|
Venusian Weasel posted:I recognize the importance of The Call of Cthulhu and it's got a great opening sentence, but the story itself is kind of boring. Dagon isn't great either, but it's shorter and holds together better as a story than Call. They're both 'core' Lovecraft stories but really aren't particularly good. I actually started this thread years ago because I was attempting to read all of lovecraft's writing in publication order (havent finished, somewhere in the middle of Unknown Kadath atm) and I barely got through Call. it's basically a story of a story of a story, and it's not a particularly engaging one. A friend wanted to start his Lovecraft reading with it, and I ended up warning him away from it. I'd only include it and Dagon if you feel like you absolutely have to.
|
#
¿
May 27, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:16 |
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:Wow, this is a surprisingly solid anthology. I'd be jealous it's for Brits only if I didn't already have most of the stories collected in various other anthologies. It's not UK only, actually. I just grabbed it myself and I am very much within the US. I make no guarantees for Canadians.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2015 07:29
|
|
|
I just finished the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy... I was a little undecided about continuing after the first book, since I felt it ended in kind of a compelling way and didn't feel like it needed much of a continuation. That said, I'm excited to finish out the trilogy. The second book was solid, but really felt like the middle book of the trilogy. Beyond introducing Control and setting up maybe one or two major plot points that (I hope) will get resolved in Acceptance, a lot of the book felt like it was biding time. Not filler, per se, just not big plot movement. Holy wow did it have some of the eeriest moments in a book, at least one that I've read in recent memory. Not scary, but definitely eerie.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 00:00
|
|
|
I just grabbed House of Small Shadows from the library myself. I'm excited to see what all the spoiler tags are about. Also Acceptance was really dragging. I'll get through it eventually, I just had a hard time getting started with it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2015 21:49
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:Scandinavian mythology and folklore. Shut up and take my money. Well, not you, Adam Nevill.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 18, 2015 03:12
|
|
|
I grabbed House of Small Shadows based on the recommendations in the thread, and I am loving it, enough that I've put down the third Southern Reach book in favor of finishing it. Also it's a library book so I kind of have to. I'm roughly halfway through, and I really dig Nevill's writing style. Very creepy and atmospheric, but not in a ponderous, heavy way. I recently read a bunch of "haunted house" novels because a friend of mine was designing a board game around the concept, and I think House of Small Shadows fits really well in with similar books of that style, like The Haunting of Hill House or Hell House. I will say that even being halfway through, I'm curious how much it will develop in the direction I'm expecting. I feel like it makes it kind of obvious what's (probably?) going on in the house, but I'm assuming there will be a lot of twists and misdirection in the second half, otherwise it would seem like the book plateaued early. The obvious thing would be that the puppets are possessed or actually made from human remains and are haunted or something, and that Catherine is being held at the house to participate in some kind of ritual. The last big moment I read in the book was when she walked into the workshop to find a wooden mannequin, which I assume is intended to replace her or become her or something. I'm not sure how her childhood and visions/flashbacks connect to that though, beyond that the cripple/ghost children she saw as a kid seem like they were actually the puppets based on the descriptions. But that said, I could be completely off the mark and have no idea. I get the impression that Adam Nevill's a good enough writer that it's totally in the realm of possibility that he's intentionally leading me down the primrose path in this book.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2015 07:17
|
|
|
Just finished House of Small Shadows. I agree with other assessments of it; the fact that Nevill never comes right out and explains what's going on only adds to the terrifying nature of what's happening. I also appreciate that it leaves a lot of rooms for pet theories as to what actually drove the whole sequence of events.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
Clipperton posted:I mainly want to know who all the people living in the village were. Were they kids that the Master of Revels and his mates had given the reverse-Pinocchio treatment? Because I thought only three or so kids had disappeared since MH Mason had dug up the MoR et al in 1940 or whenever, and they'd been buried for hundreds of years before that. Well it does describe the townspeople as having worn very period dress, and there are three or four other Martyrs mentioned throughout the book, so I took it to mean that the townspeople were other victims/saved individuals from the time of Henry Strader or the other two. Also I wasn't sure whether the kids from Ellyl Field were taken by Mason or Leonard. The fact that Leonard had the green van that's mentioned implies he's the one that took the three or four girls, so they couldn't be Mason's victims. Then again, I was distracted a lot while reading it, maybe I missed something.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2015 07:09
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:In an effort to swing this thread back to something vaguely interesting... Just to clarify, it looks like this is the latest Story Bundle, not the Humble Book Bundle. The current Humble Book Bundle is banned comics.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2015 04:31
|
|
|
Interestingly relevant to this discussion, while going through a box of books I had bought in college (for something like $10 for an entire banker's box of hardcovers, sight unseen) I discovered I own a 1991 Carroll and Graf edition of Grimscribe. It's particularly funny because at the time I bought this I had no idea who Ligotti was.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2015 08:19
|
|
|
Hey so I'm looking for some fairly specific recommendations-- I'm working on a project that's cosmic-horror inspired, and we'd like to track down some good short stories or novellas that have a theme of alien nature or the surrounding environment (a la Southern Reach) or specifically cosmic horror that puts heavy focus on unhospitable or Arctic environements (a la Mountains of Madness). I've read some Laird Barron, but I've been led to believe that a lot of his stuff is at least marginally focused on the Pacific Northwest or settings like that, is that true?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2016 01:32
|
|
|
Skyscraper posted:I'm not sure if it's what you're after, but maybe The Crystal World by JG Ballard? I don't even really know what I'm after. Kind of looking for inspiration for a project. Thanks for the recommendations, friendly horrors.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2016 21:22
|
|
|
Speaking of Barron, is it just me or is Procession of the Black Sloth a slog to get through? I've been jumping around Imago Sequence and Occultation but finally sat down to actually read all the ones I'd skipped before, and this one is just... not holding my interest. And maybe I'm a bad person because of it but I really liked Old Virginia and --30--.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2016 23:15
|
|
|
Phi230 posted:So like a total neckbeard I just bought the Necronomicon. I've never read Lovecraft before, so where should I start since this is a collection of all his poo poo. I've heard that his writing is incredibly bloated with description of things like houses and other kind stuff like that but what really sparked my interest is how he built up a horror for pages where the payoff is just a black person. I'm sure you'd get multiple different answers on what is or is not worth reading in the Lovecraft bibliography. I personally think most of his stuff is pretty dated or really just not that great, and you can especially skip pretty much everything he wrote before 1923, with a couple of exceptions. (The Outsider & The Music of Erich Zann). Besides that, all of the mythos stories are pretty decent. I would recommend not starting with any of the longer novellas or with Call of Cthulhu. Soooo... The Colour out of Space, maybe? Beats me, I read them all and honestly wouldn't reread most of them.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2016 20:48
|
|
|
GannerOne posted:Herbert West - Reanimator is a pretty nice one I think. I'd agree it's a good story, but it may not be the greatest introduction to Lovecraft. It reads as much more tongue-in-cheek than most of Lovecraft's stuff, though I can't remember if he wrote it to be funny or not. In any case it doesn't try to be serious or intense like a lot of the rest of his work. Maybe that's an argument for it, I suppose, but I feel like maybe one of the shorter Mythos stories would be a better starting place, given it's what people are most familiar with anyway. Dunwich Horror might be a good first option? I hesitate to say Call of Cthulhu because even though it's probably one of the better known stories it's pretty ponderous to read now. That said, if "funny tongue-in-cheek Lovecraft" sounds appealing Herbert West - Reanimator is a good option.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2016 19:56
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Why not with The Call of Cthulhu? Ehh maybe it's my own preference coloring my response. I just felt like it feels pretty dated now, and the whole frame-story-within-a-frame-story wasn't always thrilling to read. Maybe for me it was that I was so into cosmic horror and the writers influenced by HPL (and had seen Cthulhu in hundreds of other bits of media) that Call of Cthulhu felt very underwhelming when I finally read it. It's not a bad story, I just think if it were the first HPL somebody ever read it might put someone off given that Cthulhu is so played out nowadays.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 29, 2016 03:02
|
|
|
coyo7e posted:My personal favorite Lovecraft story is probably The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, because it reads almost like an epic poem or old-style fantasy novel, before it was all orcs and dwarves and elves. There's just a strange lyricism to that one, which reminds me of reading 1001 Arabian Nights and old mythology books as a kid. There's also a pronounced lack of fish-people or tentacles. Kadath has its own unique draw and charm, but if you're looking for a good staring place for Lovecraft's work overall I think it may be a bad option. I found it way too long and ponderous to get through and if it had been the first Lovecraft I'd read I would have been completely turned off from reading anything else.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2016 20:15
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:Is there no general horror book thread or did this thread devour it in its unquenchable world consuming hunger? When I started this thread, there was a Stephen King one, but not much else. This has sort of become the de-facto horror book thread.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2016 16:47
|
|
|
If there's an interest, I could poke one of the Book Barn mods to change the thread title to something more along the lines of general horror, see if we can't get more life in here. Or I could start a general horror thread. But I feel like that would only lead to two less-active threads.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2016 23:52
|
|
|
Anybody have a burning need to write a good OP, or part of one, for general horror books? I could do one but hell if I know when I'll actually get around to finishing it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2016 02:04
|
|
|
Neurosis posted:Ornamented Death seems to keep abreast of what's happening in horror better than anyone that posts here, I nominate him to at least write the recommendations part. ^^ I second this heartily. I can probably poo poo out a decent post and handle formatting and what not, but my horror knowledge is mostly limited to Lovecraft, King, and haunted house stuff at the moment, so I'd be tapping a pretty small well or random internet recommendations.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2016 22:50
|
|
|
Jedit posted:I wouldn't do the whole OP, but it should be divided into three sections - Classical 1816-1920, Pulp 1921-1973 and Modern 1974- with brief bios for a number of the most important authors and lists of others to look at. I could probably give a starting point for Classical and some British authors you might miss, at least. That would be really helpful. I've only ever read the big classical horror novels (Frankenstein, Dracula, Poe stories) and The Monk.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2016 14:53
|
|
|
Skyscraper posted:Cool, I'll check them out! Thanks! I think there's a 90% chance that if we start a second thread, they will both die in a matter of months. Plus shy of a small handful of authors, the gap between cosmic/weird horror and "traditional" horror has become so minimal it feels a little silly to arbitrarily separate them into two threads. There's no secret that the vast majority of modern horror writers owe a lot of inspiration to Lovecraft and his contemporaries and immediate followers.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2016 18:05
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:I'm having an autistic moment, would it be useful if I went through the thread and added every cosmic horror book mentioned to a Goodreads list? We can stick it in the OP. I've nearly done that a handful of times and got bored about a quarter of the way through. If you think it'd be useful to you, I know it'd be useful to me, so I imagine there's at least a few other people who might be curious to see all the recommendations. In particular I want to see what anthologies have been mentioned. I remember a lot of the individual authors that have come up, but anthologies kind of drop out of my memory.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 28, 2016 23:58
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:Kind of weird to ask for things like Aickman but not like Strantzas, but ok. I gotta find Wide, Carnivorous Sky and give it another try. I think I read one or two of the stories in it and didn't feel like it was that strong, but maybe I just picked the wrong ones to start with.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2016 03:24
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:I find Langan to be really hit or miss personally, but a lot of people love everything he does. I admit I have yet to find an anthology, even by a single author, to be anything but hit and miss. In non-cosmic news, I just picked up Tremblay's Head Full of Ghosts and I'm extremely excited to dig into it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2016 01:36
|
|
|
Speaking of Langan, anybody read The Fisherman yet?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2016 16:44
|
|
|
I just finished Simon Strantzas's Nightingale Songs and I'm a little lukewarm on it honestly. The stories were all pretty good (not really any I would call out-and-out cosmic horror though), but some of them felt a little unfocused, or like Strantzas kind of shied away from the point he was trying to make at the last moment. And dear god, I hate stories that center on the horror writers community. I think I went over this with that one story Laird Barron wrote about his fellow writers, but it stands here too. No matter how well intentioned or fictional, stories like that always read as really self-indulgent and contrived. Okay, bitching aside, how does Burnt Black Suns compare to Nightingale Songs? I probably won't go straight into it, but I like Strantzas enough that I'm willing to give it a try, if it's of comparable or better quality. Ornamented Death, sounds like you've read a lot of Strantzas, any strong opinion on it?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2016 03:47
|
|
|
Helical Nightmares posted:Where is this AMA? It's here. Edit: I just finished Imago Sequence. I'm way late to the game here but drat if it isn't pretty solid. I've been reading it over the course of months so I can't really remember exact impressions on a lot of the stories (though I do recall having what seems like a really common reaction to Procession of the Black Sloth) but my god the title story was fantastic. Oh also I really didn't like The Royal Zoo is Closed, but I think I might have to reread it while less distracted. Incidentally, the ebook is $2 right now on US Amazon. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Aug 14, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2016 00:53
|
|
|
BJPaskoff posted:I liked that one. It was 100% him experimenting with metaphors and language to describe the apocalypse, which I found really cool. I do think I need to re-read it. It may have been the fact that it was experimental that kind of threw me. I guess even if I didn't like it, I'm still thinking about it a couple of weeks later, so it had an impact.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2016 02:04
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:I guess it depends on what you find scary? I didn't think anything in Books was really scary; disturbing, maybe, in a "this makes me feel uncomfortable" kind of way (which I would argue was Barker's intention all along), but nothing that made me lose sleep. FWIW if you have Kindle Unlimited, Worlds of Hurt is a round $0, as is his novel Whom the Gods Would Destroy, which has been recommended in here not that long ago. Actually, if you're big into cosmic horror, Kindle Unlimited is actually a pretty good. I know that at the minimum, all of these are on it: -Nightingale Songs (Strantzas) -Burnt Black Suns (Strantzas) -Without Purpose, Without Pity (Hodge) -Greener Pastures (Michael Wehunt) -Cthulhusattva (Anthology) -The Light is the Darkness (Barron) -Member (Michael Cisco) -Hive (Tim Curran) -Dead Sea (Curran) as well as other stuff too, I'm sure. I can't swear all of these are good, but they've all come up in this thread, or at least the authors have come up before.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2016 23:52
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:I really love Curran but you need to go into his novels understanding that they're too long by at about 20%, and that 20% is entirely in the middle where he keeps replicating the same situations with slight changes, usually in an effort to whittle the cast down for the finale. Good to know. I've never read any of his stuff (barring something in an anthology that I don't recall). Honestly though, as much as I like the modern crop of writers at the forefront of weird fiction & cosmic horror, I kind of go into anything assuming none of them are particularly adept at writing novel-length works, since it seems to be true more often than not.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2016 00:45
|
|
|
I'm curious now, what novel-length horror have people read that you felt really did manage to maintain a good vibe the whole way through? Or managed to juggle horror with something else (general character-centric drama or relationships or whatever) well enough that the whole book felt satisfying? What makes novel-length horror really work, as opposed to short stories? For me, I'm a Stephen King fanboy and apologist so I won't get too into it, but I think a good number of his tend to be solid, but they also don't always feel like they're horror first and foremost. Otherwise, besides the protagonist kind of being genre-dumb and a bit of a plot puppet, House of Small Shadows felt really strong throughout. Curious to hear others' opinions though.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2016 01:33
|
|
|
Awesome list, though I haven't read most of them. I'd definitely second Hell House, and while it might feel dated to some, The Haunting of Hill House is also excellent and definitely a classic. I really enjoyed Southern Gods as well, surprised I forgot about that one. Head Full of Ghosts is next on my to-read list.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2016 02:18
|
|
|
Robot Wendigo posted:I thought Dan Simmons' The Terror managed this particular trick. That one's really high on my list too, though I've heard pretty varying opinions on the book overall. If I remember correctly, most of the less favorable responses I've heard focused on how a lot of time was spent, a la Moby Dick, on details surrounding the ship that weren't necessarily needed. Still gonna read it though, I think.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2016 00:16
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:^^^You cat-faced bastard Hahahaha, sounds like you actually have first-hand experience, though.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2016 00:20
|
|
|
Ornamented Death posted:Yeah, I read it back when it came out. I loved it, but then I get a massive boner over pre-modern arctic/antarctic exploration. That is exactly why I'm looking forward to it. I think I first saw mention of it in the Pagophiles TBB thread and just about dropped everything to start reading it right then and there.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2016 00:49
|
|
|
Fire Safety Doug posted:Just try not to count how often characters say something "softly". Seldom has a book so badly needed an editor. It always surprises me what words authors fixate on. I swear if I read China Mieville write the word "bathos" once more I'm going to reach through a book and slap him.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2016 04:02
|
|
|
FreudianSlippers posted:He uses "puissant" basically any time he's writing about magic in The Scar. A word so uncommon and antiquated that the spellchecker in my browser refuses to acknowledge it. "Puissant" is intentional though. He specifically designates it early on as the word used in universe for anyone with magical ability, really.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 26, 2016 22:24
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:16 |
|
|
A while back I read American Elsewhere and really loved it overall, in spite of some occasional slow pacing. How is the rest of Robert Jackson Bennett's horror stuff? Is any of the rest of it cosmic-flavored? Also I heard he was a goon once upon a time. Fun fact.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2016 07:12
|
|