The General Horror Book Thread: Between Two Fires fucking RULED! Hell yeah!!!!

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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Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Lake Monsters. Rivers are mostly not deep enough to have very good monsters. Just saying.

edit: :goonsay:

So the third story, Skullpocket Fair, had a very Matthew Bartlett feel to it to me. Not so much in the writing--Bartlett tends to be dream-like snippets whereas this is a loving well-grounded story, but the theme of New England children off for some use by a mysterious gentleman from the underworld and the village cowered and submissive to this need.

edit edit: I am really loving Wounds but it is really lacking the power of the first book IMO

# ¿ Aug 20, 2019 02:19

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# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 18:37

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Mix.

Holy poo poo

# ¿ Aug 20, 2019 04:00

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The Visible Filth just ruined me

# ¿ Aug 23, 2019 06:26

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Just finished Wounds. Goddamn.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2019 19:13

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

The Black Sloth story was pretty great

I like a lot of what he has written but have to agree with OP that the samey protagonists kinda ruins it for me over time.

But really even Laird Barron would agree the world needs more Nathan Ballingrud

# ¿ Aug 29, 2019 05:42

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Wounds trailer is out. Can I post it here or should it go TVIV?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2019 15:47

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

fauna posted:

that one's my favourite

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 08:37

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Len posted:

Are there any other books like Annihilation only good? I really like the style of someone writing about exploring someplace that's just wrong. The Navidson Record was the better part of House of Leaves and the SCPs about that are the best of them.

Audiobooks would be preferred so I could listen in the car and at the gym.

Roadside Picnic but I am not sure if in audiobook.

Also I liked Annihilation :smith:

# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 06:58

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

unpacked robinhood posted:

There are three books but they're mostly backtracking and describing stairs

are they insulated?

# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 02:04

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StrixNebulosa posted:

Anyone in here read Caitlin R Kiernan? Because I finished the Drowning Girl yesterday and it's not horror, but it doesn't really fit into any other thread here. It's haunting me. The imagery and mood of it was just devastating and I keep thinking about it.

Also I don't know if I've ever seen an author insert not one but two full short stories into a work before and they're seamless.

I too liked Drowning Girl, and have a copy of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories in the to read pile.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2019 03:27

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Big sale on
https://pspublishing2.com/?fbclid=IwAR1OiPoYkAZiACzfWm_EVlI3Ig5Pbczt2RAMnKS93Tqx6kMvK5HJ0cgfEzo

# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 04:55

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

szary posted:

I looked it up, the title is 'White Light, White Heat'.

A good Velvet Underground tune as well

# ¿ Dec 4, 2019 22:07

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

The Drowning Girl is also leisurely paced

# ¿ Dec 10, 2019 02:34

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

StrixNebulosa posted:

I love everything about the weird limited edition signed book scene except for the prices. Good lord, Centipede. Good lord, Subterranean. Good lord, Dark Regions.

Hope Caitlyn gets a taste of that at least, I know money concerns aren't far from her mind

# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 17:28

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

books are good as an extra layer of insulation for your home

# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 19:22

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

COOL CORN posted:

What are the best stories to look forward to in North American Lake Monsters? The first story was a great little spook, but "SS" just felt like some slice of life story in a Nazi gang? Was there a monster I missed, or horror at all?

Or am I a dummy and those characters are revisited in a later story?

This post.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2019 07:06

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

j. alfred moonrock posted:

I actually just got back from a mini vacation in Asheville NC, and stopped by Malaprop's... sure enough, left with a signed copy of Wounds.

I loved NALM but I didn't think I'd enjoy Wounds since 'magical realism but with HELL STUFF' didn't seem quite up my alley. But I'm through the first two stories, and I'm loving it. The imagery of the babbling/rumbling skull in "The Atlas of Hell" is amazing, and "The Diabolist" was so sad and wonderfully imaginative.

Hang on to your butt then for the last story

# ¿ Jan 13, 2020 05:14

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Black Griffon posted:

Well, I finally finished NALM. I'd kept putting off the last story, perhaps out of no small degree of trepidation, perhaps because it's hard to end things sometimes. I think the wait made it even better though. In some ways, I feel that all the other stories built up to The Good Husband, and with all the varied strengths of the rest of the tales, this one felt the most like pure horror. Utterly magnificent.

North American Lake Monsters is loving good. Read it if you haven't (though who in this thread haven't?).

The Good Husband is so magnificently :wtc:

it is the perfect capstone to a thoroughly strong series of stories

# ¿ Jan 14, 2020 05:20

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

OK

Where should I start?

# ¿ Jan 16, 2020 06:37

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

can't tell whether it is a property of Ligotti to make a random goon swoon after him like this every few months or if its just a series of reregs of the same goon :iiam:

# ¿ Feb 11, 2020 02:38

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

wrap the cover in a paper bag, the more crinkled the better, and write the title on the cover with crayon

# ¿ Feb 17, 2020 21:25

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

20 Days in Turin rocked

Fisherman was meh. Had good points destroyed by affected try hard prose

I would suggest Laird Barron's Imago Sequence because I want to see your posts about the Black Sloth

# ¿ Feb 21, 2020 07:36

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Black Griffon posted:

I hope Ligotti gets kicked in the head by a horse a year before his death and it cures his anhedonia so he can experience something other than existential dread before he goes.

might help that but it might also interfere with his ability to pass the salt

# ¿ Feb 23, 2020 06:21

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chernobyl kinsman posted:

have you read wuthering heights

Every time this gets recommended I spend half of the day humming Kate Bush its getting pathological

# ¿ Mar 4, 2020 16:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Heard a phrase recently that stuck with me, along the lines of American evangelical Christianity is the best argument against letting theological decisions be made by the laity

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 16:21

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SniperWoreConverse posted:

that poo poo is a death cult and has very little to do with any coherent interpretation of the bible I think. Without question some of the worst people I've ever known have been that kind of capital C Christian.

Oh yeah, I grew up in that world. Its deeply hosed up filled with completely morally rudderless people.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 18:28

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

MockingQuantum posted:

Second, I may have asked this in one of the previous horror threads, but if so I can't find it: What are some horror (or horror adjacent) novels with strong gnostic influence or that have a similar sort of cosmology to them? Besides obvious stuff like Blood Meridian.

Arthur Machen's White People would suit. He was a Golden Dawn type turn of the last century, and his work is heavily influenced by a hermetic/gnostic world view, colored by Welsh folklore. Some really good stuff.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 18:31

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

I haven't yet, embarrassed to admit

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 18:37

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chernobyl kinsman posted:

yeah evangelicals, and in fact a lot of prots, are basically manichaeans. their ideas about satan are wildly at odds with catholicism's

I caught a buddy of mine, who is a ~master :mason:

~ and conservative high Anglican, espousing the Manichean heresy, which did not go over well with him but the rest of that end of the bar had a good laugh.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 18:43

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

SniperWoreConverse posted:

Oh poo poo is this the one where the one guy argues that morality is basically multimodal? Like there is both good and bad and on a different axis there is righteous and evil? Righteous things can be bad etc? If it's the one i'm thinking of it fits with the horror adjacency thing but I think is not ultra intense. Worth reading once or twice.

Or wait I think there's a similarly named one about a guy who falls in love with a inbred woman from wales or some rural anglo zone, and it doesn't go well, but it's not really gnostic. Actually I can't remember the name of that one at all.

vOv
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_People

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 18:44

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

deffo in for a gang tag

# ¿ Mar 9, 2020 05:18

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Unfortunately my eyes have been burned out by the horrors I've seen from too many years on SA so I can't see the gang tag right now

(Read: I'll look I to this for y'all later to ight when I'm off work)

Many thanks for all your clickins HA!

# ¿ Mar 10, 2020 05:41

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

escape artist posted:

What do you think of Matthew Bartlett?

I drunk-ordered one of his books and I'm digging his style.

Pretty outrageous and funny. I've read a few of his chapbooks and its a unique take on weird horror

While searching the library here for any Ligotti (they have Grimscribe but you can only read it in the archival reading room), I found the following article, the title alone could go into the OP:

Smiles of Oblivion: Demonic Clowns and Doomed Puppets as Fantastic Figures of Absurdity, Chaos, and Misanthropy in the Writings of Thomas Ligotti

I downloaded the PDF for shits and giggles

e. oh god the second paragraph, this is gold

quote:

Drawing upon Mikhail Bakhtin and Francois Rabelais, Jack Morgan in his �Dark Carnival� chapter of The Biology of Horror emphasizes how �laughter is worked by the horror imagination for its own antithetical purposes� (139). Just as the maniacal laughter of the Joker entails malice, laughter in horror literature tends toward entropy: the frenzied fragmentation of personality into the spaces of madness and death. Literary horror has explored the clown's ability to dismantle conventional truths. The horrific clown exists as a liminal figure�lurking between accustomed categories and undercutting its victims� sense of reality. With Thomas Ligotti the evil clown figure assumes its most philosophically and psychologically devastating guise. The clown in Ligotti is not simply a marker of reversals, disorder, and chaos in the universe but rather exemplifies the fragmenting dynamic of Ligotti's misanthropic metaphysics where entropic madness disintegrates rational identity. The subversion of the rational is manifest with clown figures generically because of their defiance of pretensions to order and understanding. In Ligotti's narratives of clowning horror these apocalyptic jesters as well as doomed puppets display a malignancy that is dehumanizing and anti‐anthrocentric. In the exploration of Ligotti's demonic clowns an analysis of the tendencies of his corporate horror is also relevant because the annihilating nonsense of the clowns is the other side of the coin of the mysteriously ordered conspiratorial corporate horror of inescapable punishment, injustice, and hierarchical oppression. These seem to be contradictory models of malign order and malign disorder: organized conspiratorial malignancy and chaotic random nonsense, but in fact they are both systems of Ligottian anti‐anthrocentrism because they attack the integrity of the human mind and spirit. This anti‐anthrocentrism is also manifest in Ligotti's writing style which clowns the reader by subverting narrative expectations of a stable setting. Ligotti's �The Last Feast of Harlequin,� �The Clown Puppet,� and �The Bells Will Sound Forever,� evoke aggressive humor and outright horror where the clown‐figure not only signals carnivalesque fantastic reversals but also acts as a misanthropic metaphor for the universal degradation of humanity.2

# ¿ Mar 11, 2020 20:04

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

OpenSourceBurger posted:

Hey everybody. I have a sort of specific subgenre/trope? of horror lit I'm wondering if anyone could help find more examples of. I'm working through Universal Harvester and I'm really interested in more horror/thriller books with a focus on strange, disturbing or otherwordly media. Like weird unknown tapes, audio files of disturbing stuff, etc. A good example would be Night Film where the book is focused on a series of lost and disturbing giallo horror films and a search for their creator.

Found Audio

MockingQuantum posted:

As a non-recommendation, avoid Found Audio by NJ Campbell. It ostensibly fits the whole "found audio tapes" horror trope but it's a pretty bad book that really squanders the premise, and is just generally poorly written.

Eh its not so bad. As I recall, a lot of you criticized before I can easily attribute to story driven mechanisms.

Plus part of it is set in the Kowloon Walled City and who can dislike that

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Apr 20, 2020

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 23:45

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Vastarien posted:

Here's a video of David Tibet (of Current 93) accepting the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Ligotti. Ligotti's acceptance speech reads... pretty much exactly how you'd imagine.

https://youtu.be/PXdE3mq-OZc?t=822

I found it to be a touching and compassionate statement.

I will also now be meditating on every element in David's wardrobe. Fantastically put together fellow

# ¿ Apr 21, 2020 02:34

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

the_enduser posted:

Finally got around to Laird Barron's Blood Standard but was really hoping for more horror. It was decent for straight up crime novel but is there any thing with more horror vibes?

Also got around to Night Film and that was pretty great, really into the cursed objects/film stuff. Not sure where to go next from there though, I've seen a few recommendations in the thread already, just don't know which to pull the trigger on. I think it was Experimental Film and the one with the kid and VHS that I can't remember the name of.

Was the main character a tough, hard drinking, hard boiled gumshoe who likes the dames?

# ¿ Jun 11, 2020 22:15

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Ornamented Death posted:

At this point I'm just kind of confused. By and large the consensus seemed to be "Yeah this was a real lovely thing you've done and you need to have a timeout to work on not being a creeper," and everyone expected Matt would do the work and be a better person. No one was really calling for him to be canceled. Then he decided to blow it all up for some stupid rear end reason or another and here we are.

there is a lot of psychological pressure due to *waves generally everywhere*

# ¿ Jun 30, 2020 20:48

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Clipperton posted:

spotted in tofino british columbia, it's a regular tourist gallery place but the name (and tentacles) made me unaccountably happy

with lovecraft's name in the nerd news again though it could lead to some pretty loving uncomfortable conversations for the owner

disappointed its not a sex shop

# ¿ Aug 6, 2020 19:48

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Lester Shy posted:

https://twitter.com/NBallingrud/status/1291834740182528000

He says later in the thread that four of the episodes are based on stories from NALM, the other four are original stories by the show's writing staff.

Oh god that first story in NALM

# ¿ Aug 8, 2020 06:43

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# ¿ Apr 16, 2024 18:37

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escape artist posted:

Anyone read Gateways to Abomination or Creeping Waves?

I really like the Leeds universe

Yeah loved Gateways. Also recently read If it Bleeds. I like what he does

# ¿ Aug 18, 2020 01:45

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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