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MockingQuantum posted:I mean, I wouldn't rush out to read it if you've got a big TBR pile. It's not bad, and shows up on a lot of 30/50/100 best horror novel lists, but it feels very much like a product of its time. If you dig early 80's American horror and all of the oddities/shortcomings it entails, then you'll probably like it. The title is apt though, at its heart it's a ghost story, and also has all the weird inconsistencies and ambiguities that oral ghost stories accrue over time. Like I said, I think that's intentional, but it could just as likely be subpar plotting on Straub's part. Yeah, I wasn't running down to the amazon dot com to buy it, I'll just put it on the list. Straub tends to be popular compared to, like, Caitlin Kiernan, so they seem to make his books into audiobooks, which makes them less of a time investment. I would also like another The Cipher.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:31
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MockingQuantum posted:Well if Straub really does stink, I need a suggestion for what to read next horror-wise. Is there anything out there that's kind of like The Cipher? Everything about that book was gripping to me. Story, characters, style, prose, tone, it all hit the right notes. Straub's alright, but all of his best stuff was written 20+ years ago. Dude should retire. Recommending things like The Cipher is tough because it's such a singularly weird book. Koja wrote other books that covered similar themes, so you might try those (I haven't read any, so I can't vouch for them). I'll toss out a recommendation for Matthew M. Bartlett. His Leeds, MA, stories are all very weird in interesting ways.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:35
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Ornamented Death posted:Straub's alright, but all of his best stuff was written 20+ years ago. Dude should retire. Dang, I was secretly hoping someone would say "well here are one or two books that you've never heard of for some reason." I figured most of what makes The Cipher so compelling are also what make it very unique. Oh well, I've got a huge TBR list, I suppose I'll grab something off of that when the time comes. I'll look into Bartlett though, his stuff seems right up my alley.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:41
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Skyscraper posted:That sounds awesome. it might be if it were played as absurd instead of being portrayed in a dead-serious manner
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Mar 27, 2018 20:41
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I've never read Floating Dragon but the synopsis I read makes me think he's a major inspiration for the Garth Marenghi.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:49
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uber_stoat posted:a major inspiration for the Garth Marenghi. chernobyl kinsman posted:portrayed in a dead-serious manner stop, stop, I'm sold already
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Mar 27, 2018 21:39
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I've somehow ended up skipping Straub as well – however, it seems that a lot of horror authors have been praising his stuff in podcasts I've listened to recently. Can't name any specific author or episode but I do remember thinking that maybe I should check him out after all.
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Mar 27, 2018 22:31
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uber_stoat posted:I've never read Floating Dragon but the synopsis I read makes me think he's a major inspiration for the Garth Marenghi. it loving sucks so bad. i forced myself to read like a half dozen straub novels in high school because i loved Stephen King and Stephen King loved Peter Straub, so by the transitive property i must love peter straub floating dragon was the one that finally broke me of that unfortunate delusion
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Mar 27, 2018 23:09
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I have discovered I love horror novellas (or shortish horror novels). I don't mind the occasional horror doorstop, but man, so many horror novels feel like they're 100-200 pages longer than they need to be. What are some really fantastic horror novellas I should check out? I remember like, six years ago, there was a book club thing that put out horror/weird fiction novellas on a monthly basis, but it seems like it either went away or changed names, and I can't find it now. Reading Ballad of Black Tomb, Agents of Dreamland, Hammers on Bone, Twilight Pariah, and Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe is what prompted this. I'd recommend all of those to anybody who's looking for a shorter, brisker read. All of them but Twilight Pariah are directly related to Lovecraft Mythos, to varying degrees. Vellitt Boe is a straight-up pastiche and pseudo-sequel to Dreams of Unknown Kadath, and Black Tom is a retelling of Horror at Red Hook (and I'd recommend reading it before reading Black Tom, the short story is kind of cringe-worthy but that's part of what makes Black Tom so good). Hammers on Bone and Agents of Dreamland are more modern takes on Lovecraft with a pulp/PI twist and espionage flavor, respectively. Twilight Pariah isn't really Lovecraftian at all, it's a really pretty conventional horror story, but it's pretty well done (and introduced me to Jeffrey Ford).
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Mar 28, 2018 18:59
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MockingQuantum posted:Also if you want an interesting pulp detective take on lovecraft, check out Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw. And gonna second the Ballad of Black Tom recommendation, that one is fantastic.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:23
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MockingQuantum posted:I remember like, six years ago, there was a book club thing that put out horror/weird fiction novellas on a monthly basis, but it seems like it either went away or changed names, and I can't find it now. That was DarkFuse; they shut down last year and the rights to everything they published reverted back to the authors. Here's (nearly) everything they published in physical format, though novels and novellas are mixed in together. There's also no guarantee the authors have put their novellas back in print. They also did a bunch of ebook-only stuff, but I don't have a convenient index of those works handy.
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Mar 28, 2018 19:34
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Fire Safety Doug posted:I've somehow ended up skipping Straub as well – however, it seems that a lot of horror authors have been praising his stuff in podcasts I've listened to recently. Can't name any specific author or episode but I do remember thinking that maybe I should check him out after all. Just curious, what podcasts? I'm always looking for new ones to check out.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:35
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gey muckle mowser posted:Just curious, what podcasts? I'm always looking for new ones to check out. Brian Keene (The Horror Show with Brian Keene) and Mary SanGiovanni (Cosmic Shenanigans) have both been praising him a lot recently; Keene's book club is reading A Dark Matter for April.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:41
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gey muckle mowser posted:Just curious, what podcasts? I'm always looking for new ones to check out. Probably either the aforementioned Horror Show or then This Is Horror. From what I’ve listened, The Horror Show is a lot more acerbic and insider-y while This Is Horror has more of a fanboy feel. But while Keene appears to be quite a divisive figure, he is also more entertaining than the TIH guys, who can be a bit fawning.
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Mar 28, 2018 22:27
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Ornamented Death posted:I'll toss out a recommendation for Matthew M. Bartlett. His Leeds, MA, stories are all very weird in interesting ways. Gateways to Abomination is great.
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Mar 28, 2018 23:49
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Fire Safety Doug posted:Probably either the aforementioned Horror Show or then This Is Horror. I like the Horror Show and Keene, but the man's ego is absolutely massive and his thoughts on both his place and importance within the horror genre are horribly inflated. Like the news and interviews are absolutely worth tuning in for, but be prepared to hear "I'm Brian loving Keene!" at least once every episode. Also Mary irritates the poo poo out of me a lot of the time.
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Mar 29, 2018 01:56
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MockingQuantum posted:Just goes to show that what an author and a reader think of a book will rarely align. I will say among my friends that are big King fans, it's extremely divisive. Usually the other sort of horror they enjoy will tell you flat-out whether they like Sematary or not. I suspect I'll end up being a little on the "not" side, since I do like King's more fantastical stories (and I'm a sucker for Kids Beat Up Scary Thing storylines sometimes). Plus I think there are a lot of horror writers who do very raw, very nihilistic horror much better than King can, it's not really something he excels at. My high school had a library where Stephen King had his own five shelves. He was my introduction to books for adults, and I dove pretty deep into his content. Initially I wanted to read all of his books in chronological order, but Pet Sematary was where I stopped, because I adore cats and was afraid to read about one dying in the book. I still haven't read it today, because I haven't read any of his books in years. MockingQuantum posted:Reading Ballad of Black Tomb, Agents of Dreamland, Hammers on Bone, Twilight Pariah, and Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe is what prompted this. I'd recommend all of those to anybody who's looking for a shorter, brisker read. All of them but Twilight Pariah are directly related to Lovecraft Mythos, to varying degrees. Vellitt Boe is a straight-up pastiche and pseudo-sequel to Dreams of Unknown Kadath, and Black Tom is a retelling of Horror at Red Hook (and I'd recommend reading it before reading Black Tom, the short story is kind of cringe-worthy but that's part of what makes Black Tom so good). Hammers on Bone and Agents of Dreamland are more modern takes on Lovecraft with a pulp/PI twist and espionage flavor, respectively. The Ballad of Black Tom and The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe are indeed excellent, even though I read the former without knowing it was based on anything at all. I wish either of them had won the Hugo last year. Anyway, I just started reading The Weird, and unless anyone has any objections, I'm gonna write up some thoughts on everything in it. "The Other Side" (excerpt) by Alfred Kubin What strikes me most about this one is the details that aren't explained outright, only alluded to in passing, such as aspects of "the American," a figure who enters the narrative infrequently and indirectly yet is implicitly at the center of the calamity besieging the city of Pearl; and of Castringius, the artist who paints a bunch of decadent images before the calamity reaches its most debilitating stages, but seems entirely unaffected by it (he is described at one point has having a paw). The disaster itself takes an interesting form: after a period where the population sleeps, animals run rampant throughout the city. The human population fails to hold it back, in part because everything man-made starts decaying at an accelerated rate. There's an element of mankind being humbled for its hubris, made explicit when someone assures people that a tiger will defer to an upright human without any evidence to support that, only to be proven wrong immediately. It's possible that my slight confusion as to what Pearl was like before everyone in it fell asleep will be answered in the full text. I don't mind the lack of overt explanation; in this case, I was more invested having to piece some things together myself than I would be otherwise. Edit: Michael Moorcock wrote the foreword. He curmudgeons about the tastes of general audiences and muses about how the "canon" of essential writers has changed during his life. Solitair fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 31, 2018 |
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Mar 31, 2018 01:04
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The Weird is a really good collection, please continue.
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Mar 31, 2018 02:30
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MockingQuantum posted:
I really enjoyed all three of these. Especially The Dream Quest of Vellit-Boe. I really like Kij Johnson though.
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Mar 31, 2018 02:56
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Ornamented Death posted:I like the Horror Show and Keene, but the man's ego is absolutely massive and his thoughts on both his place and importance within the horror genre are horribly inflated. So much truth here. If I hear Mary’s “woohoo” one more time I’ll die. And yet, I listen to every episode. The Outer Dark is really good but has atrocious sound quality.
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Apr 1, 2018 20:43
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I finished that free “Another Way to Fall” book with novellas by Brian Evenson and Paul Tremblay last night, it was pretty good. Tremblay’s contribution “The Harlequin and the Train” felt like a Ligotti story, and was probably the better of the two. Definitely worth checking out. The Evenson novella was weird but I liked it, I’m not familiar with his other stuff but I think I’ll check it out now.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:56
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Evenson's stuff is hit or miss and very weird but then he is Mormon and that is to be expected
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Apr 1, 2018 21:59
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chernobyl kinsman posted:Evenson's stuff is hit or miss and very weird but then he is Mormon and that is to be expected I thought he was ex-Mormon, according to this article I read a while back.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:10
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it matters not
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Apr 1, 2018 23:49
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chernobyl kinsman posted:it matters not This is a really weird and bad attitude to have
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Apr 2, 2018 00:00
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The Vosgian Beast posted:This is a really weird and bad attitude to have Mormon spotted e: to be clear i quite like Evenson but Mormonism is very weird and his stories are very weird and these things are probably connected, and also i like making fun of mormons chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Apr 2, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 00:22
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I just finished Nate Southard's collection Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again?, and it's pretty strong. Four long short stories or short novellas, all roughly about people encountering monsters. The first, He Stepped Through, is the weakest, I think, and the second, Something Went Wrong, is the strongest, with three separate threads that tie up nicely at the end. The collection is definitely worth a read.
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Apr 2, 2018 00:38
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Oh, okay, maybe I'll finish it then, quit after the first one.
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Apr 2, 2018 10:21
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I bounced off the first as well, but picked the book back up when I was bored this weekend, and the remainder of the book was much better.
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Apr 2, 2018 13:23
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He Stepped Through was written fairly early in Southard's writing career, and it shows. He's improved a lot since then.
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Apr 2, 2018 14:36
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Hungry posted:I loved JDATE on both first read (which was at breakneck pace and finished in about 3 days) and a reread, but I read Spiders last month and while it was well-written and fun, I felt it fell short of the first novel but I've been having trouble articulating why I felt that way. Book is Full of Spiders and What the Hell Did I Just Read (how the heck do I abbreviate these?) massively dialled back on how Dave is a barely functioning psychopath, which is a big part of what made JDatE more than just a goofy horror novel, and both felt like they were trying much too hard to be clever with their bait-and-switches about the monsters. I also think they lost a lot of the uniqueness of their horror. In JDatE the demons are basically schoolyard bullies (and in the early release of the book, 4channers. The re-release of JDatE stripped out a lot of the more puerile torment and edgelord racism*) which is a nice banal take on cosmic horror. They're no more cruel and vindictive than the worst of humanity, they're just given all of eternity to hone their viciousness. In Spiders and Hell they're much closer to generic unknowable cosmic horrors, which is nowhere near as interesting. *Also he got rid of Strummy Two-Queues, and thus is dead to me.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:55
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I wish there was a legal way to get ahold of the original version of JDATE. I didn't read it until a five or so years ago, and I'd like to see what was changed.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:57
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Book is Full of Spiders and What the Hell Did I Just Read (how the heck do I abbreviate these?) massively dialled back on how Dave is a barely functioning psychopath, which is a big part of what made JDatE more than just a goofy horror novel, and both felt like they were trying much too hard to be clever with their bait-and-switches about the monsters. Agreed on all points, especially Strummy Two-Queues (i recognize your name) except for Dave, I'm glad they dialed back on him, though it seems like they went overboard with that.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:00
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I remember reading (possibly in here?) ages ago that some major work of weird fiction or cosmic horror had a reworking that should be read instead of the original. Anybody know what I'm talking about here? I feel like it was maybe a Clark Ashton Smith or William Hope Hodgson novella but I can't remember precisely.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:23
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I don't know if any of you guys have heard of Livia Llewelyn but "Bright Crown of Joy" was extremely my poo poo. Climate dystopia meets post-Cthulhu 'utopia'. I can't find it anywhere online but I recommend it a lot.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:37
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General Battuta posted:I don't know if any of you guys have heard of Livia Llewelyn but "Bright Crown of Joy" was extremely my poo poo. Climate dystopia meets post-Cthulhu 'utopia'. I can't find it anywhere online but I recommend it a lot. Looks like it is available in the Dark Horse "Children of Lovecraft" anthology and "The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2017", for ~$11 and ~$7 respectively on Kindle US. Catching up on the thread. I'm bummed the Annihilation film never came out near me so I'm keeping an eye out for it to show up on demand. I'll have to track down What The Hell Did I Just Read? also, the first two were great. I've had The Ritual book in my sample downloads for a while to check out, maybe I'll look for the movie instead.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:48
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bagrada posted:Looks like it is available in the Dark Horse "Children of Lovecraft" anthology and "The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2017", for ~$11 and ~$7 respectively on Kindle US. The Ritual is much better as a movie than a book. The book isn't godawful terrible, but it's also not Nevill's best and kind of a weak horror novel overall. The movie both cuts the novel's worst parts and improves the best elements. It also manages to add a small(ish) plot point that retroactively would have made so much of the book feel more natural.
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Apr 2, 2018 22:50
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MockingQuantum posted:I remember reading (possibly in here?) ages ago that some major work of weird fiction or cosmic horror had a reworking that should be read instead of the original. Anybody know what I'm talking about here? I feel like it was maybe a Clark Ashton Smith or William Hope Hodgson novella but I can't remember precisely. Possibly The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle instead of "The Horror at Red Hook" by H.P. Lovecraft? "Red Hook" isn't really a "major" Lovecraft story and it's also very muddled and rambling - and racist, let's not forget racist - but I'd still recommend reading it before you read Black Tom. Reading "Red Hook" lets you better appreciate Black Tom because you'll understand exactly what LaValle is responding to. Still, I think Black Tom would hold up fine if you haven't read "Red Hook" first.
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Apr 2, 2018 23:12
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Pththya-lyi posted:Possibly The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle instead of "The Horror at Red Hook" by H.P. Lovecraft? "Red Hook" isn't really a "major" Lovecraft story and it's also very muddled and rambling - and racist, let's not forget racist - but I'd still recommend reading it before you read Black Tom. Reading "Red Hook" lets you better appreciate Black Tom because you'll understand exactly what LaValle is responding to. Still, I think Black Tom would hold up fine if you haven't read "Red Hook" first. True, though not what I was thinking of. It was a reworking of The Night Lands, someone suggested it over reading the original. I can't find out much about the reworking, though, anybody read it?
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Apr 2, 2018 23:46
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MockingQuantum posted:I remember reading (possibly in here?) ages ago that some major work of weird fiction or cosmic horror had a reworking that should be read instead of the original. Anybody know what I'm talking about here? I feel like it was maybe a Clark Ashton Smith or William Hope Hodgson novella but I can't remember precisely. Probably talking about The Night Land
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Apr 3, 2018 00:40
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