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i just started carrier wave and it is wonderful
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Dec 3, 2021 06:14
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ptkfvk posted:i just started carrier wave and it is wonderful If you're into bleak apocalyptic horror with shifting perspectives, there really isn't anything else quite like it. It's one of the few semi-recent horror books I'm considering rereading.
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Dec 3, 2021 06:32
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ptkfvk posted:i just started carrier wave and it is wonderful Yeah... there's a big tone shift mid way through. Would be interested to see what you think after you hit that.
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Dec 3, 2021 18:44
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I listened to the Tim Curry audiobook of Dracula and couldn’t get Frank N Furter out of my head Made the story waydifferent
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Dec 4, 2021 20:30
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LOL! “How forceful you are, Jonathan. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So... dominant. You must be awfully proood of him, Mina.”
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Dec 4, 2021 22:32
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Thanks to Famethrowa in the TBB secret Santa, I started reading Negative Space by B. R. Yeager and holy poo poo what a ride. It's like if the movie Kids was a cosmic horror. I'm loving it so far.
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Dec 4, 2021 22:45
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MrMojok posted:LOL! "Tell me, do you have any tattoos?"
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Dec 6, 2021 01:06
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I’m listening to The Final Girl Support Group and I’m getting real Pinhead/Hell raiser vibes from Chrissy, but definitely agree that she’s supposed to be an amalgamation
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Dec 6, 2021 17:16
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No. 1 Juicy Boi posted:Thanks to Famethrowa in the TBB secret Santa, I started reading Negative Space by B. R. Yeager and holy poo poo what a ride. It's like if the movie Kids was a cosmic horror. I'm loving it so far.  Curious on your thoughts on the ending, whenever you get there
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Dec 6, 2021 17:20
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Famethrowa posted:
I'm about 60% through it right now, but I keep thinking about it when I'm not reading it. It's got its hooks in me, for sure.
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Dec 6, 2021 17:22
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Are any of the Dexter books worth reading? Not sure I want to start right at the beginning since I know how it plays out for a while, and I know some of the later ones go a bit off the rails, but curious if any of them are recommended
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Dec 7, 2021 15:41
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Retro Futurist posted:Are any of the Dexter books worth reading? Not sure I want to start right at the beginning since I know how it plays out for a while, and I know some of the later ones go a bit off the rails, but curious if any of them are recommended I haven't read them, but even the first book departs from the series, with main characters in the show being killed off fairly quickly.
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Dec 7, 2021 15:48
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Paddyo posted:Yeah... there's a big tone shift mid way through. Would be interested to see what you think after you hit that. i hit that point. i dont love it anymore. its good but im at the walled city bit and once the first centipede monster popped up i kind of know i will be dissatisfied with whatever happens after. It has to be difficult to pull stories like this together but i had higher hopes as to the final monsters and stuff. i dont know what i want but im usually pretty disappointed with high concept bad guys/monsters. i havent had my mind blown in a while. i have a lot of driving to do over the next few weeks so ill probably finish it then. one thing about this book is that its pretty brutal. it reminds me of Surface Detail by iain banks. i really want to reread it but the horrible hell and torture scenes id rather just skip.
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Dec 10, 2021 05:08
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ptkfvk posted:i hit that point. i dont love it anymore. its good but im at the walled city bit and once the first centipede monster popped up i kind of know i will be dissatisfied with whatever happens after. It has to be difficult to pull stories like this together but i had higher hopes as to the final monsters and stuff. i dont know what i want but im usually pretty disappointed with high concept bad guys/monsters. i havent had my mind blown in a while. i have a lot of driving to do over the next few weeks so ill probably finish it then. I think carrier wave works better as a series of short stories during the end of the world. If/when I read it again, I will probably just skip any chapter where a character from earlier comes back and also skip a certain group entirely (you know the one). No major spoilers, but regarding the ending, it sucks
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Dec 10, 2021 06:25
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Franchescanado posted:Personally I had to bail on this one because I can't stand how she did voices for the male characters. It sounded like Lauren Lapkus doing Big Sue. I had about the opposite reaction and enjoyed that audiobook a lot, but it did strike me as funny that for the male voices the narrator seemed to go super-nasal instead of trying to sound deep and resonant. I'm used to female narrators lowering their pitch a lot for the male voices, and instead it just sounded like Joy Osmanski was maybe pinching her nose and lowering her voice slightly for the male characters. It didn't really bother me, but I figure people have wildly different reactions and tolerances when it comes to voice acting and narration.
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Dec 11, 2021 05:53
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I read books so am fully responsible for the voices of the characters (I don't do different voices for characters in books I read)
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Dec 11, 2021 05:56
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Carrier Wave is too long by at least a third. It reminds me a bit of Tim Curran's novels in that there seems to be a compulsion to go over way too many iterations of "poo poo's horrible!" in an effort to drive home the fact that poo poo's horrible. We get it, fuckin' move on with the story.Bilirubin posted:I read books so am fully responsible for the voices of the characters (I don't do different voices for characters in books I read) Same. Unless there's been a film/TV adaptation, then sometimes I'll find the actor's voice creeping in.
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Dec 11, 2021 05:59
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Famethrowa posted:
I read this one based on a thread recommendation (maybe yours?) A couple of my thoughts for you. The beginning chapters of this book are incredibly well done in tone, pace and scene setting. This is the first book I've read in maybe 10 years where I have, by the end of the first dozen pages, been fully invested in reading the whole thing. Mid and late book spoilers: It was relentlessly dark (which worked for me but I could see it not working for others, I have a pretty high tolerance for that kinda thing) and found it to be at it's best right around the half way point when Tyler comes back from being 'missing' and the mystery is peaking. I have genuinely mixed feelings about the ending - I reacted negatively to it initially because it seems to deliberately subvert a satisfying resolution or payoff in terms of the characters and the central mystery of what's befalling them in those ending chapters. I found myself at the 3/4 mark really wanting Yeager to go whole-hog with the cosmic horror angle and build on that side of his storytelling, but he never really goes in that direction. It wasn't until I put the book down and had time to digest it that I realised it's not really a book about cosmic monsters. It's a book about addiction, and we need to read the ending as such. And when you consider it though that lens, the ending is actually pretty poetic. Tyler succumbs early and his memory was enough to drag Jill away with him, despite her best efforts to escape. Lu manages to run away from it. Ahmir beats it, but in the end he has nothing left. Tyler was really compelling, an anti-hero who never quite made it to the hero part. I found myself genuinely hoping for his redemption right to the end of the book - Yeager does a really good job of making him seem magnetic, forgivable and redeemable, even when he is doing increasingly horrible things - a perfect lead for this kind of subject matter. Overall, I really liked it. Strong recommend so long as you're down to deal with some pretty uncomfortable subject matter. I'm genuinely excited to try whatever Yeager puts out next - I think he's got a lot of potential.
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Dec 12, 2021 13:01
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Jsut finished Hellbound Heart and it was terrific. I've seen Hellraiser several times but there are enough differences here to still be fresh, plus the prose is just  Retro Futurist posted:Been thinking about it and realized I'm basically looking for Dead Space. Has anyone read any of the novels based off it and are any good?
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Dec 13, 2021 22:21
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Retro Futurist posted:Jsut finished Hellbound Heart and it was terrific. I've seen Hellraiser several times but there are enough differences here to still be fresh, plus the prose is just Yeah. I went through a phase when I was an edgy middleschooler when I read a lot of Barker, and looking back and re-reading his stuff I find it pretty uneven, but I've always thought The Hellbound Heart was his best and tightest work. I still kind of want to see a remake of Hellraiser where they make the dynamics between the characters a bit more true to the original story (toxic adult friendship instead of a wicked-stepmother situation) and maybe do some different things with the design and presentation of the Cenobites (even though the "Angels to some, demons to others" speech is impossible to top).
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Dec 14, 2021 03:33
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Sally Sprodgkin posted:. When Ahmir and Tyler got the apartment and there were signs of Tyler rallying as they made a happy home I felt such a pit in my stomach. I've known so many addicts and know the way it goes and sure enough...
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Dec 14, 2021 03:52
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Blastedhellscape posted:design and presentation of the Cenobites (even though the "Angels to some, demons to others" speech is impossible to top). Kind of funny in retrospect how Pinhead only shows up in the beginning and has like one line
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Dec 14, 2021 04:20
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Retro Futurist posted:Kind of funny in retrospect how Pinhead only shows up in the beginning and has like one line That and at a chaotic moment late in the movie when he pops up and says "We have such sights to show you!" Kind of a textbook example of how less-is-more works in fiction.
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Dec 14, 2021 04:51
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Some recent horror books I read: QUIET HOUSES Fantastic. A nice anthology of small horror stories, none of which outstay their welcome. The author set out to write small stories in places he actually knew, and that was a great decision, because he's able to inject a ton of little detail and texture into the world. GRAVEYARD APARTMENT Intensely Japanese. Sometimes to its credit, sometimes detriment. I enjoy reading non-western horror, and Graveyard Apartment definitely serves up some Japanese style horror, but the book kind of feels like it's stuck in first gear until it suddenly jumps to a climax that feels unearned. Some of the concepts in the book also feel extremely alien to me from a western perspective. I'm not talking about base level stuff like "living next to a graveyard is something most people wouldn't do if you paid them to", but concepts like "weasel winds", which are apparently winds that can suddenly flare up and toss sharp objects into you with enough force to cut you. Is that really a thing? Also the book's attitudes towards women are often downright regressive which was a huge bummer. THE ELEMENTALS A big letdown. Part Tennessee Williams play, part horror story. The horror itself is spooky enough, and I do appreciate character building, but it feels like the book does way too much of not character building but character going over the exact ground for the 6th time... ing. The book wasn't terrible or anything, but I seriously don't understand why the book is so highly rated. DISAPPEARANCE AT DEVIL'S ROCK Fantastic. A melancholy story of a young teen's disappearance, and the effect it has on his friends and family. I loved the central theme of "how do others see us". The teen himself never appears as a point of view character in the book and we only see him through the eyes of others, coloured by their expectations and perceptions. What is the real version? Wonderfully written with very realistic and natural sounding dialogue. A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS After Devil's Rock this was a big disappointment. The basic premise is great; a young adult woman recounts a childhood memory of her older sister becoming possessed. Or was she? Was she making it up? Or was she suffering from a mental illness? That's all great, and the possession stuff is spooky and disturbing, but my big problem was that the main character is supposed to be an 8 year old girl but never feels remotely like it. Instead the book reads like an adult who has forgotten what it was like to be a child trying to imagine it, and not doing a great job. OBviously the waters a bit muddied by the narrative device of an adult remembering their childhood, but honestly it feels almost like a parody of an adult trying to write a child character. "I saw a sign saying 'god hates fags', I didn't know what that word meant but I got the idea that it was real bad" that kind of stuff.
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Dec 14, 2021 09:47
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:
I'm assuming that's a reference to kamaitachi ('sickle weasels/ferrets') that are little Japanese folk monster goblin things that were supposed to be weasel-beasts made of wind and dust that'd cut your legs when you walked through long grass. This was a sufficiently common folk belief that during the late 18th/19th century Western biologists just assumed it was a weird species of mustelid they'd never heard of so they investigated it before they eventually came to the conclusion that it was just people with no shoes and short pants/clothes getting little cuts from walking in sharp grass and getting scraped by little bits of poo poo. I really like learning about ooks and spooks from other cultures cause I just think it's fun, so I have a copy of this that I read through once on vacation and liked a lot*. It does a really good survey of all the little Japanese gribblies that people were afraid of with a lot of emphasis on cultural context and trying to explain them as sort of pantheon of monsters but also with the understanding that each one is actually just a spooky thing that some gramma invented in 1638 in rural Kyushu or whatever. It's a nice intersection of horror and some very light anthropology, and it gives a good survey of everything from the big, culturally relevant ones (e.g. kappa, inari, tanuki) to smaller ones that can be super-cute or just weird as hell (like the various flavors of animated objects in case you ever wanted to get stalked by an umbrella, or the toofu kozoo which is a creepy little boy selling tofu that follows you in the rain.) *It's a 2-300 page little encyclopedia of Japanese forest monsters and I got to sit on a porch in the middle of the woods while it was snowing, sipping my way through a very nice bottle of bourbon. Of course I'm gonna have positive associations with the book.
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Dec 14, 2021 15:57
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:THE ELEMENTALS Lol one of the reasons I love horror is that responses to the same "classics" or must-reads can vary so wildly. I had basically the same feelings about Graveyard Apartment as you did (the sudden jump from general uneasiness to full-blown horror novel didn't bother me much, but yeah it does kind of come out of left field) but I felt almost the opposite on the other three. I can't blame anybody for not liking The Elementals, I absolutely loved it but a friend of mine hated it for similar reasons you described here. I think the mood of the book either grabs you or doesn't, and to be brutally honest about one of my favorite horror novels... there isn't a whole lot that happens in the book, so the mood and atmosphere is most of what it has going for it. I don't remember finding the book repetitive at all personally, but it's been a minute since I read it last. There are a few moments in the book that have always stuck with me since the first time reading it. It's interesting to hear what you didn't like though, my friend who read it just said he didn't think it was scary and left it at that, which isn't helpful when it comes to deciding whether to recommend it to others, lol. I actually did like Disappearance at Devil's Rock, but liked it a lot more once I sort of tempered my expectations. I read it pretty quickly after A Head Full of Ghosts (which I loved, more on that later) and was expecting the same level of intense horror, and Devil's Rock is... just not that at all. It's subtle, and intense in a totally different way, but pretty compelling. I sort of wish I had gone in with a better idea of what I was going to read because it took me a while to get on board with the book, but I liked it overall and will probably re-read it at some point. As far as Head Full of Ghosts goes, I'm pretty sure the things you don't like about the narrative voice are entirely intentional. It's not exactly groundbreaking to say that Merry is an unreliable narrator, I think the book signposts that pretty clearly, but I think it goes pretty deep. I think the reader is intended to really deeply question the story they're being told, and Merry's inconsistent recollections and the way her story is totally incongruous with how an 8-year-old would have seen the situation is intended to make it increasingly clear as the story goes on that Merry is concealing a much darker reality. I don't know that Tremblay totally pulls that off (that sort of unreliable narrator seems like a constant tightrope to walk in the writing, also he just doesn't write children particularly well even when they're supposed to be acting like children, IMO) but I really liked that aspect of the book anyway. The book was heavily implying Merry was the one that was actually possessed and experienced everything she's attributing to her sister, but I've seen people suggest online that not only was it Merry that was possessed, but that she's actually Marjorie, which would explain why her supposed recollections from when she was 8 feel unrealistic, because it all would have actually happened when she was 14. I don't know if the timeline of the book supports that, but I'd be curious to re-read the book with that theory in mind. Edit: also, given what you liked about Devil's Rock, I think you might really enjoy Cosmology of Monsters. I don't think I've ever recommended it in here before, in part because like Devil's Rock I don't think it really fits the traditional expectations people have when looking for a "horror" novel, but it has a similar feel-- a melancholy exploration of someone's life through a supernatural lens with moments of complex horror. It was probably one of my favorite books I read last year. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 16:59
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I started Jeremy Robert Johnson’s The Loop last week, and so far, it’s pretty much just 90s teen horror film Disturbing Behavior (which isn’t a particularly good teen horror movie, even by the low standards of the genre). Anyone else read it?
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Dec 14, 2021 17:00
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a foolish pianist posted:I started Jeremy Robert Johnson’s The Loop last week, and so far, it’s pretty much just 90s teen horror film Disturbing Behavior (which isn’t a particularly good teen horror movie, even by the low standards of the genre). Anyone else read it? I read it at the same time as Carrier Wave and it came off as a weaker version of the same story. There’s a few good ideas in there but the novel doesn’t appear all that interested in them
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Dec 14, 2021 17:19
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MockingQuantum posted:As far as Head Full of Ghosts goes, I'm pretty sure the things you don't like about the narrative voice are entirely intentional. It's not exactly groundbreaking to say that Merry is an unreliable narrator, I think the book signposts that pretty clearly, but I think it goes pretty deep. I think the reader is intended to really deeply question the story they're being told, and Merry's inconsistent recollections and the way her story is totally incongruous with how an 8-year-old would have seen the situation is intended to make it increasingly clear as the story goes on that Merry is concealing a much darker reality. Yeah it was the same with the blogger thing. at first I just found those parts super annoying, but then it clicked that they were kind of supposed to be annoying, and Merry's other idiosyncrasies make more sense when you realize that it's just a damaged person telling a story about how they remember it from when they were a kid. The rest is kind of interesting there but I prefer the interpretation that there was no possession at all, just a sick girl being exploited and her sister getting taken in.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:13
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I started The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and, not only does Hendrix have a great grasp on the general feel of South Carolina and suburban moms, he does the switch from slice-of-life to bluntly gruesome (although they aren’t always that different), very well.
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Dec 14, 2021 21:01
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I hated A Headful of Ghosts the first time I read it a few years ago (I actually felt that it wasn’t ambiguous enough), I think it’s time for a reevaluation.
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Dec 15, 2021 00:04
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remigious posted:I hated A Headful of Ghosts the first time I read it a few years ago (I actually felt that it wasn’t ambiguous enough), I think it’s time for a reevaluation. IMO it's kind of a weird book in that it's very obvious about the ways in which it's ambiguous, if that makes any sense at all. I like it a lot but it's one of the more divisive modern horror novels among my friends who read that sort of thing.
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Dec 15, 2021 01:51
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I happened to read Headful of Ghosts pretty recently after I had read We Have Always Live in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. And, well, I don't want to spoil anything for either book, but if you've read both it's pretty obvious that HoG is a direct riff (OK one spoiler because I think it nearly ruined HoG for me was at the end with the family poisoning which is just the end of WHALitC jammed in there pretty much exactly. Would have been nice to see something that wasn't such a near 1:1 trace!). However, I will say the parts of HoG that I liked were the ones that were the ones least related to WHALitC (the purposefully obnoxious blog posts and the reality tv aspect, for example).
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Dec 15, 2021 04:45
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Retro Futurist posted:Also answering my own question here for anyone curious. I read Dead Space: Martyr and it was solidly "okay to good". It's a prequel but takes place about 2 centuries before the games so you don't know everything that's going to happen. Takes a while for the inevitable stuff you do expect to happen to happen, but it's cool when it does. Most of it is more of a thriller and it succeeds there as well as any airport paperback I keep buying Brian Evenson short story collections like Song for the unraveling of the world and The glassy burning floor of hell because the combination of title/cover art/blurb make them sound like exactly my jam but then I always get bored of them halfway through and move on to something else. The dude knows exactly how to make me stop scrolling and buy a book. In practice his short stories end up being just a bit too minimalist for my taste, though. Maybe I’ll vibe with one of his novels better. I could use a horror-ish action thriller schlock story about now
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Dec 15, 2021 04:58
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MockingQuantum posted:A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS SPOILERS Whoa. Really? That flew completely past my head. Can you elaborate on this? And my personal reading on the situation was that Marjorie had undiagnosed mental illnesses compounded by her awful parents, and those issues were then exploited for monetary gains and made worse. And thanks for the recommendation, added Cosmology of Monsters to my list. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 09:14
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Whoa. Really? That flew completely past my head. Can you elaborate on this? And my personal reading on the situation was that Marjorie had undiagnosed mental illnesses compounded by her awful parents, and those issues were then exploited for monetary gains and made worse. It's been a minute since I read the book so someone who's read it more recently might have to chime in with some examples but I do remember there's a few moments, especially right at the end during the present scenes with the interviewer where Merry manifests some of the signs of possession, like the room getting suddenly and inexplicably colder. Also IIRC it's more that the evidence suggests that Marjorie is faking her possession to protect her sister, because she believes Merry is possessed and is trying to draw the focus away from her in a misguided attempt to protect her. Or rather, not that misguided given how everything ends up. But the things like Merry suggesting that all of the signs of her possession being drawn from popular culture definitely imply Marjorie is faking (or as your reading suggests, truly believes she's possessed but isn't). I have it in my head that there's also at least one instance of the timeline suggested by Merry's story not actually being possible, which suggests that she was the source of some of the possibly paranormal occurrences, but like I said, it's been forever since I read the book, so it's possible I'm mixing it up with something else. Sorry I can't give more concrete examples! I should re-read the book. I do remember it is intentionally written in a way that there's two or three possible explanations for what happened, Tremblay's said as much in interviews. Your reading is definitely supported too. And yeah, there are some connections to We Have Always Lived in the Castle that muddy the waters if intertextuality is your jam.
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Dec 15, 2021 16:43
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No that's all right, don't apologize. I'll go googling and see if I can find more thoughts on this interpretation, it's definitely at the very least a very fascinating one and could give the book a whole new perspective.
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Dec 15, 2021 21:39
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Good Citizen posted:Maybe I’ll vibe with one of his novels better. I could use a horror-ish action thriller schlock story about now Never seen Brian Evenson described as ''action thriller shlock'' before.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:14
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ravenkult posted:Never seen Brian Evenson described as ''action thriller shlock'' before. His short story collections certainly are not but I just assumed that’s what a book based on the dead space IP would be
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Dec 15, 2021 22:17
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Oh god. I’m at the part of Southern Book Club where you know the hammer’s about to fall like in Mrs. Mary’s story. I’m at the Three Years Later part and it’s grinding trying to go forward, but in a good way. Sort of like how it was hard to keep watching Hereditary after a certain point. Edit: LOL at Hendrix taking a swing at Clancy though. DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 00:51
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