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Good Citizen posted:but seriously VBC whoever was being a dork about your posting can gently caress off and I want more recommends This. They had tons of excellent recommendations that I would never have come across, did a great job highlighting authors or topics that are underrepresented, and somehow managed to explain the stories and tell me whether I would be interested in it or not without spoiling them. Whoever ran vbc off should be permad.
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Oct 17, 2025 21:21
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death to AI re-reading night shift by stephen king then probably my seasonal read of salems lot after
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Oct 17, 2025 22:00
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escape artist posted:Ha, you organize a thread that targets me - because you're still pissed I went above your head and got that pathetic probation reversed by Pragmatica at the end of last year. Which, I'll note, is mentioned in that thread - you and I aren't the only ones who remember it because you got called out by a dozen people for it. Jesse what the gently caress are you talking about?
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Oct 17, 2025 22:10
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escape artist posted:Ha, you organize a thread that targets me - because you're still pissed I went above your head and got that pathetic probation reversed by Pragmatica at the end of last year. Which, I'll note, is mentioned in that thread - you and I aren't the only ones who remember it because you got called out by a dozen people for it. Get his rear end.
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Oct 17, 2025 22:38
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escape artist posted:Ha, you organize a thread that targets me - because you're still pissed I went above your head and got that pathetic probation reversed by Pragmatica at the end of last year. Which, I'll note, is mentioned in that thread - you and I aren't the only ones who remember it because you got called out by a dozen people for it. Lmao ----------------
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Oct 17, 2025 23:02
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Did anyone enjoy the Stranger by Stephen King? I never finished it, might just watch the tv show
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Oct 17, 2025 23:31
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caspergers posted:Did anyone enjoy the Stranger by Stephen King? I never finished it, might just watch the tv show Is that when you put one his novels on your arm for a while first? Haven’t tried it
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Oct 18, 2025 02:26
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caspergers posted:Did anyone enjoy the Stranger by Stephen King? I never finished it, might just watch the tv show Assuming you're talking about The Outsider, I found the show far more enjoyable than the book but I'm pretty down on King in general so ymmv.
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Oct 18, 2025 03:57
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Reminds me I have The Long Walk on my pile TBR. Anyway I might continue with the next series of MR James short stories since I got the collected works volume from whichever public domain sites is linked above, and we are in the midpoint of the spoooOOOoooky month. Also if you are wondering about next month's book: it will be one of our new Nobel laureate's Lazlo K.'s works. Poll to be forthcoming soon in TBB (will put a link here)
OMGVBFLOL posted:if you have the money and the patience, you can Hello Kitty anything   Thank you deep dish peat moss!
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Oct 18, 2025 04:48
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Bilirubin posted:Reminds me I have The Long Walk on my pile TBR. I just finished the long walk. It's not bad for what it is, a book about kids walking to death. Like some of his other work, he gets in his own way sometimes- there's a fair amount of weird sex stuff, but with teenage boys it works on a certain level. It's a quick read, which helps keep the pacing snappy.
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Oct 18, 2025 06:06
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I just read Pet Sematary for the first time, definitely doesn’t live up to the hype.
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Oct 19, 2025 18:59
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What's the point in reading it if you can't hear the old man saying "it's that drat RAOD"
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Oct 19, 2025 20:03
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if there isn't a slimy creepy guy named some poo poo like ralph then it's a bad king book
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Oct 19, 2025 21:51
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I like Pet Sematary a lot, but I think it can be hit or miss because the supernatural elements of the plot are really more window dressing to a core of mundane horror, which works for me but I imagine might disappoint if you're hoping for lots of zombie stuff. At least it also has the major King strength of being relatively short.
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Oct 20, 2025 00:20
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The aftermath of resurrecting a dead toddler from a closed coffin and trying to pass it off as anything approaching normal is a much more fertile premise for existential horror than what he actually went with. I guess I’ve read too many King books where the ending has exploded into cosmic horror (which the beginning definitely led me to expect) to be satisfied with the wet farts of Chucky and a zombie wife. I admit I was put off by the unlikeable protagonist too, who often thinks about beating/abandoning his family.
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Oct 20, 2025 11:36
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I think what I liked most about Pet Sematary was the hinting at an ancient evil in the Maine woods, some sort of shumbling giant presence as the protagonist heads beyond the deadfall. It reminds me of the monster (?) in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which is an underrated King IMO. I don't think I'll read the book again, now that I have two young sons and I live near a busy road but I think it deserves the reputation it has as one of King's best
MNIMWA fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Oct 21, 2025 |
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Oct 20, 2025 13:43
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Thread, post a vocaroo of your impression of the old man from pet semetary
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Oct 20, 2025 14:11
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A spooky novella I read recently was "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L Peck. The premise is that a guy dies, discovers that actually Zoroastrianism was the correct religion and is sent to kind of a group hell that is explicitly based on the concept of the Borges short story The Library of Babel (which is about a library that contains every possible book as it has books with every possible combination of letters.) The main character is told that somewhere in this seemingly infinite library is a book that perfectly describes his life with no typos and that once he finds he he can leave and go to heaven. The story is mostly about how the various people trapped in this hell react to the situation.
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Oct 21, 2025 17:58
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caspergers posted:Thread, post a vocaroo of your impression of the old man from pet semetary Sometimes...unread is bettah (I kid, I like Pet Semetary)
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Oct 21, 2025 18:23
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muscles like this! posted:A spooky novella I read recently was "A Short Stay in Hell" by Steven L Peck. The premise is that a guy dies, discovers that actually Zoroastrianism was the correct religion and is sent to kind of a group hell that is explicitly based on the concept of the Borges short story The Library of Babel (which is about a library that contains every possible book as it has books with every possible combination of letters.) The main character is told that somewhere in this seemingly infinite library is a book that perfectly describes his life with no typos and that once he finds he he can leave and go to heaven. The story is mostly about how the various people trapped in this hell react to the situation. Heads up, if you read A Short Stay in Hell and decide you want more of that, there’s Windows into Hell. Short story collection that does the same Zoroastrian thing but each story covers different person in a unique hell. All the stories I recall have the similar theme of how a human mind reacts to geological time scales. I enjoyed it
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Oct 21, 2025 18:27
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Bilirubin posted:In case you live in your bookmarks: I started a thread to discuss a possible rule about posting chatbot outputs in TBB: the Horror is why mods need to think about this for more than 0 seconds. it's because you are very foolish
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Oct 24, 2025 04:29
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You ok man
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Oct 24, 2025 13:20
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Just finished We Used To Live Here by flipping to the next page, seeing the acknowledgements, and going "that's it???". It's a classic 'spooky haunted house' in the vein of The Haunting of Hill House or House Of Leaves and does a good job of putting together unsettling events and ramping up the psychological distress of the narrator, but it (ending spoilers)definitely feels like it puts throws a lot of mysteries in the air and shouts "AND SCENE" before they come down. There's a lot of additional clues that reddit seems to have pieced together, but I found the note it ended on pretty unsatisfying.
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Oct 24, 2025 20:45
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RoboCicero posted:Just finished We Used To Live Here by flipping to the next page, seeing the acknowledgements, and going "that's it???". It's a classic 'spooky haunted house' in the vein of The Haunting of Hill House or House Of Leaves and does a good job of putting together unsettling events and ramping up the psychological distress of the narrator, but it (ending spoilers)definitely feels like it puts throws a lot of mysteries in the air and shouts "AND SCENE" before they come down. There's a lot of additional clues that reddit seems to have pieced together, but I found the note it ended on pretty unsatisfying. this is one that was written by a reddit r/nosleep guy and, i gotta be honest, it is extremely r/nosleep. like, i think it contains every single trope ----------------
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Oct 24, 2025 21:18
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Just finished Cold Hand in Mine, first Robert Aickman book I've read. It wasn't quite what I expected; has more of an incredibly tense, stressful feel, without releasing the tension. He's an excellent writer line by line too. There were a couple I didn't really vibe with, but overall I liked it a lot. "The Swords" - This started off rather ordinary (the scene in the tent) but the ending was weirder. "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" - moves from a funny beginning as a Regency tale to a very creepy ending. I liked it, but it was rather a list of things happening, given the protagonist's inability to do anything. Still a really impressive bit of character writing. "The Hospice" - this one probably got under my skin the most, with the worry of not being able to find a way home before dark. Or the horror of having to rely on the hospitality of people you don't know. Or the terror of sharing a room with someone you don't know. Also the funniest one. "The Same Dog" - I didn't like this one so much; it didn't add up to much. Kind of obviously a reworking of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. "Meeting Mr Millar" - this one intrigues me the most; it feels rather like a Gene Wolfe story. The narrator begins the story by mentioning his amnesia and mentions forgetting in the very last paragraph, too. So what did the narrator forget? Certainly whatever he saw at the climax, which he tells to Maureen's husband. And why is Maureen's husband so friendly with him? Did Millar actually kill those other business owners and they returned for him, post mortem? By the end, the narrator seems trapped and is apparently having sex with the psychologically-traumatised Maureen. It felt like a social change story as well as a coming of age story; just change for the worse. The sexual angle is a lot like "The Swords". "The Clock Watcher" - something like an allegory of PTSD, modernity, lack of status, the spoils of Empire, but all mixed together... Horrible narrator, but understandable.
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Oct 26, 2025 03:46
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Yeah, "The Hospice" is probably the best story in CHiM, and maybe my favorite Aickman overall. It's just so good at the unrelenting tension and unease in a non-standard horror scenario. It, along with several other Aickman stories, is as close as I've ever read to prose that feels like a real nightmare, complete with the awkwardness and powerlessness that comes with dream scenarios.
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Oct 26, 2025 03:56
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Just finished The Exorcist and it's great. You get a lot more time with the characters than the movies, and of course get in their heads much more. One interesting bit is that it's nearly 1300 pages and the exorcism itself starts around page 1150. I wouldn't say it's slow though, as with the movie that earlier stuff is still just as tense.
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Oct 26, 2025 06:39
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Opopanax posted:Just finished The Exorcist and it's great. You get a lot more time with the characters than the movies, and of course get in their heads much more. One interesting bit is that it's nearly 1300 pages and the exorcism itself starts around page 1150. I wouldn't say it's slow though, as with the movie that earlier stuff is still just as tense. You added a digit here, right? Antivehicular posted:Yeah, "The Hospice" is probably the best story in CHiM, and maybe my favorite Aickman overall. It's just so good at the unrelenting tension and unease in a non-standard horror scenario. It, along with several other Aickman stories, is as close as I've ever read to prose that feels like a real nightmare, complete with the awkwardness and powerlessness that comes with dream scenarios. Would you say it's his best book, then? Or how does it fit into his career?
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Oct 26, 2025 14:36
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Safety Biscuits posted:You added a digit here, right? You know I thought that seemed like a lot, I guess they updated my ereader at some point so that it gives a true page count to whatever I have it set to and I have 40 year old eyes so my text is pretty big. Regardless, it's a very portion of the book
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Oct 26, 2025 15:05
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I got The Exorcist in audiobook form a few years back, and it felt like your average classic horror novel length, so 1000+ pages feels wrong. But also that reminded me that I should give it another listen for spooky month, one mostly forgotten it since I listened with 2020 lockdown brain. e: 
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Oct 26, 2025 15:07
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I read it when it was recommended when this thread visited the haunted clubhouse last year, and I absolutely loved it but it was definitely normal book length lol
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Oct 26, 2025 15:20
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1000 page animorphs on my kindle
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Oct 26, 2025 16:51
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Funny that The Hospice should come up, I just got to that one in The Weird and it's been excellent so far. I love Aickman's prose and his ability to instill creeping dread in absolutely everything the authorial voice falls upon. Nothing has even really happened yet and my inner voice is screaming at this guy to get back in his goddamn car and drive to literally anywhere but here, up to and including a ditch on the side of the road. Maybe it's because I've been replaying Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours lately, but I get strong Grail cult vibes out of this place. I feel like Aickman is going to be a bit above the obvious cannibalism angle, and not knowing what he's going to do (or what the hell is going on with the "cat bite" is really helping to ramp up the tension. All of which reminds me of something I've been meaning to ask. I'm sure there's at least a couple folks in this thread who are Cultist Sim / Book of Hours fans, with its elaborate and excellently-written take on cosmic horror that is less about nihilistic despair and more about obsession, longing, and transformation. I've always wondered what its literary influences are, which is surprisingly hard to search up since Influences are a mechanical term there. For those of you who've played those games, have you run across any horror lit that feels like it might have been an influence on them?
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Oct 26, 2025 20:30
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Conrad_Birdie posted:I know I’ve talked about it here before, but I was apart of the NYPL Best Horror 2025 Committee this year. It was super fun; I read a ton of great books (and also a lot of bad books). Yesterday our top 20 list was finally published (technically our year went from October 2024-October 2025, for Halloween reasons). My library had Whistle available from this list, so I picked it up and enjoyed it. It's a book with two timelines - a current timeline with an author and her young son, and one about a sheriff in a small Vermont town from 2001 investigating an escalating series of odd misfortunes, disappearances and accidents. It's a solid read, moreso for the small town "spooky shop proprietor" storyline than the seemingly cursed children's author storyline. It definitely had some old school Stephen King vibes to it, so I wasn't surprised when in the acknowledgements the author mentioned that King read over the first draft. The author is not great at writing children, so those parts fell a little flat, but I really enjoyed the pseudo-nostalgia of getting to know all the characters in a quiet little Also it made me want to go look at elaborate model train set-ups in weird basements, choo-choo! Enfys fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Oct 27, 2025 |
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Oct 27, 2025 10:44
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I am about halfway through Michael McDowell’s Blackwater and it is excellent. For the most part it’s classic Southern Gothic, focused on the internecine dramas of factions within a wealthy Alabama family, and while this is interesting and well executed, when it switches into full on horror mode he’s an incredibly effective writer. There’s an “oh god what’s in the closet” sequence I read late at night and found myself skimming through because it got to me. I especially appreciate that the perpetuators of the worst things that happen are just as often human as they are supernatural. McDowell as a person is fairly fascinating- he started as a pulp horror writer in the 70s-80s, and once said in and interview “I would be perfectly willing if a publisher came up to me and said, "I need a novel about underwater Nazi cheerleaders and it has to be 309 pages long and I need fourteen chapters and a prologue.” In addition to his career as a horror/mystery writer (writing under a number of pen names) he also wrote the screenplay for Beetlejuice and contributed to that of The Nightmare Before Christmas before dying at 49 of complications related to AIDS. I’m going to stick with his books for a while, next up is his haunted house novel The Elementals. Eta: almost forgot to mention that he wrote the novelization for the movie Clue! Rain Brain fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 28, 2025 |
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Oct 28, 2025 01:50
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We love McDowell here
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Oct 28, 2025 12:59
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Conrad_Birdie posted:We love McDowell here Ah crap I was preaching to the choir!
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Oct 28, 2025 15:32
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Let's see if anybody here has any ideas. I have been invited to perform at a winter variety show, and what I've decided I'd like to do is read a Victorian ghost story. Problem is my slot is going to be around 5 or 6 minutes, and all the ones that I know are around 20 or 30. Does anybody know of any good but relatively short Christmas ghost tales?
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Oct 28, 2025 15:36
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Opopanax posted:Let's see if anybody here has any ideas. I have been invited to perform at a winter variety show, and what I've decided I'd like to do is read a Victorian ghost story. Problem is my slot is going to be around 5 or 6 minutes, and all the ones that I know are around 20 or 30. Does anybody know of any good but relatively short Christmas ghost tales? I don't have a great sense of the max word count you could reasonably expect in 5-6 minutes, but I'd imagine it's gotta be pretty short. This is one of the shorter but still might be too long, Jerry Bundler: https://www.online-literature.com/ww-jacobs/light-freights/11/ This is probably a bit too long: https://americanliterature.com/author/mr-james/short-story/the-story-of-a-disappearance-and-an-appearance This is probably the shortest I know, but it's not really that spooky: https://raincoaster.com/2016/12/02/christmas-ghost-stories-christmas-meeting-by-rosemary-timperley/
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Oct 28, 2025 17:13
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Opopanax posted:Let's see if anybody here has any ideas. I have been invited to perform at a winter variety show, and what I've decided I'd like to do is read a Victorian ghost story. Problem is my slot is going to be around 5 or 6 minutes, and all the ones that I know are around 20 or 30. Does anybody know of any good but relatively short Christmas ghost tales? Would faux-Victorian be acceptable? If so, Robertson Davies used to write a tongue-in-cheek Xmas horror story every year and recite it at some seasonal event at the university of Toronto(? iirc.) Some of those are short. There's a paperback collection of them all called High Spirits. Otherwise, There Was A Man Dwelt By A Churchyard by MR James is pretty short. Going by the Youtube readings of it, that can be done in 5 or 6 minutes. The Old Portrait by Hume Nisbet is super short. So is Transition by Algernon Blackwood. e; hm, those last 2 might still be slightly too long, unless you gabble, going by the length of readings online. Flopstick fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Oct 28, 2025 |
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Oct 28, 2025 17:50
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