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DurianGray posted:I just had to flip through my copy. What exactly do you mean by it having a split ending? Just like the last chapter and then the epilogue? I read it as the house (fascism) not necessarily always having as much control as it thinks it does, but that doesn't mean it's not still a threat. Even when you 'win' against it, you still have to stay vigilant since it's always there as background radiation. I think there's also the sort of note of hope with the line of the award-winning photograph, (it also says "They don't know that yet." which implies they lived), something came out of it that hopefully moved people.
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Apr 20, 2023 19:31
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zoux posted:Do you guys ever get actually scared by literature? I was thinking about this, I'm not sure that I've ever been scared by a book in the same way I have been by scary movies, in that "I'm a grown rear end man but I don't feel comfortable going to bed tonight with my closet door open" sense. I certainly find horror compelling, thrilling, interesting, disturbing, and other such reactions, and I feel anxiety or fear for characters in these stories, but idk why books just don't scare me. I had a horrible nightmare after reading the first chunk of The Day of the Triffids, which is a really compelling depiction of societal breakdown (it's a shame the second half is just the "ten women for every man!" scene from Dr Strangelove played straight).
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Apr 20, 2023 19:41
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Halfway through Library of Mount Char - which fuckin owns - and would you guys call that urban fantasy or horror
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Apr 20, 2023 20:06
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zoux posted:Halfway through Library of Mount Char - which fuckin owns - and would you guys call that urban fantasy or horror Dark fantasy I guess? It has some horror elements but I wouldn't call it a horror novel. That was a fun book.
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Apr 20, 2023 20:14
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zoux posted:Halfway through Library of Mount Char - which fuckin owns - and would you guys call that urban fantasy or horror It's sui generis baby e: Americana horror with curtis lemay characteristics
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Apr 20, 2023 21:10
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zoux posted:I did read a book one time that promised a monster at the end...but I was too scared to go on you’re joking but as a kid this was my first experience with a frisson of enjoyable dread and I probably wouldn’t be into horror novels now if it wasn’t for that
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Apr 20, 2023 21:24
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:you’re joking but as a kid this was my first experience with a frisson of enjoyable dread and I probably wouldn’t be into horror novels now if it wasn’t for that Hell me too, that book imprinted a love of horror on my child brain, I think
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Apr 20, 2023 21:52
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gey muckle mowser posted:Dark fantasy I guess? It has some horror elements but I wouldn't call it a horror novel. That was a fun book. I picked up Mount Char because the John Dies At The End guy recced on it on the blurb and it rules. Its not "horror" in some ways and is in others but I'd settle on dark fantasy too. Bilirubin posted:The last time I got scared while reading was around the same age and it was a haunted house story in a Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone anthology. I don't get scared by like monsters jumping out of a closet or anything while reading, but books can do existential horror better than any other medium- while I've mentioned it, John Dies is just kinda weird and funny and chaotic when there's a monster around but when characters think or talk about suicidal ideation or how we live in a society its scary.
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Apr 20, 2023 22:09
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I just want to apologize for being cunty about The Strange. It has some charm to it. It's hard to live up to NALM and Wounds, especially in a genre I normally avoid
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Apr 21, 2023 04:01
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After 14 loving years, Mike Carey is finally releasing a new Felix Castor book in July.
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Apr 21, 2023 10:18
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Is Eyes of the Dragon ok for an 11 year old? I remember it being pretty all ages but it's been over 20 years since I read it so I don't remember much
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Apr 21, 2023 17:44
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Avram Davidson's The Boss in The Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil which I've recommended numerous times in this thread is free on Amazon for the next 5 days.
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Apr 23, 2023 23:52
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fez_machine posted:Avram Davidson's The Boss in The Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil which I've recommended numerous times in this thread is free on Amazon for the next 5 days. It's good and pretty unique, I also heartily recommend it.
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Apr 24, 2023 02:38
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Opopanax posted:Is Eyes of the Dragon ok for an 11 year old? I remember it being pretty all ages but it's been over 20 years since I read it so I don't remember much Steven King? There's sex stuff iirc. Like weird king style sex stuff but not the sewer orgy I think I might still have my copy it's probably not work the ~60-75% of my stuff that got destroyed, so if you want I can double check SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Apr 24, 2023 |
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Apr 24, 2023 03:56
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Steven King? There's sex stuff iirc. Like weird king style sex stuff but not the sewer orgy I have one just debating giving it to him, he's going through a fantasy and horror phase. I'm going to reread it anyways I just have a few books on my list first before I'll get to it.
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Apr 24, 2023 04:06
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Opopanax posted:I have one just debating giving it to him, he's going through a fantasy and horror phase. I'm going to reread it anyways I just have a few books on my list first before I'll get to it. If he's in that phase then yeah, just give it to him. Kids are very good at feeling out whether they're ready for a book or not, and they will drop it without hesitation if they're not. You can't do any harm here. They're also usually much more ready for books than adults tend to think they are, and if it's pushing their boundaries a little (but not too much, in which case they'll abandon it), they tend to appreciate it - at least, this has been my experience with kids who like to read enough that they go through genre phases. Edit: Tying back to the earlier discussion of getting scared by literature, reading Lovecraft and King at around 11-12 definitely scared me, but I liked it, because it was scary in a way I was completely in control over. I'd get too spooked and just put the book down for a while, play some Final Fantasy or what-have-you, and a little while later I'd be good to go again and excited to do so. Kestral fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Apr 24, 2023 |
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Apr 24, 2023 04:10
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OTOH usually when I give him a book it just sits on his shelf for a few months while he does yet another reread of Calvin and Hobbes so he'll probably age into it by the time he reads it
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Apr 24, 2023 04:21
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If it helps I distinctly recall that the king eats a booger in that book
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Apr 24, 2023 05:22
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i remember some chick not knowing what a dick was while about to get hosed, the magician purposefully hyperventilating to avoid dying while cooking the magic allegory for meth or w/e, and the prince escaping by climbing a rope made of his own hair (maybe?) which broke i don't remember the dragon
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Apr 24, 2023 06:07
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Just started reading ligotti for the first time, a dual collection of songs of a dead dreamer and grimscribe. It sometimes is terribly, awesomely effective and I love it. And then it whiplashes into what I can only describe as wankery? Like, of the worst kind. The nyctalops poo poo was really awful, although the second part with the corpse magicians assistant was kind of fun once you peeled back the awful prose. I'm going to keep going but so far it's been 1 or two hits for 3 or 4 duds Edit I guess when you think about it, that's not a completely bad hit rate. Are there collections out there where it's just banger after banger? Even barron who is my favorite has some absolute dreck.
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Apr 24, 2023 06:36
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Opopanax posted:OTOH usually when I give him a book it just sits on his shelf for a few months while he does yet another reread of Calvin and Hobbes so he'll probably age into it by the time he reads it If my own childhood is anything to judge by, the trick is to leave books with interesting covers out on a table somewhere and, when asked what it is, to feign indifference. Also, your son has excellent taste, well done.
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Apr 24, 2023 07:21
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SniperWoreConverse posted:i remember some chick not knowing what a dick was while about to get hosed, the magician purposefully hyperventilating to avoid dying while cooking the magic allegory for meth or w/e, and the prince escaping by climbing a rope made of his own hair (maybe?) which broke That's because it's a trophy mounted on the wall. The sex scene in Eyes of the Dragon is decidedly weird because King wrote the book for his daughter so she'd have a book of his that she could enjoy. But that's the Cocaine Years for you.
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Apr 24, 2023 10:31
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zoux posted:Halfway through Library of Mount Char - which fuckin owns - and would you guys call that urban fantasy or horror Half way through this as well, is fun. I also finished blindsight.. that was pretty fun.... Highly technically poo poo go through your going to need to know about scramjets and other hard science to have an idea of what's going on in summer sections. They don't explain a lot of it just make drop the theoretical tech that that's been used in sci-fi novels for years Both are fairly short I was able to get through them both this weekend but I was reading hours a day. Wendigee fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Apr 24, 2023 |
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Apr 24, 2023 11:15
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fez_machine posted:Avram Davidson's The Boss in The Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil which I've recommended numerous times in this thread is free on Amazon for the next 5 days. Maybe it’s because I’m on my phone right now, but I checked thru the Amazon app & the Kindle app and it doesn’t seem to be free. EDIT: Weird; it worked using Safari & just going to Amazon there. Thanks & good looking out! C2C - 2.0 fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Apr 24, 2023 |
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Apr 24, 2023 11:24
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sephiRoth IRA posted:Just started reading ligotti for the first time, a dual collection of songs of a dead dreamer and grimscribe. imo these are his least enjoyable collections and you should just put them down and read Teatro Grottesco or The Conspiracy Against The Human Race
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Apr 24, 2023 14:57
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I had the same experience but ultimately I stuck with those collections and I’m glad I did, because even though Ligotti is sometimes simply jerking off for all to see a bunch of the stories are really memorable and cool and make you want to play a horror TTRPG campaign in them
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Apr 24, 2023 16:03
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Skyscraper posted:imo these are his least enjoyable collections and you should just put them down and read Teatro Grottesco or The Conspiracy Against The Human Race I'd agree they're both weaker than Teatro Grottesco but I don't think they should be skipped entirely, they both have some really great stories, unfortunately I can never remember which ones are the good ones and which are skippable. Even some of the worse ones can be enjoyable if you read them in the context that they're what you get when Ligotti is being "playful" or as close to it as he can get. Songs of a Dead Dreamer is the weaker of the two iirc, I know Grimscribe has Nethescurial and The Last Feast of the Harlequin which are both good, there are a few other ones too
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Apr 24, 2023 17:48
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MockingQuantum posted:I'd agree they're both weaker than Teatro Grottesco but I don't think they should be skipped entirely, they both have some really great stories, unfortunately I can never remember which ones are the good ones and which are skippable. Even some of the worse ones can be enjoyable if you read them in the context that they're what you get when Ligotti is being "playful" or as close to it as he can get. I agree with you but if someone is starting out reading Ligotti I'd rather they start by enjoying his best work than get turned away by a very mixed bag.
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Apr 25, 2023 02:31
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Skyscraper posted:I agree with you but if someone is starting out reading Ligotti I'd rather they start by enjoying his best work than get turned away by a very mixed bag. Oh that's fair, I missed the post that started the discussion. Yeah in that case it's Teatro Grottesco hands-down
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Apr 25, 2023 02:36
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The last bigass Ligotti collection I read included one of his stories twice in a row. I kept waiting for some mind melting time is a flat circle twist on the second one but it was just the same thing twice 
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Apr 25, 2023 03:47
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Teattro Grotesco has that scene with the woman dipping hot dogs into mayo which literally makes me nauseous when I think about it
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Apr 25, 2023 03:59
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zoux posted:Do you guys ever get actually scared by literature? I was thinking about this, I'm not sure that I've ever been scared by a book in the same way I have been by scary movies, in that "I'm a grown rear end man but I don't feel comfortable going to bed tonight with my closet door open" sense. I certainly find horror compelling, thrilling, interesting, disturbing, and other such reactions, and I feel anxiety or fear for characters in these stories, but idk why books just don't scare me. Okay I thought of a good answer. Smear by Brian Evanson really freaks me out. It's not hide in my room under my covers scared but it makes me intensely uncomfortable. It's short, give it a read.
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Apr 25, 2023 04:00
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The Dreamer/Grimscribe collection is front loaded with the weakest stories. I don't know whose idea it was to put Frolic first but I've never met anyone who liked it. I have a soft spot for Dr Thoss and Dream of a Manikin, but I don't think it gets good until Masquerade of a Dead Sword.
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Apr 25, 2023 04:46
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Did the Mother Horse Eyes reddit guy ever put out a book? I accept that some of the mystique is lost when it's removed from the format of connected, wild flash fiction couched in the comments of r/Biking, but I liked his style and the world he built.Opopanax posted:OTOH usually when I give him a book it just sits on his shelf for a few months while he does yet another reread of Calvin and Hobbes so he'll probably age into it by the time he reads it You should follow his example. Calvin and Hobbes is eternal. (i'm stoked for whatever that new comic Watterson's got coming out in October turns out to be)
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Apr 25, 2023 06:39
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did i first hear about conjunctions from the forums or somewhere else??? drat.
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Apr 25, 2023 07:18
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MockingQuantum posted:I'd agree they're both weaker than Teatro Grottesco but I don't think they should be skipped entirely, they both have some really great stories, unfortunately I can never remember which ones are the good ones and which are skippable. Even some of the worse ones can be enjoyable if you read them in the context that they're what you get when Ligotti is being "playful" or as close to it as he can get. See, I'd argue for Ligotti as a genuinely very playful writer who does a surprising amount of pastiche and homage, but like you say, I think that accounts for some of his weakest and his best work alike. Some of his best stuff in TG (I think!) is heavily influenced by the playfulness of the European theatre of the absurd - in particular Ligotti seems to fall in love with the idea of a nameless Kafkaesque protagonist or community that gets swept up in a bizarre system of rules and procedures and ends up accepting the truly unacceptable, and he has a ton of fun with the inhumanity of modern corporate jargon as well: The Town Manager, Our Temporary Supervisor, In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land are great starting places for his work, but they're also genuinely very funny. But you also have these very baroque and stylised pieces about Poe-inspired villains whose function is usually to expound on a pessimistic philosophy at length as they defeat or devour the helpless protagonist (The Frolic would be the very first and worst example), and they generally end up being...at times a little twee, which is a weird descriptor to hang on an author who's usually considered the bleakest of the bleak. I generally know instantly if I'm going to like a Ligotti story or not, because the ones that don't work for me are the ones about eccentric and mysterious professors, pretentious serial killers and puppet-makers, whose names are often openly silly and ornate in an Edward Gorey or Lemony Snicket way. Grimscribe, Dr Voke and Mr Veech, Severini...
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Apr 25, 2023 11:06
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I rarely see it mentioned in this thread, but I quite enjoyed My Work Is Not Yet Done too.
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Apr 25, 2023 11:48
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General Battuta posted:Okay I thought of a good answer. Smear by Brian Evanson really freaks me out. It's not hide in my room under my covers scared but it makes me intensely uncomfortable. It's short, give it a read. Oh, that's what happens during a jaunt.
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Apr 25, 2023 15:02
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Frolic is one of my favorite Ligotti stories and I’ve read all of his collections multiple times. I don’t understand the hate for it.
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Apr 25, 2023 18:52
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General Battuta posted:Okay I thought of a good answer. Smear by Brian Evanson really freaks me out. It's not hide in my room under my covers scared but it makes me intensely uncomfortable. It's short, give it a read. That was a good read but I can't help but feel that dissociating so totally would be a pretty good way to ride out your time given the circumstances.
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Apr 25, 2023 20:19
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