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Aight I took a small diversion and read Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and Tender is the Flesh. Starting on Let the Right One In now. Thank you everyone for your suggestions.
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Jul 17, 2022 11:54
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I just finished The Last House On Needless Street and what a rollercoaster of emotions it is. You think it is one thing, but it is another whole different story. I caught on that Olivia wasn't real pretty early on and thought she was just an alter of Lauren but had no idea that they were ALL Ted's alters he created from years of abuse and that he was a victim, not a horrible serial killer The book raises interesting questions about integrating alters of people with D.I.D vs letting them live as a person with many other persons inside them Highly recommended if you want a good mystery-horror and a story that lingers long after you finish it.
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Jul 19, 2022 04:02
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Probably an odd hill to die on particularly as it's from the last page, but I think both Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle have perfectly good and fine plotting for what they're trying to achieve. Both novels are about sheltered, detached and (in very different ways) fragile souls with a vivid internal life, embarking on a destructive collision course with the outside world, so naturally a lot of the storytelling and tension is confined to the workings of the protagonists' heads; it's exquisite character-led goodness. Love them both. You could do a hugely entertaining 'gifted child does gothic murders' reading marathon of WHALITC followed by The Wasp Factory (which has probably aged badly in a couple of ways but which I remember really blew me away as a kid) and a watch of Park Chan-Wook's Stoker.
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Jul 20, 2022 13:57
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New book by Blake Butler is out, it's called Aannex. This one seems more sci-fi and also probably very experimental, but everything by Butler is at least horror-adjacent, so maybe check it out
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Jul 20, 2022 17:55
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elpaganoescapa posted:New book by Blake Butler is out, it's called Aannex. This one seems more sci-fi and also probably very experimental, but everything by Butler is at least horror-adjacent, so maybe check it out I just finished reading 300 Million last week so I don't think my brain is sufficiently prepared for more of his particular style of uh, madness, and this sounds absolutely insane again.
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Jul 20, 2022 20:58
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grobbo posted:Probably an odd hill to die on particularly as it's from the last page, but I think both Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle have perfectly good and fine plotting for what they're trying to achieve. Yeah, I agree with this. I can see how Hill House might be a disappointment for people looking for an explicitly supernatural haunted-house story (I would argue that what we see qualifies, just in a subtle way, but I can see a reasonable reader decide otherwise), but the character work is superb and powerful.
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Jul 21, 2022 04:27
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elpaganoescapa posted:New book by Blake Butler is out, it's called Aannex. This one seems more sci-fi and also probably very experimental, but everything by Butler is at least horror-adjacent, so maybe check it out EVERYONE GET THE gently caress OUT OF MY WAY
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Jul 21, 2022 11:23
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Had less time to read due to moving so I'm almost done with Dust. I gotta say it kinda loses a lot of it's charm when it hits the more Lovecraftian elements. Cowboys gunfights with monsters- cool, black cube ascending to heaven as Cthulhu reaches down- kinda lame. I dunno. Started the Necroscope five audio book again on my drive to and from work. Forgot about the necropedophilia.
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Jul 23, 2022 08:00
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Did anyone read Horrotstor as an ebook? It's really faint on my kobo, to the point where it's difficult to read. Changing the font helped a but but not much, and I checked a couple other books and their all fine so it seems like a publisher choice. I suspect it has something to do with all the pictures but I'm not sure what
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Jul 23, 2022 17:05
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Opopanax posted:Did anyone read Horrotstor as an ebook? It's really faint on my kobo, to the point where it's difficult to read. Changing the font helped a but but not much, and I checked a couple other books and their all fine so it seems like a publisher choice. I suspect it has something to do with all the pictures but I'm not sure what I tried reading it on my kindle paperwhite and had the same issue. I ended up reading it on my tablet with the FBReader app, it handled the pictures a lot better.
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Jul 23, 2022 17:54
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Opopanax posted:Did anyone read Horrotstor as an ebook? It's really faint on my kobo, to the point where it's difficult to read. Changing the font helped a but but not much, and I checked a couple other books and their all fine so it seems like a publisher choice. I suspect it has something to do with all the pictures but I'm not sure what I tried it in multiple electronic formats (the NYPL app one and a Kindle, among others), and they sucked so bad I quit after less than 15 pages. Meant to give it another pass with dead tree, but got distracted so here we are and I still haven’t given it a full day in court. Shame cause it looks interesting.
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Jul 23, 2022 20:39
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I changed the font and cranked rhe weight up and it's better, but what a weird choice
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Jul 23, 2022 21:07
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I think I read it on the kindle app on an iPad before I had a kindle and don’t remember any issues
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Jul 23, 2022 21:11
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It's one of the few books I had to buy physical because it was so irritating on my Kindle. The audiobook is pretty well done, as well. He seems like a decent fella so I didn't mind going a bit overboard.
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Jul 24, 2022 17:38
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Don’t think I’ve seen this mentioned in this thread yet - I just finished an anthology from earlier this year called Dark Stars that has new short stories from John Langan, Stephen Graham Jones, Gemma Files, and some other notables plus a number of authors I hadn’t heard of. A couple were a little weak but for the most part I really enjoyed it.
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Jul 27, 2022 00:59
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I've been reading through Alone with the Horrors, the Ramsey Campbell collection, and man, what a great writer. I just love that subtle style, the constant and increasing disturbing hints, the final reveal. He writes the same story again and again so they may start to blur together, but I think that's a strength for him. One of the all-time masters, for sure. What of his novels would you guys recommend?
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Jul 30, 2022 23:08
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elpaganoescapa posted:I've been reading through Alone with the Horrors, the Ramsey Campbell collection, and man, what a great writer. I just love that subtle style, the constant and increasing disturbing hints, the final reveal. He writes the same story again and again so they may start to blur together, but I think that's a strength for him. One of the all-time masters, for sure. love Campbell! Ancient Images, Midnight Sun and The Nameless are my favourite novels of his
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Jul 31, 2022 05:20
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elpaganoescapa posted:I've been reading through Alone with the Horrors, the Ramsey Campbell collection, and man, what a great writer. I just love that subtle style, the constant and increasing disturbing hints, the final reveal. He writes the same story again and again so they may start to blur together, but I think that's a strength for him. One of the all-time masters, for sure. I really like Campbell. He's under-discussed even if he's an acknowledged master. There's a lot of books though of varying style and quality. I'll second everything alf_pogs recommended. Midnight Sun in particular, although it's not the most consistently great, when it hits it hits HARD. I always recommend his introduction to The Face That Must Die, “At the Back of My Mind: A Guided Tour”, as one of the greatest pieces of auto-biographical horror ever. The Grin Of The Dark is probably the start of his punning phase, where the typical late period Campbell protagonist is constantly barraged by mishearing, misinterpretations, and maladjusted language that obscures their impending doom. Anyway, it's a miserable book but it very effectively builds and builds and builds the horror, until it culminates in something very unsettling. (I felt like my brain was being rewired reading it). fez_machine fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Aug 1, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 21:36
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also, Campbell's childhood sketchbooks are really fun. macabre in the way that angry teen biro scratchings are: http://jkpotter.com/the-art-of-ramsey-campbell/  
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Jul 31, 2022 22:43
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Thanks for the recommendations! I'll start with those. Also, yeah, I love those old drawings of his. I also used to draw silly-scary stuff at a similar age so they always make me smile
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Jul 31, 2022 23:18
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Shaitan the Fallen Yeah I'm still reading Necroscope 5.
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Aug 1, 2022 01:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:No worries. It was 30% wanting to be helpful and 70% an excuse to draw some draculas. I have received Dracula for my birthday!   Also, an equally scary book and a spooky snake.    So far I'm digging the context-setting introduction for Dracula. It's not as in-depth and crunchy as I might want, but it's entertaining nonetheless and full of cool vampire-related photos, and it's getting me excited to read the main course.
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Aug 1, 2022 01:41
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O poo poo! First, happy birthday, obviously. Second, if you give even a tiny poo poo about little fiddly things, you’re gonna love Wages of Destruction. Guessing from you wanting an annotated Dracula that you’ll be stoked because uh spoilers the Nazis were some bad eggs and they did a lot of dumb things. It’s one of the top recommendations from the Military History thread, great book. Finally, glad you’re liking the Dracula. It’s a really under rated book, somehow, where a lot of people don’t even try to read it. Which is a shame cause it goes down real smooth once you get in the mood.
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Aug 1, 2022 02:37
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Finished Let the Right One In and then checked out Let the Old Dreams Die (super weak). I just finished Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon and wow it sucked. It's an epistolary novella that hints at some grand reveal but it ends up going over like a fart in church. Not sure what to read now, but I've got a lot of options.
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Aug 1, 2022 05:36
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Untrustable posted:Finished Let the Right One In and then checked out Let the Old Dreams Die (super weak). Yeah some of your blood was a weird one. I always dig super niche horror because it feels like stumbling into a forbidden book, but that one really fell flat. I don't even remember it well, just that I didn't enjoy it much
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Aug 1, 2022 05:50
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fez_machine posted:I really like Campbell. He's under-discussed even if he's an acknowledged master. It looks like between my library's physical collection, they have The Searching Dead, The Kind Folk, The Overnight, and Nazareth Hill. Any opinion on any of those?
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Aug 1, 2022 17:24
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anyone have any despair horror gems i may have overlooked? or maybe arent that well known? (i’ve read Ligotti’s collected works several times over to save you some time recommending anything by him) recently read In That Endlessness, Our End by Gemma Files and honestly had some of the best short stories ive read in a long time, though there were a few that did nothing for me. i plan on hitting Experimental Film once i finish Between Two Fires, which was an excellent rec btw thread. also you guys make me want to reread The Butcher’s Table everytime i get caught up on this thread.
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Aug 2, 2022 01:24
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Have you read any Brian Evenson? Song for the Unraveling of the World is probably his best collection, but it's all solid.
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Aug 2, 2022 02:47
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:anyone have any despair horror gems i may have overlooked? Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana
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Aug 2, 2022 03:02
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MockingQuantum posted:It looks like between my library's physical collection, they have The Searching Dead, The Kind Folk, The Overnight, and Nazareth Hill. Any opinion on any of those? Of these I've only read The Overnight (I've just started reading The Searching Dead). The Overnight is decent, it's pretty deliberately tongue-in-cheek being based on Campbell's own experience of being forced into working at Borders at an advanced age because writing wasn't paying the bills. But it has its moments. A very slow burn if you can't stand the tedium of workplace disputes and pettiness. The Searching Dead is him returning to his Lovecraftian roots, which people have periodically begged him to do. Nazareth Hill is from around his 80s and 90s peak so might be very good. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Aug 2, 2022 |
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Aug 2, 2022 06:18
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:anyone have any despair horror gems i may have overlooked? or maybe arent that well known? (i’ve read Ligotti’s collected works several times over to save you some time recommending anything by him) Christopher Slatsky’s short story collections, especially the title story from The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature
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Aug 2, 2022 12:42
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I really like Slatsky’s take on horror and I think he's one of the best recent authors, but I feel like a lot of his stories can be a little samey, and rely on the abstract reality-is-disintegrating ending a lot. Still, really solid writer
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Aug 2, 2022 23:57
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That collection was one of my favorite reads of last year. I want to re-read it soon. Slatsky's Corpse.
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Aug 3, 2022 00:09
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just finished HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, which i quite enjoyed. terrific final sequence of events even if getting there takes a bit of stephen king-ing
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Aug 3, 2022 00:26
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Chipping through The Magpie Coffin in print and Necroscope 5 as an audio book. Get the gently caress out of here, Harry. I need more vampire warfare.
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Aug 3, 2022 23:03
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Traxis posted:Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana never heard of this and people keep describing it as hellish in the reviews, so def grabbing it, thank you Big Mad Drongo posted:Have you read any Brian Evenson? Song for the Unraveling of the World is probably his best collection, but it's all solid. I started it long ago and got distracted, I’ll def return to it, thx Oxxidation posted:Christopher Slatsky’s short story collections, especially the title story from The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature Already read this but I dont remember it much so I’ll definitely reread it, i remember liking it
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Aug 4, 2022 01:50
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:never heard of this and people keep describing it as hellish in the reviews, so def grabbing it, thank you Triana wrote the only book ive ever given up on because it was too loving much. It's good poo poo.
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Aug 4, 2022 04:00
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Shitstorm Trooper posted:Get the gently caress out of here, Harry. I need more vampire warfare. You're moving on to the Vampire World trilogy, then?
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Aug 4, 2022 16:39
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Not quite that bad yet. It will also physically hurt me to skip books in a series even if not directly connected. I had to track down a copy of The Pig by Edward Lee before I could read Header 2 because the events of The Pig lead to H2.
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Aug 4, 2022 19:31
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Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:anyone have any despair horror gems i may have overlooked? or maybe arent that well known? Assume that you've read "The Road"? "Cold Moon over Babylon" by Michael McDowell meets the criteria too I think. Just a non-stop misery-fest for the characters...
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Aug 4, 2022 22:42
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