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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah the only horror I've ever found genuinely scary was the first third of The Stand because it had a very "this could happen very easily" feel. You know, this is true for me. I read it as a Freshman in college during flu season and it made me paranoid as hell. The last book that actually scared me was I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. It's an incomplete book, since she passed away while writing it, but the details of how the Golden State killer worked--stalking people for months, breaking into their home multiple times unnoticed before attacking them, the psychological games he played, the torture he'd put them through--was absolutely terrifying and disheartening. I don't really recommend it, because it really hosed with me, but it was an experience. I can't say I've had a fictional story have the same effect on me. I wish I knew a book that scary.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:18
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I've never really found scary books scary the most frightened I remember being in a book is The Sound and the Fury when Quentin 2 goes missing
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Sep 25, 2018 20:19
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I've never really found scary books scary Right. I don't get the same scared feeling as I do when I watch a really effective horror movie. I like reading horror, but it just doesn't give me that reaction. Some books give me anxiety. Infinite Jest's story of the man who's so afraid of doctors forcing radiation into his blood that he ends up getting put into an institution where the doctors put him through the experimental treatment of putting chemicals in his blood... That was effective. Aquarium's beginning, before you realize who the old man is, that made me anxious. Some books like The Troop grossed me out. But in recent memory nothing's scared me, besides the McNamara book I mentioned.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:25
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Franchescanado posted:Right. I don't get the same scared feeling as I do when I watch a really effective horror movie. I like reading horror, but it just doesn't give me that reaction. I was more anxious during the "what it was like scene"
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Sep 25, 2018 20:28
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Franchescanado posted:Right. I don't get the same scared feeling as I do when I watch a really effective horror movie. I like reading horror, but it just doesn't give me that reaction. Ugh, The Troop. It might just be that I'm getting older, but my tolerance for gross-out horror has dropped precipitously in recent years. It's not even that I can't take it or can't read it without getting squicked out, it just feels cheap and ineffective. I spent a lot of The Troop just rolling my eyes at how hard Cutter tries to make the reader feel really uncomfortable/sick but all of it felt so predictable. I think some of the body horror stuff he did in The Deep was infinitely more effective because he was less heavy-handed with it. Hell I feel that way about horror in general--horror books that just kind of drop things in place, then let me draw my own terrifying conclusions or fill the dark spots with my own flavor of terrifying always seem more effective than ones that go into great detail on anything. Which is probably why my favorite horror novels are what they are--Shirley Jackson is kind of the reigning champ, in my mind, of horror writers who just get out of your way and let you freak yourself out with what you've been given. fake edit for actual recommendations: I've been wracking my brain to think of a single book I've read in recent memory that's genuinely scared me, and I think The Elementals might be the only one I've read in the last year and a half. But there's some books that have deeply unsettled me in a horror-ish way: The Grip of It I'm Thinking of Ending Things seconding Franchescanado's mention (if not quite recommendation) of I'll Be Gone In The Dark Universal Harvester (okay, this one is patently not at all horror and don't let the publisher tell you otherwise, but there's one moment that is one of the most creepy/unsettling moments I've ever encountered in a book, probably because I was entirely unprepared for it and/or quite stupid) The Cipher MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 20:57
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Franchescanado posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as9pu3rqgFs
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Sep 25, 2018 21:03
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i was extremely frightened by the very hungry caterpillar because i am a leaf
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Sep 26, 2018 00:21
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Thread, please recommend me books that remind you of A Night in the Lonesome October by Zelazny, From the Dust Returned by Bradbury, or The Graveyard Book by Gaiman. These are books that fall into what I can only term the "Halloween Cozy" category: spooky October-y trappings, sometimes a bit unsettling or chilling but rarely actually frightening, often with kids as protagonists. Something Wicked This Way Comes is in this category, but right on the edge, because there's little if any levity to it, and the touchstones I've got for this weird category tend to be a bit lighter. Basically if you can picture a book as a grinning jack-'o-lantern, it probably counts.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:05
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the last book i remember actually scaring me was being dead, by the extremely fake sounding vivian vande velde. specifically the first story in it, about a teenager who is being haunted by the ghost of a little kid. i stayed up all night and had nightmares when i finally fell asleep after dawn. i was i think 10 years old.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:46
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Kestral posted:Thread, please recommend me books that remind you of A Night in the Lonesome October by Zelazny, From the Dust Returned by Bradbury, or The Graveyard Book by Gaiman. These are books that fall into what I can only term the "Halloween Cozy" category: spooky October-y trappings, sometimes a bit unsettling or chilling but rarely actually frightening, often with kids as protagonists. Something Wicked This Way Comes is in this category, but right on the edge, because there's little if any levity to it, and the touchstones I've got for this weird category tend to be a bit lighter. i also love this sub-subgenre, but it's really difficult to find books that fit it. norman partridge's dark harvest looks like this:  you would like some of the stories in the anthology october dreams edited by i forget who and, to a much lesser extent, haunted nights ed. by ellen datlow you've read bradbury's the october country and the halloween tree, yeah?
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Sep 26, 2018 02:51
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Dark Harvest is definitely happening, thanks! Loved October Country, and haven't gotten around to The Halloween Tree yet because the description makes it sound less like a novel and more like an elementary grades history lesson - which I'm not opposed to when it's written by a master like Bradbury, come to think of it. What's it actually like?
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Sep 26, 2018 03:37
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Al Sarrantonio has the Orangefield books, which can be conveniently purchased as a relatively inexpensive omnibus on Kindle. They are...alright.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:42
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I creepily stared at a man's kindle over his shoulder on the subway today and jotted down some names so I could look up what he was reading. Turns out it was The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Looks pretty good! Score one for being nosy.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:54
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al sarrantonio lives in the hudson valley area & goes around to the barnes & nobles there & quietly signs all of his books on the shelves, which is niceKestral posted:Dark Harvest is definitely happening, thanks! if you like dark havest, partridge has a collection called Johnny Halloween: Tales of The Dark Season which contains a follow-up. the follow up is good but the rest of the stories are more grim than the novel is (iirc) and so may not fit the bill. i havent read it since whenver it came out though, so ymmv halloween tree is definitely a history lesson, but basically everything it teaches is wrong. it may have been right in 1972, i'm not sure, but it's definitely wrong now. this, imo, adds to its charm, and there's enough of the kids-caught-up-in-supernatural-goings-on vibe to make it fit the October Cozy bill. chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 04:53
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Bradburys the Veldt always freaked me out, I like to think of them grown up
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Sep 26, 2018 05:19
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Also Bradbury's short story, The October Game.
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Sep 26, 2018 07:15
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AnonymousNarcotics posted:I creepily stared at a man's kindle over his shoulder on the subway today and jotted down some names so I could look up what he was reading. Turns out it was The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Looks pretty good! Score one for being nosy. That book is like 50% interesting fantasy plot and 50% bending over backwards to represent as many oppressed groups as possible and gender flip in ~important~ ways. It rubbed me like tokenism and I felt vaguely offended by the whole thing.
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Sep 26, 2018 12:14
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Oh no, not representation in fiction!
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Sep 26, 2018 13:28
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tuyop posted:That book is like 50% interesting fantasy plot and 50% bending over backwards to represent as many oppressed groups as possible and gender flip in ~important~ ways. It rubbed me like tokenism and I felt vaguely offended by the whole thing. nice. nice post.
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Sep 26, 2018 14:16
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Time Cowboy posted:Oh no, not representation in fiction! 🙄 yeah that’s my point.
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Sep 26, 2018 14:53
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i loving hate women (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 26, 2018 18:24
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Next tell me how having that Indian guy on The Big Bang Theory is representation instead of tokenism.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:09
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tuyop posted:Next tell me how having that Indian guy on The Big Bang Theory is representation instead of tokenism. who cares, as long as he is funny?*. *he is not, that show is awful.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:23
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buglord posted:Throw em here then! When I'm in Chapters or Indigo, I'm often drawn to the worst possible covers, so I check those out. Otherwise, I rely on the goons here for recommendations. Strix, Ornamented Death and a few others have always been on point for me. Robot Wendigo fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Sep 27, 2018 |
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Sep 27, 2018 00:02
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Time Cowboy posted:Oh no, not representation in fiction! Oh cool, we have representation of "that guy" in the thread 
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Sep 27, 2018 04:38
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What's a good history on The Boxer Rebellion
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Sep 27, 2018 05:05
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tuyop posted:That book is like 50% interesting fantasy plot and 50% bending over backwards to represent as many oppressed groups as possible and gender flip in ~important~ ways. It rubbed me like tokenism and I felt vaguely offended by the whole thing. Legit confused here. I don't remember there being gender-flipped stuff in The Fifth Season, nor allusions to a wide variety of oppressed groups. You could say that the book is overbearing and unsubtle about its themes of oppression and I would understand, but tokenism makes no sense to me as a complaint considering who wrote the book.
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Sep 27, 2018 10:29
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Solitair posted:Legit confused here. I don't remember there being gender-flipped stuff in The Fifth Season, nor allusions to a wide variety of oppressed groups. You could say that the book is overbearing and unsubtle about its themes of oppression and I would understand, but tokenism makes no sense to me as a complaint considering who wrote the book. Oh poo poo, I think I was confusing it with The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley. And I love a few of Hurley’s short stories (and I liked The Stars are Legion) so I was very disappointed. I did read it and I think The Fifth Season was just fine, sorry everyone!
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Sep 27, 2018 10:59
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I just finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and am a little of the way through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both of which I've enjoyed quite a bit. What's the best thing to followup with when I finish Huck Finn? Preferably not Mark Twain if possible; nothing against him but I'd rather expand my horizons for now instead of reading the same author over and over.
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Sep 28, 2018 18:30
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Boo! I was surprised how neat and subversive A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was
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Sep 28, 2018 18:52
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OscarDiggs posted:I just finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and am a little of the way through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both of which I've enjoyed quite a bit. What's the best thing to followup with when I finish Huck Finn? Preferably not Mark Twain if possible; nothing against him but I'd rather expand my horizons for now instead of reading the same author over and over. What other books do you like, and what do you like about Twain
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Sep 28, 2018 18:58
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Junkie Disease posted:I was surprised how neat and subversive A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was said it before but the ending of that book is unironically one of the most prescient things written before the first world war
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Sep 28, 2018 20:58
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Captain Kevbo posted:I help coordinate a book club for faculty and we work with our library to ensure that there are some copies of the book on reserve. Apparently our librarian colleagues had to create a fictional course to place the books on reserve in their system. And apparently they misstyped "book club" when they created this fictional course because I got an e-mail this morning from the faculty member leading next month's discussion asking why her book is reserved for the "boob club."
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Sep 28, 2018 22:09
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Is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich an accurate and well-written history book? I've heard it is, but someone I got in an argument with said it backed up her assertion that the Nazis were socialist at one point, a claim I've seen debunked multiple times.
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Sep 29, 2018 05:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What other books do you like, and what do you like about Twain I liked the slight episodic nature of Tom Sawyer. I could read it, put it down and not have to worry about forgetting important details if it was more then a few days between each session of reading. Made it easy to read both schedule wise and in a "I'm a pretty lovely reader" wise. I don't know if that's a Twain thing though; these two are literally the only things of his I have read. I'm not much of a literature guy though I'm trying to be, so something that counts as Capital-L Literature without being suffocatingly dramatic or depressing, would be a nice way to continue the trend. Otherwise I'm a big Sci-Fi and Fantasy guy for the most part. I did fall in love with Lincoln in the Bardo though. Never read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court though I think I've seen like 5 different movies based on it. I could give it a go through barring any other suggestions.
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Sep 29, 2018 14:06
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Those movies are nothing like the book beyond future man hangs with king Arthur. Merlin's got an iPod and he's digging rap music! Disneyfied kid crap The man from the book loathes medieval culture, poverty, class struggles, ignorance, and bullshit superstition fed con artists. However he doesn't hate nor blame the people produced by it. If this book were a movie it would be rated R I won't say why
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Sep 29, 2018 14:23
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OscarDiggs posted:I liked the slight episodic nature of Tom Sawyer. I could read it, put it down and not have to worry about forgetting important details if it was more then a few days between each session of reading. Made it easy to read both schedule wise and in a "I'm a pretty lovely reader" wise. I don't know if that's a Twain thing though; these two are literally the only things of his I have read. Ok, it sounds like you might like other "picaresque" novels -- books like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn that basically focus on a young-ish rapscallion going on a trip and having adventures along the way. A few suggestions: Rudyard Kipling's Kim Maybe Pickwick Papers but for Dickens I'd recommend David Copperfield instead On the Road by Kerouac Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (Working title: "Jews with Swords") ("a 2007 serial novel by American author Michael Chabon. It is a "swashbuckling adventure"[1] set in the kaganate of Khazaria (now southwest Russia) around AD 950. It follows two Jewish bandits who become embroiled in a rebellion and a plot to restore a displaced Khazar prince to the throne"). For Twain it's hard to go wrong but I'd highly recommend his Autobiography, or if you want something shorter, specifically Life on the Mississippi, his mostly-nonfiction account of growing up on the river.
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Sep 29, 2018 14:28
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Okay I think I'm sold on Connecticut Yankee based on that description. And those suggestions also sound great Hieronymous. Fellow Goon Franchescanado explained picureasque novels to me a while ago, and yeah they sound just like my cup of tea. I look forward to reading some more good books that aren't just Big Macs.
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Sep 29, 2018 14:53
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Pickwick Papers is really early Dickens and I love it. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome is also a journey punctuated by silliness.
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Sep 30, 2018 00:19
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tuyop posted:That book is like 50% interesting fantasy plot and 50% bending over backwards to represent as many oppressed groups as possible and gender flip in ~important~ ways. It rubbed me like tokenism and I felt vaguely offended by the whole thing. if a post could have a massive neckbeard this would be it
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Sep 30, 2018 09:43
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