Amazon’s Best Books Of The Month For March 2010 – D’D Filtered

March 4, 2010 at 3:18 pm by Morbid  

Every month, Amazon highlights some books that their editors feel are the best new reads in fiction and nonfiction, making them available at a discount all month long. So we have decided that every month we will take a look at this list and put it through the D’D filter, taking out any crap that may have terms like “young adult”, “heartwarming” and “inspiring” attached to them – leaving a much better list of the dark, morbid and macabre. I won’t sit here and pretend to care if some of you open-mouth breathers pry your eyes off of Maury long enough to crack a book, as I don’t care if you stay dumb. I NEED some of you to serve me my $5 Box at Taco Bell and to wash my car. This monthly section is more for fans of D’D who also like to read a good book on occasion. So for you, feel free to jump into the discussion with your observations or chime in if you have already read any of the books we feature. Read on for our filtered list of Amazon’s Best Books for March 2010.

Horns: A Novel by Joe Hill

Best known for his terrifying (really) debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, and his famous dad, Joe Hill continues to make a name for himself with Horns, a dark, funny exploration of love, grief, and the nature of good and evil. Ignatius William Perrish wakes up bleary and confused after a night of drinking and “doing terrible things” to find he has grown horns. In addition to being horribly unsightly, these inflamed protuberances give Ig an equally ugly power–if he thinks hard enough, he can make people admit things (intimate, embarrassing, I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that details). This bizarre affliction is of particular use to Ig who is still grieving over the murder of his childhood sweetheart (a grisly act the entire town, including his family, believes he committed). Horns is a wickedly fun read, and reveals Hill’s uncanny knack for creating alluring characters and a riveting plot. Ig’s attempts to track down the killer result in hilariously inappropriate admissions from the community, heartbreaking confessions from his own family, and of course, one hell of a showdown. –Daphne Durham

D’D says: I really enjoyed Heart Shaped Box and the award winning Locke and Key comic book series he authors is fabulous. So I am anxious to see if this second novel equals the quality of his first. The reviews coming in indicate that he has. Besides, the man is so badass, when he was a kid he killed Tom Atkins with a goddamn voodoo doll!

Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermyby Melissa Milgrom

For many, taxidermy summons images of wildlife frozen in menacing poses, teeth bared in an eternal rictus; or maybe it’s the lamented family cat, forever curled in purr-less slumber. With Still Life, Melissa Milgrom peels the skin back on Norman Bates’s favorite pastime, dutifully tracking taxidermy from its 19th-century heyday (the beneficiary of a natural history boom), to its nadir as a reviled predilection in the age of PETA and conservation. It will tell most readers as much as they need to know about erosion-molded rats and replacement lips, ears, and eyelids, but it’s the culture of iron-stomached men (and occasionally, women) that practice the art of skinned carcasses and stretched hides–those who wield “the calipers and the brain spoons”–that Milgrom’s after. Beginning as a wide-eyed visitor to a third-generation stuff shop, she moves through an underworld of auctions, artisans, scientists, and the ultra competitive (albeit insular) World Taxidermy Championships, ultimately trying a queasy hand at squirrel-stuffing herself. Still Life is an entertaining and illuminating adventure. –Jon Foro

DD says: This one just sounds too interesting to pass up. Not just because the author is pretty hot, but the entire subject matter is fairly creepy to me starting when I first touched the glass eyes of a mounted deer head in a friend’s living room. So while I am recommending this book purely from my own uneasiness with the art, reading some of the comments and reviews have definitely intrigued me.

Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay

With a storyline that’s wound tighter than a rattlesnake’s coil, author Linwood Barclay returns to play upon our deepest fears with Never Look Away . Journalist David Harwood is left only with questions after a family outing becomes a terrifying nightmare in the mere blink of an eye. Someone, it would seem, is out to get him, and when suspicious evidence labels him a “person of interest” in a mysterious disappearance, the unassuming Harwood is forced to bare his teeth in pursuit of the truth. Fans of Fear the Worst , Too Close to Home , and No Time for Goodbye should already know the drill: Barclay again refuses to grant readers any respite with gut-wrenching plot twists that keep firing until the final page. But those unfamiliar with his work would be wise to clear their calendars for this engaging non-stop thriller. –Dave Callanan

DD says: Honestly I know nothing about this guy mostly because he is Canadian and Canadians are notoriously evil creatures. But people seem to like his past work and I do enjoy me a good thriller. reviewers are really liking this novel with some throwing out names like Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly. So I dunno…I may pick this up and give it a go. If anyone has read anything by this guy, pipe up.

Well that’s it for the stripped down version of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month. You can check out the entire list if you want. There’s a book about the Vietnam War, some crap about childhood and a chick rambling on about her shaking fits. But like I said, we have listed the only ones worth checking out.

3 Comments

• 

• Tweet