 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to Top 5 Friday. Today I am super excited. I'm finally starting my Top 20 of all time. Today we are going through Numbers 20 through 16, so settle in and let's talk about these books. So jumping right into it, I ended up replacing, if you watched my video on those across the river, my review for that book, I ended up replacing Twilight Eyes by Dean Coons, but I also reorganized things and put because Twilight Eyes was pretty far up on the list. I looked at that after my reread and I was like, no that's either dropping way down or it's going off the list completely as I can't put, even though the carnival scenes mean a lot to me, they, they're very, they're not a small part of the book, but that the pieces of the carnival that really stuck with me are a small part of the book like the smells of popcorn and the way that Dean Coons brings the carnival to life. But anyways, so at number 20 we have Those Across the River by Christopher Buhlman. Will this be here a month from now, a week from now? Who knows? This list is subject to change on a whim. When I find a terrific book that stays with me, it'll go up on the list. That's exactly how I do my Top 20. The Top 5 have not changed in years though. So Those Across the River, you can watch my review for a lengthier reason why I love it. And I'm going to try and stay away from spoilers in this review if I can. With this one I loved that I finally got a hold of a Salem slot with werewolves. The, the book, I also feel and this is, this is the reason why it's actually on this list. The book is a complete experience. There, there is no unanswered questions. I don't feel. I feel that every single little thread that is brought up in the story comes together and I am impressed. It is very, very rare in literary horror that every, even with Stephen King now, even with Stephen King, he's done, he's done much better toward the, things like insomnia. But even insomnia goes on too long. I feel answering questions is what I'm getting at. With this one is a perfect succinct experience well put together and it is, it is, it is brief. It's only 350 pages roughly. So it's your average length novel and it still manages to be literary. It's kind of, it's kind of like genre, genre length but it is literary in the, in its themes and its writings, all that. I got a leaning tower piece over here because the top 20 and top, well the, the top, the bottom two books are on the top so I can do the ascending order and they are hard covers but the other ones are paperbacks. So I'm worried that it's going to fall. Let me try and be gentle. Okay. Next up, we have at number 19, The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. I did a retro review of this book. My, the beauty of this book and hopefully on this list there aren't recurring themes. Each one of these books means something is special to me because it, because of specific reasons. The last one was The Complete Experience. This one is my favorite example of stories within a story. I don't consider this a mosaic novel. Like Alan Moore's Jerusalem, like Cloud Atlas, those, those type of books. This has a regular novel narrative. It does. But there are short stories sprinkled throughout that, that not emboldened. I'm trying to think of the word. It's early in the morning y'all. I'm sorry. It, it strengthens the overall narrative. It strengthens the story and you can take away those stories and the book is still a book just with the Marianne Engel and the main characters. You know, like it's funny that I remember the, the, the supporting character more than I remember the main character whose head we're in. I don't even remember his name but I love Marianne Engel. She's one of my favorite characters of all time. But those stories enhance the story. I mean, it could have been quick. Did you know this one time that was a priest or a monk? There was one, these Vikings. There was these Japanese during that, so on and so forth. You, you could have done really, really quick snippets. Davidson could have done that but he didn't. He dove all in and I love every aspect of that. Now people who say things like the, I feel like the story meandered or drifted away from, from the, from the, the plot. If you're one of those people who find yourself saying that a lot, you're probably not going like this book because there are parts that, that dive deep into other stories and it goes completely away from the, the narrative plot but it all comes together literally, in the literary sense. So there's number 19. Number 18. I do not have a copy of this book. It would be simple to acquire but the thing is I like the audio book more than I like the other, the actual reading of it because I can consume the audio book in about two to three hours if I boost the speed up to either times two or times three and the book is only like six, seven hours long, something like that and it's animosity by James Newman. One thing that horror writers get all the time, all the time, we get this crap all the time is that we must be terrible people because we write about terrible things. That's what James Newman talks about in animosity. James Newman is a Christian. He is a super, super good dude. I put those two things separately because I'm just giving a, I'm giving a, I don't, I'm not religious at all. He's a religious man. He's also a super great dude. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Or I think I said that wrong. Anyways, those two things do not always come together. There are plenty of terrible Christians. There are plenty of terrible atheists, that kind of thing but he is, he is a great individual, a great human being and he's religious and he writes about something super fucked up stuff. Animosity is one of those books that describes perfectly, I feel, how a horror author is treated by, I don't want to call you normies, but by people who do not like horror. They automatically assume that just because you write this stuff or just because you think this stuff that you're a terrible person. That's what this book does well and that's why it's on the list. I know I was rather brief with that one, but there's not much else to say about it because I don't want to give any spoilers away for that book whatsoever. I think it's a fantastic book and you definitely need to go try it out. My personal favorite way to, to consume it is the audiobook though. That's important. Next up, we have number 17 which is Gone South by Robert R. McCammon and no, Boys Life is not on my list at all. This is my favorite Robert McCammon book. I am not a Robert McCammon fan. I am a Robert McCammon appreciator. I think he's written some, he's written more bad books so far that I found. Y'all calm down down there in the doo-doo-doo. Calm down. It's okay. I can have my opinion. I think he's written more bad books than he has good books. I feel the same way about Peter Straub. They have some amazing books. Peter Straub has Ghost Story and Shadowland. McCammon has Boys Life and Gone South so far. I haven't read Stinger and I need to reread Swan Song and a couple other ones, but I'm going chronologically. You know how I do. Gone South is the characters. The characters are absolutely amazing, but specifically, because we're going to get into characters with other books, specifically because they are so fucking odd. I don't want to get into any spoilers, but the private investigator, the person tracking down the main character is amazing. Well, it's actually the duo. Both of them put together, it's amazing. It blows my mind that there is so much creativity in this book and nobody ever talks about it. You see people go, you know, Gone South is great, whatever. Then there's a dog pile with, what about Boys Life? Boys Life is great. It's a terrific book. It's nowhere near as good as this. I'm sorry. That's how I feel about it. This book wraps up beautifully. There is a beautiful theme of acceptance in this story that I really attached to, but the main thing is it is the inclusion of characters that are not as the rest of the world would see normal. They are odd people, and I love reading books about odd people, so there's your number 17. Now, at number 16 is a book that I think is the most whacked out shit ever, and also I find it funny that I see people dissing on the regulators and other odd books, and they end up liking this book, which is Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. This is one of the only books in school that I ended up falling in love with. Everything else felt like a chore. It felt tedious, but Vonnegut with this book, the satire is on point. It's even something that, you know, 12, 13-year-old me caught onto, the Tremflamadorians, whatever the hell you, however you pronounce it, everything in here, the illusions to himself as a character, you know, his alter ego kind of, everything about this book is fantastic, but the sole purpose it is on this list is because it is one of the only cases where an author has gone full bonkers batshit crazy and the book is celebrated. You have books like The Regulators, which is batshit crazy, and it has terrific themes, and it's literary, and it's fantastic. Nobody takes it seriously. Then you have this one, which is just, and it just blows my mind that the book is as weird as it is. It has time travel, it has space travel, it has aliens, it has all different kinds of stuff, it has a circular narrative, it has a alternating timelines, it's got all different kinds of stuff, it's got history, it's got loads of stuff in it. The same thing goes for The Regulators. I'm not saying these two books are on par, I'm just saying it's odd to me, why? So I've read this book several times, simply because I'm trying to figure out what makes this book so special with, and what other books, I see people going, oh, that book's just fucking weird, but then they talk about this book as if it's amazing. I don't understand where the disconnect is when their only argument is, it was too weird for me. They didn't like the other book because it was too weird. This book is considerably more weird, I feel, but who knows, if you are someone who dislikes one weird book and loves another weird book, I'd love to hear why. So that's our question for the day, not what's your top, what's your number 20 through 16? Of course, if you want to leave that, leave that down there in the doobly-doo if you have a top 20 list. But the question of the day is, why do you like one weird thing and you don't like the other weird thing? I don't think the characters are strong in this, I think that the theme is on point, I think that, but the whole reason I like this book is because it somehow became as popular as it did. Being the weirdest fucking thing, it could possibly be. Flying its freak flag strongly. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another Top 5 Friday, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!