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This will be the ongoing, rolling megathread for the Book of the Month going forward -- please bookmark!
Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 03:36
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Suggestions for Future Months You can suggest a book for us to read in future months! If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please post about it! Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have some combination of quote:1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both Suggestions for future BOTM's (running list) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mayne_Reid Nomadland The Street by Ann Petry Debt: The First 5000 Years Role Models by John Waters Against Nature Lightning Rods Restraint of Beasts at night all blood is black ape and essence Lost Horizon Philip Roth (Plot Against America, American Pastoral, or Portnoy's Complaint) Addiction by Design The Road Back Ring of Bright Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shame_of_the_Cities Matrix by Lauren Groff The Autobiography of a Flea Swan Song Water Margin Under the Volcano quote:also for the next botm can everyone please suggest spinal catastrophism by thomas moynihan cos i think it would be really funny and literally no one would enjoy it Salaambo Pimp by Iceberg Slim Now and Then..., the collection of Gil Scott-Heron's poetry hardwired by john walter williams king leopold's ghost Convenience Store Woman Highlander: The Novel The Once and Future King The King Must Die Passages from the Life of a Philosopher by Charles Babbage Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli Black Lizard and Beast in the Shadows by Edogawa Rampo Sleeping With Hitler’s Wife. Six Characters in Search of an Author Boris Godunov The 42nd Parallel All the Pretty Horses The Twelve Chairs The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee The Lathe of Heaven The Egg and I A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Goldstein Underground by Murakami Missing Person from Modiano and Second-Hand Time from Alexievitch Year of the Runaways Orlando The Orphan Master's Son All Tomorrows [/spoiler] Prior Book of the Month Polls (spoiler tagged so as not to clog the thread) https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1375824850430869504?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1563976576290676736?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1551731458225618944?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1518750996813565952?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1332710186214182912?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1354247560253194240?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1255197970380795907?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1266505654170255361?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1419833847387131904?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1211808697057529863?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1264661413227827201?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw https://twitter.com/alloy_dr/status/1223203562194395137?s=20&t=DQpcNBG4RvPJWvniYM2kVw poisonpill posted:I'll put the following out, and I think each one would drive some good discussion: Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 4, 2022 03:36
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The Book of the Month for October 2022 is  Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Lefanu quote:Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 26 years. Book available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007 https://archive.org/details/carmilla_s_lefanu_librivox About the Book quote:First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72),[1][2] the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality as an antagonistic trait, leaving it subtle and morally ambiguous. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in film and other media. About the Author quote:Le Fanu worked in many genres but remains best known for his horror fiction. He was a meticulous craftsman and frequently reworked plots and ideas from his earlier writing in subsequent pieces. Many of his novels, for example, are expansions and refinements of earlier short stories. He specialised in tone and effect rather than "shock horror" and liked to leave important details unexplained and mysterious. He avoided overt supernatural effects: in most of his major works, the supernatural is strongly implied but a "natural" explanation is also possible. The demonic monkey in "Green Tea" could be a delusion of the story's protagonist, who is the only person to see it; in "The Familiar", Captain Barton's death seems to be supernatural but is not actually witnessed, and the ghostly owl may be a real bird. This technique influenced later horror artists, both in print and on film (see, for example, the film producer Val Lewton's principle of "indirect horror").[3] Though other writers have since chosen less subtle techniques, Le Fanu's finest tales, such as the vampire novella Carmilla and the short story "Schalken the Painter", remain some of the most powerful in the genre. He had enormous influence on one of the 20th century's most important ghost story writers, M. R. James, and although his work fell out of favour in the early part of the 20th century, towards the end of the century interest in his work increased and remains comparatively strong.[7] Themes Gothic fiction; Victorian women; Victorian lesbians; female power References and Further Reading quote:As with Dracula, critics have looked for the sources used in the writing of Carmilla. One source used was from a dissertation on magic, vampires, and the apparitions of spirits written by Dom Augustin Calmet entitled Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenants de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c. (1751). This is evidenced by a report analysed by Calmet, from a priest who learned information of a town being tormented by a vampiric entity three years earlier. Having travelled to the town to investigate and collecting information of the various inhabitants there, the priest learned that a vampire had tormented many of the inhabitants at night by coming from the nearby cemetery and would haunt many of the residents on their beds. An unknown Hungarian traveller came to the town during this period and helped the town by setting a trap at the cemetery and decapitating the vampire that resided there, curing the town of their torment. This story was retold by Le Fanu and adapted into the thirteenth chapter of Carmilla [19][20][21][22]
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Oct 4, 2022 03:37
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quote:Audible Originals brings you a brand new audiobook adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic gothic novella, Carmilla - starring Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey), David Tennant (Doctor Who and Broadchurch) and Phoebe Fox (Life in Squares and The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death) https://www.audible.com/pd/Carmilla-Audiobook/B015RJL1Z6
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Oct 4, 2022 12:25
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if anyone is going to get a physical copy, be aware that the version with Carmen Maria Machado as editor presents itself as a straightforward work of scholarship but is actually a "playful" postmodern exercise in not letting readers in on the joke. It has an introduction and footnotes throughout which are entirely fictionalized, denigrate Le Fanu for a crime he didn't commit (because Machado made it up to suit the metanarrative in the introduction/footnotes) and exist to bravely posit the novel idea: "what if Carmilla ... were about lesbians???"
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Oct 4, 2022 12:56
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Bonaventure posted:if anyone is going to get a physical copy, be aware that the version with Carmen Maria Machado as editor presents itself as a straightforward work of scholarship but is actually a "playful" postmodern exercise in not letting readers in on the joke. It has an introduction and footnotes throughout which are entirely fictionalized, denigrate Le Fanu for a crime he didn't commit (because Machado made it up to suit the metanarrative in the introduction/footnotes) and exist to bravely posit the novel idea: "what if Carmilla ... were about lesbians???" ...what? Why would you do that?
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Oct 4, 2022 15:41
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to ‘reclaim’ the story or the characters from a modern queer perspective … I’ve got no objection to the imaginative exercise, but the book (unless it’s been updated in later printings) contains no indication outside of the essential absurdity of its metanarrative (which will not be evident to a lay reader) that it has been fictionalized at all and that is what makes me balk: i catalogued it for a library and in trying to ascertain whether we were going to classify it under Le Fanu or Machado due to the new elements, I found so many reviews online by people who, oblivious to the tells and winks she put in, were like: “Wow can’t believe Le Fanu stole this story and gave no credit to the real life inspirations, and also turned one of them into a vampire because he hated lesbians. Very important and eye-opening piece of scholarship, thank god for Carmen Maria Machado’s investigative work that finally allows these women’s stories to be told” it’s so irresponsible
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Oct 4, 2022 15:57
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I have my doubts about how faithful the audiobook is either, because having finished the version off Gutenberg, I wouldn't say it featured "violence...and lots of blood..." (Very ending) Well maybe you could stretch it and say the coffin at the end featured several inches of blood, but that hardly seems to satisfy expectations. I wouldn’t have guessed based on the writing that Carmilla pre-dated Dracula, because it’s much more readable. Although based on having also read Lair of the White Worm, maybe Bram Stoker just wasn’t a good writer. Carmilla is also short enough that I went ahead and finished it already, so everyone should check it out. Maybe I’m as oblivious as Laura, but did the book completely drop the issue of: Carmilla’s mother, the mission she wouldn’t divulge, and how she knew the General?
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Oct 5, 2022 02:58
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AngusPodgorny posted:Although based on having also read Lair of the White Worm, maybe Bram Stoker just wasn’t a good writer. it’s this lol AngusPodgorny posted:
Le Fanu, at least in his best stories, is a fan of leaving dangling threads and of creating unease through implication and ambiguity. I may be mistaken and forgetting something in this particular story, but—I’m fairly certain the unresolved matter of Carmilla’s retinue is left mysterious for this purpose. Truly, the Dark Souls of horror fi Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Oct 5, 2022 |
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Oct 5, 2022 03:34
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AngusPodgorny posted:
My guess is that it's partly LeFanu being ahead of his time and partly that Dracula is written in a deliberately somewhat anachronistic style to ape older fiction -- the epistolary format, etc.. Dracula is 1897! Practically contemporary with Sherlock Holmes! But it's written to feel older.
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Oct 5, 2022 04:45
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AngusPodgorny posted:I wouldn’t have guessed based on the writing that Carmilla pre-dated Dracula, because it’s much more readable. Although based on having also read Lair of the White Worm, maybe Bram Stoker just wasn’t a good writer. Carmilla is also short enough that I went ahead and finished it already, so everyone should check it out. If I'm not mistaken, Lair of the White Worm was written after Stoker had a stroke so that explains why it's such a drastic step down in writing quality from Dracula. Having re-read both Carmilla and Dracula over the weekend I prefer the former, but the latter still has some great sequences - Harker in the castle, the Demeter, etc. - and the epistolary format is really well executed. My only quibble with Carmilla is the clumsy way it's shoehorned into the Dr. Hesselius stories.
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Oct 5, 2022 13:39
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Perhaps I'm being too harsh on Stoker then, but his writing still feels older than Carmilla, which you could've told me was written this year and I'd almost believe. Especially with how blatantly lesbian the story is for 1871, and I'm normally pretty resistant toward projecting sexuality into works (like say, Frozen). I had to go search on Dr. Hesselius, because I'd forgotten about him entirely. At first I thought you were talking about the treating doctor who I don't remember having a name, but his involvement seemed fine so I was confused. So yeah, pretty clumsy and entirely unnecessary. On the plus side, the existence of Dr. Hesselius stories implies that I have more to read, which is a good thing.
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Oct 5, 2022 16:08
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"Green Tea" and "The Familiar" are both great horror stories in the same Hesselius collection as Carmilla. I really should read more Le Fanu. And while perhaps not totally appropriate for a Book Barn thread, I would definitely recommend the Hammer films adaptation The Vampire Lovers if you can find it. The biggest divergence from the book that I remember is that General Spielsdorf and Laura's father are combined into one character. But since he's played by Peter Cushing doing his normal Van Helsing routine I can't complain. Otherwise it's pretty faithful and, being a Hammer film, dials up the sexuality to be even more overt than in the book. 
MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Oct 5, 2022 |
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Oct 5, 2022 16:37
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The Vampire Lovers loving rules
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Oct 5, 2022 17:36
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Just about to start this. I'm excited!
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Oct 6, 2022 17:22
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By the way, Augustin Calmet's treatise sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenants de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c, mentioned above as an influence on Carmilla, was published in English under the very lame sounding title "The Phantom World." i can't find the copy i have listed on amazon so won't vouch for any of the physical editions i see there, but it's available at gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29412. despite the title, vampires really only come into the fore in the second volume. particularly interesting is the firsthand and skeptical account of the exhumation of a vampiric corpse related by M. de Tournefort (a traveler in Greece) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29412/29412-h/29412-h.htm#Page_304 Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 18:35
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About half way done, good so far! I didn't realize there was a vampire story prior to Dracula so I'm excited to finish up
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Oct 7, 2022 14:46
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McSpankWich posted:About half way done, good so far! I didn't realize there was a vampire story prior to Dracula so I'm excited to finish up The generally accepted "first" published vampire story is quote:"The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.[1] There's also quote:Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood is a Victorian-era serialized gothic horror story variously attributed to James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest. It first appeared in 1845–1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls". The author was paid by the typeset line,[1] so when the story was published in book form in 1847, it was of epic length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages[2] and 232 chapters.[3] Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words.[4] Polidori's too short to be BOTM though and Varney's probably too long, while Carmilla is probably more interesting / complex than either, and LeFanu is a writer worth publicizing since he wrote a lot of other neat things also.
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Oct 7, 2022 15:47
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^e;fbMcSpankWich posted:About half way done, good so far! I didn't realize there was a vampire story prior to Dracula so I'm excited to finish up there's quite a lot of vampire fiction that predates Dracula, although Carmilla is probably the best. while there's one or two minor works that predate the following, the real craze for vampires in fiction began in 1819 with Polidori's novella "The Vampyre," available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm. It kind of sucks, but it was massively popular and established a ton of tropes attached to literary vampires (as opposed to folkloric vampires, with which they have very little in common) ever since; and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every subsequent "vampire" story has Polidori's tale in its DNA. The Vampyre's genesis actually took place during the same Shelly/Byron get-together that spawned 'Frankenstein,' with Byron starting and aborting a vampire story that was later picked up by his doctor, Polidori. Polidori and Byron had a falling out by this time, and so Polidori modeled the villainous vampire in the story after Lord Byron--transparently so--as a way of getting back at him. Everyone recognized Byron in the story as the vampire; Polidori even used the name Ruthven, a known alias of Byron. To capitalize on this, the publishers cravenly advertised it as being a story by Byron, which he denie;d but the damage was already done and the misconception that it was Byron's story continued for years. Without getting credit for his massively successful story, Polidori languished in obscurity and killed himself a few years later. His attempt to get back at Byron by calling him a vampire was also a huge backfire. The character in the story is dark, brooding, mysterious, handsome, dangerous, rich, aristocratic; and Polidori is there pointing at this smoldering immortal hottie and going "Why does everyone like this jerk?" while every woman in Victorian England is too busy creaming themselves over the brooding, mysterious, handsome, dangerous, aristocratic immortal to care. When I said earlier that the story was popular, I mean they made multiple operas throughout Europe based on it that ran for years and years. "Lord Ruthven" was to them what "Count Dracula" is to us, and the latter owes many of his characteristics to the former. When discussing antecedents to Dracula, I must also mention a German story, possibly by Karl von Wachsmann, written somewhere between 1844-1854, which did appear in English at that latter date under the title "The Mysterious Stranger." By "antecedent" I mean that he, uh, practically plagiarized parts of it. For instance, the story opens with a carriage being pursued by wolves as it careens through the narrow paths of the Carpathian mountains. The carriage reaches the outskirts of a ruined castle and the wolves surround it, only for a preternaturally tall figure to emerge from that place, with piercing grey eyes, who commands the wolves to depart with an imperious wave of his arm. Like, come on. The only source of the full text I can find online is sadly a .fandom site, but: https://souo.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Text:_Mysterious_Stranger.
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Oct 7, 2022 15:54
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Well I'll have to check those out as well, thanks. That's crazy about the Wachsmann story being almost identical to the opening of Dracula Just finished Carmilla, was enjoyable. No huge surprises or unexpected things but it was a good quick read. Looking forward to next month. McSpankWich fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Oct 7, 2022 |
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Oct 7, 2022 18:03
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I've started reading Phantom World because I'm curious what vampire traits were traditional, and which we created for sake of the story. There were some traits I expected, some that were noticeably absent, some that reminded me more of witches, and one that just made me go "wait, what?" The fact that vampires, or at least some, can only use aliases that are anagrams. Carmilla reminds me of Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. It's another old book about a mythical monster that got out-shadowed by a successor (The Little Mermaid), and was also based on a "scientific" work, [i]Book on Nymphs ...[/i[ by Paracelsus.
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Oct 7, 2022 21:35
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I was really surprised by how gay the book was. Like, it's Ao3 levels of chicks in to each other in a book from the 1800s. Nthing the fact that I didn't know there were vampire books before Dracula. It's kind of neat to see the way they do things before they got streamlined by Dracula. Except for the dialogue and the occasional archaic word, this book feels like a pretty modern writing. I have trouble getting in to a lot of older books because they have a hard time getting to the point of each sentence and half the words aren't used anymore, so this was a pretty pleasant surprise. It also took me a few chapters to realize this book is why every sexy lady vampire in any form of media is always named Carmilla. I watched the movie someone mentioned earlier, and it was pretty good. It was a bit hammy, and Carmilla tended to freak out in a way I don't think she really does in the book, but you gotta make the hour and a half interesting. Got me to move some of the Christoper Lee/Peter Cushing movies to the top of my queue.
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Oct 8, 2022 07:39
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Ok, I edited one of the first posts in the thread into a running list of suggestions for future Books of the Month. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=4013975&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post526717929 If anyone has suggestions for November or December, please post and suggest! It can be one of the ones in the suggestion post or any other book you'd like to read. If enough people go "that sounds good!" we'll pick something, or I'll pick off the list, or I'll do a poll.
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Oct 9, 2022 01:30
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Bonaventure posted:^e;fb only because I went for shitpost wikipedia quoting and you went for effortposting excellence Every time the Polidori / Byron / Shelley contest gets mentioned, I think of Minions, because  
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Oct 9, 2022 01:43
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In case you have strong feelings about how your ebooks look, Carmilla is also available from Standard Ebooks in an anthology of LeFanu's short stories. The text is from Project Gutenberg, but it's been prettified and given a cover. Still free! I've been meaning to read this one for a while.
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Oct 10, 2022 08:03
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Finished both the Gutenberg ebook and the Audible drama! The latter is pretty abridged, but still great fun, and the cast are fantastic. Listen with headphones though, because there are some pretty sensuous sapphic groans and moans from Carmilla in particular. I liked the story, it was decently spooky and I liked the climactic image of the coffin filled with blood - yuck! Very neat stuff.
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Oct 10, 2022 09:04
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I actually used Libby and borrowed it from my local library, it didn't have any of the usual free ebook formatting issues and was very nicely put together.
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Oct 10, 2022 12:33
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AngusPodgorny posted:I've started reading Phantom World because I'm curious what vampire traits were traditional, and which we created for sake of the story. There were some traits I expected, some that were noticeably absent, some that reminded me more of witches, and one that just made me go "wait, what?" The fact that vampires, or at least some, can only use aliases that are anagrams. The spoiler is so commonly associated with Vampires these days, I wondered if it was from folklore. I also wondered a bit as to whether Stoker was familiar with the work, mostly just because of the similarity with the dead ward Rheinfeldt and Renfield. I did enjoy the book, it was a nice Halloween read, and yes, very gay.
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Oct 10, 2022 16:04
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AngusPodgorny posted:Carmilla, which you could've told me was written this year and I'd almost believe. Especially with how blatantly lesbian the story is for 1871, and I'm normally pretty resistant toward projecting sexuality into works (like say, Frozen). I got my re-read in over the weekend and this time I was thinking about the writing and the apparent age of the writing specifically while I read because of this post and others like it above. It's an interesting puzzle because LeFanu's writing does feel strikingly modern. Which is weird, because there are plenty of other writers from around the same time period (Twain, Bierce, some Poe) who feel similarly so, and plenty of others (Dickens, other Poe) whose prose definitely feels "older." I'd be tempted to think it was American writers vs. British ones but LeFanu was Irish. In this instance I *suspect* the reason it feels modern is that LeFanu was one of the first developers of the "scientific narrator for a horror story" technique that Lovecraft perfected and that we're used to seeing as the structure of a modern horror story. Every scooby doo plot has the "we though it was Spoooky, but it's all perfectly explicable" structure. LeFanu's dry, in-between, "well this could all be scientific, it seems like an infection that spreads, science just hasn't figured out why their names have to be anagrams" approach here at the time would've been a twist on pure magical horror but now reads like a twist on "scientific" horror -- rather than scooby doo unmasking the villain and finding out it's just old lady Mircalla in a mask, nope, definitely an actual vampire, that there's your coffin floating seven inches deep in blood, that's how you tell. I think if a story like this were written today . . . I'd expect a lot more "scientific" analysis, microbes and whatnot, and I'd probably also expect the final twist that the girls would get a happy ending together as vampires .
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Oct 10, 2022 16:31
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Ben Nevis posted:The spoiler is so commonly associated with Vampires these days, I wondered if it was from folklore. I also wondered a bit as to whether Stoker was familiar with the work, mostly just because of the similarity with the dead ward Rheinfeldt and Renfield. I did enjoy the book, it was a nice Halloween read, and yes, very gay. I'm pretty sure Stoker had read it. If you read "Dracula's Guest" which was part of Dracula in early drafts before Stoker took it out, there's a cool scene where Harker comes upon a graveyard where a Styrian countess is entombed. I figure that's a little nod to Carmilla.
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Oct 10, 2022 18:25
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I seem to have some serious gaps in my knowledge of vampires, since I didn’t know that Carmilla was a popular name or that they had to use anagrams. I guess I’ve been largely ignoring vampires, since the most recent examples I’m familiar with are Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and Blindsight by Peter Watts. The latter being so scientific it’s hardly a vampire other than that being the name used. As to Carmilla, I wonder if it was ultimately less successful than Dracula because of how passive everyone is. Dracula had Harker, Van Helsing, and various side characters that were at least trying to do things, so it was more of a traditional story. Carmilla had Laura, who never suspected anything, much less tried to do anything. And then in the last 10% of the book, other characters showed up and took care of everything while she watched.
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Oct 10, 2022 18:49
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AngusPodgorny posted:I seem to have some serious gaps in my knowledge of vampires, since I didn’t know that Carmilla was a popular name or that they had to use anagram.[/spoiler] Specifically spelling names backward. Alucard has quite a pop culture history of being a hidden vampire. Pratchett also commented on it "Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone?" There's enough out there that the portait was a dead giveaway. I'm curious as to whether it was for contemporary readers too.
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Oct 10, 2022 20:13
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Ben Nevis posted:Specifically spelling names backward. Alucard has quite a pop culture history of being a hidden vampire. Pratchett also commented on it "Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone?" There's enough out there that the portait was a dead giveaway. I'm curious as to whether it was for contemporary readers too. look, you hold the name up in a mirror, nobody can see it, that's just science
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Oct 10, 2022 20:17
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Ben Nevis posted:Specifically spelling names backward. Alucard has quite a pop culture history of being a hidden vampire. Pratchett also commented on it "Do they really think that spelling their name backwards fools anyone?" There's enough out there that the portait was a dead giveaway. I'm curious as to whether it was for contemporary readers too. Ah, that is what he meant with that. I did not know that about the name spelling so the Pratchett comment went completely over my head.
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Oct 10, 2022 20:49
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Looking over the list of prior suggested titles, my plan for next month's Book of the Month at this point is probably going to be The King Must Die by Mary Renault -- putting that out there early so people can reserve copies etc. or give me other suggestions if folks think that one's a bad pick. We also need suggestions for December, I've run most of the solid Christmas-themed titles I'm aware of already. edit: or maybe Voyage of the Space Beagle? I want real bangers for the next few months to get us re-launched solidly Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Oct 11, 2022 |
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Oct 11, 2022 13:41
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Both of those sound good to me. Mary Renault is one of those authors I keep thinking I should try some day, but who never makes it to the top of the list (mostly the fault of Patrick O'Brian who I default to for historical), and I'm always entertained by outdated science fiction so A.E. van Vogt sounds right up my alley. I'm drawing a complete blank on anything Christmas-related to recommend. I can't think of anything I've read where it's mentioned as anything more than to indicate that time is passing.
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Oct 11, 2022 17:47
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AngusPodgorny posted:
This is a good question. I'm not sure. It might also have just been too racy for the time, or it's possible that it was too ahead of its time and the audience just didn't even clock what was going on at all ("oh, that's nice, they're going to be roommates.") It definitely lacks the Action Plot Tension of Dracula; the one time I listened to the Dracula audiobook in my car I got so riveted I forgot to watch the meter and we ran out of gas; that's a book that knows how to hold your attention. Carmilla by contrast is far more vibe than it is action. Or maybe Carmilla was successful just later eclipsed. LeFanu *was* a big name at the time he was writing, he's just sortof forgotten today.
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Oct 11, 2022 18:41
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I think there's a bit of passivity required in Carmilla since she's portrayed (from my reading, of course) as something other than a predator for the first half or so of the book - isn't Dracula's reveal as a monster fairly early in Stoker's text? I'm not sure how much more action could be added to the middle of Carmilla without it seeming trite or contrived.Hieronymous Alloy posted:or it's possible that it was too ahead of its time and the audience just didn't even clock what was going on at all ("oh, that's nice, they're going to be roommates.") Yeah, LeFanu definitely was not being subtle with the intimacy between Laura and Carmilla for the majority of the book, haha. I wonder if some of the reduction in success was also due to having a female PoV character/leads; I'm honestly not sure how much that'd influence its impact in the Victorian era book market, though.
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Oct 12, 2022 20:00
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I'm surprised how quickly the book wraps up. The general spends all of like two pages to arrive at the graveyard and get to staking. He doesn't gently caress around.
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Oct 13, 2022 08:34
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