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Took me long enough, but I finished Misery by Stephen King. This was the first book I’ve read by King and I gotta say, I get the hype now. I liked how grounded it felt. The slow burn that only got crazier and crazier was so well done. Every time Annie did something to hurt Paul from wailing on his knee, to cutting off his foot caught me off guard. “Surely she can’t keep getting crazier?” Oh but she did. Loved it. My girlfriend has read a lot of King’s work and has told me about novels like Pet Cemetery that have more super natural elements and that just doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy. Horror isn’t my preferred genre but if I’m gonna consume it, it’s gotta feel plausible. And Misery did. I think this was a great intro to King, there are a few more of his books I wanna check out and I’m excited to do so. I mostly listened to the audiobook narrated by Lindsay Crouse, who did a wonderful job. It sounded like she took inspiration from Kathy Bates’ performance, but still did quite well. Her reading is very well paced and she did really well in expressing the changes in tone for both Paul and Annie throughout the book. If you’re looking to do a re-read, check out her audio book.
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Nov 1, 2024 18:11
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I haven’t read too much not-supernatural King but The Long Walk owns bones.
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Nov 1, 2024 18:20
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Pet Semetary is probably one of his scariest books but not because of the supernatural elements (which I liked are cool). He has some others that are solid without explicit supernatural stuff, e.g. Cujo, The Long Walk, that you might like too
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Nov 1, 2024 18:41
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Thanks for the recs! The Long Walk sounds interesting, weird dystopias are cool. I’ll pick up a copy this weekend.
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Nov 1, 2024 21:30
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Is The Long Walk the OG dystopian-future-kid-competition-to-the-death-for-entertainment story? It beat Battle Royale by a few decades.
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Nov 1, 2024 21:52
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Rolo posted:Is The Long Walk the OG dystopian-future-kid-competition-to-the-death-for-entertainment story? It beat Battle Royale by a few decades. It's not the first story in the vein, but many of the precursors are private entertainment and all of them that I know of involve adults. The Long Walk is the earliest book I know of that deals with both children and a public contest. King definitely had inspiration, though; Robert Sheckley's 1958 story The Prize of Peril is an obvious precursor to The Running Man.
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Nov 1, 2024 22:20
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Rolo posted:Is The Long Walk the OG dystopian-future-kid-competition-to-the-death-for-entertainment story? It beat Battle Royale by a few decades. I think Lord of the Flies is one of the earliest of that specific subgenre, which is an interesting component in the project to create a humanity that is naturally barbarous and violent. The genealogy of that project follows from like Plato to the Bible to Hobbes through to stuff like The Coral Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, like all of HG Wells, and so on. I recently read Death of Grass which said the quiet part out loud pretty well. Fantasticland is a very recent entry too.
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Nov 1, 2024 23:13
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I’m 80% through Cold Moon Over Babylon and I’m beginning to wonder if they’re ever going to finish this blueberry harvest
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Nov 2, 2024 00:12
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One thing I always liked about pet semetary is that it will let you in if you want to get in. No matter what there's some kind of insane method to get in that couldn't possibly work logically. That & oh no the noise is just loons from out across the lake, just put one foot in front of the other. Ignore it and keep going. And you have to be initiated by someone else. It's, well... all his work has a recurring series of motifs. King was always good at describing situations where you know you shouldn't be doing this thing. Except once you start you're almost roped into doing the wrong thing even though you know you shouldn't do it and you know you're tricking yourself. There are off ramps. You can quit. But you don't quit. You need increasing amounts of courage to make it stop and instead you keep lying to yourself to stay comfortable with yourself. This is the root of evil in most or all of his stories and sometimes irl.  did king become mega popular in the US especially because he hit a nerve and was selling one basic story to the same basic group? "poo poo I'm kinda crappy because I sort of sold out for my own comfort. Doing this hosed everything at least a little bit -- or maybe a lot -- and I have contradictions, guilt even. Eh the world is metaphysically gnarly anyway so I, the reader, can mirror myself into these characters and self-resolve all this without doing anything but paying Steve a few bucks."The last few that I remember reading or super stand out to me were maybe: IT, tommyknockers, pet semitary, idk maybe needful things, salems lot way a long time ago, random parts of dark tower, some short story thing i don't remember the name of
How do I wanna put this? They're all movies. They're all TV. That's fine, but what I'm getting at is that maybe Steven King got popular and got so many books sold is cause a huge % of people in his generation in USA would be happier living in a cartoon than not. V much a crystalline form of a certain era? "Holy poo poo a spookly ghost haha everything's basically sort of fine just don't think about it too much" and a ton of people were like "holy poo poo take my money"
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Nov 2, 2024 05:16
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king made an absolutely staggering amount of money out of the gate - he was offered a quarter of a million dollars as an advance for Carrie, in 1974. the agent definitely saw something there e: misremembered - the initial advance was $2500, the paperback rights were sold two years later for $400k, with King collecting half of that Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 2, 2024 |
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Nov 2, 2024 10:27
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I liked the description of Pet Semetery as having the simple structure of a greek tragedy, where the hero embarks on a course of action, is warned by the gods that persisting in this course of action will lead to disaster and the hero says: "Yeah, well, I'm gonna do it anyway". From that moment of hubris, the hero's nemesis plays out. In the book, the protagonist is explicitly warned by a ghost that he's set terrible events in motion, but there's still time to jump off this train, if he stops now. If you've read the book, you'll know how that ends up.
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Nov 2, 2024 10:30
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tuyop posted:I think Lord of the Flies is one of the earliest of that specific subgenre, which is an interesting component in the project to create a humanity that is naturally barbarous and violent. Lord of the Flies is probably an inspiration on The Long Walk, but they're polar opposites. Lord of the Flies is about a group of young boys who need to cooperate to survive but devolve into savagery and start killing each other; The Long Walk is about a group of boys who can only survive if all the others die, but nevertheless form friendships and help each other. (There is, of course, one other significant difference: the boys in Lord of the Flies are private schoolboys from rich families, while the boys on the Walk are explicitly poor and lower class.)
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Nov 2, 2024 10:44
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Pistol_Pete posted:I liked the description of Pet Semetery as having the simple structure of a greek tragedy, where the hero embarks on a course of action, is warned by the gods that persisting in this course of action will lead to disaster and the hero says: "Yeah, well, I'm gonna do it anyway". From that moment of hubris, the hero's nemesis plays out. In the book, the protagonist is explicitly warned by a ghost that he's set terrible events in motion, but there's still time to jump off this train, if he stops now. If you've read the book, you'll know how that ends up. A scholar of tragedy, writing about Shakespeare at the start of the 20th Century said this: quote:The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' though generally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in his error and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human nature. [10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never, like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the book with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'What a piece of work is man,' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so much more terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty and greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?' We seem to have before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from the crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. It forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worth of that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in the reflection that all is vanity. Now what a "Tragedy" even is has been debated by a ton of folks, so I'm not gonna say PS isn't one. All I'm gonna say is that it certainly leaves me feeling like everything is vanity. That man, far from being grand and noble even in his failures, is pathetic and weak. It's a very depressing book. I guess that means it did its job but I don't have much desire to ever re-read it and come away feeling like total poo poo. My favorite King novel (that I've read) is still The Shining. Depressing? Absolutely. But nevertheless inspiring.
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Nov 2, 2024 10:48
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Agreeing that the scariest elements of Pet Sematary have nothing to do with the supernatural elements. It's very much a story of human psychological devastation, with the supernatural elements as a way of enabling further harm/tragic hubris. Agreed that it's a book that makes you feel like poo poo, though!
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Nov 3, 2024 01:02
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drat, I found out last night by reading Noctuary that Ligotti has an amazing Halloween story, "Conversations in a Dead Language". Missed reading it on Halloween by one day.
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Nov 3, 2024 01:14
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Antivehicular posted:Agreeing that the scariest elements of Pet Sematary have nothing to do with the supernatural elements. It's very much a story of human psychological devastation, with the supernatural elements as a way of enabling further harm/tragic hubris. I like how he uses supernatural things to push along a psychological plot more than being like “ooh spooky monster.” The hotel’s ghosts in the Shining were legit scary but Jack’s slow decline is what kept me reading. Same with Salem’s lot. Vampires spooky yeah but watching an entire town slowly decline was done so well.
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Nov 3, 2024 01:18
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LifeLynx posted:drat, I found out last night by reading Noctuary that Ligotti has an amazing Halloween story, "Conversations in a Dead Language". Missed reading it on Halloween by one day. Grabbing this immediately. I've been meaning to read more Ligotti but I'm also still in a Halloween mood, so this is perfect, thanks!
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Nov 3, 2024 02:11
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Finished Nestlings by Nat Cassidy and enjoyed it. This had been an almost read by me for a while so glad to finally read it. I’d almost classify it as more of a psychological family drama in a horror setting than a horror novel. It certainly has a lot to say about motherhood
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Nov 3, 2024 02:16
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not-supernatural King is good I do live for the cocaine bender "home electronics being controlled psychically by alien-invaded humans" of his other stuff
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Nov 3, 2024 05:06
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alf_pogs posted:not-supernatural King is good I do live for the cocaine bender "home electronics being controlled psychically by alien-invaded humans" of his other stuff When it comes to King I’m definitely more of a ‘1k pages he didn’t remember writing because of cocaine’ enthusiast. That poo poo was my jam when I was like 15
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Nov 3, 2024 05:23
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I've said before and I'll say it again; that two page bit in Sematary where Louis is chasing Gage as fast as he can, and he can see the truck coming and knows drat well he isn't going to make it, is the scariest piece King has ever written
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Nov 3, 2024 05:30
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Opopanax posted:I've said before and I'll say it again; that two page bit in Sematary where Louis is chasing Gage as fast as he can, and he can see the truck coming and knows drat well he isn't going to make it, is the scariest piece King has ever written That actually happened with King's own son! In real life his son tripped over and King was able to catch up and grab him but the question of: "what if?" stayed with him and Pet Semetery grew from that. It's scary 'cos King is really following the 'write what you know' adage there.
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Nov 3, 2024 09:30
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value-brand cereal fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 26, 2025 |
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Nov 3, 2024 20:42
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Opopanax posted:I've said before and I'll say it again; that two page bit in Sematary where Louis is chasing Gage as fast as he can, and he can see the truck coming and knows drat well he isn't going to make it, is the scariest piece King has ever written The subsequent dream sequence is what really kills me. Maybe not "scary," but Jesus Christ.
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Nov 3, 2024 22:44
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Finished Cold Moon Over Babylon. I liked The Elementals way more but this was short and easy to read, it keeps a good pace and doesn’t waste much time. Pretty drat dark and spooky too. Now I’m deciding between Annihilation and Between Two Fires. I’m gonna read both, I know the former is a series, but I can’t decide where to start.
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Nov 4, 2024 15:02
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escape artist posted:Great call. This is the closest anything ever came to scratching the Ligotti itch for me. I think I recommended this book to gey muckle mowser and he enjoyed it immensely. Yeah it’s an excellent collection. The story about the ferris wheel especially has really stuck with me
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Nov 4, 2024 16:46
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Rolo posted:Finished Cold Moon Over Babylon. I liked The Elementals way more but this was short and easy to read, it keeps a good pace and doesn’t waste much time. Pretty drat dark and spooky too. Do you want horror about a grimy period with creatures or weird horror about the nature of consciousness and evidence and stuff with creepy creatures too? I actually can’t remember what Annihilation is specifically about since I devoured the whole trilogy as quickly as possible and had nightmares about slugs from it. Absolution has a ton of weird philosophy of mind horror poo poo that I really dig though, and I think all the rest do too.
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Nov 4, 2024 18:12
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I think I’m gonna start with BTF then. You’re not the first one to tell me that the VanderMeer books can be read one after the other so I’m gonna go with the shorter option before committing to three books. I did like the Garland movie and it’s been awhile but I remember feeling like it was intentionally vague and left any real interpretation to the watcher (was it a metaphor for cancer? Grief? Self-harm?) I also heard the movie is very different so I’m wondering what they’re like in comparison. Rolo fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 4, 2024 |
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Nov 4, 2024 18:48
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Rolo posted:I think I’m gonna start with BTF then. You’re not the first one to tell me that the VanderMeer books can be read one after the other so I’m gonna go with the shorter option before committing to three books. Grief is one of the most prominent themes in the Southern Reach books and I think the movie did a good job with it, but the books are very different beyond that. And hell yeah, that book rules I’m jealous that you get to experience it for the first time.
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Nov 4, 2024 18:56
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Absolution is so loving dense I keep feeling like I’ve downed a couple hundred pages and when I check the count I’m on like, page 90 It’s such a strange and unpleasant read. I love it.
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Nov 5, 2024 01:46
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How fresh in the reader’s mind do the Southern Reach books need to be to ‘get’ Absolution? It’s been years and years since I read them so my recollection is shaky, but adding another three books to my TBR pile just to read Absolution is not thrilling, even if I’m very curious about it.
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Nov 5, 2024 01:50
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is any of Dennis Wheatley's stuff worth reading, dear thread?
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Nov 5, 2024 05:09
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tuyop posted:And hell yeah, that book rules I’m jealous that you get to experience it for the first time. 60ish pages in and it’s so easy to read. Im running through this like poo poo through a goose.
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Nov 5, 2024 05:23
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alf_pogs posted:is any of Dennis Wheatley's stuff worth reading, dear thread? You should probably read The Devil Rides Out so that you've done it. After that see how you feel.
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Nov 5, 2024 09:15
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alf_pogs posted:is any of Dennis Wheatley's stuff worth reading, dear thread? If you like sneering, hyper-Catholic, phrenological racism interspersed with rants about how unfair it is that aristocrats can no longer drive their horses-&-carriage through central London, sure. (It's actually fairly well written, mostly, and makes for a weirdly cosy read, in the same way that a Dornford Yates or Agatha Christie does. Calibrate your expectations accordingly. They Used Dark Forces is pretty entertaining.)
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Nov 5, 2024 13:44
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I don't think Dennis Wheatley was Catholic.
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Nov 5, 2024 15:27
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Terrible Opinions posted:I don't think Dennis Wheatley was Catholic. He was CofE in later life, but not Catholic, no. On the other hand he also thought Goebbels was left wing.
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Nov 5, 2024 15:37
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Terrible Opinions posted:I don't think Dennis Wheatley was Catholic. Ah yeah, you're right -- I got him mixed up with Montague Summers. The two of them plus Rollo Ahmed cluster together as an amorphous blob in my memory.
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Nov 5, 2024 15:57
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Kestral posted:How fresh in the reader’s mind do the Southern Reach books need to be to ‘get’ Absolution? It’s been years and years since I read them so my recollection is shaky, but adding another three books to my TBR pile just to read Absolution is not thrilling, even if I’m very curious about it. It’s been a few years for me, too, but the new one is a prequel and so far at 200 pages there’s really nothing specific you need to remember. Just that Old Jim was in the bar during the transformation scene in Acceptance, and Central was messing around in the Forgotten Coast for a long time before the events of the earlier novels Fallom fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 5, 2024 |
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Nov 5, 2024 16:03
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Between Two Flames owns so far and now I wish more books had boss fights.
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Nov 7, 2024 21:30
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