A visit to the october country — 2018

He was running late.

They all were, it seemed – everyone, all around. Heads down, unable to tear themselves away from the latest horror. It weighed upon him, this feeling of unending stress and strife, this sense that it would only get worse before it could possibly get better (and even the getting better might only be a mitigating better as opposed to true progress).

As the world moved faster and faster, he tried to keep pace in his daily life and the race was running him ragged. And so it was that he awoke on the last day of September and realized that he’d not even packed, not even considered the trip forthcoming.

And he wondered, for the first time, if it was a trip he could make. The world of fantasy and fear was ultimately an escape, and the real world demanded presence. It demanded a commitment to the fight.

“But,” said his partner, shining red dog standing by her side, “no one can go forever. Everyone needs a break. Others will take up the fight. Don’t let them take this from you.”

And so he shrugged on his jacket and set to packing…

The 2018 October Country Reading List

  • Dinner, César Aira

  • Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis

  • The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks

  • The Bus on Thursday, Shirley Barrett

  • My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

  • Kindred, Octavia Butler

  • The Honours, Tim Clare

  • The Twenty Days of Turin, Giorgio De Maria, tr. Ramon Glazov

  • Alice Isn’t Dead, Jeffrey Fink

  • The Twilight Pariah, Jeffrey Ford

  • The Last Wolf / Herman, László Krasznahorkai, tr. George Szirtes and John Batki

  • Judderman, D.A. Northwood

  • The Ghost Box I & II, ed. by Patton Oswalt

  • Wolfman Confidential, Justin Robinson

  • Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi

  • Memento Mori, Muriel Spark

  • The Job of the Wasp, Colin Winnette