I don't know whether there will be much woo in it, but I'm betting there might be, but I'm going to read the Bigfoot book of the Into the Fray podcast's host Shannon LeGro. I first saw Shannon on her TV show on Amazon Prime called "On the Trail of UFOs" and then later listening to the Into the Fray podcast and through the production group Small Town Monsters, whose Amazon and YouTube documentaries on cryptids like Momo (Missouri's Bigfoot) and the Minerva Monster (a Bigfoot that visited an Ohio family's property) and Mothman (those who know me well, know I love the Mothman cryptid stories even more than Bigfoot!) I've been consuming these stories like a kid consumes Halloween candy the day after trick or treating. Shannon's book is called Beyond the Fray: Bigfoot. I will read it next.
Books by one of the all-time woo authorities on weird shit, John Keel, are on my to read list: The Mothman Prophesies, Our Haunted Planet, and The Eighth Tower: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum. I'm not sure I'll be able to get to all of these, but for research purposes, I need to read the first and the third, at least. Why Mothman for a bigfoot book? He kind of figures into it somehow, but I don't know how just yet. I have a feel, way down deep in my little woo soul, that all cryptid creatures (if real) are somewhat connected.
I almost forgot that I'm also currently reading Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Florida, by Tim Reeser. Speaking of the all-prevalent, dirty word WOO, my partner and I like to do some paranormal investigations sometimes, not strictly for fun, mind you, but to see what we feel. I'm particularly interesting in seeing how much I can feel from the other side of the veil since some of it lifted a lot for me after an encounter I had (and not a positive one) in a duplex I lived in here in Florida. So far, we've only visited the fort at Ft. DeSoto, reputed to be haunted by ghosts of soldiers and pirates. There was one bunker we felt a little uneasy in the day we went, but otherwise we didn't experience anything too ghostly there that day.
Other research books on my list are more scientific. The Oregon Bigfoot Highway has witness accounts for sure, but also pictures of scat samples (they call it the Mother of All Turds, I shit you not...no pun intended), locations, and other interesting data. Jeff Meldrum is featured on many a bigfoot show and he is a scientist and University professor who believes in something called the relict hominid theory. That bigfoots are an undiscovered missing link to humans, if you will. Could be. Why not? Doesn't take away from their woo-ness. May even add something to it. His book, Sasquatch; Legend Meets Science, is on my list.
I have a few books on the Florida Skunk Ape and one on the Ohio Minerva Monster bigfoot account. I'd like to try and read the skunk ape one before our 4-day trip to Myakka River State Park this year (we recently saw our own MofATs there, but it was most likely a human who had to go to bad to get to the restrooms at the park...it was hella big though, enough for us to crack jokes about us finding squatch crap in the woods...lol).
For fun and to get my fiction fix, I'd like to finish reading the latest Murderbot novel, Fugitive Telemetry. I'll be really absorbed in research and writing, but I need to get some reading-for-fun into my busy schedule in 2022.
And I'm ordering from Amazon soon the second and third volumes of Junko's romcom manga Kiss Him, Not Me. I'm hoping I can fit those into my busy reading schedule this coming year.