September Shorts: Paperbacks from Hell

To me, black paperbacks are holiday books. I guess this goes back to the horror-obsession I had during my teenage years in the late 1980s. As my family’s summer break loomed each year, I’d pack black books about monsters. I remember James Herbert’s The Rats and The Fog, Guy Smith’s The Crabs, Steven King’s stuff and Peter Benchley’s The Deep.

Black books do special things when you take them to a sunny beach or pool, and this is why I love them:

1. They absorb heat and nearly burn your fingers when you pick them up.
2. The glue that binds them melts faster than other books and the pages begin to separate.
3. Sand attaches itself to the tacky glue between the pages in fine lines. The book almost crunches as you leaf through it.
4. The covers often curl as they dry so your summer read assumes the shape of that elongated ‘m’ we use to indicate distant birds in childhood pictures.
5. Splashed swimming pool water gathers in beads on black covers. Each becomes a super-heated pinprick before it evaporates.

Grady Hendrix's wonderful Paperbacks From Hell is a razor-sharp comedy-critique of the kind of books I took on holiday back then. Hendrix writes with wit and verve, gently ridiculing the tropes of black-book sub-genres whilst clearly still loving them.

If like me you're a black-book fan, check it out.