THE MONSTERS THAT MADE US

Tim Flight. Basilisks and Beowulf : Monsters in the Anglo Saxon World. Reaktion Books, 2021.

This is a well-researched and thought-provoking book, which shines a light on some of the cultural origins of our instinctive human fears. Fear of wolves, of snakes and serpents, of dense forests and deep seas, fear of isolation, fear of chaos and disorder. It tells us much about monsters and Anglo Saxons, but also quite a bit about ourselves.

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SEEING SEA SERPENTS ON THE SEA SHORE

David Goudsward. Sun, Sand, and Sea Serpents. Anomalist Books, 2020.

I have to admit that cryptozoology is not my favourite aspect of Forteana. Too much of the published literature is either intrepid explorers hacking their way through jungles in search of some cryptid which they never seem to find, or just ‘interesting-if-true’ trawls through the journals of earlier travellers, or the seldom-explored reaches of newspaper files. But this book is quite different.
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MARKS OF THE BEAST

Jack Fennell. Rough Beasts: the Monstrous in Irish Fiction, 1800-2000. Liverpool University Press, 2019.

"In Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1938 novel Nausea, the protagonist Roquentin descends into an existential crisis when he starts to perceive the viscosity of the world around him – that is, its malleability and lack of consistency – which Mary Warnock explains via a comparison to treacle, a substance that is nether solid nor liquid, lacking a defined shape and boundaries."

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MONSTER MASH

Jason Offutt. Chasing American Monsters. Llewellyn, 2019.

No-one reading this book should be expecting a critical scientific survey of cryptozoological phenomena in the USA. That’s not what it’s for, it’s a rollicking read of accounts of encounters with the weirder denizens, or in many cases, pseudo-denizen, of the 50 states.

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MAD ABOUT MONSTERS

Boria Sax. Dinomania: Why We Love Fear and Are Utterly Enchanted by Dinosaurs. Reaktion Books, 2018.

Anyone buying this lavishly and beautifully illustrated book will know from its title not to expect a history of dinosaurs. This book instead, which appears to be born of the author's own genuine fascination with the creatures, traces how society has treated the discovery of the dinosaur from the earliest of times.

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MONSTER ROUND-UP

Malcolm Robinson. The Monsters of Loch Ness (The History and the Mystery) lulu.com, 2016.

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Karl N. P. Shuker. Here’s Nessie: A Monstrous Compendium from Loch Ness. CFZ Press, 2016.

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Nick Redfern. Nessie: Exploring the Supernatural Origins of the Loch Ness Monster. Llewellyn, 2016.

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Denver Michaels. Water Monsters South of the Border. CreateSpace, 2016.

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Ken Gerhard. A Menagerie of Mysterious Beasts: Encounters With Cryptid Creatures. Llewellyn, 2016.
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IN SEARCH OF THE MONSTER HUNTERS

Gareth Williams. A Monstrous Commotion: The Mysteries of Loch Ness. Orion, 2015.

First things first, this is not really a book about whether the Loch Ness Monster exists or not. It’s much more Magonian than that. It’s about the people who have seen, hunted and believed in the Monster and how they have created and directed the phenomenon.
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AMERICAN MONSTERS

Linda S. Godfrey. American Monsters. Tarcher Penguin, 2014.

Cryptozoology is the starting point for many a budding Fortean. If one is British then by far and away the most well-known and written-about cryptid has to be the Loch Ness Monster. If one hails from the United States, it is probably Bigfoot and the news surrounding it that receives the most attention in the popular media, and therefore by default, almost certainly first catches the imagination.
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MONSTERS IN THE FILING CABINET

Nick Redfern. Monster Files. New Page, 2013.

Well, it’s closing time at the Arkham Wetherspoon's, and we’ve had a lively evening in the company of Nick Redfern and his gang of strange buddies. We moved from our old meeting place, The Rampant Ram after the unfortunate incident of the rail replacement bus and the headless coachman.

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TWO CLASSIC MONSTERS

S. T. Joshi (editor). Encyclopedia of the Vampire; The Living Dead in Myth, Legend and Popular Culture. Greenwood, 2011.

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Bob Curran. Man-Made Monsters: A Field Guide to Golems, Patchwork Soldiers, Homunculi and Other Created Creatures. New Page 2010.

Well, you wait ages for one gigantic encyclopaedia about vampires, and then two turn up! Following on from J. Gordon Melton's 900 page tome (LINK) we get a mere 450 pages in this volume, and the total weight is 1.1 kg. as against Melton's 1.5 kg. However in terms of content it is hard to decide which is the weightier.

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