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chernobyl kinsman posted:you've been assured incorrectly. you can absolutely skip the johnny truant bits, and you will enjoy the book much more if you do I actually liked the Johnny Truant part, and I thought the horror in The Navidson Record was underwhelming, despite being a really good concept.
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May 27, 2019 01:15
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Bilirubin posted: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. I just finished--and loved--Roadside Picnic. Having read all of House of Leaves, the main house mystery is the only part that was memorable and worthwhile. The rest was just wankery.
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May 27, 2019 01:41
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Robot Wendigo posted:I just finished--and loved--Roadside Picnic. Having read all of House of Leaves, the main house mystery is the only part that was memorable and worthwhile. The rest was just wankery. I hope you read the version with the zombies because that was both wtf and lmao at the same time. Really good, and as you said in your review could have been written today. I just picked up Lincoln in the Bardo at a small indy bookstore today and while chatting evangelized the clerk on Lake Monsters. Hope he takes me up on it, since we bonded over Blood Meridian.
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May 27, 2019 03:46
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This Humble Bundle (which has about 14 days left as of June 5) has a lot of horror stuff in it: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/science-fiction-start-books Anyone know if these books are worthwhile? EDIT: I bought it, so I guess we'll see. a foolish pianist fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jun 5, 2019 |
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Jun 5, 2019 19:53
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a foolish pianist posted:This Humble Bundle (which has about 14 days left as of June 5) has a lot of horror stuff in it: Anyway, I just finished Kwaidan and I found out about it in this thread - are there any more books in this vein (not necessarily Japanese, it could be from anywhere; just folk horror stories) anyone could recommend?
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Jun 5, 2019 20:35
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a foolish pianist posted:This Humble Bundle (which has about 14 days left as of June 5) has a lot of horror stuff in it: The only ones I can vouch for are Best of the Best Horror, which in general are pretty good collections, and Book of Cthulhu II.
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Jun 5, 2019 20:54
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anilEhilated posted:
the title has been variously translated so i will link the wikipedia page about it, but you may enjoy this (though it is a bit light on the horror elements, really) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Stories_from_a_Chinese_Studio
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Jun 5, 2019 21:27
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MockingQuantum posted:The only ones I can vouch for are Best of the Best Horror, which in general are pretty good collections, and Book of Cthulhu II. I haven't read either, but I've seen horror writers say that they think Ellen Datlow is good at short story collections, and they like her work.
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Jun 6, 2019 15:44
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Bonaventure posted:the title has been variously translated so i will link the wikipedia page about it, but you may enjoy this (though it is a bit light on the horror elements, really)
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Jun 6, 2019 18:11
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anilEhilated posted:This looks great, thanks! i also just remembered this book, Terrifying Tales: Stories of the Occult from Around the World, edited by Terri Hardin: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/terrifying-tales-terri-hardin/1119275200 which i found at Barnes and Noble 10 years ago, and which surprised me. The title is misleading: there's nothing in here about Occultism, and it really has the feel of "what's some public domain or cheaply licensed poo poo we can stuff in a book and shove it out for Halloween" about it as opposed to being an intentional work like Kwaidan or Strange Tales from [Whatever] Studio, but the actual content of the book really surprised me: it's almost exclusively articles from early folklore and anthropology journals relating stories told from around the world, selected by the editor to be ones with horrific and supernatural elements to them. So as far as looking for 'folk horror stories,' it sounds to me like it's very much what you're looking for. It's out of stock on Barnes and Noble but you can probably get a used copy on Amazon or something. A caveat: these articles are all from the early 20th century or even late 19th century if memory serves, so you may see the word 'Mohammedan,' or even 'Mahometan' now and then Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Jun 7, 2019 14:47
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Started the new John Langan collection, Sefira and Other Betrayals. The titular story (which is a decent novella length) was otherwise enjoyable, but in parts he was doing the same thing that annoyed me about The Fisherman, namely trying to pass narration off as a character monologue. It simply doesn't sound like anything a human being would say. Langan can do decent dialogue as well, which just makes it more grating.
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Jun 9, 2019 18:35
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chernobyl kinsman posted:also, steven hall's raw shark texts just sat down and read this in one day which i don't think has happened since i read the twits when i was 12. it's pretty good. lmao that he writes for the battlefield games now
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Jun 11, 2019 03:03
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i don't think uncooked sharks are very scary. seems like a big time fail for a horror book in this reader's opinion.
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Jun 15, 2019 10:18
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Spoken like someone who's never had hákarl.
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Jun 15, 2019 20:02
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CestMoi posted:just sat down and read this in one day which i don't think has happened since i read the twits when i was 12. it's pretty good. lmao that he writes for the battlefield games now hall hid a bunch of secret chapters in like foreign language editions and under park benches irl. i haven't read them yet, and i'm pretty sure most of them haven't been found
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Jun 15, 2019 20:17
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I think the biggest part I hate about horror writers is how often some just disappear. Even though my tastes have changed somewhat, I remember checking weekly to see what was going on with the new Will Christopher Baer and Craig Clevenger books. What happened to them? Godspeed had a release date then there were rumors it was going to be hundreds of pages long. Then eventually...nothing.
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Jun 15, 2019 20:37
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it's important to remember that a lot of horror writers are deeply unstable weirdos. t.e.d. klein and ligotti both dropped off the face of the earth because they had existential nervous breakdowns followed by crippling writer's block, for example
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Jun 16, 2019 05:20
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chernobyl kinsman posted:it's important to remember that a lot of horror writers are deeply unstable weirdos. 
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Jun 16, 2019 07:15
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ligotti is strangely adorable i hope it doesn't eventually turn out he accidentally killed a bunch of children trying to turn them into dolls or anything like that nankeen fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jun 16, 2019 |
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Jun 16, 2019 12:29
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my ballingrud update is that wounds is still very good and has a few great hard-hitting moments. the stories just aren't as sharp or as raw as lake monsters but it's worth reading for the atmospheric prose alone
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Jun 16, 2019 12:30
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lake monsters would be hard to follow up and you can pretty much smell the publisher harassment all over wounds, ballingrud's third book will probably take fifteen years to arrive but it'll be fantastic when it gets here
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Jun 16, 2019 12:33
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one thing i appreciate about ligotti, especially given his influences, is that he genuinely does not seem to be a racist individual
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Jun 16, 2019 12:39
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When you think the entirety of humanity is a mistake, all forms of discrimination lose their appeal.
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Jun 17, 2019 22:53
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I've never read any Ligotti. Is the combined edition with Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe a good place to start?
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Jun 18, 2019 01:39
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Lester Shy posted:I've never read any Ligotti. Is the combined edition with Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe a good place to start? I always recommend Teatro Grottesco as the best place to start with Ligotti. It contains a lot of his best work imo and its maybe a bit more "accessible" than Songs/Grimscribe.
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Jun 18, 2019 02:56
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Lester Shy posted:I've never read any Ligotti. Is the combined edition with Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe a good place to start? It's fine, but if you can get your hands on older editions of either of those, go with that; Ligotti revised some of the stories for the new edition, and the changes weren't always for the better.
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Jun 18, 2019 03:20
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Vastarien posted:I always recommend Teatro Grottesco as the best place to start with Ligotti. It contains a lot of his best work imo and its maybe a bit more "accessible" than Songs/Grimscribe. Teatro Grottesco is where I started and what I would recommend also. "The Town Manager" is still my favorite Ligotti story.
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Jun 18, 2019 07:50
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yeah start with teattro. dreamer/grimscribe is borderline outsider art, but the stories in teattro are all much more focused and less repetitive so, as mentioned above, accessible. by borderline outsider art i mean you can tell when ligotti's jerking off and he is a psychosexual labyrinth of a man
nankeen fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 18, 2019 |
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Jun 18, 2019 13:01
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incidentally all my italian friends have clown phobias except one who has a clown fetish. i asked
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Jun 18, 2019 13:08
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So if I don't like Teattro is it fair to assume Ligotti isn't for me?
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Jun 18, 2019 15:18
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bloom posted:So if I don't like Teattro is it fair to assume Ligotti isn't for me? Probably, unless what you disliked was the fact that it was short stories specifically. Any particular reason why you didn't like it?
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Jun 18, 2019 15:44
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I just didn't find it scary or weird enough to be interesting. The Town Manager was kinda neat, but when the high point of a collection is "kinda neat" that's not really enough. On a more positive note, I picked up the audiobook version of Wounds and listening to The Visible Filth while trying to fall asleep proved to be a terrible idea. Fortunately I didn't have an early morning the next day.
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Jun 18, 2019 17:00
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Wounds was loving great, and "The Atlas of Hell" ruuuuuled. If you liked North American Lake Monsters then definitely check it out.
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Jun 30, 2019 02:55
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I finished North American Lake Monsters and I can see why people like it but every time I pick up a horror book expecting something spooky I keep getting something else entirely. I just keep having bad luck and go in with the wrong expectations.
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Jun 30, 2019 03:53
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plz dont pull out posted:I finished North American Lake Monsters and I can see why people like it but every time I pick up a horror book expecting something spooky I keep getting something else entirely. I just keep having bad luck and go in with the wrong expectations. If you want to be straight-up spooked, I just finished The Hunger by Alma Katsu, a supernaturally-tinged retelling of the Donner Party story, and it checked that box for me. My first book by the author and I was impressed. I started it a while ago, then the device I was reading it on broke, and I’m kicking myself for not finishing it sooner. Good, menacingly creepy read. I grew up close to Donner Pass so it had the bonus of being a creepy book that reminds me of my childhood, which makes a creepy book even creepier.
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Jun 30, 2019 05:24
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Buddy of mine (the one who lent me Lake Monsters) is currently finding this one super creepy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...wNwuf206o24ODv8
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Jun 30, 2019 07:05
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Thanks for the recommendations guys. I'll give these a look. Despite being disappointed a lot (I posted back in the fall after reading three books for October that were all pretty unsatisfying) I still really wanna find a good spooky book.
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Jun 30, 2019 13:54
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Evenson is more like Lake Monsters than like a traditional spooky book. He's fantastic with short stories, but don't expect there to be your usual ghosts - he's a lot more Aickman than Stephen King.
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Jun 30, 2019 15:08
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I'm gonna' try Wounds next & I'll probably like it. But goddamn am I ready for the next great horror novel.
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Jul 1, 2019 00:26
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I read Wounds first and loved everything about it. Now I’m worried that I’ll be disappointed by Lake Monsters.
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Jul 1, 2019 01:25
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