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unpacked robinhood
Feb 18, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Did Kathe Koja write anything noteworthy beyond The Cipher ?

Trying to top-up an amazon order by looking at reviews for her other books, but then people in the comments seem to mostly dislike The Cipher, which is obviously a bad opinion.

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Skyscraper
Oct 1, 2004

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming



Kestral posted:

Any recommendations for stand-out horror in audiobook format, either books or short story collections? I have to do most of my reading on audio these days, and horror is especially tricky to do right in that format: I was looking forward to Wounds, for example, but some of the narrators are terrible fits for the material.

Some things I've listened to and enjoyed include:

Dark Matter, A Ghost Story - Michelle Paver
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Elementals - Michael McDowell
The Haunting of Hill House
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
The Imago Sequence - Laird Barron
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Stories - John Langan
... and a lot of Stephen King, which has consistently gotten good narrators for some reason.

Ghost stories and weird/cosmic horror are my jam, but I'll check out anything that isn't gore-porn or really extreme body horror.

I really liked the narration and stories in 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
abdominal crisis lol

i love that man

C2C - 2.0
May 14, 2006

Dubs In The Key Of Life


Lipstick Apathy
Anyone read Sefira & Other Betrayals by Langan? I've read Wide, Carnivorous Sky and I liked it well enough. Amazon reviewers seem to compare it favorably to that collection.

Slamhound
Mar 27, 2010

unpacked robinhood posted:

Did Kathe Koja write anything noteworthy beyond The Cipher ?

Trying to top-up an amazon order by looking at reviews for her other books, but then people in the comments seem to mostly dislike The Cipher, which is obviously a bad opinion.

It’s been a while but liked Bad Brains and Strange Angels, though they’re not really horror, more the horror of massive brain injuries and schizophrenia.

Skin and Kink were okay though I don’t remember much about them.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
iirc ligotti's abdominally critical character passed out and was rushed to hospital in the middle of a book signing

is that what actually happened

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Fallom posted:

Mainly the titular one. What was the monster supposed to represent? Why did its substance adhere to the father, and what was the significance of the glow that animals carried away from it as they devoured it? What's the meaning of how the daughter saw the monster when she made her drawing? Is there a horror element here beyond the father struggling to reintegrate with his family after leaving prison and falling back on his (self) abusive behavior?

I feel like answering the first question would probably be enough to help me understand the rest.

I regret this question has not engendered more discussion. I'm really not sure whether the first question is at all appropriate though? I suspect that this might be a situation where trying to impose an "explanation" on something that is so much larger and, frankly, non human, will lead to the overwhelming dissonance experienced by the father. Somethings just are, and have no reason, ya know?

The other way of approaching it would be how the unexamined life and traumas of the father perpetuates a cycle of abuse, vs. an unknowable thing that the father struggles to first understand, then get rid of, in disastrous failure, might be another way out

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

Kestral posted:

Any recommendations for stand-out horror in audiobook format, either books or short story collections? I have to do most of my reading on audio these days, and horror is especially tricky to do right in that format: I was looking forward to Wounds, for example, but some of the narrators are terrible fits for the material.

Some things I've listened to and enjoyed include:

Dark Matter, A Ghost Story - Michelle Paver
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Elementals - Michael McDowell
The Haunting of Hill House
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
The Imago Sequence - Laird Barron
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Stories - John Langan
... and a lot of Stephen King, which has consistently gotten good narrators for some reason.

Ghost stories and weird/cosmic horror are my jam, but I'll check out anything that isn't gore-porn or really extreme body horror.

The Dark Worlds of HP Lovecraft might be an obvious suggestion, but since you don't list it I'll mention it just in case. Even if you're not a Lovecraft fan, the narrator(Wayne June) is a joy to listen to.

Anomalous Blowout
Feb 13, 2006

rock
ice
storm
abyss



It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars.

*

bloom posted:

The Dark Worlds of HP Lovecraft might be an obvious suggestion, but since you don't list it I'll mention it just in case. Even if you're not a Lovecraft fan, the narrator(Wayne June) is a joy to listen to.

Wayne June is a gift. Seconding this. I'm meh on reading Lovecraft but whoa Wayne June's voice.

unpacked robinhood
Feb 18, 2013

by Fluffdaddy

nankeen posted:

iirc ligotti's abdominally critical character passed out and was rushed to hospital in the middle of a book signing

is that what actually happened

It was a painter showing his work at a gallery iirc. The rest of the book makes several mentions of his gastrointestinal ordeal.

Dreqqus
Feb 21, 2013

BAMF!

C2C - 2.0 posted:

Anyone read Sefira & Other Betrayals by Langan? I've read Wide, Carnivorous Sky and I liked it well enough. Amazon reviewers seem to compare it favorably to that collection.

I enjoyed it. Sefira was weak for me and there was one other I didn't particularly care for but Bloom really got me.

Dreqqus
Feb 21, 2013

BAMF!
I listen to Pseudopod. It's a weekly horror fiction podcast in case you don't know. You should check it out, it's great.

They recently did 'I Hate All that is Mine' by Leigh Harlen. It was printed in Lost Films. Have any of you read that anthology? I really enjoyed that particular story and was wondering if the rest of the collection holds up. Sorry for the double post.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747

unpacked robinhood posted:

It was a painter showing his work at a gallery iirc. The rest of the book makes several mentions of his gastrointestinal ordeal.
hahahaha i was trying to remember that exact phrasing today, i don't have the book on hand right now so couldn't check. ligotti has exactly two voices, hallucinogenic meltdown and absolute deadpan, when he's deadpan he's incredibly funny in a way that is really hard to describe

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

quote:

Often at the conclusion of an author interview, a question is posed, one that allows the subject to announce or promote forthcoming projects and publications. In the case of Thomas Ligotti, the response has invariably been to the effect that he never has any idea what he is going to produce in the future, if anything. Since he began publishing in the early 1980s, this answer has perhaps seemed somewhat disingenuous. Some may have thought that it was an affectation or diversionary tactic. After all, books under his name have since appeared on a somewhat regular, if not exactly prolific, schedule. But as the years went by, it became more and more apparent that Ligotti’s output was at best haphazard. A chapbook here, a slim or full-fledged story collection there, a book of poetry or unclassifiable prose out of nowhere, and then at some point a quasi-academic statement of his philosophical ideas and attitudes. Such a scattered crop of writings is not unheard-of, but for one who toils in the genre of horror, whose practitioners are commonly hard at work on a daily basis, it does seem as paltry as it is directionless.

Accordingly, the present volume is another unexpected contribution to Ligotti’s desultory offerings. And no one could be as surprised by its appearance as he was. As anyone knows who has followed his interviews and obsessions as they appear in his fiction, Ligotti must take his literary cues from a lifetime of, let us say, whimsical pathologies. Other authors may suffer writer’s block. In the present case, the reason may be dubbed “existence block,” one that persisted for some ten years. This is less than an ideal development for anyone, but for a word-monger it can spell the end. And yet the end did not arrive. During 2012, it seemed that it might in the form of a sudden collapse and subsequent hospitalization prefigured—one might speculate—by the abdominal crisis suffered by the character Grossvogel in Ligotti’s story “The Shadow, The Darkness.” Yet like the agony endured by the aforementioned figure, the one in question led only to a revitalization of creativity. This revitalization may not be exactly spectacular, but all the same here it is.

Throughout Ligotti’s “career” as a horror writer, many of his stories have evolved from physical or emotional crises. And so it was with the surgical trauma that led to the stories in The Spectral Link, an event that is marginally mentioned in the first of these stories, “Metaphysica Morum.” In the second story, “The Small People,” Ligotti returns, although not precisely in the usual fashion, to his fixation with uncanny representations of the so-called human being. Having nearly ceased to exist as he lay on the surgeon’s table, the imposing strangeness of the nature and vicissitudes of this life form once again arose in his imagination. So what project and publications are forthcoming from Thomas Ligotti? As ever, not even he knows.

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
i like to imagine ligotti communicating with his publishers exclusively via webcam and most of the calls are just the camera pointing out into a dark room full of mannequins while the great man makes strange whimpering noises in the background

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord
And the room is lit solely by old carnival signs

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747

COOL CORN posted:

And the room is lit solely by old carnival signs
i adore his fixation on signs

E-S-S-E-N-C-E LOUNGE LOUNGE LOUNGE

BEEF PORK GOAT

BEEF PORK GOAT

at semi-appropriate moments i find myself thinking "obsessed with the meat nonsense, the beef-pork-goat nonsense, and the death nonsense, the very worst sort of nonsense"

nankeen fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 7, 2019

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
conceptual separation of the fictional narrator from the real author is a pretty standard bit of dogma in literary criticism which absolutely does not in any way apply to ligotti

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747

chernobyl kinsman posted:

conceptual separation of the fictional narrator from the real author is a pretty standard bit of dogma in literary criticism which absolutely does not in any way apply to ligotti
i interpret everything he writes as sincere autobiography

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747
only compassion stops me from writing a story where ligotti travels back in time and meets hp lovecraft, tries to engage him in discussion about the universe and lovecraft is all "...begone from my sight you lugubrious pole!!"

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
(the sinking city)

uber_stoat
Jan 21, 2001



Pillbug

it's very true to the source material.

https://twitter.com/BAKKOOONN/status/1148371138751295488

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Got my hands on a copy of Wounds, wish me luck, heading in

Fire Safety Doug
Sep 3, 2006

99 % caffeine free is 99 % not my kinda thing

Bilirubin posted:

Got my hands on a copy of Wounds, wish me luck, heading in

Wear an iron box over your head and you’ll be okay.

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Fire Safety Doug posted:

Wear an iron box over your head and you’ll be okay.

Finally was able to get to it and after the first story I understand this now

Its good.

Fire Safety Doug
Sep 3, 2006

99 % caffeine free is 99 % not my kinda thing

Bilirubin posted:

Finally was able to get to it and after the first story I understand this now

Its good.

It really is.

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord
Crossposting(ish) from the "what did you just finish" thread, but I finally finished Teatro Grottesco and... man I was really running out of steam near the end.

I think it's just the nature of his short story style, but by the end it started to feel formulaic - at least the way he plays with nihilism and despair as sources of horror. Each story started to feel like "hi, I'm [x] the insignificant person. Let me tell you about another person I know. They told me nothing is meaningful, and I saw some weird things by hanging around this person. That person disappeared and now I agree nothing matters."

Ligotti is a bit of a one-trick pony it seems (judging only from this book), but I must say, the trick he does is VERY GOOD. I want to read more of his stuff, but I need a break. Maybe North American River Monsters next!

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Lake Monsters. Rivers are mostly not deep enough to have very good monsters. Just saying.

edit: :goonsay:

So the third story, Skullpocket Fair, had a very Matthew Bartlett feel to it to me. Not so much in the writing--Bartlett tends to be dream-like snippets whereas this is a loving well-grounded story, but the theme of New England children off for some use by a mysterious gentleman from the underworld and the village cowered and submissive to this need.

edit edit: I am really loving Wounds but it is really lacking the power of the first book IMO

Bilirubin
Feb 16, 2014

The sanctioned action is to CHUG


Mix.

Holy poo poo

nankeen
Mar 20, 2019

by Cyrano4747

COOL CORN posted:

I think it's just the nature of his short story style, but by the end it started to feel formulaic
that's his thing lol, he is an actual crazy person obsessively writing the same story over and over

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord

Bilirubin posted:

Lake Monsters. Rivers are mostly not deep enough to have very good monsters. Just saying.

Doh, good catch. I meant Lake Monsters.

nankeen posted:

that's his thing lol, he is an actual crazy person obsessively writing the same story over and over

Oh poo poo that actually makes a lot of sense now.

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



Though everyone should read the forum's resident favorite North American river monster book, Blackwater. It's such a good horror southern gothic supernatural family drama novel.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

MockingQuantum posted:

Though everyone should read the forum's resident favorite North American river monster book, Blackwater. It's such a good horror southern gothic supernatural family drama novel.
Yeah. Funnily enough the scariest moments of that have nothing to do with the monsters involved.

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

MockingQuantum posted:

Though everyone should read the forum's resident favorite North American river monster book, Blackwater. It's such a good horror southern gothic supernatural family drama novel.

the elementals is better imo

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat
you guys really need to read crampton, the teleplay that ligotti wrote, unsolicited, for the x-files

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord

chernobyl kinsman posted:

you guys really need to read crampton, the teleplay that ligotti wrote, unsolicited, for the x-files

hahaha I love this man

MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



chernobyl kinsman posted:

the elementals is better imo

Agreed, everyone should read that too. Doesn't have river monsters though.

Lil Mama Im Sorry
Oct 14, 2012

I'M BACK AND I'M SCARIN' WHITE FOLKS

chernobyl kinsman posted:

you guys really need to read crampton, the teleplay that ligotti wrote, unsolicited, for the x-files

i cant find it anywhere for less than like $200

chernobyl kinsman
Mar 18, 2007

a friend of the friendly atom

Soiled Meat

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

i cant find it anywhere for less than like $200

it was never published; it’s online as a pdf

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Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

chernobyl kinsman posted:

it was never published; it’s online as a pdf

At least one limited edition printing exists, by Dutro if I'm not mistaken.

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