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Franchescanado posted:I would really like something in the vein of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Hell House by Richard Matheson. Not that the two are overly similar, but both are favorites of mine and I have a hard time finding something that hits those highs. Lovely prose, macabre ideas, inventive imagery, serious tone but still fun. The last horror book that really knocked my socks off was Blatty's The Exorcist.
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Mar 14, 2024 13:46
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Franchescanado posted:I would really like something in the vein of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Hell House by Richard Matheson. Not that the two are overly similar, but both are favorites of mine and I have a hard time finding something that hits those highs. Lovely prose, macabre ideas, inventive imagery, serious tone but still fun. The last horror book that really knocked my socks off was Blatty's The Exorcist. Ghost Story by Peter Straub.
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Mar 14, 2024 14:39
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Jedit posted:Ghost Story by Peter Straub. Weird question, but when does this get into the Ghost part of the Ghost Story? I read the first chapter last weekend on a whim trying to find something new to read and it was seemingly a kidnapping story? I liked it, but it was not at all what I was expecting with the title and blurb. Thanks for the suggestion! anilEhilated posted:The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford is pretty close to Something Wicked in tone, I think. Very different writing style obviously, but the setting is similar and it deals with similar themes. Not sure if it counts as horror, although it is a ghost story. Thank you! It sounds good. I'll look for a copy.
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Mar 14, 2024 20:26
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Franchescanado posted:Weird question, but when does this get into the Ghost part of the Ghost Story? I read the first chapter last weekend on a whim trying to find something new to read and it was seemingly a kidnapping story? I liked it, but it was not at all what I was expecting with the title and blurb. Pretty quickly, and it does a real good job of building an overwhelming sense of dread. Book-ruining spoilers: Sadly it goes off the rails a bit. By the end the seventy-year-old protagonist is chopping up shapeshifters with an axe in a cinema playing Night of the Living Dead and I kind of switched off
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Mar 14, 2024 20:53
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Jeffrey Ford wrote a strange "sequel" to Moby Dick called Ahab's Return... anybody check it out? I was pulled in by the initial story- finding out that Ahab never died and actually had a son to reconnect with. I did feel like the idea fizzled out before the end... Curious if anyone else has read it.
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Mar 14, 2024 22:45
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escape artist posted:Jeffrey Ford wrote a strange "sequel" to Moby Dick called Ahab's Return... anybody check it out? I was pulled in by the initial story- finding out that Ahab never died and actually had a son to reconnect with. I did feel like the idea fizzled out before the end... Curious if anyone else has read it.
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Mar 14, 2024 23:22
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Franchescanado posted:Weird question, but when does this get into the Ghost part of the Ghost Story? I read the first chapter last weekend on a whim trying to find something new to read and it was seemingly a kidnapping story? I liked it, but it was not at all what I was expecting with the title and blurb. It turns into a ghost story surprisingly quickly, even if nothing supernatural happens for a while.
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Mar 15, 2024 12:09
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Franchescanado posted:I would really like something in the vein of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Hell House by Richard Matheson. Not that the two are overly similar, but both are favorites of mine and I have a hard time finding something that hits those highs. Lovely prose, macabre ideas, inventive imagery, serious tone but still fun. The last horror book that really knocked my socks off was Blatty's The Exorcist. Have you checked out what Valancourt Press is publishing? https://www.valancourtbooks.com/horror.html Michael McDowell is a perennial thread favourite. Particularly Blackwater. I love their Robert Westall reissues.
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Mar 15, 2024 12:12
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fez_machine posted:Have you checked out what Valancourt Press is publishing? I’ll check out that link. I’ve only read McDowell’s The Amulet, which was awesome and pretty spot on with the vibe. Blackwater’s a bit of a beast in length, cuz it’s a few books, so I haven’t made the plunge yet.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:14
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Franchescanado posted:I’ll check out that link. I’ve only read McDowell’s The Amulet, which was awesome and pretty spot on with the vibe. Blackwater’s a bit of a beast in length, cuz it’s a few books, so I haven’t made the plunge yet.
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Mar 15, 2024 18:37
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Franchescanado posted:I’ll check out that link. I’ve only read McDowell’s The Amulet, which was awesome and pretty spot on with the vibe. Blackwater’s a bit of a beast in length, cuz it’s a few books, so I haven’t made the plunge yet. The Elementals is great too. And it's far less daunting, size-wise, than Blackwater.
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Mar 15, 2024 19:01
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Cold Moon Over Babylon is also great and short
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Mar 15, 2024 19:07
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Blackwater is surprisingly easy reading for something so big, to the point where sticking to the individual novels it was published as would feel weird to me. Maybe it’s the rhythms of the family saga aspect.
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Mar 16, 2024 09:49
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escape artist posted:Jeffrey Ford wrote a strange "sequel" to Moby Dick called Ahab's Return... anybody check it out? I was pulled in by the initial story- finding out that Ahab never died and actually had a son to reconnect with. I did feel like the idea fizzled out before the end... Curious if anyone else has read it. What’s the point of Ahab if he doesn’t die? I don’t come to the Ahab shop for personal growth.
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Mar 16, 2024 14:46
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Blackwater is a masterpiece
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Mar 18, 2024 23:29
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Drunkboxer posted:What’s the point of Ahab if he doesn’t die? I don’t come to the Ahab shop for personal growth. turns out he was a ghost
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Mar 19, 2024 11:50
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Conrad_Birdie posted:Blackwater is a masterpiece I will never not quote a statement like this.
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Mar 19, 2024 13:50
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I keep trying to read Boys in the Valley by Fracassi but everytime I get to the epigraph where he uses a My Chemical Romance lyric, I go "what the gently caress am I doing?" and read something else.
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Mar 19, 2024 15:40
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Mar 19, 2024 16:12
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escape artist posted:I keep trying to read Boys in the Valley by Fracassi but everytime I get to the epigraph where he uses a My Chemical Romance lyric, I go "what the gently caress am I doing?" and read something else. It's an okay book, but nothing special. It also felt like low-key Christian propaganda, but maybe I'm reaching here.
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Mar 19, 2024 16:28
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value-brand cereal posted:Arithmophobia: An Anthology of Mathematical Horror by Robert Lewis All I can think of is the SCP article about an equation that, when solved, manifests a grizzly bear at your location. Not as a magic ritual or anything, just because the mathematically correct answer is somehow "grizzly bear."
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Mar 19, 2024 22:50
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value-brand cereal posted:That bit irritated me so much that I used calibre to edit that out of the epub. It is thematic to the plot in the end, but man. To put that below this quote in the same epigraph? Interesting, love some cosmic horror based on weird numbers!
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Mar 19, 2024 23:10
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Jorge Luis Borges does the best mathematical stories and I couldn't imagine anyone else doing anything remotely as interesting.
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Mar 20, 2024 02:04
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UwUnabomber posted:Stephen King's short story collections have some real bangers. John Connolly's Nocturnes is excellent. (As is The Book of Lost Things, but that's not a collection.) tetrapyloctomy fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 02:56
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 Finally got around to reading this, and it was excellent. Way more even than most anthologies; there's no Butcher's Table level stuff but they're all at least "really good".
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Mar 20, 2024 05:10
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escape artist posted:Jorge Luis Borges does the best mathematical stories and I couldn't imagine anyone else doing anything remotely as interesting. I like Greg Egan for fiction about weird math I can’t understand
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Mar 20, 2024 14:22
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tuyop posted:I like Greg Egan for fiction about weird math I can’t understand What's a good starting place? Never heard of this fellow but skimming his Wiki has me intrigued.
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Mar 21, 2024 00:00
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escape artist posted:What's a good starting place? Never heard of this fellow but skimming his Wiki has me intrigued. The Best of Greg Egan
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Mar 21, 2024 01:26
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escape artist posted:What's a good starting place? Never heard of this fellow but skimming his Wiki has me intrigued. Diaspora is my favorite. It’s about sentient digital beings and really digs into questions about time and consciousness and identity. The main character is like, a mathematician and that frames the whole story. I also really loved Quarantine. It has elements of existential and body horror throughout. It’s kind of a detective noir in a near future world where the solar system has been surrounded by a force field. The main character is investigating a disappearance and the case takes lots of wild turns. Big themes of consciousness and free will due to the protagonist’s various neural implants and stuff. the Copenhagen interpretation plays a big role.
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Mar 21, 2024 01:29
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value-brand cereal posted:Arithmophobia: An Anthology of Mathematical Horror by Robert Lewis This was not good. Opens with three decent ones and the rest is pretty much drivel, e.g.: Real Numbers, by Liz Kaufman posted:Numbers are real. And they are watching us very, very closely. lol
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Mar 23, 2024 02:03
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Wachter posted:This was not good. Opens with three decent ones and the rest is pretty much drivel, e.g.: I didn't think it would be good  There are so many of these themed anthologies coming out.
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Mar 23, 2024 02:38
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Wachter posted:This was not good. Opens with three decent ones and the rest is pretty much drivel, e.g.: Reading this in the Ralph Wiggum "and I saw the baby and the baby looked at me" cadence
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Mar 23, 2024 03:05
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Has anyone else seen these Encyclopocalypse movie novelization books? They seem to be novel versions/expansions of classic horror movies and I only noticed them because Jeff Strand wrote a take on Attack of the Killer Tomatoes that ended up in my recommendations feed. For the movies based on books like the stephen king ones, it looks like just radio plays or scripts, but for original stuff like Reanimator, Wishmaster, and the mentioned Attack of the Killer Tomatoes it has some additions from the author doing the novelization. There's like 20 of these. I'd have probably never noticed them if Jeff Strand didn't write one, but clicking through the amazon series links they all seem to have decently good reviews and I guess I could be down for a reading an adaptation of Wishmaster or some poo poo on a sunday afternoon?
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Mar 26, 2024 04:45
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Between Two Fires loving RULED! Hell yeah!!!!
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Mar 26, 2024 17:16
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Wachter posted:Between Two Fires loving RULED! Hell yeah!!!! now you get to experience the true horror--finding out that there's basically nothing else quite like it out there
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Mar 26, 2024 17:21
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There are, just not in the same medium.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:16
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The General Horror Book Thread: Between Two Fires loving RULED! Hell yeah!!!!
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Mar 26, 2024 18:23
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Ravus Ursus posted:There are, just not in the same medium. True, there's a lot out there with a similar vibe but I've basically never run into another novel that scratches the same itch
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Mar 26, 2024 18:35
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It reminded me of Glen Cook's trilogy that begins with The Black Company (I forget what it's called), but Fires is more polished. I found both by searching for "books that feel like Soulsbornes" and they both fit the bill of underequipped protagonists battling unimaginable evil and despair
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Mar 26, 2024 19:22
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Ravus Ursus posted:There are, just not in the same medium. Well?
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