 Hi there, today on Topical Books we're talking about the 25 Book Reading Challenge, the Read What You Own Challenge. I am maybe only about 10 books through, so I have 15 books to read. I have books on the go right now and the books that I finished I've really thoroughly enjoyed. There were a few Kindle books, I still have quite a bit on my Kindle, and the rest have come literally from my shelves and I really enjoyed that. So today I'll talk about a couple of the books that I received over the holidays that I will be reading soon, some of them, and the books that I'm reading right now. Most recently I finished reading Kearney by Regina St. Clair and if you have pecked it up and haven't got to it yet, highly recommend it because it is a really heartfelt read with interesting characters. I got to the after work where Regina talks about the actual Burlington Island where the carnival that the story is sort of based on did exist and I want to go visit this because as she says in the afterward of the book, there is a carousel that still survives a 100 year old carousel and I really want to go see it. That was one of the highlights of the book and of course meeting Kearney the Clown who if you have a penny-wise shaped hole in your heart, Kearney will definitely step in to fill that for you and her unlikeable main character Dag who really steals the show as far as a super unlikeable character. If you follow the news of some sort of like disgraced gentleman here and there over time and we had a CBC personality here that reminds me quite a lot of this main character and they try and turn things around for them as a journalist after having assorted past. It's just an interesting spiral to see them go down so he was an interesting main character and just sort of the thought process is behind somebody like that. You know we don't really hear from that perspective very often so I thought it was a really bold choice and she did really really well bringing that character to life so it was really fun. I was also just finished reading The Only One Left by Riley Sager and I keep saying Sager. I understand that it's Sager but the pronunciation changes depending on who you ask so I'm going to try and just I don't know how I'll pronounce it probably Sager because that's how I've been saying it all this time but yeah Todd Ritter thoroughly enjoyed this book and I will have a full-on review coming up next. Before I get into the other books that I'm reading because that's what I just finished reading I do have some books that will go on to the shelf Endless Night by Richard Layman which I do believe only just finished reading so I think that's interesting. It is a layman that I've read before so looking forward to revisiting this sometimes this is a 47 North Edition at that and there's another one in the pile that I'm going to be reading right now but yeah Endless Night by Richard Layman and then we get into the Extreme Horror part of the show with Splatter Lands and Anthology and The Distended Table a collection of holiday favorites. A lot of authors I'm not familiar with in this particular book and this one there's quite a few royalty names but I really really love these selections because they were not on my radar at all and I like hearing about new horror authors in Splatter at that because it's somewhere you don't hear of as many unless you subscribe to something like Godless personal intelligence subversive Splatter Lands horror with a point it says featuring the talents of Michael Lamo, Ray Garten, Gregory Al Norris, James Astor, J. Michael Major, A. A. Garrison, Christine Morgan, Chad Stroup, Allen Griffin, Michelle Garber, Eric Del Carlo, Jack Maddox, Paul M. Calron, and illustrations by Cary and House. The illustrations are extremely cool so I really like that. Looking forward to digging into this because I really like the Splatter punks not in dead anthology was the most recent one and I still have 69 Stroup Iron Road to get to but yeah this one's up next. The Distended Table also has some illustrations so it's prepared and served by the Splatter Punk Brigade. This is a co-op of authors from what I understand. Welcome to the holiday feast of your nightmares where the main course is sanity. Okay feast on my sanity a lot of the same sort of names so we have let's see. Sarah Colby, John Rossellot, Michelle Peterson, Dean M. Drinkle, Matthew Vaughn, NC Patterson, Roland Bursey Jr. who I've never read any but Roland Bursey Jr. and I've really wanted to. Ryan Harding of course, Allison Weir, and Ronna Selner, Joe X Young, and Trevor Candy, Russell Holbrook, and some more Sarah Colby. There's a couple of Sarah Colby and this is one of those books where they keep the spelling in the spelling that the authors nationality reflect so if they submitted a book with curb spelt in the British way that is how it sits and I really like that curb with a K and tire with a Y you know if that happens I like that. It's confusing for under sometimes as a Canadian author because we use British and American spellings of things kind of mixed up in Canada and I'm getting told often to stick to one and well I'm sticking to Canadian. Hopefully this would respect that sort of thing and you'll be tired of hearing about it skin flicks by Duncan Ralston. I'm still I'm still reading that so yeah on to what I'm reading right now. I'd picked up because of questions we have about the film A Clockwork Orange so I thought I'd just reread A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I'm only a little of the way through it so I'm going to set it aside till I'm finished reading Cults that I'm reading right now. I'm almost finished reading this anthology on Cults and it's really interesting because it's not just horror only of course it's it barns a noble anthology from quite a few years ago and some of the stories are really good. Some of them are really interesting. There's some new to me authors but I might even skip some of the better known ones because I've already read them like Children of the Corn. So far the standout story has been Village of the Dead by Edward D. Hawke. Right after I am done reading that I'm going to read Friday Night in the Beast House. This is the last book in the Beast House series by Richard Layman and I'm looking forward to it. It's really short and it has a bonus novella The Wilds. This is also a 47 North printing of a Richard Layman book and I'm very curious if anyone knows if the Layman estate of Kelly Layman and her mom get any money from these 47 North versions of Richard Layman books. I've seen them around lots. I've had a few in my possession and now I have a few more so I'm very curious about 47 North. I guess that's the Amazon publishing company not Kindle but 47 North. Friday Night in the Beast House is one I've never read so I'm very excited to get to that. I should read the other Beast House stories as a refresher but I think I'll just cut to that and then I can finish reading A Clockwork Orange and Skinflix. So are any of those on your list? I'm getting closer to the 25 books read. I'm hoping to be done mid-February so I can pick up a few new books and we'll talk about that then but coming up next will be a review on Raleigh Sager's The Only One Left. Have you read that one? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you very much for watching and have an oaky spooky day.