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Can y'all help me with a recommendation? I would like to find another occult (or similar) book like Adam Nevill's Last Days. I enjoyed it but wanted more of a payoff, I guess. Lots of beating around the bush. I was thinking of reading The Hellbound Heart but idk. Has Stephen King written anything like a full-length Gramma? E: ah poo poo if I'd just read the last few posts I'd have seen Devil's Creek. That looks good Fitzy Fitz fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 22:17
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I'm 90% through Devil's Creek and I'm also not very impressed, but I'm going to finish it. I honestly think the premise is really good, probably because it's something I thought about doing myself 15 years ago. Cosmic horror in the southern Appalachians. Great idea. But yeah he just skipped all the character development. There's no tension at all. And the central elements that make it such an interesting premise are not really developed well. What I do think it does well is capture the nostalgic return by the protagonist to his stagnant childhood hometown. That felt very authentic to me and I'm disappointed that the rest of the book didn't capture that feeling.
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Jul 25, 2020 04:19
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Lester Shy posted:https://twitter.com/NBallingrud/status/1291834740182528000 I started reading NALM today and it's very good.
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Aug 9, 2020 04:47
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Rolo posted:I’m excited to see how they do the first story with the waitress in live action. Yeah part of that I'm sure could be really cool visually, but I hope they do the characters and setting justice. These feel kind of like Murakami stories set in the Southeast.
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Aug 9, 2020 05:01
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Huh, I assumed everyone liked the first one best. I enjoyed all three. There are some more fun reveals but they never get bogged down in explanation, which I appreciated.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:37
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Idle Amalgam posted:Mission accomplished then. I shouldn't have led in with that as a detractor. That's definitely personal on my part. All in all, the imagery and ideas were excellent. I did enjoy the story. Just not the direction some of the tropes took. Nathan Ballingrud's work is very southern, but I assume everyone's read that by now. I was recently disappointed by both Keisling's Devil's Creek and DeMeester's Beneath. The former actually nailed the setting, at least.
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Feb 23, 2021 17:50
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a foolish pianist posted:EDIT: It's definitely more supernatural and less grounded, but read Ballingrud's Wounds collection. It's just a relentlessly great romp through some literal hells. Everyone praises "Skullpocket" and "The Visible Filth," but "The Butcher's Table" was so loving cool. I want more stories like that.
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Mar 3, 2021 19:48
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Yeah I'm probably wrong about that. I just really liked it and didn't expect it at all.
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Mar 3, 2021 20:01
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R.L. Stine posted:I'm doing research for a project involving Tennessee (specifically the southeast border) and I'm looking for some creepy materials on rural southern Appalachia. Works by people native to the area would be a huge plus. Anything worth checking out? The exact location is kinda important, the border of the Tennessee Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains is fairly significant to the work I'm doing and contains a lot of natural diversity. Really though, anything Appalachian is a thumbs up, fiction or otherwise. Classic ghost stories, monster stuff, hillbilly horror, all good good good. Please be writing a haunted account at Lake Winnepesaukah. Or about this thing: https://goo.gl/maps/2Tpo9BWWrSPuhuqK9 I grew up on the GA/TN border outside the Cohuttas and wrote my history capstone about Cherokee history in the region, so I feel like I should have something helpful to add here, but nothing is coming to mind. Maybe check out Foxfire.org. New Echota's library has a lot of good material on Cherokee history (or at least they did ten years ago when I was doing research). The stone structure on Fort Mountain is spooky, but that's Georgia again. spookiest plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora Fitzy Fitz fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Mar 17, 2021 |
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Mar 17, 2021 16:29
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fez_machine posted:Have you read The Weird anthology by the Vandermeers? That's usually a good place to find this type of stuff. Just got this in the mail and am excited to get started. Also, I just finished the first Books of Blood anthology. In the Hills, the Cities!
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Mar 24, 2021 02:52
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MockingQuantum posted:Like "In the Hills, the Cities" is so loving weird and gruesome, but knows it and revels in it in a way I really enjoy. I read this the other day. It was so strange, like seeing a new color that I had no preconception of.
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Apr 20, 2021 17:33
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Paddyo posted:I've been brainstorming on this myself after getting sucked into McDowell. In my mind one of the things that sets him apart from other authors in the genre is the way the setting plays such a huge part in his stories. The climate, culture, economy, and history of the deep South provide so much context to his characters and plots, and adds a ton of nuance that creates this awesome atmosphere. I haven't gotten to Blackwater yet, so maybe I'm wrong about how it's written, but have y'all check out some classic southern gothic lit? It's basically what you're describing, minus the supernatural.
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Apr 29, 2021 21:43
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I'm about halfway through Carrier Wave and it's mostly just made me feel sad
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Apr 30, 2021 01:55
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House of Leaves dealt with loss in a way that meant a lot to me
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May 8, 2021 05:47
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Paddyo posted:Man, Carrier Wave is some dark poo poo. Reminds me of all of the vignettes from World War Z, except without any of the slapstick or optimism. I'm about half way through and a little burnt out on the gore and hopelessness. I hope some sort of overall narrative starts to develop soon. The tone starts to lighten up at around the halfway mark, specifically with "The Walled City." It never turns into a happy book exactly, but that's when the story starts working toward resolution. I was similarly bummed out, but I enjoyed the rest.
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Jun 25, 2021 18:00
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I don't think Carrier Wave holds up to close scrutiny, but I'm usually ok with that in stories as long as the finer details aren't really crucial for the story.
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Jul 25, 2021 00:31
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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. I keep meaning to buy a physical copy because I liked it so much.
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Aug 12, 2021 12:57
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Retro Futurist posted:Wasn't he turning the animals into robots? That's how one of the cartoons explained it
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Sep 2, 2021 02:58
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I didn't care about the colored text, but I actually liked Johnny's story as much as the house. Both stories drew from the same themes (loss, separation, grief, etc.) but his felt especially sad to me.
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Sep 7, 2021 02:37
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