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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What's the elevator pitch to get people to read ligotti? Imagine the pessimistic societal insignificance of Kafka mixed with the cosmic horrific insignificance of Lovecraft. Ligotti turns this on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy. I've read a lot of horror, and Ligotti's the only author who's made me uncomfortable with my very existence.
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Mar 10, 2020 13:50
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I think there's parts of TD where he literally quotes Conspiracy Against the Human Race verbatim
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Mar 10, 2020 16:11
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The Good Husband and The Monsters of Heaven or whatever it's called are two of my favorite stories of all time now and I can't wait to see how they translate to the screen
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Mar 27, 2020 10:50
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Conrad_Birdie posted:I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed reading something as much as I was enjoying reading “The Butcher’s Table.” Every sentence, every turn of the page was a goddam delight. Literally what I was about to post. Nathan just posted on Twitter that it got included in Best Horror of the Year vol. 12 (ed. Ellen Datlow)  but i would go so far as to say it's one of the best horror stories ever written
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Mar 27, 2020 22:47
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Conrad_Birdie posted:A more existential “The Butcher’s Table” drat, you stuck the landing on that one. I'm sold.
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Apr 15, 2020 13:43
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Have any of y'all ever encountered a book that's too obscene or grotesque or unsettling? I just realized that's happened to me movies but never with books. Maybe it has something to do with the limits of my imagination. I'm not sure but now I want to push myself!
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May 17, 2020 03:19
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escape artist posted:New Ballingrud story, Scream Queens, is a loveletter to 70s horror cinema while being a harrowing story on its own. When I finished it, I went back and read it a second time. Final Cuts is on my short list to buy soon. I'm currently working through Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory, but I'll probably buy it after.
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Jul 9, 2020 03:28
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AHHHHHH AAAAHHHHquote: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. Ehhhh.
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Aug 8, 2020 18:50
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Yeah like, even if you don't like one of the collections as much as the other, they're both still Ballingrud which puts than head and shoulders above a lot of stuff There were a couple stories from NALM that made me sob on a deep existential level (a lot of that was thanks to Nathan's prose) - The Monsters Of Heaven and The Good Husband. I hope either of those are done justice in the new show.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:16
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Thom and the Heads posted:I finished North American Lake Monsters last night. I liked it a lot - I think Wounds is definitely the better collection but I think The Good Husband might be the most affecting story I read out of the two. That story is incredibly heartbreaking. Both collections end on incredibly strong notes.
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Aug 17, 2020 15:57
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Ffffffffffff GIVE IT TO ME NOW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kgtaf-KxeA Edit-- after tweeting back and forth with Nathan, these 3 are confirmed: - You Go Where It Takes You - The Monsters From Heaven - The Good Husband I assumed the fourth was "The Way Station" but he said that's not it. Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 21:49
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remigious posted:I thought I would hate skullpocket because it seemed kind of twee at first, but now it’s one of my favorite short stories! It's a lovely heartfelt journey that has a nice payoff. It's extremely Clive Barker in tone, which I think works really well.
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Nov 17, 2020 16:31
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Yep I binged the one big audiobook too. It's an incredibly-crafted story, and I can't believe how much it drew me in. Super super good, one of my favorites.
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Mar 1, 2021 17:04
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Hell yeah, Blackwater is so good
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Mar 23, 2021 02:50
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Ariza posted:Can anyone recommend any books that deal with suicide? Thanks! The last story, "The Good Husband", in Nathan Balingrud's North American Lake Monsters deals with this theme and is absolutely heartbreaking but amazing. But also Conrad_Birdie posted:You okay?
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May 7, 2021 13:21
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I just read my first splatterpunk novel, Aron Beauregard's The Slob. Hoo boy.
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Jul 6, 2021 14:58
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I'm a chunk of the way through Kathe Koja's Cypher and it's such a strange book to get into. Like, it has some of the edgelordiness of Palahniuk, but the prose is SO GOOD that I'm just mesmerized by it.
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Jul 15, 2021 16:21
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You had me at cosmic horror and splatterpunk
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Jul 23, 2021 21:37
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SniperWoreConverse posted:This is pretty good Yeah I'm halfway through and the stories have all been average to great, no real stinkers so far.
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Jul 24, 2021 03:06
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Yeah I'd say the stories range from 2/5 to 4.5/5 stars. There's some really good hits and a couple misses. But for being a free quick read I really enjoyed it. I think Every Day For The Rest of Your Life was my favorite story, even though it was very uncomfortable.
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Jul 27, 2021 01:39
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DreamingofRoses posted:So I’m listening to North American Lake Monsters again. I listened to it before but never finished the very last story, now I’m stuck on Crevasse because of dog death. It keeps striking me how the most horrific part of each story isn’t the blatantly ‘horror’ bits, but the mundane emotions and reactions to them. Ahhhhhh the last story is the best one of the bunch!! Oh my gosh, you need to finish it! --- I just finished Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana and it was... fantastic. Emotionally and viscerally gut-punching the whole way through, but holy hell what a great read it was.
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Aug 12, 2021 06:08
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I'm over halfway through Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse, and I'm having trouble deciding if a) this isn't actually horror, or if b) I'm just super desensitized at this point. Like, yeah, there's a lot of gross visuals, but to me it's just a really depressing love story that happens to have murder in it.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:25
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Just finished Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite and it was wonderfully written and an absolutely heartbreaking LGBTQ novel. Super disturbing too. I enjoyed it a lot.
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Sep 21, 2021 00:07
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The Three Body Problem is like 2/3 a book about dealing with trauma in a communist country while weird spooky things happen, and then 1/3 a physics lesson
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Oct 14, 2021 16:11
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Xiahou Dun posted:Can I get recommendations for good horror with images of cannibalism? I’m running an RPG with that as a central theme, and I find it easiest to do that by just filling my brain with stuff to steal from. I’ve read a bunch already but feel free to give obvious ones too cause maybe I missed obvious stuff. Extra bonus if I can get it cheap and digitally cause the game is in two weeks so I don’t want to wait too long. Recently I read Off Season by... Jack Ketchum I think? It was excellent and had weird hosed up cannibals.
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Oct 15, 2021 01:53
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Segue posted:Just finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and it's very solid. He's actually a very good writer with deeper characters than a lot of horror writers and the Indigenous setting and characters added a nice freshness to what can be a stale white man terror genre. Plus basketball! Yeah! My wife and I binged through the audio book on a road trip last month and it was really good. SGJ writes fantastic characters, and the underlying mythology of the whole thing (if that's even a fair word to use, since it's based in Native folklore) is expressed wonderfully.
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Nov 3, 2021 13:00
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I'm about halfway through The Troop by Nick Cutter, and it's EXCELLENT but... (big spoiler question here) this is basically just The Thing with boyscouts, right?
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Nov 16, 2021 21:21
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I just finished The Final Girl Support Group which was super fun and good. I know that the characters are supposed to be based on popular slasher final girls, but who was Chrissy supposed to be? they mention the movie Gnomecoming and also something about a prom night and I'm stumped.
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Nov 27, 2021 08:55
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Darko posted:I think Chrissy just didn't have an analogue. She was generic, I guess. That's kinda what I figured
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Nov 27, 2021 23:44
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Thanks to Famethrowa in the TBB secret Santa, I started reading Negative Space by B. R. Yeager and holy poo poo what a ride. It's like if the movie Kids was a cosmic horror. I'm loving it so far.
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Dec 4, 2021 22:45
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Famethrowa posted:
I'm about 60% through it right now, but I keep thinking about it when I'm not reading it. It's got its hooks in me, for sure.
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Dec 6, 2021 17:22
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I just finished up Negative Space (thanks again Famethrowa!) and really really liked it. The content is bleak, but the prose is absolutely gorgeous, even as everything starts to unravel and fall apart. The whole thing felt like if Gummo had more cosmic horror and was way more surreal. I'm still processing the ending, but I like that it was uhh... I dunno, nothing wrapped up in a neat package. Instead of fading to black, like a movie, everything kind of faded to... blurry. The ending felt like a panic attack happening in slow motion. Now to go read all the spoiler text over the last couple pages. Edit-- whoops, there's only two posts with spoiler text! my thoughts: Yeah, the addiction angle is obviously very strong here, and you can see how insidious and cancerous it can be, sometimes even literally. The way that Yeager gives the "high" a more absolute purpose (seeing... ghosts? demons? whatever the threads are?) is a great way of communicating to the reader that there's a reason they can't just stop. In the book, they're literally keeping evil at bay, not just keeping themselves out of withdrawals. And the cancerous hacking and coughing that the family members start to have is a really striking metaphor for the grief of watching someone you love throwing their life away. As for the ending, yeah, it was pretty fuckin' bleak. Everyone in the end had been torn apart by Tyler, even if they "got out". Lu had the "happiest" ending, and even still ruminated on how nothing really mattered and she wouldn't have anyone to remember her. Everyone that knows her has disappeared thanks to the WHORL and everything that happened. Ahmir's story was downright heartbreaking. Jill managed to find love again but her trauma from Tyler metaphorically (and literally) killed her love. All in all it was haunting, and I'll be thinking about it for a while. One of the best books I've read this year, even if it's not one I can really recommend to my friends, haha. Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Dec 17, 2021 |
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Dec 17, 2021 20:20
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Recent book thoughts: The Deep by Nick Cutter -- I didn't like it as much as The Troop, but it was... fine. It had some really fun scenes but it really felt like it retreaded a lot of what The Thing and The Abyss did. It wasn't very inventive, but I don't feel like I wasted my time either. 3/5 Along The Path of Torment by Chandler Morrison -- Jesus take the wheel, this was a rough one. Imagine if American Psycho took place in 2000s Hollywood, was written by Marquis de Sade, and... yeah. It was a really interesting look into how past trauma can turn you into an absolute unfeeling monster, but it's definitely not for the faint of heart. I gave it 4/5.
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Jan 24, 2022 19:59
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Yeah there's definitely bees, and there's definitely something akin to what you're describing, but I don't remember dick bees
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Jan 24, 2022 21:40
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Aron Beauregard is a super nice guy to deal with and I'm excited to dig into these gross offerings
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Jan 24, 2022 23:23
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I got in late on Aron Beauregard's hardcover pre order for Nightmare Nirvana, and so what did he do? Sent me his author's Copy  he's such a great guy in addition to being a great authorHe set out to make an adult version of the classic Scary Stories books and so far it's pretty wonderful.  . 
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Mar 31, 2022 01:29
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I really enjoyed Things Have Gotten Worse, and I also have You've Lost a Lot of Blood on my reading pile. Also just today his new book, We Can Never Leave This Place, came in the mail! I love his book covers   
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Apr 19, 2022 03:04
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I recently finished Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell , and it was pretty excellent. It does indigenous horror very well, and the epilogue includes a short essay written by the author on what it means to write indigenous horror as a non-indigenous person, and how to do that responsibly. So, I really respect that. I'm about a third of the way through Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehle, and I LOVE it. It's sort of a mix between historical fiction and Dark Souls, and I'm absolutely looking for more of that sort of thing. [edit-- apparently my brain shorted out at the end of that last sentence] Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Apr 21, 2022 |
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Apr 21, 2022 05:00
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Wonderful thank you!
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Apr 21, 2022 16:59
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It's more "dark fairy tale thriller" than horror, but the horror groups on Facebook have been fishing about it so... You ever read a book and, even before you finish it, you already know it's going to rank among your favorites of all time? I just binged Winterset Hollow over the course of 2 days and I can't believe how good it was. I'm shocked that this is the only book Jonathan Edward Durham has published because the prose is incredible.
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May 16, 2022 05:55
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