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Slyphic posted:One of the books named Last Days is a solid horror story about a gumshoe running down iirc a missing person in a cult. But damned if I can ever remember which of the three horror novels from the mid 2010s named Last Days that was. Lazy rear end publishers... Last Days by Adam Nevill? I read a few of his books (well, listened) and this is the one enjoyed most. I've also read the Reddening and Cunning Folk, both of which enjoyed less because it didn't seem like anything was really happening besides the good guys trying to survive/thwart the bad guys. Last Days was legitimately a good read and things were moving, there was a thread of consequences in that one vs the others. Can anyone rec a horror novel with good plot unity? Tired of these survival style books that don't have much story beyond the trying to survive part
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Aug 9, 2024 13:22
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Kestral posted:Speaking of books that take themselves seriously, I finally got around to reading Bird Box. Jesus christ that book is intense. I can't imagine how they made a movie out of it, it seems like the definition of unfilmable.
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Aug 16, 2024 13:32
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zoux posted:I like horror novels better than short stories. I agree because what makes horror enjoyable for me is atmosphere and tension, neither of which a short story has enough space to establish. Short stories are good for horror premises/concepts but not plot imo. I tend to avoid story collections from horror authors because I'm apprehensive that it'll just be one interesting premise after another. Same with Lovecraft, I can't actually the Call of Cthulhu a story because it isn't one. It's a fictional essay.
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Aug 22, 2024 12:57
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caspergers posted:Listening to another book by Bird Box author called Incidents Around the House. I just finished and I hate it. What is the deal with horror books not having endings? I'm tired of the whole absurdism angle as a lovely excuse for poor writing. Night Film by Marisha Pessl was a frustrating ending but I guess it kind of had a point? This one kinda established what the metaphor of the story is about 80% in which is fine but then now that we know what's happening there's no reason to resolve it. Let's just have everyone die instead of learning anything. I get that evil can't be killed, but this whole "the ending is pointless because life is pointless! Did anyone else read Incidents Around the House? If so I'd like to hear your thoughts. At least someone who's better at rationalizing things
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Aug 22, 2024 14:41
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Tiny Timbs posted:I think one thing I liked a lot about Ballingrud’s collections is that each story felt like a complete thought. He doesn’t seem to fall into this trap as much (that fallen angels story maybe qualifies). Aight I'll check eem out (literally)
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Aug 22, 2024 20:57
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anilEhilated posted:I don't give a poo poo about character psychology, writing quality or even if it's tense or scary at all - just in it for the monsters. If there isn't a monster, I lose interest. ahahaha you and I are totally opposite people but I have a tremendous amount of respect for you
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Aug 23, 2024 00:34
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szary posted:"The Deep" by Nick Cutter seems extremely divisive, but I liked it I would like to read some Darcy Coates, and forgive me for being so superficial, but those covers are awful and trick me into thinking they'll be bad
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Aug 29, 2024 12:31
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R.L. Stine posted:Nabbed as many of those as I could get my hands on, thanks. Only one I've read was Red Rabbit, it was pretty cozy. I started Brian Evenson's Last Days a while ago but just couldn't make it through the beginning. I'll have to give it another go, I've heard good things and I'm always down for cults. Same, I just have trouble with books where you're thrown into the middle of the action. Don't get me wrong, the premise/inciting incident ought to be established within the first chapter, but I'd at least like one introductory scene that makes me give a poo poo about the character before throwing him into this conundrum. I understand why an author wants to do this, put the reader in the same emotional state as the character etc. Nevertheless, it's hard to invest in such a chaotic opening of a book. Action off top does not make it more interesting imo. Big Mad Drongo posted:A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs is two novellas, I really liked the first, was meh on the second. Total opposite for me lol. I liked the first novella enough, I dug the fascist regime aspect of it but I have a hard time enjoying characters who are academics/intellectuals; also I might just be stupid but I didn't really "get" the first novella. The second on the other hand I absolutely loved; horror with a detective feel to it really keeps me immersed, and also a narrator fresh off a tragedy helped me sympathize. I'd like to read Southern Gods but it seems like it has a very similar plot/premise, so I'm on the fence if anyone wants to convince me. Kubricize posted:Nestlings by Nat Cassidy. I got this one right after Mary but I am struggling through it. caspergers fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Nov 28, 2024 |
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Nov 28, 2024 16:18
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Anyone got any good detective horror? Preferably not too campy, something with a serious tone
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Nov 30, 2024 03:25
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Thanks fellas, I'll dig in
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Nov 30, 2024 21:10
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Rolo posted:How’s The Fisherman? Not a very traditional approach to storytelling, so you might find it frustrating. I honestly just liked the atmosphere, the prose and the characters. Plot-wise there doesn't seem to be a lot of unity, but maybe I missed the point.
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Dec 11, 2024 22:19
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Listening to this book called Twelve Nights at Rotter House by this JW Ocker, and boy. I just love authors who substitute style for pop culture references. Honestly that's the only way my imagination can work, with the endless listings of horror movie titles (AND their directors). It's like the haunted house equivalent of Ready Player One. It isn't nauseating or tiresome at all.
caspergers fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Dec 12, 2024 |
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Dec 11, 2024 23:20
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value-brand cereal posted:Oh that book. Lmao that it has the plot twist of cuckolding. No really.. Or maybe that's just my interpretation. Lmaos. That's like every episode of Black Mirror
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Dec 12, 2024 00:13
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I personally prefer a transcript of the audiobook and then text-to-speech
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Dec 12, 2024 03:07
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quadrata posted:I was lukewarm about The Fisherman but it has an unusually layered structure that I found interesting. It struck me at one point that the narrator was retelling a story he heard from another character, about a third character who interviewed a fourth character with personal experience of the events, but also described in detail the experiences of a fifth character. That's kinda the thing, it was interesting but there didn't seem to be enough time dedicated to arc of the two characters bookending the story for it to have any significance. so one guy wants his family back and seems to get it, but the other is like "that obviously is NOT your family, bucko", so honestly my only takeaway from the book is: the past is dead and dwelling on it will kill you faster; reminds me of an Auden poem called "Another Time" and one line reads "Another time has other lives to live". So that's a pretty fine little sentiment and all, but I really don't understand the significance of the leviathan and why the Fisherman was trying to catch it; is it a metaphor? Somebody help me tf out, I clearly have bad reading comprehension
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Jan 8, 2025 15:48
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Read Nestlings. It sucked.
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Jan 11, 2025 02:17
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What are you guys talking about
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Jan 19, 2025 19:00
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Opopanax posted:They've apparently swung around to "Southern Reach is bad, actually". Should all be turned into dolphins Fitzy Fitz posted:The characters weren't very compelling though.
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Jan 19, 2025 20:22
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anilEhilated posted:To be fair the movie is fairly different from the book. Given your username I will take your word for it
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Jan 20, 2025 20:37
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Metaline posted:Hiring a Midwestern voice actor for a protagonist from Alabama took some getting used to lol When I listened to Nestlings it sounded to me like the narrator was a British person reading with an American accent, and I just thought it was obvious and distracting. So I looked it up and she's from Michigan. Not a trace of northern midwest in her voice. It's also frustrating when actors try to do a southern accent but just end up sounding like hillbillies. caspergers fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Feb 1, 2025 |
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Feb 1, 2025 00:35
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Enfys posted:I think Nat Cassidy just isn't my cup of spooky tea despite his popularity. Yeah Nestlings was interesting and boring at the same time, very frustrating. I think my main issue was it was a slog for a bit and then everything started happening at once. No real buildup, it didn't even establish a good atmosphere at the beginning of the book. It did have enjoyable aspects like the very Stephen King-inspired ex-landlord and the two protagonists turning on each other. And the ending was very strange, confusing, and depressing. I'm not big on bleak endings unless it's a somewhat satisfying conclusion to the emotional structure of the story. Anyone read Adam Neville? Two of his books, Cunning Folk and Last Days, have very bleak endings but the protagonists' needs are technically met, so it offers a really bittersweet and poignant ending. Nestlings didn't seem to have that, just "something bad happened, let's move on from this." Nothing learned whatsoever, absolutely pointless.
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Feb 1, 2025 13:21
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value-brand cereal posted:iirc Nat Cassidy is Jewish or was raised in Judaism byt is non practicing. If that explains why theres a general 'bad things happen, we survived, no morals, the end' explanation. It reads a more literary horror than horror, to me. It's not like scifi or fantasy where theres generally a winning Good Ending. Same tone or flavors of realism as Tremblay or King really. I can admire an author who would go for the Bad Ending, whether or not theres a Final Girl / Boy. This makes sense, similar to the ending of A Serious Man, regarded by most to be the Coens' most quintessentially jewish film Also just to clarify further with the "needs met with a bleak ending" thing I prefer in storytelling another good example of this is Being John Malkovich, where the protagonist gets what he wants but we see just how pathetic he is and the lengths he went to achieve it. In Cunning Folk the protagonist's wife takes his daughter away but by some folk magic deal with the devil he was able to become some shadow entity demon thing so he could haunt his daughter's bedroom, so he got what he wanted but it leaves you with a unique sense of disgust.. So when I talk about "needs met" I don't necessarily mean good/happy ending, just structural integtrity; Seinfeld and Peep Show are masters of this (apples and oranges comparing books to film/tv, i'm sure, but at the end of the day writing is writing) caspergers fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Feb 2, 2025 |
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Feb 2, 2025 13:44
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Pistol_Pete posted:great concept, enthusiastically written, but holy poo poo, is it incoherent. Speaking of Blood Meridian
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Feb 3, 2025 14:00
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Thread I read Night Film and I enjoyed it but found the ending frustrating and I feel very stupid. What's this all about?
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Feb 12, 2025 16:31
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Jedit posted:You're not stupid, you're just relying on the text of a book telling the actual story. I gathered it's mainly about the narrator's obsessive, narrow-minded pursuit and his bending reality to fit his narrative, much in the way most journalism seems to do, but the very last passage in the book is so ambiguous that either which way I interpret it renders the rest of the book almost pointless. "The friends we made along the way" etc.
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Feb 13, 2025 15:19
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escape artist posted:Wrapping up Rosemary's Baby tonight Good, it's cold out
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Feb 14, 2025 02:38
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The Ritual by Adam Neville? Yeah he's pretty hit or miss. I think his biggest weakness is pacing
caspergers fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Feb 16, 2025 |
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Feb 16, 2025 02:45
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oh god oh gently caress posted:Haven't read The Ritual but All The Fiends of Hell by the same author is a good time. One of my favorite depictions of an alien invasion. Check out his novel Last Days if you haven't, it's got a detective vibe to it and it's about a cult.
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Feb 16, 2025 19:20
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fez_machine posted:That's Brian Evenson. Very different author. 
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Feb 17, 2025 17:24
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Opopanax posted:Colour out of Space is ok I'm not big on Lovecraft but this is my favorite story by him. Very creepy atmosphere and reminiscent of Evil Dead. I haven't seen any of the film adaptations tho.
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Feb 20, 2025 14:19
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I was listening to Old Soul by Susan Baker and was pretty thoroughly enjoying it. Unfortunately my time ran up and Libby returned the audiobook when it had less than an hour left. Worse is that it was on hold for not one but five people. I have to wait 12 weeks before I can finish the last 45 minutes of an audiobook.
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Feb 23, 2025 02:31
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Gave me the incentive to finally give Experimental Film a go, thanks. How does it compare to a book like Night Film?
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Feb 23, 2025 13:18
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Finished Old Soul (had to get free trial from audiobooks.com and im canceling immediately). I know I bitch a lot about unresolved endings but this one, while not as satisfying as I'd hoped, resolved in a good enough way, the selfish antagonist getting exacrly what they deserve: loss. A tiny bit disappointed she didn't meet a more gruesome end, but in the epilogue, even though -ALL- the good guys we've invested in have died, we end up feeling not pity for her but gratitude that we are not like her. So pretty good for a (seemingly) unresolved ending.. The idea of immortality being more of a burden is kinda cliche at this point, but this book has a pretty refreshing take on it although fairly similar to the story of Voldemort and his quest for immortality, but the biggest difference here is the Woman had the chance to experience love and, therefore, loss.
caspergers fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Feb 25, 2025 |
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Feb 25, 2025 17:22
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Pistol_Pete posted:Adam Nevill likes to take creative risks with his books that don't always work out. When he's good, he's very good; when he's not... eh, at least he's making the effort. I'm not sure if by "writing" yall mean his plot structure or his prose, but I can say I find some passages frustrating, and particularly the opening scenes in many of his books; it seems like Nevill's idea of interesting is: don't introduce the character, just put them in the middle of some confusing conundrum. I've noticed a lot of his scenes don't contribute to the overrall story but to create a sense of dread or claustrophobia, which is cool and all but you can still do that while giving it some kind of narrative momentum. Tl; dr, Nevill seems to write a lot of stuff that doesn't matter. That's what I love about Last Days (astonishingly his third novel), it doesn't waste a single page. He must be getting worse because I couldn't even finish his most recent, the Reddening.
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Feb 27, 2025 13:30
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I find it so hard to get into series at all. It's a giant commitment imo, plus I prefer tight storytelling (at any length) and a whole series just tells me the author isn't really sure where they're heading. I know I'm probably mostly wrong, but that's just a personal hangup.
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Mar 1, 2025 14:35
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Opopanax posted:Fully agreed. There's lots of times I'm checking out an interesting book on the kobo website, then I see at the bottom it's part 1 of 5 or something and I completely check out I just got burned by Libby, which usually shows whether it's in a series like so in the bottom pic, and I've trained my eye to skip those. So I find a book to listen to and discover it's the third in a series. It's a stand-alone detective story so I'll probably still give it a chance, but that's just another hangup for me when it comes to series, particularly murder mysteries. You mean to tell me this detective is so good they solved all of these crimes? drat, that's one talented mf. It just seems very disingenuous to me Personally I think it's more impressive to come up with a new detective for your next book, it would probably make for a more interesting story anyway. But I do understand this from a marketing standpoint, readers do love coming back to something familiar, so series are def a plus when it comes to guaranteeing sales. 
caspergers fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Mar 5, 2025 |
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Mar 5, 2025 15:51
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I encourage you all to read The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. Horror-scifi-detective-thriller with the vibes of Twin Peaks.
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Mar 7, 2025 18:35
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value-brand cereal posted:Old Soul by Susan Barker [white american woman] cycle of abuse I hadn't quite caught that when I read it and found this to be insightful. The epilogue was especially very important for my understanding of the book. still kinda disappointed Jake died
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Mar 7, 2025 18:41
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Another note on Old Soul, I really wish it had been longer. And I rarely say that about books.
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Mar 8, 2025 01:26
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Also I've discovered my favorite narrative style, commercially anyway, is testimonies, interviews and investigations, aka any book where the story unfolds through several subjective accounts. I'll take any horror recommendations that fit the bill, following examples like Old Soul Night Film It (kinda) Last Days (Neville) I honestly the Fisherman to go this route when I first read it, and it might have ruined the story but I woulda dug the absolute poo poo outta that
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Mar 8, 2025 01:40
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