I guess I found a story that makes me as uncomfortable as Survivor Type, but In the Tall Grass also has a fantastic anxiety-inducing beginning. I respect nature and I can admire beautiful views just as much as the next person, but I'm not particularly adventurous. If you want to go save someone from a creepy thicket of tall grass, go ahead. I'll stay in the car, blasting music and eating chili peanuts, and I'll also call 911 when you inevitably end up lost.

The Netflix movie might have served its purpose more effectively in an anthology show. I also don't understand why people always insist on making small changes to adaptations, because in the end they rarely add anything interesting to the story. This one is middle of the road horror, but as far as King adaptations go, not the worst I've seen.

For the English-speaking readers at least, Lagerlöf is probably best known for Gösta Berling (1891) (one of my favorite books of all time) and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906) (haven't read it yet, but I loved the animation when I was little). I liked Troll och Människor more than I did The Girl from the Marsh Croft (1908), but I can't yet say that anyone should go out of their way to try to find her lesser known translated works.

The entire collection is beautifully written, but as far as stories that held my interest go, the ones that stood out were The Changeling (a mother's love and belief in kindness saves her family when her child is replaced with a troll child), Vattnet i Kyrkviken (a folklore-inspired story about a priest who tries to stop a man from drowning, but the man thinks he's protected by water sprites), and Gammal fäbodsägen (a girl stays alone at a cattle hut making cheese, when a cauldron warns her of danger with the voice of an old lady).

Lagerlöf is definitely at her best in supernatural stories, but the four speeches (including the one she made when she won the Nobel prize in 1909, and one that she made in favor of women's voting rights) were interesting as well in terms of finding more about her as a person. Lagerlöf completionists, or people who are more enthusiastic about her other work than I am, might enjoy the collection a tad more than I did. Collections such as these can easily feel like the publisher just dumped extra material in one book, and in this case I can see the beginnings of at least three separate books.

Still, I have an amazing 1915 copy (with a dedication: "To Wiena, Christmas 1915. Love, Mother"), so even if I hadn't been impressed by any of the stories, I would have wanted to keep it in my shelf.

I have a strange thing going on with Highsmith. No matter how much I like the stories themselves (and the stories have inspired so many good movies, such as Purple Noon [1960]), reading feels like a slog. Maybe her novels are too long for their own good and I should try her short stories, but every time I open one of her books, I get the same brick wall between us every time. I don't mean that she's a bad writer, or that I don't like slow and subtle, just that I can never get into her books as much as I'd like to.

Strangers on a Train is no exception. The highly visible homoerotic undertones, Bruno's absolutely demented and delusional mind, the manipulation, the mommy issues, the drama, the murder... All great, but everything is almost clinical, and there's just no tension. Or at least the kind that would keep me on the edge of my seat. Some things make more sense in the movie, and there are aspects I like more in the book, but Hitchcock still deserves my vote.

Not anything that I would remember after a few days. The writing was beautiful as usual but the stories didn't live up to others Wilde's works.

When it comes to relaxing, it doesn't matter what the topic of a book is, because for me reading is an unparalleled way to charge my batteries (unfortunately, writing reviews doesn't always sound tempting when I've already squeezed out words out of my brain all day). In any case, even when the book isn't quite as interesting as I had hoped, it completely transports me somewhere else. The Heroin Diaries really is another world. I read The Dirt about a year and a half ago, and I figured it would be time to read the solo book as well.

Now... I loved Sixx's portions of The Dirt, but this felt like a long-long version of them. It just got so mind-numbing to read about the hundredth time of shooting up, but I'm guessing that's the reality of living in this kind of plane of existence. The (often very negative) comments from Sixx and friends and past acquaintances did fortunately offer a bit of relief, hindsight, and a different perspective. Special mention to the very fitting graphic design, and there's also an audiobook for those who want to hear Sixx himself tell his story.

In the end, no matter how monotonous I thought the diaries were, their publication was nevertheless important and needed. Some people complain about celebrity books, but if they have an interesting and a valuable story to tell, who cares about their celebrity status? Not everyone has the same amount of money or opportunities, but if there's even the slightest chance to become something else than what Sixx used to be, taking that road could change everything. Especially because most people don't come back after dying.

Although Babbitt's stories didn't quite charm me the way they have charmed others, they're a clever and refreshing choice for those who want an entertaining children's book with a few lessons here in there, but nothing that is schmalzy or underestimates children. The title alone can cause the most moralistic and religious people to freak out (the book has in fact been challenged by parents in some American schools, which just tells me they either didn't bother reading it or refused to understand it), but the truth is that in these fable-like stories Mr. Satan himself learns a few things about people and their ability to resist him and his tricks.