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Thanks for the Campbell thoughts, all! Ancient Images and Midnight Sun both sound like they were made just for me, though I'll probably start with one of the short story collections mentioned here, just to see if his writing clicks with me before committing to a novel.
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Sep 23, 2024 02:02
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Sep 23, 2024 02:17
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drat I finally got to Dark Matter by Michelle Paver and it was VERY good. I loving love those arctic expedition memoires and this was like those but with the horror amplified (appropriately). I'll check out Thin Air as recommended pages back as well.
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Sep 25, 2024 17:19
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value-brand cereal posted:escape artist if you're still looking for appalachian horror, there's a novel coming up. Chizmar's Boogeyman sequel was one of the worst, laziest, novels I have ever read. And the first one was barely okay. Sure hope he found another gear.
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Sep 25, 2024 17:44
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tuyop posted:drat I finally got to Dark Matter by Michelle Paver and it was VERY good. I loving love those arctic expedition memoires and this was like those but with the horror amplified (appropriately). I'll check out Thin Air as recommended pages back as well. Fwiw I found Thin Air to be basically more of the same, which is probably fine if you enjoyed Dark Matter. It does a lot of the same things right, but don't expect it to really turn over any new stones narratively speaking
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Sep 25, 2024 18:25
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I've made an impromptu book club with a couple friends and our first book was my suggestion, Between Two Fires. I'd already read it, but in the book club read we've finished Part One. I was actually wondering if anyone could recommend any discussion prompts or questions for our very informal face time catch up. None of us have ever been in a boon club and I think we're all mentally reaching towards what directed reading in school was like. I've thought about it a little and the only thing I've come up with so far is discussing how Thomas and Pere Matthieu are both unhappy with who they are. Also, when reviewing and highlighting striking passages, there were quite a few in the beginning dealing with Thomas' thoughts about the girl, and children in general; their vulnerability, their weakness in an unkind world etc.
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Sep 28, 2024 13:46
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"The Middle Ages sucked. Discuss." I don't remember where the first part cuts off - what's the last thing that happened to them?
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Sep 28, 2024 22:32
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It ends with the phantasmal castle and the nighty tourney.
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Sep 28, 2024 23:18
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Is there gonna be an October forum and is this thread gonna move there again? I thought it was good for new blood. Also I just read Intercepts by TJ Payne and it was alright. I don't have a ton to say about it because it feels like exactly the kind of thing you'd pick up in an airport and read on a reasonably long flight. It mostly accomplishes what it sets out to do and its totally fine.
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Sep 30, 2024 05:47
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If there’s no October forum we riot, I demand that style sheet
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Sep 30, 2024 10:03
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FWIW today is the final day to select a spooky read for the Month of October--see the stickied post I know nothing about whether Prag is going to run an October forum again or not
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Sep 30, 2024 15:11
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Jack B Nimble posted:I've made an impromptu book club with a couple friends and our first book was my suggestion, Between Two Fires. I'd already read it, but in the book club read we've finished Part One. Maybe determining what realistic horror there was in the middle ages (low life expectancy, frequent illness/pestilence, quality of life, lifelong indentured servitude) vs phantasmogoric/unreal horror (night tourneys, demons etc) as mentioned in the book Cultural expectations vs individual paths, what choices each character made towards better self-individualization vs. rote/societal expectation Just some things I remembered thinking about while reading. anilEhilated posted:"The Middle Ages sucked. Discuss." i mean my response is pretty much, expanded, lol
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Sep 30, 2024 21:35
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Knocked out The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. I think I really liked this book. There was a point at which I didn't, and I honestly felt legitimately mad at the author, and it was because they managed to rug pull me right when I thought I was settling into a cozy horror mystery groove. The rest of it was paced really well and gave me a lot of interesting themes and cultural discussion to think about.
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Oct 1, 2024 21:06
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Tiny Timbs posted:Knocked out The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. I think I really liked this book. There was a point at which I didn't, and I honestly felt legitimately mad at the author, and it was because they managed to rug pull me right when I thought I was settling into a cozy horror mystery groove. The rest of it was paced really well and gave me a lot of interesting themes and cultural discussion to think about. I absolutely LOVE this one. I read a sample on kindle and immediately bought the hardcover, which I rarely do because I’m out of space for new physical books.
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Oct 1, 2024 23:12
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I honestly think it's among the best modern horror novels, and I also feel like SGJ caught lightning in a bottle... and everything else I've read of his has been disappointing, as a result.
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Oct 1, 2024 23:26
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escape artist posted:I honestly think it's among the best modern horror novels, and I also feel like SGJ caught lightning in a bottle... and everything else I've read of his has been disappointing, as a result. Yeah, it’s on a whole other level than Mongrels or The Night of the Mannequins. I won’t speak for My Heart is a Chainsaw and its sequels because I haven’t read them yet. He has an excellent novella that’s available on kindle unlimited called Mapping The Interior that in my opinion is worth a read, definitely in a similar vein to The Only Good Indians.
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Oct 1, 2024 23:47
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=690 Haunted Clubhouse is open. Requesting temporary relocation so we can have their stylesheet for October
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Oct 2, 2024 01:55
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Good Citizen posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=690 on it
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Oct 2, 2024 02:09
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yessssss
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Oct 2, 2024 03:14
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Children of the dead by Elfride Jelinek is the strangest book i’ve read this year, really detailed slimy zombies in the Austrian alps which somehow manages to be an angry dissection of Austria’s refusal to acknowledge their participation of the Holocaust its super strange, super grotesque, and utterly fascinating
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Oct 2, 2024 07:54
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escape artist posted:I honestly think it's among the best modern horror novels, and I also feel like SGJ caught lightning in a bottle... and everything else I've read of his has been disappointing, as a result. Yeah I’d say that too. Kind of shaken by how confused I was by the nature of their transgression. I haven’t read anything else he’s written yet, though.
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Oct 2, 2024 15:13
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So since we are on exhibit in the Haunted Clubhouse, I want to announce to everyone that The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty is in fact a book that is better than the movie and actually lives up to the hype, with beautiful prose. It is not only the perfect horror novel, but it is a perfect novel. Yes, I know how outrageous that sounds. The author reads the audiobook and it is MESMERIZING. tuyop posted:Yeah I’d say that too. Kind of shaken by how confused I was by the nature of their transgression. I haven’t read anything else he’s written yet, though. I wish I had just stopped after The Only Good Indians honestly.
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Oct 2, 2024 15:38
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Oct 2, 2024 15:54
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value-brand cereal posted:Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt I’m reading this for the first time as my kick off for October and so far I’m liking it a lot. Also, to add to your list, there’s the ‘Goosebumps but for adults’ category and it contains all the Grady Hendrix books
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Oct 2, 2024 16:29
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My first read for October will be A Sunny Place For Shady People, the newest short story collection from Mariana Enriquez. I enjoyed her first story collections a bit (Dangers of Smoking in Bed) and her second short story collection was among my favorites in the past decade. She is an Argentinian writer and that is what appealed to me. I really enjoyed the way she wrote about cartel violence in some of her stories, but she there's way more to her than just that. She has a sprawling novel entitled Our Share of Night that came out in 2023, but I have not read it.  What a cool cover, right? I am two stories in, the first is about a woman who can see ghosts and the second story draws heavily upon (and mentions by name) the famous creepy death of Elisa Lam I'd say Things We Lost In The Fire is a great entry point!
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Oct 2, 2024 19:40
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Tiny Timbs posted:Knocked out The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. I think I really liked this book. There was a point at which I didn't, and I honestly felt legitimately mad at the author, and it was because they managed to rug pull me right when I thought I was settling into a cozy horror mystery groove. The rest of it was paced really well and gave me a lot of interesting themes and cultural discussion to think about. I hated My Heart Is a Chainsaw, but I'll give this a go since it's gotten such high praise this page... Also put a library hold on The Exorcist audiobook which should be available soon.
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Oct 2, 2024 21:33
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New comers read Brian Evenson
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Oct 2, 2024 21:45
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tuyop posted:Yeah I’d say that too. Kind of shaken by how confused I was by the nature of their transgression. I haven’t read anything else he’s written yet, though. I was too and I’ve been thinking about it on my last few drives to work so I’ve managed to work out some thoughts that seem sensible to me: It’s unclear what the four hunters did that was so wrong. They were hunting on land meant for the elders, but the elk aren’t going to give a poo poo about that. They had an unfair advantage against the elk but so does everyone else, especially the hunters that once backed an elk herd up against a train and slaughtered them en masse. The cow’s death was traumatic but there was no more ill intent behind it than the usual. Lewis is the only one that recognizes he committed some spiritual wrong, but he thinks it’s about how the meat was wasted, as if the deal he made with himself when he killed that elk mattered. I think his theory about the timeline for the return of the elk spirit matching up with some elder tossing out a hunk of meat may be correct but also irrelevant. The elk spirit doesn’t give a gently caress about whether they were “wasted,” though the final loss of flesh may be what freed them to remanifest. This isn’t about some mutual understanding between predator and prey where everybody understands their purpose in life and respects the rules of the hunt. That doesn’t exist. The elk loving hate being killed and the reason they came after the protagonists so hard was because they happened to be the lucky group of dumbasses that killed an elk god. Ultimately the elk wanted to be reunited with her baby but she was also super pissed at those dudes in particular as well as anyone who happened to be nearby, both because of what happened to her and also collectively what people have been doing to the elk. I could easily be wrong about this but I think the book is partially a takedown of the idea of noble hunters and mutual respect between hunter and hunted.
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Oct 2, 2024 22:08
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fez_machine posted:New comers read Brian Evenson Last Days is among the best things written in the 21st century. Great starting place, too, people.
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Oct 2, 2024 22:52
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I suppose The Last House on Needless Street didn't live up to the hype. I liked the cat POV chapters though.
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Oct 2, 2024 22:55
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While I can't agree that The Exorcist the novel is better than The Exorcist the movie, the novel adds much, much greater psychological complexity to the battle between Karras and the demon. In the novel, Karras' crisis of faith is much more significant. His eagerness and persistence in proposing (pseudo-)scientific explanations for Regan's behaviour is in service of, rather than a symptom of, his waning belief in God. He wants there to be no demon not for Regan's sake, but because it will further validate his decision that his faith has become obsolete. The demon knows this, immediately, and repeatedly provides credence for Karras' increasingly desperate assertion that Regan is "just" a manipulative ESPer. The demon is telepathic: it mimics the case studies Karras has read, it makes facile attempts to prove its magic powers ("Think of a number between one and one hundred!"), it refuses to divulge Karras' mother's first name, all to feed Karras' desire to professionally absolve himself of his responsibility to Regan... but, like a serial killer returning to a crime scene, it can't resist indulging in it's own desires. It sprinkles just enough hints that something more sinister is happening: “Couldjya help an old altar boy, Faddah?”, or mimicking Karras' mother, or the Herod/fox pun. Where before he had only one crisis of faith (God is not real), now Karras has to contend with a possible second (God is real, because so too is this fallen angel, but He is either powerless or delinquent to intervene). The demon could have just shown what Karras wanted to see, but wants too much to see him suffer and doubt and exhaust himself, even though it knows that exposing itself like this could precipitate an exorcism. The novel demon is much more ancient, inhuman, and implacable, because this ability to worm its way right into the core of Karras' neuroses is way more frightening than simply telling him his mother sucks cocks in hell.
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Oct 2, 2024 23:33
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quote != edit
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Oct 2, 2024 23:36
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escape artist posted:Last Days is among the best things written in the 21st century. Great starting place, too, people. Last Days is pretty intense, so one of his short story collections may be more approachable imo. Then again I read Last Days on a late night flight, so maybe that made it come across as more oppressive than it was. Either way, Brian Evenson is ftw
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Oct 2, 2024 23:42
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fez_machine posted:New comers read Brian Evenson Agreed, also Richard Aickman
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Oct 2, 2024 23:50
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Starting Misery by Stephen King at the high recommendation of a co-worker. Horror as a whole aren't my go to, she's much more into the genre so I'm willing to give it a shot. I've never read anything by Stephen King before either, so if its a bad introduction to him I can try his more famous works.
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Oct 3, 2024 01:24
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Miracle Box posted:Starting Misery by Stephen King at the high recommendation of a co-worker. Horror as a whole aren't my go to, she's much more into the genre so I'm willing to give it a shot. I've never read anything by Stephen King before either, so if its a bad introduction to him I can try his more famous works. enjoy! aside from his chonkers famous tomes like IT and the dark tower, his short story collections are also really great, heaps of fun ideas in one little book. (also the movie of Misery absolutely rules, well worth a go if you like the book.)
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Oct 3, 2024 04:11
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Miracle Box posted:Starting Misery by Stephen King at the high recommendation of a co-worker. Horror as a whole aren't my go to, she's much more into the genre so I'm willing to give it a shot. I've never read anything by Stephen King before either, so if its a bad introduction to him I can try his more famous works. Misery is pretty good and one of the last of the cocaine-era Stephen King stories. It's also a good middle ground between his short story collections and his mega doorstoppers like It and The Stand. I don't consider myself a huge King fan at this point but fully most of us here started our adult horror reading career on cocaine-era King.
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Oct 3, 2024 04:13
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If you like space horror, I recommend Paradise-1 by David Wellington.
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Oct 3, 2024 09:43
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Oct 3, 2024 14:36
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If anyone wants to join us in the SA book club thread we'll be doing King in Yellow for october
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Oct 3, 2024 16:21
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