R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril XI takes place from September 1st, 2016 through October 31st, 2016.

RIPEleven

Abigail Larson’s original artwork for RIP XI 2016

There are only two expectations if you want to participate with us:
1. Have fun reading (and watching*).
2. Share that fun with others.

Sign-ups are here, on Stainless Steel Droppings.

Reading, Watching, and, new this year, Playing.*

Mystery. Suspense. Thriller.Dark Fantasy. Gothic. Horror. Supernatural.

The event has run on the same general principles from the beginning, although gradually widening to incorporate other RIP-themed fun as the years have passed. Please visit Carl’s page for more details. 

Even back in 2010, I was watching movies as part of the celebrations, but this year I also want to try the newest category, Peril in Play, so that I can lay out some games on the table between the stacks of books.

MisterBIP is going to love this because we usually play a game on Sundays anyway, and now he will have an excuse to suggest new creepy-spooky games to add to our (very small but much-adored) collection.

For Peril of theShort Story, I’m beginning with Ladies of Fantasy: Two Centuries of Sinister Stories by the Gentle Sex (Ed. Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis).

It’s an old-fashioned collection that’s been on my shelf since I was a girl and I’ve not yet read it cover-to-cover. The first story is by E. Nesbit, who also apparently wrote horror stories as well as the gentle fantasies shelved with the children’s classics.

For Peril of the Screen, MisterBIP and I aim to watch 13 horror films together each season, but it feels a little too bright and warm outdoors to begin just yet. Whenever we have made a list, we have scurried in exactly the opposite direction of all our good intentions, so whimsy will dictate here.

For Peril the First, I’ve looked back at my lists from previous events to see what books I’d hoped to read that I didn’t complete. Much of my reading this year has been devoted to filling some gaps, finishing books that have stumped me in the past, reading on with series I’ve enjoyed, and finally following up on recommendations from reading friends.

Most of my past RIP plans were rooted here too, so I’m not going to make a new list, rather look to good ideas on older lists, and then allow for some whimsy along with the excitement of a new publishing season to build some stacks as the weeks pass.

I’m especially keen to see where works by favourite authors (even some of my MRE MustReadEverything authors) might fit thematically). Maybe this is when I will finally restart and finish, at last, Toni Morrison’s Beloved?

And all year I’ve been reading on in series which have languished unfinished for too long; I’ve even finished some! Two series that I’m ready to complete are Kelley Armstrong’s final in the Nadia-Stafford-assassin series (Wild Justice) and the final in her Women of the Otherworld (13). Are there series volumes figuring in your RIP reading this year?

I’ve also been wanting to carry on with Jackson Brodie as well, but I’ve been eyeing Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? for so long now, that I wonder if I won’t need to begin again with Case Histories. Perhaps watching the BBC episodes which corespond with the first two volumes would suffice: thoughts?

As for stories that I’ve waited a long time to read, my first official read for this year’s RIP is George Elliott Clarke’s George & Rue, which retells the story of a bludgeoning and a hanging from 1949 New Brunswick, Canada.

Previously, I’ve read his Execution Poems, a set of verses which also consider this murder, and his Whylah Falls, which is preoccupied with another sort of passion. Clarke’s exuberance spills across the page of whatever stories he tells and this one, though difficult, is just as beautiful (but, yes, brutal) as the other works of his which I’ve read.

Next in the stack is Steven Price’s By Gaslight, which was published at the end of August. A novel of “darker selves”, unfolding in a “city of fog and darkness” about “notorious thief Edward Shade [who] exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men’s futures – a man of smoke”. It’s being compared to Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, which works to draw me in, but it also reminds me of Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx, a book that I struggled to finish for another year’s RIP.

And there is a mystery near the top of the stack: The Hanging by Lotte and Søren Hammer. (My copy is translated by Ebba Segerberg. What a shame to have to look to the copyright page to find this crucial piece of information: why isn’t her name on the cover or, at least, the cover page?(

This duo is new-to-me but I’m predisposed in their favour because I’ve recently read and enjoyed another Danish duo’s collaborations, the Nina Borg mysteries (The Considerate Killer is the most recent). There is now at least one other volume available in English translation: anyone read their work yet?

Are you joining or have you joined this event? If so, what are you most looking forward to for this year’s celebrations?

If not, are you reading something creepy-spooky in the wings? Either way, woudl you care to recommend a sinister tale for my stack?