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chernobyl kinsman posted:read more aickman I loving loved the fisherman if only for the scene on the primordial coast- it was so vivid. He short stories though were mostly meh.
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Feb 21, 2020 00:54
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While I’m not done reading The Elementals, I am definitely done reading it before bed.
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Feb 21, 2020 05:14
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Also wasn't a fan of Ghosts and kept waiting for the good, meaningful parts to show up because people kept saying they were there. Also I felt like the weird dad stuff needed more foreshadowing to not feel like a twist for the sake of a twist.
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Feb 21, 2020 05:19
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ghosts did nothing for me as well, the framing device (devices? they kind of nested into one another) was tedious Growing Things was better, though the only story from the collection that still sticks out in my head is "___________"
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Feb 21, 2020 05:26
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sephiRoth IRA posted:I loving loved the fisherman if only for the scene on the primordial coast- it was so vivid. that poo poo sucked dude it was just tryhard dark fantasy garbage. the book tries to position itself as though its A Story About the Hudson Valley like stephen king's books are Stories About Maine but it could have been set in any vaguely wooded place on earth without any loss at all. also the frame narrative flashback bit where the narrator is like "Wow its so spooky that i remember verbatim every word this guy at a bar said to me" sucked poo poo Mel Mudkiper posted:Chernobyl were you the one who rec'd Twenty Days of Turin way back? yea
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Feb 21, 2020 07:16
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20 Days in Turin rocked Fisherman was meh. Had good points destroyed by affected try hard prose I would suggest Laird Barron's Imago Sequence because I want to see your posts about the Black Sloth
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Feb 21, 2020 07:36
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Eh, I admit a lot of that story wasn’t great, but that scene on the beach of a giant serpent chained through the sheer grief-fueled will of a sorcerer was beautiful. I am very fond of the pacific nw coasts though, so maybe the bleakness of the scene played on my nostalgia.
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Feb 21, 2020 08:37
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i am, myself, a coast of great desolation
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Feb 21, 2020 11:00
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Bilirubin posted:I would suggest Laird Barron's Imago Sequence because I want to see your posts about the Black Sloth Anyhow, is there any other must read McDowell other than Blackwater and The Elementals? I tried The Amulet and honestly wasn't too impressed, felt a bit too like Stephen King. Then again, it was his first novel, so any other recommendations?
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Feb 21, 2020 12:47
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ok, putting together a list The Red Tree by Kiernan is supposed to be good (She's never gelled with me) The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat is a Iranian classic Michael Cisco's work is more weird than horror but still worth tracking down, The Wretch of The Sun is him working in the horror mode. Kathe Koja's The Cipher is a classic for a reason
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Feb 21, 2020 12:50
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Get rid of The Drowning Girl which is boring deranged rambling and getfez_machine posted:Kathe Koja's The Cipher
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Feb 21, 2020 16:25
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anilEhilated posted:Actually this is a great idea. Cold Moon Over Babylon is cool but its weird because it is definitely his most superficial novel. I enjoyed it, but it has no ambition greater than to read like a spec script for an episode of Tales From the Crypt. It has a really cool twist halfway through though that simultaneously briefly elevates it but then also kind of leaves it with little to move the story forward. It also exposes my one genuine problem with McDowell, which is that his villains are terrible. His characters are so well written and so human and so meditated but when there is a "bad guy" in his stories they are always just "bad dudes". Like, every character in the Elementals is really well written and really great to read about and then Lawton pops up and is just such a superficial "bad guy"
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Feb 21, 2020 17:01
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Has anyone mentioned Bartlett's The Stay-Awake Men? It's a fantastic collection, up there with Evenson's short story collections. EDIT: Or Jeremy Robert Johnson's Entropy in Bloom? a foolish pianist fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 21, 2020 |
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Feb 21, 2020 19:31
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i like JRJ but the original request was for literary horror and he's pulpy as the day is long been a while since he's published anything, now that i think about it
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Feb 21, 2020 20:02
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Someone recommended The Ruins to me. I haven't read it yet, but I came across a Scott Smith story in an anthology and thought it was fantastic.
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Feb 22, 2020 02:54
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Just finished Teatro Grottesco. Did Ligotti have some sort of stomach ailment IRL
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Feb 22, 2020 04:47
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Didn't he think one up during surgery on his guts or something?
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Feb 22, 2020 04:53
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He said the only time he ever felt happy in his life was when he almost died during abdominal surgery So uh
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Feb 22, 2020 05:13
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:Just finished Teatro Grottesco. Did Ligotti have some sort of stomach ailment IRL
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Feb 22, 2020 07:29
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all of ligotti's writing is autobiographical, just like ulililia's masters of the universe is autobiographical it's all about the incomprehensible eldritch horror of being thomas ligotti
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Feb 22, 2020 07:30
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I love him 
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Feb 22, 2020 21:10
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Oxxidation posted:i like JRJ but the original request was for literary horror and he's pulpy as the day is long He has a new book coming, The Loop, this September 
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Feb 22, 2020 21:12
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david tibet wrote a piece called Soft Black Star: On Knowing Tom Ligotti which you can find on google books and which isn't very interesting except for two things: 1) ligotti loves surf rock, the moody blues, and my bloody valentine and 2) thisquote:Tom once wrote to me that he was working towards achieving an effect in his prose style that would make his stories read as if they had been awkwardly translated from some Eastern European language into English.
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Feb 23, 2020 01:15
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Good I fuckin love our boy Tom Also Jesus of fuckin course he and David Tibet are friends
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Feb 23, 2020 01:59
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the moody blues omg they're my dad's favourite
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Feb 23, 2020 02:42
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ligotti's grandmother was polish and he said that being told horrifying polish fairytales was a major part of his childhood
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Feb 23, 2020 02:43
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Thomas Ligotti seems like the kind of dude I would force to get drunk and watch Wrestlemania
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Feb 23, 2020 02:43
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I would give Thomas Ligotti extreme noogies and probably a zerbert.
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Feb 23, 2020 03:39
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hallelujah posted:ligotti's grandmother was polish and he said that being told horrifying polish fairytales was a major part of his childhood 
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Feb 23, 2020 04:33
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(i have no evidence that guy is related to doleful tom. but look inside your heart)
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Feb 23, 2020 04:34
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I hope Ligotti gets kicked in the head by a horse a year before his death and it cures his anhedonia so he can experience something other than existential dread before he goes. 
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Feb 23, 2020 04:45
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Black Griffon posted:I hope Ligotti gets kicked in the head by a horse a year before his death and it cures his anhedonia so he can experience something other than existential dread before he goes. might help that but it might also interfere with his ability to pass the salt
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Feb 23, 2020 06:21
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the least surprising thing to me about ligotti's background is that he's ex-catholic. only catholics and jews can manage that kind of existential despair
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Feb 23, 2020 06:40
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Was hungover as poo poo this morning and had an hour+ train ride to my apartment but I read Ligotti’s “Vastarien” on the way back and he rocks so much it made the trip bearable and I lol’d when he called the little guy a “human crow.”
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Feb 23, 2020 18:55
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Horror Thread: Gotti gang, Gotti gang, Gotti gang (Gotti gang!)
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Feb 24, 2020 13:34
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sephiRoth IRA posted:I enjoyed a lush and seething hell by John Horner Jacobs. The first novella was extremely effective. The second wasn’t great, too cliched with the writing too stilted, but it’s worth it for the first one. I actually just finished this as well and agree with your review as well. Have you read anything else by him? If so, any recommendations?
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Feb 25, 2020 04:35
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dms666 posted:I actually just finished this as well and agree with your review as well. Have you read anything else by him? If so, any recommendations? That was my first one, unfortunately! Although I will say, I picked up evensons “song for the unraveling of the world” and it’s fuckin great The only dud so far is “glistening world”- can someone explain that one to me because I’m apparently a dummy? Fav stories so far are cardiacs and room tone, although hole and tower were good too.
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Feb 25, 2020 08:56
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Two interesting Ballingrud news tidbits: - Monsterland season 1 (the Hulu adaptation of NALM) wrapped filming on 2/10, so hopefully there's some sort of official announcement soon? - He's nearing completion on his next book, "The Strange", and it's a "dark Martian fantasy" novel.
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Feb 25, 2020 16:07
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dms666 posted:I actually just finished this as well and agree with your review as well. Have you read anything else by him? If so, any recommendations? Southern Gods is an alright book, it's a cosmic horror book set in the US south in the '50s. It's not revolutionary or anything and leans more into action than creeping dread kind of horror but I enjoyed it. I also liked The Incorruptibles but that's not really horror at all. A lot of what Hornor has out right now isn't really explicitly horror honestly, a lot of it falls in the "weird fiction" camp or something adjacent. Incorruptibles is sort of an alternate-history western where the Holy Roman Empire controls early America, devil summoning exists, and guns are basically powered by hellfire.
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Feb 25, 2020 18:35
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COOL CORN posted:- He's nearing completion on his next book, "The Strange", and it's a "dark Martian fantasy" novel. What the gently caress hell yes?
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Feb 25, 2020 18:43
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