The General Horror Book Thread: Between Two Fires fucking RULED! Hell yeah!!!! - The Something Awful Forums

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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The General Horror Book Thread: Between Two Fires fucking RULED! Hell yeah!!!!

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Stephen King loving sucks poo poo and all his books suck poo poo and since there is a general thread to say it I am glad to finally be free to say it

# ¿ May 15, 2018 17:39

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:31

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

MockingQuantum posted:

There's also a Stephen King thread, you could say it there too. I've read and enjoyed a lot of Stephen King and I'm not even sure I can disagree.

They get mad when you say it though

Also, everyone should read Michael McDowell

# ¿ May 15, 2018 17:41

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Oxxidation posted:

joe hill is worse than his father by an order of magnitude

you cannot multiply by zero

IT is trash and anyone who says its their favorite book is also trash

# ¿ May 15, 2018 18:43

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I have a problem where the concepts I find most horrifying are also the concepts I most strongly oppose logically.

Like, things that haunt me are also things I find deeply frustrating to experience and consider

# ¿ May 15, 2018 19:36

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Popular Human posted:

I picked up The Elementals

Dope

Franchescanado posted:

Care to elaborate or provide some examples?

Ideas of eternal damnation or tortured souls in particular, especially when they are based on arbitrary things. Basically anything where the moral order of the universe allows for a perpetual state of punishment.

# ¿ May 15, 2018 20:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Upon reflection, I really like Body Horror although I tend to prefer it as a dressing in a larger story than the main focus

Like it sounds weird, but one of the most horrifying stories I can remember reading is from this non-horror book called The Illuminations and one of the chapters was about a woman who got an incurable and inexplicable oral ulcer that caused chronic distracting pain and it haunted me

# ¿ May 15, 2018 20:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Oxxidation posted:

funnily enough the end of king's novel Deliverance is one of the nastier if less subtle takes i've seen on that concept

pity about the 300 or so pages that precede it

I read about the ending to Revival which hits that spot but apparently the book is terrible and I already am on record wrt King sucking rear end

# ¿ May 15, 2018 20:20

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Relevant Tangent posted:

Roko's Basilisk style or just arbitrary Demiurge style?

Nah Roko's Basilisk doesn't do it for me because stuff like I have no mouth isn't scary as much as its just dumb

Relevant Tangent posted:

Maximum Overdrive is good tho.

I concede this point

# ¿ May 15, 2018 23:59

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

UCS Hellmaker posted:

Barkers biggest issue is he somehow makes Grossout horror happen in book form. He massively tends to detail out exactly what horror is happening to a person has they are killed. Also if you in any way do not like gay imagery god he loves to detail out cock.

Yeah he was one of the founders of splatterpunk

# ¿ May 16, 2018 00:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Pistol_Pete posted:

In short, this book owns and everyone should read it.

This reminds me that everyone should read Paperbacks from Hell

Its a visual history of radical horror novel covers and concepts

# ¿ May 22, 2018 14:58

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

So I just got done reading Kwaidan which is a book of ancient buddhist ghost stories and it owned

# ¿ Apr 17, 2019 13:46

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Pththya-lyi posted:

Best one is either "Hoichi the Earless" or "Yuki-Onna," change my mind

I realized that Gargoyle story in Tales from the Darkside is literally just Yuki-Onna

I am a fan of how ridiculous Rokurokobi is and how its basically a story of what would happen if Ash from Evil Dead was a Buddhist Monk.

My favorite is probably The Dream of Akinosuke or The Story of Aoyagi

Its funny how many of the stories are "I married this hot chick and whoops she's a ghost"

I mean, Hoichi the Earless is loving great. I am a fan

Bilirubin posted:

link that poo poo up my good man

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1210

Skyscraper posted:

Have you seen the movie, and if so how did it stack up?

I am gonna watch it on Criterion Channel here in a few days so I will let you know

# ¿ Apr 17, 2019 15:43

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Pththya-lyi posted:

Dudes in folklore are always marrying supernatural women, and always failing to keep the simple precautions that would let them (or force them to) stay

The funny thing is that in most of the stories nothing bad even happens to the dude for marrying a ghost. Like Yuki-Onna is the only bad one and even then not really.

Its more like "We have been happily married for many years bee tee dubs I am a ghost wooooooo" and she disappears the end

# ¿ Apr 17, 2019 15:53

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mujina is also a really fun story because you can almost envision a bunch of japanese kids telling it around a campfire with flashlights under their faces in the way its paced

# ¿ Apr 17, 2019 15:56

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I am still smiling at the fact that halfway through the book the author is like "And now, the story of the monk who kicked all sorts of rear end"

# ¿ Apr 18, 2019 19:02

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

hey guys I have been on a horror kick recently fostered by reading like three McDowell novels in a row and I want some more good literary horror

I read Robert Aickman and liked it.

I read Paul Trembalay and didn't like it.

Any diamonds in the rough are a big plus. Like yeah I know Shirley Jackson yadda yadda. Give me some poo poo I wouldn't hear about doing a google search.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2020 19:27

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Ghosts had three big issues for me.

1.) The prose was terrible. His attempt to mimic the cadence and style of a sardonic millennial girl was legitimately painful to read

2.) There is almost nothing worse than a stupid character the book keeps trying to convince you is smart. The only thing worse than that is a writer having a writer character in a book who has other characters complement them on their writing. Its oppressively masturbatory.

3.) He seems to think themes are "things I show happen" instead of "ideas that saturate the text." Like, the idea of a person surreptitiously working through their emotional baggage by anonymously doing a critical analysis of their own experience for a publication is a cool idea. But, they never do anything with it other than have it happen and go "WOW HOW META"

# ¿ Feb 19, 2020 20:16

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Also since you guys have been discovering McDowell, which is great, has anyone else read Cold Moon Over Babylon? I want to discuss it but I don't know anyone who has read it.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2020 20:29

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Ok, putting together a list

Night Film by Marisha Pessl
The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
The Fisherman by John Langan
Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson
The Toll by Cherie Priest
A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 19:29

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

PsychedelicWarlord posted:

Didn't the italics in Night Film drive you nuts though? I couldn't focus on the story

Havent read it yet

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 22:47

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Chernobyl were you the one who rec'd Twenty Days of Turin way back?

Because that was good poo poo

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 23:51

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

anilEhilated posted:

Actually this is a great idea.

Anyhow, is there any other must read McDowell other than Blackwater and The Elementals? I tried The Amulet and honestly wasn't too impressed, felt a bit too like Stephen King. Then again, it was his first novel, so any other recommendations?

Cold Moon Over Babylon is cool but its weird because it is definitely his most superficial novel. I enjoyed it, but it has no ambition greater than to read like a spec script for an episode of Tales From the Crypt. It has a really cool twist halfway through though that simultaneously briefly elevates it but then also kind of leaves it with little to move the story forward.

It also exposes my one genuine problem with McDowell, which is that his villains are terrible. His characters are so well written and so human and so meditated but when there is a "bad guy" in his stories they are always just "bad dudes".

Like, every character in the Elementals is really well written and really great to read about and then Lawton pops up and is just such a superficial "bad guy"

# ¿ Feb 21, 2020 17:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Thomas Ligotti seems like the kind of dude I would force to get drunk and watch Wrestlemania

# ¿ Feb 23, 2020 02:43

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Blackwater is an investment but it is his peerless work imho

# ¿ Feb 25, 2020 21:09

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

COOL CORN posted:

Yeah I'm about halfway through it and it's insanely good. I mean, it's 90% southern gothic family politics, and 10% terror, but it's still a really good read.

Its also the closest in content to The Elementals in that it is set around the legacy of families and three neighboring houses and ghosts the traumatic legacy left behind by controlling mothers

They are so close in both when they were written and in the content that I suspect Elementals opened up a whole bunch of buried skeletons in his psyche he had to write Blackwater to get rid of

# ¿ Feb 25, 2020 21:27

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Aesthetically I preferred the original covers but I do think the Valancourt anthologized version is more "honest" to the story tbh

# ¿ Feb 26, 2020 00:41

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chernobyl kinsman posted:

i just keep recommending it bc i didnt really understand what was going on with the photo/drawing of the woman and the deformed baby and im hoping eventually someone explains it to me

I have a theory

There are actually two supernatural forces at play in the story one is that the family is cursed by the dead wife who ate her own baby. That is why the ending line of "these babies are Savages" is meant to suggest that they have inherited a sort of darkness from the family legacy that will pass down the generations.

The elementals, on the other hand, are simply a supernatural force of nature that are empowered by being near the curse. If the Savages were not near those houses, the Elementals would never show up or care. Its also why the oil company never had a problem with the area after the Savages sold the land. Its not enough for the elementals to be present, they have to be present around a darkness to empower them, which the Savages have

Alternatively, who cares spooky don't need answers

# ¿ Feb 26, 2020 04:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Anyone ever read Edogawa Ranpo?

He was apparently the father of Ero Guro Nansensu (Erotic Grotesque Nonsense) a short lived literary style from 1930s Japan and it sounds insanely my poo poo

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 18:08

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Erotic Grotesque Nonsense

Incredibly violent and perverse crime stories that reached its peak following the real life story of a geisha who cut off her lover's penis and wore it as a necklace under her kimono

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 18:13

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I do like Junji Ito

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 18:27

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

yeah, body horror is the only kind of horror that "gets" me. Like, body horror is the only horror genre that consistently actually causes me to be unnerved or horrified. Videodrome is one of my all time favorite movies.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2020 18:34

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Some of the Edogawa Ranpo I ordered arrived today and the first story was about a man who turned himself into a chair so he could be sat on by women and hell yeah this is gonna own

# ¿ Mar 27, 2020 21:57

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:31

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

my big issue with ellis is that all the ideas and themes he is obsessed with are just so utterly boring and pointless

# ¿ May 20, 2020 18:24

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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The General Horror Book Thread: Between Two Fires fucking RULED! Hell yeah!!!!

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