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I finished the book during a week without internet access so I couldn't post as I went, but overall I wasn't impressed. I had hopes that it would at least be a polished story because it was written by a professional author, but it still jumped all over the place time-wise and read like someone recounting a dream. A lot of "suddenly I was in another room and don't know how I got there" and "I knew the roof was on fire but there was no heat" type descriptions. And having to continually assure readers that you're not crazy should probably be considered a warning sign. Although after thinking about it, I guess I do use language to the effect that "I am mentally competent to attest to the matters in this affidavit" so maybe I'm not one to talk. I liked the last part of the book the best, because that's when you get passages like: "We go from the endless battle of the duality to the harmony of the triad, and then to the mystery of the eagle." I'm not sure what that has to do with alien abduction, but it still somehow seems perfectly appropriate.
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Sep 15, 2023 00:21
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I'm sorry everyone
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Sep 15, 2023 01:49
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AngusPodgorny posted:I finished the book during a week without internet access so I couldn't post as I went, but overall I wasn't impressed. I had hopes that it would at least be a polished story because it was written by a professional author, but it still jumped all over the place time-wise and read like someone recounting a dream. A lot of "suddenly I was in another room and don't know how I got there" and "I knew the roof was on fire but there was no heat" type descriptions. I've been going though it too and I quite agree with your take. He's writing it with a great deal of drive, of urgency, and its clear he's convinced this happened to him and I empathize with his clear feeling of overwhelm, but its organized like a dogs breakfast. I'm really surprised this was written by a professional writer, to be honest. escape artist posted:I'm sorry everyone (but I wanted to read the Le Guin)
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Sep 15, 2023 03:44
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I wanted Contact because I like hard science fiction, so what happened to all the people that voted Communion? It's a short read, so I was surprised to see almost nothing here. To tie it back to Cormac McCarthy, the conversations with the hypnotists don't work as well here as the conversations with the psychiatrist is Stella Maris because people aren't that clever and articulate in real life. I do have to give Streiber credit for being as impartial as he could in accurately transcribing the sessions though, even when he has to add commentary admitting some of the things said under hypnosis are wrong (at least stuff his wife said under hypnosis)..
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Sep 15, 2023 04:07
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Don’t blame me, I voted for kodos
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Sep 15, 2023 04:22
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Just started re-reading Communion since I was like 12 or so. Nothing to say yet other than this https://youtu.be/2HSBmSmykBc?si=2ZpvviueTzYn5rOX
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Sep 15, 2023 11:11
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I haven't done a Book Club read in a while and somehow saw this and was intrigued by it, probably mostly because I was a 90s kid and grew up steeped in that cultural milieu of UFOs and cattle mutilations and abductions and X-Files episodes that I was too scared of to actually watch at the time. Anyway, I definitely agree that as a book Communion wasn't well written. But there is something fascinating there to see in the psychology of someone who (if I assume he's not knowingly fabricating the story) feels something very distressing happened and is trying to fit it into some sort of logical framework to explain it, even if 'logical' is something as far out (  ) as aliens. I think it's especially telling with how desperate he seems to be to fit the complete lack-of-anything-notable in his wife's hypnosis session with his own theories, saying that her forgetting (what was, very likely, a pretty mundane and unexceptional weekend or two for her) was actually a sign of her memories being manipulated or suppressed. Or his fixation on the glass seltzer bottle shattering/exploding being meaningful, as if that's not something that just happens sometimes to pressurized bottles. I am not a psychology professional but his story about randomly wandering around Europe and missing time for weeks during it when he was younger also sounds a lot like some kind of fugue state. It wouldn't surprise me if he did have some sort of (understandably distressing!) intermittent mental issue that was not properly diagnosed for whatever reason (I definitely have known lovely psychs who completely miss a diagnosis or misdiagnosed people unfortunately). But instead of digging into that further (he never seems to say he saw any other psych professionals besides the hypnosis guy, unless I missed it?), he went to aliens as the explanation. All that to say, it might not have been the best book, but it was an interesting case study on the mindset of someone who is really invested in explaining something upsetting via alien abduction.
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Sep 15, 2023 21:20
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When I was a kid I woke up in the middle of night unable to move and the room seemed bright, so I was afraid I was being abducted by aliens. I was also a weird kid obsessed with reading about mysterious events though, so I just figured "oh so that's sleep paralysis" and that was it. But when you're already missing time and having to buy a shotgun because you think people are sneaking into your cabin, I can see the brain making more out of something like that. Now I want to go read more about childhood mysteries like towns where everyone suddenly vanishes and some houses still have dinner sitting on the stove and things. Those were always my favorite kind, because it was too easy to make sense out of things like aliens (just people from outer space) and ghosts (just dead people).
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Sep 15, 2023 22:14
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DurianGray posted:I haven't done a Book Club read in a while and somehow saw this and was intrigued by it, probably mostly because I was a 90s kid and grew up steeped in that cultural milieu of UFOs and cattle mutilations and abductions and X-Files episodes that I was too scared of to actually watch at the time. Good post. Whereas I was calling it a "dog's breakfast", that almost manic desire to persuade the reader, or at least get this all down on paper, is compelling reading. And hell, its short.
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Sep 16, 2023 00:10
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Done. Whereas I found the final quarter of speculation more engaging, it kind of ended weakly. Aliens are inscrutable.
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Sep 19, 2023 04:27
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Finally started suttree and it's good so far!
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Sep 21, 2023 14:12
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Lawman 0 posted:Finally started suttree and it's good so far! Glad you finally got the library loan!
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Sep 21, 2023 14:34
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Enjoying suttree so far, the writing is quite uh earthy.
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Sep 23, 2023 22:02
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Lawman 0 posted:Enjoying suttree so far, the writing is quite uh earthy. Hell yeah suttree stays winning three months in a row
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Sep 24, 2023 01:10
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BOO! It's the poll for October's horror-themed BOTM! A wide range of different genres and themes to choose from. Vote early and vote often, tell all your friends, let's pick a great one for next month!
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Sep 25, 2023 04:26
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The votes are in, and our BOTM for October will be... Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle! What happens when an enigmatic writer known for bizarre short-form gay pornography becomes a cult sensation? Rising from obscurity through outrageously strange butt-centric erotica, Tingle's idiosyncratic style and boundless positivity have led to (among other things) two podcasts, a controversial Hugo Award nomination, and even an FMV adventure game (that sadly never materialised).  For Chuck Tingle, this newfound fame was a chance to turn his hand to exploring the darker sides of sexuality, and the kind of people who seek to suppress it. After two entries in his Harriet Porber series (which combines trans liberation with dinosaurs to spite everyone's least favourite wizard-book lady) and a horror novella, Straight, about the violence of heterosexuality. Now, in his latest novel, Tingle plies his talents to a story set in the grim and all-too-real world of Christian fundamentalism. quote:From beloved internet icon Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus is a searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down. quote:Rose Darling is about to graduate from high school. She’s a little older than some of the other kids, because she’s part of a fundamentalist church called The Kingdom of The Pine that has its younger members do a few dedicated years of service work scattered across their teens. Rose loves being a member of the Kingdom. She knows a Bible verse for every occasion, she knows that the only real superhero is Jesus, and she knows that the Kingdom’s Camp Damascus, the “most effective ex-gay ministry on the planet” has a 100% success rate. Camp Damascus is available from bookshops, in audiobook form (read by Mara Wilson), and is almost certainly at your local library. Read As Thou Wilt, share your thoughts here, and remember: Love Is Real!!! EDIT: Yeah go and do this also VVVVVVVVVVV Gertrude Perkins fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 21:15
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Just a heads up - this is available on Scribd, which you can get a free trial of... (cancel the trial before it expires... I am on my fourth month of a one-month free trial. Keep cancelling before the cycle and keep getting extended 30 days...)
Help a goon out! Lots of books - horror, nonfiction, classics and more for sale.
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Oct 1, 2023 23:58
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I read it back when it first came out so I hope that's not cheating, but I really enjoyed it. I especially loved the narrative twist where It seemed like it was taking forever to get to the camp, only to turn out that it happened years ago and we're essentially reading a sequel. That was really clever. I'm a boring old cishet white guy so I'm sure there was a lot of subtext that didn't fully resonate with me, but I can see this being essential reading for any young queer kids. Very interested to see what Tingle does next.
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Oct 6, 2023 19:00
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So I'm halfway through and I'm very impressed. I knew Tingle had skills but it really is impressive how this is unmistakably him and yet the setting and the tone are so different. And yet they're not completely different - so many of his stupid porn stories were about people's repressed longings manifesting as strange and supernatural beings, so why not turn that into an earnest exploration of the ways evangelical bigotry enforces that repression? Featuring some really nasty parenting stuff that so far has not failed to make my skin crawl. I want to pace myself but I also want to finish it tomorrow, you know?
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Oct 7, 2023 09:08
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Just finished it and I really liked it! The ending where the pastor gets his nervous system and eyes sucked out is genuinely disturbing to me and is still fuckin me up a little. Big recommend Edit: Opopanax I totally didn't catch that twist?! Where does it happen? Arson Daily fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 00:18
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I enjoyed the first half of the book immensely. The mystery about what was going on was genuinely creepy. After they got to the camp everything felt rushed. It turned from a bit of a horror to more like an action flick. Still a fun read.
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Oct 10, 2023 23:22
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Starting this now.
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Oct 14, 2023 22:45
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So I finished CD a few days ago and have been digesting my thoughts before posting this. First impressions were extremely good - it's clear Tingle is coming from a place of deep and desperate empathy for victims of evangelism and that small-town oppression that can envelop a person's entire life. The scares were properly scary, the mystery unravelled at a pace that I found really satisfying. And the whole sequence with the demons and the car crash and the fire was really gripping. And the last time she sees her mother, who gives her an out, despite having been complicit in her indoctrination...that hit pretty hard. And then she escapes! And she meets Luke! Who seems pretty cool! And things from that point are a little too easy for me, a little too revenge-empowerment-fantasy. The horrible secrets at the heart of the camp, the lab and everything, that's all properly grisly and skin-crawling. But by the third act I didn't feel like the characters were at risk of failing. So even though the ending was really fun, it didn't give me the kind of catharsis that I'd expected. But then, I was lucky enough not to be raised particularly religious, and to not be treated badly by my family for my queerness. So there are parts of the story and the traumas Tingle depicts that just aren't going to resonate with me the same way.
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Oct 15, 2023 03:16
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cryptoclastic posted:After they got to the camp everything felt rushed. It turned from a bit of a horror to more like an action flick. Still a fun read. I think a lot of horror novels suffer from this, even classics like Salem’s Lot. It’s probably because once the scary unknown/unreasonable thing is identified it becomes more of a problem solving exercise than dread/fear.
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Oct 15, 2023 15:09
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I mean it works here, at least. This is a book about catharsis and empowerment
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Oct 15, 2023 16:28
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Pings the "can a horror novel have a happy ending and remain a horror novel" question.
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Oct 15, 2023 16:47
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Only like 5 chapters into Camp Damascus but so far it’s quite good and not at all what I expected
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Oct 15, 2023 17:18
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gey muckle mowser posted:Only like 5 chapters into Camp Damascus but so far it’s quite good and not at all what I expected yeah nothing has been pounded in the rear end at all so far
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Oct 15, 2023 21:56
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Bilirubin posted:yeah nothing has been pounded in the rear end at all so far Pounded in the Butt by my Preconceived Notions of a Horror Novel About a Gay Conversion Camp
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Oct 16, 2023 00:16
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gey muckle mowser posted:Pounded in the Butt by my Preconceived Notions of a Horror Novel About a Gay Conversion Camp its competing with Pounded in the Butt by the Indoctrination of my Evangelical Upbringing
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Oct 16, 2023 00:19
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Pounded In The Butt By Christian Deathcore Jams
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Oct 16, 2023 00:22
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So, that was some spaghetti dinner
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Oct 16, 2023 00:27
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Bilirubin posted:So, that was some spaghetti dinner Yeah I loved this scene, and in general I thought the first half of the book was awesome. I thought the way the parents were responding to this horrific poo poo as a metaphor for homophobic people's perception and reaction to homosexuality was really clever and effective, though it lost some of that for me when it became apparent that they were actual literal insects. It definitely felt like the second half of the book really dropped off unfortunately, turning into more of an action movie than anything and the main character's pivot on their beliefs just didn't ring true. I've worked with a number of people who've left evangelical Christian sects and the path out is always much more torturous and conflicted than what was depicted here. Maybe that's not a fair criticism of a horror novel, but I think the setup of the first half was so good it just left me expecting more.
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Oct 16, 2023 22:48
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 fulfillment for TBB's BOTM / King Bilirubin I / reasons of sincere apology: on Communion: The new introduction on the audio version mentions how all his “literary friends” abandoned him because they believed that he was perpetrating a hoax. And that his son was relentlessly bullied, according to him, on social media. Well, social media didn’t exist in the 80s, so from this introduction I can infer that Strieber has stuck to his story, and that his son has also stuck to his part of the story, in the recent years. Strieber has a weekly podcast apparently as well, which may or may not be worth checking out. After skipping the overly wordy new introduction, I dove into the abduction story. Right off the bat, I laughed pretty hard at the part of where he is recounting his abduction and the author asks to smell the alien, as a means of tempering his fear. Since smell is considered the strongest sensory memory, it actually does have some sort of psychological basis in reality. The author says the smell of the alien gave him an anchor, or tether, to reality. But the way its worded is unintentionally funny and made me laugh. He mentions a concept described by Freud – the “screen memory”, a memory that is mostly visual and begins in early childhood, and this type of memory tends to be tied to trauma. However, Strieber didn’t seem to expound much on it. Freud came up with this idea in 1899, 80 or so years before Strieber’s alleged abduction. Citing Freud may have helped bolster his narrative, but I’ve always been under the impression that Freud was in fact a big fraud. So citing a 19th century idea by Freud may have actually backfired in terms of making the story feel believable, at least to someone in the 21st century. Or at least to someone who took a few psychology classes in college and has been resting firmly in his diagnostic armchair, so to speak, ever since. He mentions that he saw four different types of creatures. The first being a small robot of a creature that was inside his cabin. The second being stocky figures in blue overalls. I must’ve drifted off during the description of the other two as I only remember one more description, which sounds a lot like the common description of greys / Zeta Reticulans. I’m not familiar enough with UFO lore and alien mythology, but I know there are books that list a hierarchy of beings. With that in mind, I wonder how the types of aliens Strieber describes compare to other abductee’s descriptions? The Zeta Reticulans, or greys, that are commonly referenced by UFOlogists seem to match with one of the descriptions. But did these archetypes arise from Whitley Strieber’s descriptions, or did he borrow them from previous abduction cases? I’d be curious to see someone do a deep dive on this. Where did this archetypal extraterrastriel first appear in writing, whether it be fiction or nonfiction? It’s like a chicken-egg situation for aliens. The most interesting part dramatically, of what I did get through, was the son’s corroboration of the story. The son’s dream about “the little doctors” hearkened to two other tales of horror for me: Poltergeist, and Stephen King’s Insomnia. Poltergeist came out in 1982, so it was huge when Strieber was at his most prolific period. Insomnia came out in 1994, and it is also a long, directionless, plodding mess that shouldn’t be read, but I have to wonder, did King read Communion and then borrow the image of the “little doctors” for Insomnia? Strieber’s story of abduction, ultimately, to me sounds like a crock of poo poo. A crock of poo poo with a ton of decent enough ingredients, but I remain unconvinced. The disjointed nature of the work doesn’t really lend itself to making the tale particularly interesting or believable. It feels to me like an early attempt at meta fiction. Think of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, a fake memoir written by the author, describing his time as an IRS agent. I get the same vibes from this. But as verbose as DFW can be, I feel like he had a much more effective editor than Strieber did for Communion. Having just read Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix’s history of 70s and 80s horror fiction, I encountered references to Strieber’s work as well as descriptions of the trends that made certain books bestsellers during these times. I wonder how Strieber’s sales were in the mid-80s. Did they stagnate, necessitating a new approach to his writing? And if yes, was Strieber’s response to dive into a new type of meta-fiction, attempting to cash in one the growing popularity of UFOs? Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM had been around for about 10 years before Strieber wrote Communion. I hate to jump to conclusions, especially when I couldn’t even finish the whole book, but I see an author experimenting with meta-fiction and attempting to remain relevant in a fast moving and ever changing literary landscape. You might say that I already had this conclusion in mine before I started analyzing Communion, and you’d probably be right. That being said, I am still of the firm belief that Strieber concocted all of this. Having not read any of his other work, I am curious to know how it compares to his fiction writing. Are all of his books disjointed and plodding with the narrative? Or is that something that is particular to Communion? It’s not that I don’t want to believe abductee’s stories. I am fascinated by these tales. But I was a Mulder when I was younger but unfortunately have grown to be a Scully in my older days. And I would say that skepticism probably kept me from enjoying Communion as much as I could have. But I’ll give Strieber some blame for the disjointed narrative, too. With that in mind, I am so sorry that I cast a deciding vote for Communion when we could’ve spent the previous month enjoying Ursula Leguin. I spent a lot of time making hesitation cuts with Communion. False-starts that ended up with my feeling distracted and uninterested and wishing that I was reading something else. But I hope it’s also apparent that I did, in fact, punish myself in an effort to show good faith to my fellow TBB readers. Well that was formatted for easier reading on a Linux document but copy and paste sort of hosed it up, so forgive the wall of text. Help a goon out! Lots of books - horror, nonfiction, classics and more for sale. escape artist fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 01:54
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escape artist posted:
well done you, its personal enough its likely not even ChatGPT! TOXX averted. 
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Oct 22, 2023 03:03
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Kerro posted:Yeah I loved this scene, and in general I thought the first half of the book was awesome. I thought the way the parents were responding to this horrific poo poo as a metaphor for homophobic people's perception and reaction to homosexuality was really clever and effective, though it lost some of that for me when it became apparent that they were actual literal insects. It definitely felt like the second half of the book really dropped off unfortunately, turning into more of an action movie than anything and the main character's pivot on their beliefs just didn't ring true. I've worked with a number of people who've left evangelical Christian sects and the path out is always much more torturous and conflicted than what was depicted here. Maybe that's not a fair criticism of a horror novel, but I think the setup of the first half was so good it just left me expecting more. As a former evangelical, from a relatively prominent family of the particular sect, I can attest to what you say being true. However, I am here for the revenge fantasy nonetheless! I'm just about half way through and the horror puzzle has mostly been worked out after the heist scene.
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Oct 22, 2023 23:09
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Just finished it, so here's my initial reaction: There's a lot of set up and pay off in this book (Rose's esoteric knowledge coming in handy, weird imagery on the TV, etc coming up later), but in the end there was quite a bit of the story happened by coincidence (Saul having the exact book they need). It's fine, but I think it's part of why the end feels rushed. The creepiness of the demons was well done. Making them employees with name tags was fantastic, A+. I want my wife to read the book, but she hates horror. She grew up deep in an evangelical bubble, and nearly everything from Rose's parents could be her parents, right down to her mother prescribing solutions for everyone's specific sins, and her father's false kindly front. Her leaving the mindset was not as quick as Rose; the book's conversion happened so quickly it was too unbelievable. I get why it happened quickly, but dang. I think in a worse book the criticism of religion would have gone overboard, but I'm glad Chuck Tingle could dance a fine line in how he diagnosed what the issue is. Characters you should hate are treated with some care, like Rose's mother, as she drives away from her for the last time, reflects on how her mother's love is still love, but twisted. Overall an enjoyable read.
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Oct 23, 2023 04:26
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Sent back my Pachid, was overdone.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:01
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Done. That was a lot of fun (if a horror novel about gay conversion camp can be called "fun")! I hope you all are equally enjoying this month's offering. I'm thinking for next month of imposing by fiat a book, the close runner up to September's book, that being Rocannon's World by Ursula LeGuin but if folks have other suggestions I'm certainly open to them.
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Oct 25, 2023 03:22
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Bilirubin posted:Done. That was a lot of fun (if a horror novel about gay conversion camp can be called "fun")! I hope you all are equally enjoying this month's offering. That book is so short that I think we could probably get away with having two BOTMs Suttree was so long that it took up two months, right? Well we can sort of balance that out with two books for November
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Oct 25, 2023 03:39
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