Mark My Words: 5 books I love and finding the good parts
When I riff through my personal library shelves, I can pick out the books I most love and use by the number of makeshift bookmarks—shreds of Kleenex, ancient business cards, even cereal box tops– hanging out of them. It’s not that I don’t have any traditional bookmarks. It’s just that choosing the right gum wrapper or creased photo feels more organic; almost a crude art form. (I admit sometimes I’m just too lazy to go find a “real” one.) A few days ago, I noticed five great books overflowing with found scraps, and decided to share not only their titles but also the added bits of flotsam and jetsam that distinguished them. So, in no particular order:
#1, and winning best title award, is Apocalypse Any Day Now by Tea Krulos, 2019, Chicago Review Press. In this witty first-hand survey of various disaster-prepping people and other live-for-today-plan-for-tomorrow folks, I used a “5-Below Store” receipt to mark the page of a checklist of things to take when the human race inevitably moves to Mars. I also used a quick-start booklet from my dash cam box instructions to note a page discussing zombies.
#2 The Big Muddy Monster, by Chad Lewis, Noah Voss and Kevin Nelson, “On the Road Publications” 2019,” I chose a “get out of fines free card” I received from Elkhorn’s Matheson Public Library, and a bulletin for the annual Van Meter Visitor Conference hosted by the three authors. The first page I marked holds a particularly interesting passage on theories regarding “window areas,” or places where various unknown creatures and phenomena manifest and perhaps have Happy Hour. The other marker begins discussion of a Bigfoot-like creature associated with central Illinois in the mid-20th century, and many other paranormal and cryptid puzzles hunted in person by Lewis, Voss and Nelson. These guys camp in monster territory when it’s ten below zero! They are the real thing.
#3 Midwestern Strange, written by associate professor of English at UW-Wisconsin, Eau Claire; University of Nebraska Press, 2019. I could easily find something to mark every page in this recounting of, as his subtitle says, “Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country.” But I used the note from my dog’s vet informing me it was time for Grendel’s heartworm pills to mark Hollars’ section on the Beast of Bray Road. It includes a copy of my first newspaper drawing of the creature. There are also chapters on Rhinelander’s famed Hodag, West Virginia’s Mothman, and the Kensington Runestone, among others. For sure, there are enough subjects backed by elegant historical facts to lose that “Flyover” name forever!
#4 Hockomock, Peter Tower, published by Shiffer, 2013, at first seemed like an outlier with its earlier date and a title taken from an Algonquian phrase meaning “where the spirits dwell.” But the book is an intriguing inlier. Today its title refers to a 6,000-acre, swampy conservation area in Massachusetts also known as the Bridgewater Triangle, said to be the locus of all forms of paranormal and cryptid events—as well as many human tragedies. I have a torn piece of notebook paper showing me where the section on black mystery cats begins, a fish-shaped shopping list marking where to find a 1979 UFO incident report, and some small Post-It tabs at the beginning of the black dog info. There are tons of nooks and crannies to explore here yet, and I will need a well-filled wastebasket to mark it thoroughly.
#5 The Real Men in Black, Nick Redfern, New Page Books; 2011, boasts a bunch of bookmarks. One, a hand-stamped fake luggage tag, says “Art saves lives.” I think that’s true. But art has its dangers. I used this tag to remind me of a particular study of the Loch Ness Monster in which the late investigator Ted Holiday witnessed a “man-in-black” figure watching him from a position slightly above the loch in 1973. Holiday felt deep “malevolence and abnormality emanating from the cold, passionless entity…” and then saw the figure instantly vanish. On his next visit, Holiday suffered a heart attack at the exact spot where the man in black had stood. This book is full of other odd MIB incidents that stand on their own merit but also document other strange events that occur in tandem with these visitations, from fairies to UFOs.
I enjoyed this journey into trash ephemera so much that I plan to do it again soon. So many economy motel notepads, so little time.
Author, investigator and artist Linda Godfrey has had 18 books published on strange creatures, phenomena and people. She’s a frequent guest on national TV and radio shows, including the Wall Street Journal Books page (Aug. 2019), Chicago Tribune, Small Town Monsters, Legend Seeker TV Show, Dead Files, The Unexplained (Travel Ch.), In Search of Monsters (TRVL Ch.) Monsterquest (Seasons 1 and 4), Fox News Red Eye, Lost Tapes, Monsters and Mysteries, Sean Hannity’s America, Inside Edition, Coast to Coast AM, Wis. Public Radio, the Jenny McCarthy Show and many more. She lives in the Kettle Moraine area of SE Wisconsin with her husband and monster dog, Grendel.
For more of contributing writer Linda Godfrey’s work, visit her on Facebook, or her website.
