Morbidly Curious by Coltan Scrivner

 

I read this little book in a coffee shop yesterday, after seeing a pretty strong recommendation online, and ... well, I was distinctly underwhelmed. It spends a fair amount of its relatively small space defending fans of dark fiction from various calumnies I personally haven't really encountered--though I also am not as a rule a fan of either slashers or torture porn. The author is apparently a real social scientist, or at least has done that kind of work, for real, but the book feels a lot more pop-psych to me, though without the readability and charm of someone like Mary Roach. Lots of recaps of various studies the author has worked on, or at least been associated with; lots of talk about purportedly haunted places in the real world (which I mostly don't buy, and the author says he doesn't but then seems to talk about experiences he's had in them). Not much is sticking a day later, which probably says something.