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Solitair posted:The book was decent, but I like the movie a lot more. There are three books but they're mostly backtracking and describing stairs
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Nov 6, 2019 18:58
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Pththya-lyi posted:One of the inspirations was the true story of the Lighthouse Tragedy of 1801, which took place off the west coast of Wales: lol cool
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Nov 6, 2019 20:05
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Franchescanado posted:What are some literary sources that inspired or relate to The Lighthouse? the myths of prometheus, also proteus the rime of the ancient mariner
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Nov 6, 2019 20:16
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Franchescanado posted:What are some literary sources that inspired or relate to The Lighthouse? I'd recommend the psychological Gothic horror that was written during the 1890s. Stories like The Yellow Wallpaper or novels like Turn of the Screw or The Great God Pan. Arthur Machen in particular would be an author to check out. I think the Lovecraft comparisons were drawn because Lovecraft himself was so taken with those stories. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 6, 2019 23:32
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The biggest Lovecraftian parallel I found in The Lighthouse would have to be "The Temple." Both stories focus heavily on isolation and are somewhere between psychological and supernatural horror. Plus you have eerie graven images that take on almost religious significance in both stories. In The Lighthouse it's a scrimshaw mermaid and in "The Temple" it's a small ivory carving of a Grecian youth And since Winslow is a Canadian timber man you could always read Blackwood's "The Wendigo" 
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Nov 6, 2019 23:55
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pospysyl posted:I think the Lovecraft comparisons were drawn because Lovecraft himself was so taken with those stories. no dude its because of the tentacles
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Nov 7, 2019 01:56
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unpacked robinhood posted:There are three books but they're mostly backtracking and describing stairs are they insulated?
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Nov 7, 2019 02:04
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chernobyl kinsman posted:no dude its because of the tentacles And the whole person guarding an entry point for mind-breaking knowledge / looking into the light for "true ecstasy". That aspect is similar to Lovecraft's The Music of Erich Zann and Pickman's Model, although The Lighthouse is much more ambiguous.
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Nov 7, 2019 13:33
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Just finished reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I never would have thought a blend of True Detective/Silence of the Lambs murder solving with cosmic horror & time travel would work so well but it did! If you're a stickler you might not consider this horror but personally the gruesome murders mixed with sense of doom hanging over everything made it one of the scariest books I've read in a while.
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Nov 11, 2019 18:02
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plz dont pull out posted:Just finished reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I never would have thought a blend of True Detective/Silence of the Lambs murder solving with cosmic horror & time travel would work so well but it did! If you're a stickler you might not consider this horror but personally the gruesome murders mixed with sense of doom hanging over everything made it one of the scariest books I've read in a while. Oh yeah I read this and forgot to post about it, it's really good.
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Nov 12, 2019 19:29
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plz dont pull out posted:Just finished reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. I never would have thought a blend of True Detective/Silence of the Lambs murder solving with cosmic horror & time travel would work so well but it did! If you're a stickler you might not consider this horror but personally the gruesome murders mixed with sense of doom hanging over everything made it one of the scariest books I've read in a while. this has been on my amazon wishlist for a while, i should pick it up andrew michael hurley, who writes very slow-paced, uneventful, atmospheric folk horror has a new book out. i think im the only person in this thread who likes him
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Nov 12, 2019 20:50
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chernobyl kinsman posted:this has been on my amazon wishlist for a while, i should pick it up I read The Loney and I'm not sure whether I thought it was boring as hell or pretty good. Maybe both? I doubt I'd ever read it again and I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless I was really confident I knew somebody's tastes, but I don't really regret reading it or anything I guess that's praise so faint it'll need smelling salts handy, but that's honestly the best way I can describe my feelings on the book.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:20
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MockingQuantum posted:I read The Loney and I'm not sure whether I thought it was boring as hell or pretty good. this has been my exact feeling about both of his books so far but i like the atmosphere and the folk horror poo poo so im gonna keep reading him
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Nov 12, 2019 21:58
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chernobyl kinsman posted:this has been my exact feeling about both of his books so far but i like the atmosphere and the folk horror poo poo so im gonna keep reading him There was definitely a point in The Loney where I thought "this book is not going the direction I thought it would, at all" and after I got over the brief disappointment and just tried to take the book on its own merits I enjoyed it a lot more. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the new one. Is Devil's Day kind of on par with The Loney in terms of pacing and.. intensity? I assume you'll know what I mean by that. I would be open to reading it, but if it's more or less like The Loney I would probably wait a bit before picking it up. Honestly I love folk horror enough that I think that sustained me through the blander parts of The Loney, I wish there was more out there that fell somewhere between The Loney and more conventional horror writing. (maybe there is and I'm just not aware of it, though.)
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Nov 12, 2019 22:20
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Finished a few horror novels as that's generally all I read in September and October: North American Lake Monsters: Loved most of this collection. Wish Ballingrud had more satisfying endings in general, but pretty incredible mood setting. Wounds: Slight preference to this over NALM, but definitely different vibe. First and last stories were so loving great, and I wish I could read longer stories set in that world. Institute and Firestarter: Agree with all the previous comments about both especially regarding their endings. Song for the Unraveling of the World: Didn't love this. Started out with a pretty creepy atmosphere, but the rest felt like a kinda bad Ballingrud knock-off. Was pretty bored by the end. Intensity: Only my second ever Koontz novel (with Phantoms back in middle school being my first). Definitely gripping and enjoyed the Edgler Vess character. Any recommendations from this crew on other Koontz books worth reading? Maybe less serial killer, more supernatural?
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Nov 14, 2019 01:57
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The Polish Pirate posted:Finished a few horror novels as that's generally all I read in September and October: Watchers is probably the best book Koontz ever wrote.
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Nov 14, 2019 05:14
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Admittedly I've never read either of those (I think) but I have never read a Koontz book and actually enjoyed it. I read five or six over the course of high school and college, always thinking that maybe I just got a dud the last time or something, but they were all pretty aggressively mediocre and forgettable IMO. He read like a more consistent but more boring Stephen King if I remember right. Also my aunt has a copy of his book on writing from the 70s or whatever and it is amazing how transparently greedy and condescending he is towards his fans (and anybody who buys books in general honestly). It basically reads like thinly veiled statements of "these dumbasses will buy anything, as long as you write it for the lowest common denominator." I didn't read the whole thing but he breaks down individual genres and how to write them but in practice it's like the pre-internet version of people that unironically use TVTropes terms in writing guides like they're constructing some kind of chemical equation of writing.
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Nov 14, 2019 05:47
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MockingQuantum posted:Admittedly I've never read either of those (I think) but I have never read a Koontz book and actually enjoyed it. I read five or six over the course of high school and college, always thinking that maybe I just got a dud the last time or something, but they were all pretty aggressively mediocre and forgettable IMO. He read like a more consistent but more boring Stephen King if I remember right. This nails King/Koontz.
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Nov 14, 2019 05:52
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Koontz will find some stereotype or trope that sells one book and run it straight into the ground over the next 7 books. For awhile it was a young disabled orphan that had an attitude but was going to die if not saved. Dogs, god half his books are about dogs in some way. And odd Thomas which just was meh incarnate for a series.
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Nov 14, 2019 07:17
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Sounds like I should leave Koontz alone for a while. I've gone through basically every recommendation in this thread so I was hungry for a bit more horror. Currently reading The Troop, but I'm too early into it to know how good it is yet.
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Nov 14, 2019 08:08
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The Polish Pirate posted:Currently reading The Troop, but I'm too early into it to know how good it is yet. its jolly good fun! i just finished koji suzuki's RING and enjoyed it a lot! the first japanese horror novel ive read that hasnt been a comic. are Spiral and Loop worth checking out? also hit me up with other good japanese horror stories
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Nov 14, 2019 08:27
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alf_pogs posted:its jolly good fun! they get progressively more bizarre (lot of stuff about sadako's balls in Spiral) and more sci-fi. Loop is completely sci-fi
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Nov 14, 2019 17:17
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The Polish Pirate posted:Intensity: Only my second ever Koontz novel (with Phantoms back in middle school being my first). Definitely gripping and enjoyed the Edgler Vess character. Any recommendations from this crew on other Koontz books worth reading? Maybe less serial killer, more supernatural? I liked Intensity back in grade school and also the movie with a younger John C McGinley at the time, but I worry that it probably hasn't aged well so I don't want to go back and re-read it. As people have mentioned, Koontz is absolutely a hack, but he's an influential hack. I don't know if Phantoms was good as a novel, but I liked the movie, and so apparently did the Silent Hill dev team. I totally recommend 77 Shadow Street if you want to want to see Dean try to rip off Silent Hill and fail utterly and completely while throwing in some republican bullshit along the way. I unironically liked the first half of The Taking, for whatever that's worth. When I was younger I watched Lost Highway and got really, really confused and shocked when the plot didn't match Strange Highways which I had confused with it. I don't know about the novels, but the film of Odd Thomas is so extraordinarily, overwhelmingly bad that I was wondering at times if the director was trying to make fun of the source material. I'd recommend it if you really like bad movies and don't end up paying money to see it.
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Nov 14, 2019 17:44
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Koontz also has some very weird and lovely political and social views. He has this weird habit of decrying fascism, and specifically Nazism (his family is Jewish and had some relatives die in the Holocaust if I remember right) while in the same breath praising something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers as being powerful for its representation of how science can't fill the void that atheism has torn in our formerly spiritual and religious cultural foundation (and somehow tie in some very quiet dogwhistles about how immigrants are bad, too) Also there was that time a few years ago where he was absolutely, totally befuddled as to why calling the Japanese CEO of Universal Pictures "Mr. Teriyaki" and suggesting they eat at Benihana's and discuss the Bataan Death March might be construed as a little bit racist. I think at the end of the day he's probably just a run of the mill dumb white Libertarian boomer with religious leanings, which honestly doesn't distinguish him from literally any other airport fiction hack. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Nov 14, 2019 |
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Nov 14, 2019 18:06
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i liked koontz’s The Taking despite its predictable story....pretty good horror elements in there
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Nov 14, 2019 18:08
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scary ghost dog posted:i liked koontz’s The Taking despite its predictable story....pretty good horror elements in there is that the one where satan is orbiting the earth in a spaceship or am i confusing it with another one of koontz' very very bad novels
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Nov 14, 2019 18:31
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Koontz is fine reading for middle school, I think - at least that's when I read his books.
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Nov 14, 2019 18:38
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chernobyl kinsman posted:is that the one where satan is orbiting the earth in a spaceship or am i confusing it with another one of koontz' very very bad novels yea —— thats the one lol
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Nov 14, 2019 18:39
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Can't remember the title, but I read this book by Koontz where he made sure to mention that the protagonist made his wife/girlfriend cum three times before he came himself like a true gentleman. There was also a a novel about time travelling Nazis, another one about a dog that was given human intelligence by the CIA, a poor Firestarter knock-off, and something about the CIA putting mind-controlling drugs in water with several detailed passages describing how the antagonist used said mind control to molest women. What I'm saying is that Koontz is a horrible hack and I can't believe how many lovely horror novels I read in my youth.
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Nov 14, 2019 19:00
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chernobyl kinsman posted:is that the one where satan is orbiting the earth in a spaceship or am i confusing it with another one of koontz' very very bad novels I feel like this could describe a number of his novels, though I don't specifically remember that in this one. EDIT: There's an evil spaceship anyway. MockingQuantum posted:Also there was that time a few years ago where he was absolutely, totally befuddled as to why calling the Japanese CEO of Universal Pictures "Mr. Teriyaki" and suggesting they eat at Benihana's and discuss the Bataan Death March might be construed as a little bit racist. You know, the depiction of him in Midnight Pals seems more realistic than I had previously given the author credit for.
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Nov 14, 2019 19:02
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MockingQuantum posted:Koontz also has some very weird and lovely political and social views. He has this weird habit of decrying fascism, and specifically Nazism (his family is Jewish and had some relatives die in the Holocaust if I remember right) while in the same breath praising something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers as being powerful for its representation of how science can't fill the void that atheism has torn in our formerly spiritual and religious cultural foundation (and somehow tie in some very quiet dogwhistles about how immigrants are bad, too) Strangers/i] was good. Phantoms was good. [i]Watchers was really good. Then Koontz went on this lengthy hosed up bit about some kind of ginormous atheist conspiracy bullshit and just crapped away every bit of good will I had for him.
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Nov 14, 2019 19:20
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i just got tired of all the golden retrievers
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Nov 14, 2019 20:02
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scary ghost dog posted:i just got tired of all the golden retrievers blandest dog for blandest horrorman also, excellent post + username combo
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Nov 14, 2019 20:15
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I've only read Dean Koontz's book Velocity. The premise and first few chapters that follow it are actually decent.quote:Bill Wiles is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. But that is about to change. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. It's one of the few books I've read where every chapter gets progressively worse and the story gets dumber. The bad guy is an artist who does gimmicky poo poo, like tying a bunch of balloons to a bridge to make it seem like it's floating, poo poo like that. The most notable thing I can remember is that in almost every chapter, the main character buys a "Peanut Bar" (like a Pay Day) and a Hershey's chocolate bar, and eats them one at a time, or sometimes stacks them to eat them. I kept wondering why he wouldn't just buy a Mr. Goodbar. Anyway, it sucked. I've been told his book Hideaway is the only good thing he wrote, but I haven't been curious enough to find a copy.
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Nov 14, 2019 20:25
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Franchescanado posted:The most notable thing I can remember is that in almost every chapter, the main character buys a "Peanut Bar" (like a Pay Day) and a Hershey's chocolate bar, and eats them one at a time, or sometimes stacks them to eat them. I kept wondering why he wouldn't just buy a Mr. Goodbar. OK, I've got to read this now.
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Nov 14, 2019 20:45
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Skyscraper posted:OK, I've got to read this now. I knew at least one person would be enticed, so I give you fair warning: You will regret that decision.
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Nov 14, 2019 20:49
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Franchescanado posted:I knew at least one person would be enticed, so I give you fair warning: blah blah blah can't hear you, sure i'm going to LOVE this book
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Nov 14, 2019 20:59
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Everyone posted:Strangers/i] was good. Phantoms was good. [i]Watchers was really good. Then Koontz went on this lengthy hosed up bit about some kind of ginormous atheist conspiracy bullshit and just crapped away every bit of good will I had for him. phantoms was good for the first like 80 pages until it becomes clear that the bad guy is an evil sentient oil slick and then they kill it with anti-oil germs
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Nov 14, 2019 21:11
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I really enjoyed the Midnight Bay books and while I'd love to read the last book in that trilogy, I absolutely do not want post-2000 Dean Koontz to write it.
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Nov 14, 2019 21:34
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odd thomas is alright, too (movie was better but still not really good)
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Nov 14, 2019 23:11
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