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Re: Blood Standard, my comment in this very thread was "it’s got that tough-guy feel of his early stuff and some of the cosmic horror elements as well, and writing for a bigger audience has helped cut down on those interminable descriptions of inchoate howling voids of cyclopean encyclopedias." I reckon that's about right, but I haven't really thought about that book since I read it. A decent book, not amazing, but I'll probably read the next one.
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# ? Jan 16, 2019 19:11 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:10 |
Bilirubin posted:Never sell books
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# ? Jan 16, 2019 19:57 |
I've made a fair amount of money selling books. And I've used that money to buy more books.
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# ? Jan 16, 2019 20:00 |
I've never made any kind of money selling books, but I've also only ever sold crappy mass market paperbacks and the occasional oddball limited hardcover or whatever. I usually just take the random crap into Half Price Books though, so maybe there's a better way to get rid of them. And yeah, what little money I make buys more books. But mostly makes room for books I actually want instead of the crud that accumulates over the years.
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# ? Jan 16, 2019 20:02 |
A lot of it is being lucky enough to own something that shoots up in value. Another big part is having a general knowledge of the market. Like, the Grant editions of the last three Dark Tower books are not worth anything, but the Grant editions of the first four are worth a bit to a whole loving lot depending on which book it is and condition.
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# ? Jan 16, 2019 20:07 |
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Ornamented Death posted:the last three Dark Tower books are not worth anything
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 17:39 |
last four
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 17:48 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:last four Wizard and Glass is the best thing King has written.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 17:50 |
I made the mistake(?) of reading the comic adaptation before reading Wizard & Glass, not realizing they covered the same backstory. I'd say the comic is better, if for no other reason than being short. Also despite really liking Dark Tower, even the crappy parts, I'm not sure I'd call any of them the best thing King's ever written. That said, I'm not sure what I would call the best thing he's written. I'm not sure he's ever managed to write the best thing he theoretically could have written.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 18:05 |
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I have become retroactively soured on King over the years; I read a lot of his stuff when I was a kid, ate the Dark tower hiatus after Wizard and Glass and the payoff was... not worth it. 5 was not good but not terrible, 6 was rubbish and I could have forgiven 7 (and the series as a whole, even if I still hold 1-4 dear) if he hadn't pulled that loving deus ex machina with the kid and the eraser or hadn't started with the truck bullshit again, and this isn't even getting into the pregnancy poo poo, Jake's death via aforementioned truck or a bunch of other stuff that I'm probably forgetting. It also had that copout in the coda going "you should stop reading now, this is for people who didn't like how the book ended". I haven't read anything he put out after 7 nor gone back to read the stuff that came out before that but I hadn't read. Also Cujo. What the gently caress was that book.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 18:23 |
Edmond Dantes posted:I have become retroactively soured on King over the years; I read a lot of his stuff when I was a kid, ate the Dark tower hiatus after Wizard and Glass and the payoff was... not worth it. 5 was not good but not terrible, 6 was rubbish and I could have forgiven 7 (and the series as a whole, even if I still hold 1-4 dear) if he hadn't pulled that loving deus ex machina with the kid and the eraser or hadn't started with the truck bullshit again, and this isn't even getting into the pregnancy poo poo, Jake's death via aforementioned truck or a bunch of other stuff that I'm probably forgetting. It also had that copout in the coda going "you should stop reading now, this is for people who didn't like how the book ended". I haven't read anything he put out after 7 nor gone back to read the stuff that came out before that but I hadn't read. I know I've said this before, probably in this thread, but I'm convinced that King mostly got big early in his career due to being just different enough and just timely enough that there was nobody doing the same thing as him at the moment. And if he hadn't gotten so big, so fast, he might have had publishers who were a little more willing to force him to work with an editor that was up to telling him to cut poo poo instead of letting him write whatever comes to mind. So many of his books that are just okay would probably be very good with some judicious editing, or at the very least someone who was more willing to call him out on poo poo that doesn't make sense. Dark Tower is kind of another layer of that entirely, I think. It's like seeing every internet geek's "dream project" that they craft in their head over decades actually become a reality, and it's plagued with the exact sort of inconsistencies and tonal shifts you'd expect from an author who is too attached to an idea trying to work it out over a matter of decades. That, plus the unnecessary "King Universe" tie-ins to other novels, means it's a highly ambitious, flawed mess. But I'm convinced that had he written it all prior to publishing any of it, and had someone (exceptionally patient) pick it apart with a fine-toothed comb to remove all the cruft and dumb poo poo, it could have been fantastic. As far as Cujo is concerned you can probably blame/thank ample amounts of cocaine for that one, depending on your disposition towards the book.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 18:30 |
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King has a bunch of good books and I feel most people forget he ''also wrote that one.'' Here's my list of good ones, up until 2010. 1974 - Carrie 1975 - Salem's Lot 1977 - The Shining 1978 - Night Shift (stories) 1978 - The Stand 1979 - The Dead Zone 1982 - The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger 1982 - Different Seasons (novellas) 1983 - Christine 1983 - Pet Sematary 1984 - The Talisman (written with Peter Straub) 1985 - Skeleton Crew (stories, including "The Mist") 1986 - It 1987 - Misery 1987 - The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three 1989 - The Dark Half 1990 - Four Past Midnight (stories) 1991 - Needful Things 1991 - The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands 1993 - Nightmares & Dreamscapes (stories) 1996 - The Green Mile 1996 - Desperation 1998 - Bag of Bones 2002 - From a Buick 8 2002 - Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales 2010 - Full Dark, No Stars Long Walk is his best one though.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 18:41 |
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Yeah, sounds about right. I think that's why I like 4 so much, it has everything great about the series without the "Kingverse" bullshit. 1-3 also handled that stuff way differently than 5-7; ties to other books in 1-3 were closer to cameos or winks for people who had read them, but suddenly after 4 you had major characters and concepts being pulled in and if you hadn't read everything he had put out before them some parts didn't make much sense. I'm also realising that I read most of his stuff in Spanish and I only read Dark Tower in English, so I'm starting to wonder how much of King's writing affectation/tics got lost in translation and how much of it only came to play at a later date, because for the life of me I can't remember anything even close to "Dad-a-chum? Dum-a-chum? Ded-a-chek? Did-a-chick?" in his earlier stuff. MockingQuantum posted:As far as Cujo is concerned you can probably blame/thank ample amounts of cocaine for that one, depending on your disposition towards the book. The only think I remember about Cujo is that I finished reading that book and feeling that nothing had loving happened in it. Also a whole sideplot of some guy masturbating on a bed? Because he was jealous? There's some urban legend about King's publisher sending him a cheque for Cujo and King not even remembering having written the book since he crammed it out in a week in the middle of a coke bender and I gotta tell you, I believe it.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 18:45 |
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Edmond Dantes posted:
Don't quote me but I think that Library Policeman had some of that. I think he used it a lot when dealing with like, repressed childhood trauma.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 19:05 |
ravenkult posted:King has a bunch of good books and I feel most people forget he ''also wrote that one.'' That's a good list, and I'd agree with everything on it (that I've read, which is about half of them), and I'm not sure I'd add anything personally. I'd easily just hand someone the first six on that list as the "must reads" if they were new to King. I tend to lean on From a Buick 8 for people who are iffy on King, though that one has its problems too. Don't get me wrong from my previous posts, I'm absolutely a King fan and often a King apologist, I just always wonder how great his books could be compared to how they are. That said, I don't feel like he really needed more aggressive editing until around It and later.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 20:00 |
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The editing would have been handy after a while, yes. It, The Stand already could have been cut down a lot and The Stand definitely needed an actual ending. It definitely looks like he's had carte blanche to do whatever the gently caress. Even more so after he ''retired'' I feel, because Duma Key was even more disjointed. I mean King's early works where small, fairly tightly written novels. Long Walk, Carrie, The Gunslinger, Dead Zone, etc are all like what, sub-300 pages?
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 20:52 |
chernobyl kinsman posted:last four I raise you all of them
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 21:03 |
Bilirubin posted:I raise you all of them
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 22:44 |
For King, really only The Gunslinger and his short stories are worthwhile. Everything else starts dragging and gets tiresome quickly.
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 22:45 |
Bilirubin posted:I raise you all of them the waste lands is okay thats as far as im willing to go
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# ? Jan 17, 2019 23:59 |
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Which one starts with them having a riddle competition with a train and then goes to boring rear end backstory about teenage Roland? That's the farthest I got. I dug the hell out of the weirdness of that setting though.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 00:08 |
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a foolish pianist posted:For King, really only The Gunslinger and his short stories are worthwhile. Everything else starts dragging and gets tiresome quickly. what the gently caress did I just say motherfucker
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 00:48 |
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I haven't touched The Dark Tower since high school (probably the best time to read it), but I only remember being disappointed by the sixth book.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 01:23 |
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when king got hit by a van his brain broke along with most of his skeleton unfortunately this happened when the dark tower was half finished
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 01:28 |
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Dream catcher is the best example of him being broke brain in those first few years. By golly that's a hosed up disjointed book. I think he didn't even want to publish it but his editor wanted to.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 01:56 |
MockingQuantum posted:How was Blood Standard? I haven't really heard anything about it, positive or negative I enjoyed it quite a bit. If you've read Barron's horror, you'll see a lot of the same themes pop up, but it was interesting to see him do something with them outside of horror. I found it a little odd how readily most (all?) characters just accepted all the ultraviolence going on around them, but at the same time characters accepting and adapting to circumstances is common in Barron's stories. It's also clear that Barron is getting better at writing novels; I loved The Croning, but it's hard to argue that it's not just a handful of short stories stitched together. Blood Standard never felt like that, and the plot moved along briskly. All in all, it's a fun book.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 02:11 |
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Is Best Horror of the Year a good anthology? The tenth volume is on sale for $1.99 on Kindle.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 21:58 |
Solitair posted:Is Best Horror of the Year a good anthology? The tenth volume is on sale for $1.99 on Kindle. Yes, Ellen Datlow is a fantastic editor.
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# ? Jan 18, 2019 22:02 |
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does anyone have ligotti's mailing address, i think a stalker would be good for his self-esteem
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# ? Jan 19, 2019 12:28 |
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this isn't even a crazy-fan thing, i think his stuff is moderately-good at best, i just for some reason feel a spiritual connection to the man and think a few mysterious letters from me would be good for him at this stage of his life
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# ? Jan 19, 2019 12:31 |
he stopped writing for a while until he had some kind of massive intestinal failure and that got him going again so mailing him a few locks of your hair dipped in blood or whatever might actually be good for his creative output
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# ? Jan 19, 2019 20:00 |
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we could be friends
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# ? Jan 19, 2019 23:26 |
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I'd kinda be curious to see Ligotti's take on Misery
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 03:16 |
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he's almost definitely a goon so is probably reading these posts and having a meltdown irl thomas calm down i'm not actually going to stalk you
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 03:55 |
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there's a bit in his wikipedia page that's something like "ligotti is three-quarters sicilian, one-quarter polish. in interviews he has said 'i don't mean to imply that being polish is inherently existentially terrifying. but it is'" and it made me laugh out loud (i am also polish)
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 03:56 |
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cosmic ancestral despair
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 03:59 |
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actually i've just figured out what i like about ligotti's work, is how matter-of-fact it is. i was reading teatro grottesco and the clown puppet story and town manager story both made me lol (not in a bad way, they were my favourites) because they just perfectly captured that tone of "i'm just trying to live my life and this loving happened, what can you do?" the characters seem to be more exasperated than frightened by the horrors they're confronted with, even under fear of death. it's great. it's been a few years since i read any laird barron who i think is ligotti's closest contemporary, he has some good stuff but he pissed me off a bit because he tended more toward "and it was so scary, holy poo poo it was so scary it was so loving terrifying i just about died" lovecraftian histrionics. ligotti gets too matter-of-fact to the point where some of his stories become impossible to read because they're just a depressed man droning on about nothing, but his good stuff really does nail the "oh gently caress not this poo poo again" reaction that certain personalities have to terrifying apocalyptic phenomena
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 04:08 |
avs i'm assuming you've seen melancholia?
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 05:06 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:avs i'm assuming you've seen melancholia? i haven't seen it and it's one of those cases where people keep recommending it to me (usually in contexts like the book barn general horror thread) and i desperately want to watch it but every time i actually get around to watching it i am interrupted by minor karmic misfortune. it has been a running joke in my life ever since it was released, which was... 10-ish years ago i think? lord time moves fast
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 05:27 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:10 |
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i've never read ligotti but that current 93 album he wrote the lyrics for is badass
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# ? Jan 20, 2019 11:29 |