Zwabu posted:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769902.Sandkings
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# ? May 5, 2019 16:48 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 17:01 |
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It's also the first episode of the 90s Showtime reboot of the Outer Limits. It's pretty good as I recall it's on Hulu.
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# ? May 5, 2019 17:32 |
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david vann is one of the authors whose work leaves me emotionally distraught irl. i should probably get aquarium, it's the one everyone recommends and i haven't been able to get my hands on it (i even go to libraries, but... regional libraries )
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# ? May 6, 2019 00:50 |
R.L. Stine posted:Is there anything out there like Lake Monsters? it's tough. lake monsters more than anything feels like the heir of stephen king's early short story collections - very character-focused, not wholly engulfed in weirdness like ligotti or aickman or neville, and very focused on eliciting an emotional reaction besides fear. so, i guess try night shift and skeleton crew if you haven't already, but i don't know of any other voices out there like balingrud atm and yeah wounds is trying to do something very different than monsters is
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# ? May 6, 2019 21:06 |
chernobyl kinsman posted:it's tough. lake monsters more than anything feels like the heir of stephen king's early short story collections - very character-focused, not wholly engulfed in weirdness like ligotti or aickman or neville, and very focused on eliciting an emotional reaction besides fear. so, i guess try night shift and skeleton crew if you haven't already, but i don't know of any other voices out there like balingrud atm Yeah I'd second Skeleton Crew, with the caveat that a couple of the stories are very dumb/haven't aged gracefully. And yeah, it's the closest approximation I can think of, but doesn't exactly do the same things. Lake Monsters is unique and I wish there was more out there like it. In other news, I read my first Ligotti story this weekend and loved it
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# ? May 6, 2019 21:23 |
ligotti goooood
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# ? May 6, 2019 21:33 |
chernobyl kinsman posted:ligotti goooood Yeah I was a big fan. Also I've heard him built up for years which is usually a guarantee I'll be disappointed because I'm a hype sponge, but I wasn't. It was "Nethescurial", no idea how that one compares to his body of work in general, but I really enjoyed it, and found it genuinely creepy at moments, which is rare for me these days
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# ? May 6, 2019 21:37 |
MockingQuantum posted:Yeah I was a big fan. Also I've heard him built up for years which is usually a guarantee I'll be disappointed because I'm a hype sponge, but I wasn't. It was "Nethescurial", no idea how that one compares to his body of work in general, but I really enjoyed it, and found it genuinely creepy at moments, which is rare for me these days the ending lines of that one whip "I am not dying in a nightmare"
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# ? May 6, 2019 21:58 |
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ligotti is an unusual man
nankeen fucked around with this message at 01:18 on May 7, 2019 |
# ? May 7, 2019 01:15 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:the ending lines of that one whip I dunno, I kinda feel like he went a little too far, really. I have a similar issue with the endings of some of his other stories (The Frolic, The Strange Design of Master Rignolo, etc.). Like it'll be creepy or scary, and then he keeps going and it turns funny (which is good, too), but then he'll keep going and it just becomes awkward? Maybe it's intentional tho
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# ? May 8, 2019 01:44 |
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filmcynic posted:Just finished reading Michael Shea’s much-ballyhooed The Autopsy, and it deserves every accolade that’s ever been thrown in its direction. Thanks to your post I finally dug this out and read it since I’ve had an epub of it for ages. drat, that was solid. I saw the ending coming from a mile away but that somehow didn’t make it any less satisfying and boy does he have a gift for turns of phrase. Unfortunately I don’t have any recs, just wanted to say thanks for reminding me to read it!
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# ? May 8, 2019 01:55 |
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Anomalous Blowout posted:Thanks to your post I finally dug this out and read it since I’ve had an epub of it for ages. drat, that was solid. I saw the ending coming from a mile away but that somehow didn’t make it any less satisfying and boy does he have a gift for turns of phrase. That's very cool, thanks! I first saw it recommended on these forums a while back, and am glad to pay the unpleasantness forward. For those still curious, it looks like Lightspeed Magazine has it up, along with a tribute by Laird Barron https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Lightspeed_47_April_2014.pdf
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# ? May 9, 2019 02:37 |
anything new out lately besides wounds?
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# ? May 9, 2019 18:24 |
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I just read All My Colors by David Quantick based on one cover blurb comparing it to early King, Lovecraft, and Borges and another saying the author cannot be unfunny, which put Christopher Moore in my mind. I don't see the King comparison, and the Lovecraft and Borges connection is only in that the first thing you think of when you hear "Lovecraft" other than horrific racism and the first thing you think of when you hear "Borges" factor in the plot. It's humorous throughout, but not in the slapdash vein that I was expecting (in the Moore comparison that I made up in the first place). It's great and the first book in a long while that I've read straight through in one sitting. There are just enough threads going on to trigger "well, one more chapter so I can see what's going on with X" mode for 270 pages.
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# ? May 17, 2019 03:27 |
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got my lake monsters! wild acre seemed like a pretty boring schlock tale, then i got to "did you tell them we're jewish?!" and laughed out loud and now i can't stop thinking about what the story actually meant
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# ? May 17, 2019 03:41 |
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lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo
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# ? May 17, 2019 14:39 |
nankeen posted:lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo right?
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# ? May 17, 2019 15:07 |
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nankeen posted:lake monsters verdict: holy poo poo Bilirubin posted:right? yeah, that collection ruled.
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# ? May 17, 2019 20:57 |
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seriously excellent tbh
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# ? May 18, 2019 00:52 |
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nankeen posted:got my lake monsters! wild acre seemed like a pretty boring schlock tale, then i got to "did you tell them we're jewish?!" and laughed out loud and now i can't stop thinking about what the story actually meant i appreciated wild acre because the werewolf attack is an afterthought to the financial and spiritual devastation that followed in its wake, to the point where the protagonist returns to the woods with a death wish that's never even fulfilled feels very appropriate for today, where debt is a constant existential nightmare but if my guts were being chewed into by a slavering man-beast then the one synapse that wasn't dedicated to shrieking in primordial agony would be going "lol this owns"
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# ? May 18, 2019 02:28 |
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yeah i'll definitely be re-reading the collection in a few days so i can give each story the attention it deserves, i'm used to short story collections fizzling out after the second or third entry so i plough through them but lake monsters stayed red hot all the way to the end. wounds wasn't as good apparently?
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# ? May 18, 2019 02:32 |
nankeen posted:yeah i'll definitely be re-reading the collection in a few days so i can give each story the attention it deserves, i'm used to short story collections fizzling out after the second or third entry so i plough through them but lake monsters stayed red hot all the way to the end. wounds wasn't as good apparently? Its different as I understand it. Not so much independent stories but more of an exercise of world building with opening and closing stories that tie it all together
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# ? May 18, 2019 06:40 |
That's accurate. It's all still solid writing, but the individual stories lack some of the oomph that Lake Monsters consistently had, and the thread tying the stories together also kind of undermines them in a weird way. I think I enjoyed Wounds more, but Lake Monsters is the better book, if that makes sense.
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# ? May 18, 2019 06:44 |
balingrud Good
chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 07:24 on May 18, 2019 |
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# ? May 18, 2019 06:58 |
one day with god's help i might even be able to spell his name correctly ont he first go
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# ? May 18, 2019 07:25 |
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Read the first story in Lake Monsters it loving ruined me. Wish me luck with rest I suppose.
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# ? May 20, 2019 12:57 |
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Read both Lake Monsters and Wounds in the past couple of weeks. Some real gut-punch moments in the former, while I really enjoyed the latter's original visions of hell. The Black Iron Monks and the demons in The Maw made me wish I was a better artist, because those would be really cool to draw...
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# ? May 20, 2019 18:19 |
wounds is just trying to be a very different thing than lake monsters. it leans much more into hellboy-esque dark fantasy than character-centered straight horror
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# ? May 20, 2019 18:56 |
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i'm on my first reread of lake monsters. a good book is like a good album imo, you skim through it the first time and then go back and engage. it's loving great, it's been a long time since horror fiction got me this excited, thank you all for recommending it ballingrud's touch with the violence is so deft, he gets just graphic enough that one's skin begins to crawl but always manages to avoid going too far into cartoonishness. i love it
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# ? May 21, 2019 01:09 |
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Not enjoyed reading something as much as Lake Monsters in a long time. I mean the actual act of reading. The dude paints with his words. Just a lovely experience.
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# ? May 24, 2019 13:34 |
I love it when the forums can agree on something
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# ? May 24, 2019 15:09 |
hulu is adapting Lake Monsters intoa series
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# ? May 24, 2019 17:42 |
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Man, I hope they focus on the human misery that just has a bit of supernatural poo poo boiling in the background instead of putting the spooky stuff front-and-center. On that note, am I crazy or is Monsters of Heaven is a thinly-veiled allegory for dealing with the fact that climate change is going to probably murder us and definitely all our children?
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# ? May 24, 2019 18:45 |
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Is there anything that has the same eerie wrongness of House of Leaves but doesn't have the footnotes that take you out of the story by being rambling drug fueled rants? House of Leaves I want to like you but the Johnny Truant story has stopped be every time. And I've been assured I can't just skip it because it's important, but I don't care about him
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# ? May 24, 2019 19:13 |
you've been assured incorrectly. you can absolutely skip the johnny truant bits, and you will enjoy the book much more if you do also, steven hall's raw shark texts
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# ? May 24, 2019 20:50 |
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bought wounds i don't care if it's not as good as lake monsters!
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# ? May 26, 2019 00:42 |
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the good husband is just... wow.
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# ? May 26, 2019 07:27 |
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Len posted:Is there anything that has the same eerie wrongness of House of Leaves but doesn't have the footnotes that take you out of the story by being rambling drug fueled rants? House of Leaves I want to like you but the Johnny Truant story has stopped be every time. And I've been assured I can't just skip it because it's important, but I don't care about him I've been slowly going through the books that pop up in this thread and House of Leaves is the first one I really don't get. What really kill it for me is the fake intellectual rambling more than the Johnny Truant part though. It felt like such a boring drag to slog through for the most part.
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# ? May 26, 2019 14:34 |
unpacked robinhood posted:I've been slowly going through the books that pop up in this thread and House of Leaves is the first one I really don't get. One of my students lent me his copy and is super keen for me to start it and I'm kinda middling about it given the mixed reviews here. But he was totally correct about Roadside Picnic so perhaps I should give him the benefit of the doubt
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# ? May 26, 2019 17:27 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 17:01 |
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nankeen posted:the good husband is just... wow. What a note to end on. Great book, but drat.
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# ? May 26, 2019 22:44 |