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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.254.173.34
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 12:48 pm:   

As the second thread is now too long for my meagre internet download on my phone, I thought I’d start a new ‘un.

I’ve just finished SKIN, by Mo Hayder. First book of hers I’ve read, though I’ve a couple of her others on my shelves – PIG ISLAND and TOKYO. I’d had bad reports about PIG ISLAND so didn’t much fancy starting on her, but positive comments from Mick and others had me giving her a go. SKIN is a series novel, featuring Hayder’s recurring detective Jack Caffrey, and it seems a semi-direct continuation of her previous novel, RITUAL, which I haven’t read, with events from that book being about a week or so old. Hayder writes engagingly, has a neat and sassy pop fiction style. Her prose is direct and uncluttered (“easy reading is hard writing”, I’m reminded). There are few long sentences and the chapters are about four to five pages long … in the large format paperback edition I borrowed from the library, anyway. I enjoyed the book, to a degree, but some of the characters’ actions beggared belief, in particular the killer’s in the showdown, and the police diver’s actions on finding a corpse and subsequent dealings with it. but I liked it enough to read Hayder again.

I’m re-reading Arthur C Clarke’s THE GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS, published in 1990, and concerning a bunch of characters’ plans to raise the Titanic on the centenary of its sinking, and much more about the Mandelbrot Set. Clarke’s prose in his later years lost some of its poetry, but the conciseness of his writing remains. It’s a lesson in less-is-more, and as ever I’m amazed at how much he got into so few words. Again, he was quite prophetic on many issues and slightly off the mark on others, though mainly his misses at predicting the future stem from his innate optimism. A sense of wonder epilogue makes the book.

Also enjoying John Connolly’s first novel for children, THE GATES, which oddly enough, given another thread on here, features demons and portals to otherworlds (mainly Hell) and the Hadron Collider. It’s clever stuff actually, told in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek prose style that manages to avoid being irritating in the Terry Pratchett mode while still feeling as though it’s jokily moving things along nicely. Nice to see a bestselling writer experimenting like this, expanding his range.

And I’m absolutely loving Ed McBain’s LEARNING TO KILL. A bunch of crime fiction stories originally written under a variety of names and published in the pulp magazines through the late 1950s. There’s cops and creeps, gangs and damsels in distress, slinky hot shots and hard guys with bunched fists, private eyes (including Matt Cordell – who’d appear in THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, reissued recently as a McBain novel from Hard Case Crime) and many more. Again, like Arthur C Clarke (for whom McBain – or Evan Hunter, as he’d legally changed his name to at the time – was acting as agent in the Scott Meredith Literary Agency at this period) McBain has a pared down style that does exactly what it needs to without wasting a word. A real lesson in direct storytelling. And – controversial, I know – reading these old pieces suggests to me that McBain may actually be better than Elmore Leonard, and in some ways more likely to still be in print for a long time to come; certainly his short stories are better than Leonard’s, though Leonard’s shorts are mostly western pieces.

Spurred on by my enjoyment of the McBain tales, I’ve started Evan Hunter’s CRIMINAL CONVERSATION. My secondhand bookclub edition has the subtitle: ‘A novel of adultery’ on it. It’s a slick piece of thriller writing, featuring detection and procedural stuff about entrapment and the Mafia, and there’s the seeds so far – I’m only 50 or so pages in – the suggestion it might get sexy later on. The family at the heart of the book is warmly portrayed and I’m not looking forward to anything bad befalling them. The book rather furthers my thinking that Hunter/McBain was a hell of a writer. He does here with dialogue everything Elmore Leonard does, but also fleshes out his descriptive prose in a way Leonard doesn’t quite ever seem to manage. And he does this without losing his dialogue’s felicity and fidelity. Quite an act. Hats off to the guy.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.106.220.19
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 01:40 pm:   

Mark, you must get on and read TOKYO - still my favourite of Hayder's books - the others seem somehow less than that one.
I'm now halfway through a Ray Bradbury collection, having recently finished Mark West's Conjure, and Mark Samuels' The Face of Twilight.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 02:00 pm:   

I've not read Tokyo yet but I have to say that The Treatment is one of the most disturbing books I've read in a very long time. Birdman is also very good and the explanation for why the girls have had birds sewn into their chests is a masterpiece of depravity. It's almost impossible to believe that a sweet young woman like Mo Hayder (check out pictures of her) could dream these things up.

Nearly halfway through Carn and thoroughly enjoying it. You can almost smell the town, his portrayal of it is so good.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 02:52 pm:   

Will do, Mick, but I just grabbed a copy of the new John Harvey novel before leaving the library, so when I've finished one of my above it'll be next on the list.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 03:13 pm:   

Just finished "Different Skins", by Gary. Startlingly good stuff, I thought and I think it's safe to say that I never want to read "In The Skin" ever again. Ever, ever again.

I posted my reviews at Goodreads, if anyone's interested - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6909457-different-skins
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.6.55
Posted on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 06:52 pm:   

I'll look at that when I've read it - be interested to hear your views, Mark - really liked CONJURE btw!
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 03:01 pm:   

Thanks, Mick, glad to hear you liked "Conjure" too - when I didn't hear anything, I must admit that I feared the worst!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 03:29 pm:   

Just started Quentin S Crisp's ALL GOD'S ANGELS, BEWARE!

The first story:

Troubled Joe

"...I thought I might as well do a bit of concentrated haunting on this spot just for my own sake."

The language flows limpidly as if from some meaningful source or fount of the future. The omens are good for me as, today, I start reading this long-anticipated book - having recently been considering, for 'Cern Zoo' purposes, the latest news that the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is sabotaging itself from the future or, as some have said, committing suicide in self-retrospect. This story's themes include what it calls 'retrocausality' in a very similar vein.

The plot flows as beautifully as the language that tells it. I really should have read more QSC before today! The narrator is a ghost (of Troubled Joe) and it is a staggeringly original treatment of such a consciousness trying to find its own 'source' of being or hindsight explication, by a form of confessional with those it haunts, sometimes almost with tactile or even sexual frisson. It is a story of some length and I cannot do justice to the relentless power of concept and emotion, leading to a final ricochet of fatal and seemingly spiteful ricochet that this ghost 'causes' or ignites between two realities, and one wonders whether assisted death (assisted by whomsoever) is an act of despair or hope. The truth, perhaps, it's neither. We all shall see, no doubt.

This review will continue here:
http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/all_gods_angels_beware__quentin_s_crisp.htm
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.202.8
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 08:04 pm:   

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

It's pronounced "Jeekyll".

Architecture described in such a way that it feels like the characters are strolling around the convolutions of someone's brain. A huge constellation of lamps in the nocturnal city. The fog in streets described as fallen clouds.

By the way, what's the origin of blanking out the end of someone's name (apart from the initial) or a date in 19th century stories?


Spoiler:







Jekyll and Hyde are the same person! Just like Fight Club. D'oh.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.202.8
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 08:11 pm:   

Mark, abiding memories of GHOST FROM THE GRAND BANKS were the two proposed methods of raising the wreck: freezing it in a block of ice by using something like an inverse thermocouple (am I mis-rememembering?) or filling it will billions of tiny bubbles.

Was it Clarke who said in reference to raising the Titanic that it would be easier and cheaper to lower the Atlantic?
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.183.167
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 09:21 pm:   

Depressingly enough, I am reading Do You Really Need Spine Surgery? as well as a bunch of books with titles like A Clinical Guide to Neuropathic Pain and The Challenge of Pain. Not exactly light reading...

But I'm happy to say that I'm finally well and truly immersed again in Thieving Fear, after various disruptions in the form of hospital stays and medical tests, relatives and pets dying, work problems and moving to a new apartment. I usually read Ramsey's books as they come out, enjoying them over the course of a few days or week or so at the most, but I honestly am beginning to feel jinxed with all these constant interruptions! Maybe I've been cursed by whatever household spirit takes pleasure in depriving people of reading their favourite author's books in a timely manner (I'm determined, however, to finish it before my copies of Creatures of the Pool and Just Behind You arrive!).

I've also just received Simon's Cold to the Touch, and the two stories I've read so far have been excellent.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.161.235.186
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 10:04 pm:   

Half way through John Christopher's 'The Possessors' which is really atmospheric. A cross between 'The Thing' and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.251.225.253
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:08 pm:   

Can you recommend a good book on dealing with chronic pain, Huw? I've a friend with rhumatoid arthritis.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.87
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:33 pm:   

Me: I'm reading Rose Madder by Mr King. There's not much of his I haven't read, so I was real happy to get acquainted once again with King's brilliant ability to suck you in from the very opening page.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:34 pm:   

Yup, them's the two methods Clarke suggested to raise Titanic. Glass bubbles and a variation on freezing the water. Alas, I don't think the iceberg notion, poetic as it aptly is, would work, as the ocean currents would surely prevent the formation of ice forming. Clarke wasn't always perfectly smart: I remember thinking his notion behind Richter 10, a novel he shipped out to someone else to write, of fusing the tectonic plates of the planet being an especially dumb one. All that trapped heat needs somewhere to escape to!

Oddly enough, my abiding memories of reading Ghost first time were of Ada's death and the grief it brought out in her parents, Jason Bradley's bondage sexlife, and that effortless far-future leap of the epilogue.

And how's this for a find: this first edition copy I'm reading is inscribed by sir Arthur himself, signed and dated in Columbo the year after publication, and I found it for £1.99 in a charity store in Bakewell (Home of the tarts, yes), on my birthday...

Tony's wife Marie reckoned it was Karma, as I'd performed a good deed for a tearful lady just a few days before in a supermarket.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:36 pm:   

There was a Radio 4 reading/dramatisation of John Christopher's Death Of Grass a few months ago. Alas David Mitchell from Peep Show was the reader, so it rather sounded like his character's internal monolgue in that show as he read it, and I'm afraid I couldn't take it seriously.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.251.135.39
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:47 pm:   

"Oddly enough, my abiding memories of reading Ghost first time were of Ada's death and the grief it brought out in her parents, Jason Bradley's bondage sexlife, and that effortless far-future leap of the epilogue. "

Jese, I don't remember any of that.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.108.225
Posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 - 11:48 pm:   

Protodroid, my wife has rhumatoid arthritis. She was diagnosed about 14 years ago. Drugs have helped, but she's never found a useful book to help her with the condition. Let me know if you come across one.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.251.135.39
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 12:31 am:   

The drugs have gotten much better in the last 10 years. My friend was diagnosed a couple of years ago. It's a severe case of palindromic RA, which is very rare.

Here's a book someone who's studying nutrition recommended to my friend:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780470775011/Nutrition-and-Arthritis?b=-3t =-26#Bibliographicdata-26

It's a little expensive but it crosses the boundary between being a medical text and being accessible to non-medical people. Everything in this book is eveidentially based and reliable.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.108.225
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 12:49 am:   

Thanks, Proto. Even though her consultant says otherwise, she finds certain foods trigger different reactions in her body. I'll check that out.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.251.135.39
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 01:35 am:   

I know someone who knows a lot about nuitrition's effects with chronic medical issues. I'd be happy to ask if you've any specific questions. My friend said certain foods trigger attacks too. Trust your body first of all, I say.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 10:18 am:   

Steve, just on the off chance... has your wife been checked for gout?

I suffer from the condition and was suspected of having rheumatoid arthritis before a proper diagnosis was made - after hospitalisation it got that severe. My attacks were triggered by diet and are now held completely at bay by one daily Allopurinol tablet.

There are a lot of old wives tales about gout with no two cases the same in triggers or severity. Believe me mutliple joints throughout the body can be affected at once and the pain during a flare-up is indescribable. All my sympathies to your wife for what she must go through... I also found glucosamine sulphate of some help.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 06:21 pm:   

Just started Ballard's THE DROUGHT. I love me some Ballard, I do.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.74
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 06:32 pm:   

I've started the John Harvey I mentioned earlier. Far Cry. Man, he's good. You read him, Zed? He uses semi-colons like you.

And I hope all those in pain or those friends of folk here who are in pain have some relief from it. I've lieved with it as a serious issue for going on 20 years. It's not much fun and at times too easy to lose your sense of humour about.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.202.57
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 06:50 pm:   

Indeed.

And then there's me giving him a hard time too!

gcw
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.182.130
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 07:32 pm:   

Proto, I would suggest trying to find a book that focuses specifically on rheumatoid arthritis. I've found that a lot of the 'how-to' type books about chronic pain as a whole are flimsy and shallow, dishing out generalities instead of good, solid information and advice. On the other hand, serious medical guides and textbooks are often too complicated and specialised for the average layman to understand. A book that targets a specific condition in a thorough but relatively jargon-free way is much more useful, and I'm sure there must be some decent books on rheumatoid arthritis.

I've learned a lot about my own specific conditions from doing as much research on them as possible, both online and reading books about them. Most of my chronic pain comes from severe spinal problems, so I read as much as I can on the conditions I have as well as books on pain management so that I understand the drugs I have to take and the various tests and procedures I have or may need to undergo in the future, including surgery.

Stephen, I have gout, too! I am on daily benzbromarone and haven't had an attack in over a year. I have to be careful with what I eat - no purines! I also have bad acid reflux as well, so my diet is tricky these days. My pain is managed 'adequately' (i.e. it is dulled to a bearable level, rather than eliminated), for now, by various medications. I am just praying it doesn't get worse.

Mark, it sounds like we've been living with this for about the same length of time (since the early nineties, for me). You're right about maintaining a sense of humour about it. It's all too easy for life to seem futile after living with this for any length of time. The constant pain and the increased isolation and depression that almost inevitably accompany it can be overwhelming at times. It's essential to adjust your lifestyle, accept that your life has changed (but still live it to the fullest extent possible) and try to maintain a sense of humour and optimism. There's not really a choice, the way I see it.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.74.96.200
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 07:39 pm:   

>>It's essential to adjust your lifestyle, accept that your life has changed (but still live it to the fullest extent possible) and try to maintain a sense of humour and optimism.

I think so. But I'm becoming increasingly intrigued by NLP-based programmes concerning not so much pain management but reconditioning of what NLPers called the "neural pathways" of the brain, the notion that, in effect, you may be able to recondition the responses to pain in the same way that some people can recover fuction after a stroke. It's intriguing stuff.

Be well, Huw.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.182.130
Posted on Saturday, October 24, 2009 - 07:54 pm:   

Thanks, Mark - you too! I will look for some info on NLP - it does sound interesting.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.91.151
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 10:09 am:   

Thanks for that advice, Huw. I'll pass it on.

I'm reading a book about cognitive-based therapy and chronic pain at the mo'.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.186
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 12:35 pm:   

'The Last Seance' by Agatha Christie
'The Day of Reckoning' by Patricia Highsmith
'The Baby Spoon' by Patricia Highsmith
'A Curious Suicide' by Patricia Highsmith
'A Rose for Emily' by William Faulkner
'The Man Who Didn't Ask Why' by CS Forester

Wonder Woman: The Complete History by Les Daniels
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 02:53 pm:   

'A Rose For Emily' is a fantastic story - the best of its kind for me.

I'm about to start 'Ripley Under Ground' by Highsmith and haven't read any of those stories. I wonder is there a complete collection available?

My fav short story is 'The Quest For Blank Claveringi' which outdoes Stephen King in terms of making the impossible convincing and completely riveting.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 03:05 pm:   

Huw, commiserations on being a fellow gout sufferer but if the medication you're on is as good as mine (on it over 10 years now) your attacks will be cut down to next to nothing. I sometimes get a mild flare-up after a particularly heavy meal and lots of drink (i.e. every Christmas) but the severity and length of time it lasts is as nothing compared to what it used to be.

I first started getting flare-ups in my late 20s which became progressively more painful and frequent (affecting more and more joints) until I ended up in hospital with suspected rheumatoid arthritis.

Getting the gout diagnosis and the miraculous medication that is Allopurinol made me thank my lucky stars for the reprieve. So I can't complain but have been given a painful insight into the suffering of those with arthritis - my heart goes out to them and I pray every day for some kind of miracle cure... unless you've suffered chronic joint pain you can have no idea just how excruciating it is!
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.194.107
Posted on Sunday, October 25, 2009 - 05:32 pm:   

Stephen, I'm lucky in that I've not yet had a flare-up that has affected more than one joint (my foot and ankle). I first started having problems 2-3 years ago and didn't know what was wrong with me - I thought it might be cellulitis. By the time my foot had transformed into something resembling a rotting lump of meat I was in severe pain (nearly as bad as the pain I get with my spinal osteoarthritis and stenosis), and the doctor did a series of tests and decided I had gout. I haven't smoked or drunk alcohol for about fifteen years, so I was surprised by the diagnosis. Several of my relatives have it, so maybe it's hereditary. It is really very painful and the way the affected joints can transform is quite amazing. Sorry to hear you've had it for so long, but it's good that you've found a drug that stops it from flaring up. It's a pity there isn't a cure - I hear that once you have it, that's it.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 26, 2009 - 01:03 pm:   

Gout is hereditary Huw - an inherited kidney malfunction to be exact that creates a build-up of uric acid in the blood which collects as razor sharp crytsals in the joints. I'm adopted and didn't trace my blood relations until after the diagnosis when it suddenly all made sense!

I was told the medication if taken every day is enough to keep the condition completely at bay as long as the diet triggers are avoided in high measures - but the odd indulgence can be suffered. Alcohol is not always the trigger as in your case and thankfully it seems in mine - phew!!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 10:24 am:   

Sorry to hear about the bad time you fine chaps are having with this kind of pain. It sounds terrible.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.224
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 03:37 pm:   

Read the title story in JC Oates' THE MUSEUM OF DR. MOSES. Meh. Not bad, just middling. The problem with being an incredible writer, your finicky readers like me expect you to be incredible all the time....
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 05:57 pm:   

Finished 'The Beetle' and my mind is still reeling from the effect. I honestly don't know what to say about this book other than it wasn't at all what I expected but nevertheless is one of the most rollicking adventure yarns I have read in a long, long time.

I can see Sax Rohmer and Dennis Wheatley as the natural successors to this style of pulp writing but Richard Marsh's uproarious wit makes this book seem far less dated than any of their works. Quite sublime entertainment.

Just started 'Ripley Under Ground' and already feel like I've never been away.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 06:12 pm:   

Nerarly finished Carn. This is just a fantastic book. Everything about it rings so true. I highly recommend it.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 10:00 pm:   

Reading Nemonymous 2, which Des kindly sent up here to Denmark, after his generous offer on another thread. Here's a brief real time-review of the first tale. I am not checking up on the identity of the author at present.
_________
Climbing the tallest tree in the world:

A sense of adventure, foreboding, tradition- the image of the tree.

'When we were students or professors'... Confusion of time? Collage of past/present as captured in the markings on tree- image of time and memory, an inversion? Heaven at the roots-crown in the clouds?

Passage of time/ direction of time/direction of the world- Microscosm / macrocosm

Rites of passage/passage of time- again a lunacy of tradition?

'The tree was older than the art of writing'

'fossils of passion'

Dislocation of time and space- sun sets, and then midnight- the journey of companions- which experiences are mutual, which ones, singular and contained?- in a kind of 'void'- 'dangled his legs over the void.'

A dream- doubling of birds- the owls/ falling up towards the sky/ down to the ground.

More moments of inversion, confusion of time, direction.

Effective use of 'unreliable' narrator- inner hidden world / external world/ markings on the tree which branches out to the void as some form of experience- Cycle of tradition vs cycle of nature/ interrupted. Vertigo.

Tradition/collapse/ renewal/ cycle
______________

A strong opening tale that manages to effectively incorporate elements of identity/tradition/alienation/

And a handsome volume in a cinematic format which is comfortable to read in the layout.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 11:33 pm:   

Real-time review of tale number two from Nemonymous 2.
_____________

Mighty Fine Days.

Missing information.

'He seemed too heavy for the air, and appeared to slump bodily where he stood...'

Corporeality, also of the passengers on the bus stop. Missing information. An effect that mounts and mounts in its absences. Corporeality again 'He slapped Harris on the shoulder' As if the details pertaining to the descriptions of other people around Harris should give us some momentary comfort against the approaching terrifying blankness.

We get the impression that Harris is moving around in a sort of fugue, as in the opening tale- a dislocation of identity/past that could be interchanged with a critique of those external material things that we identify with ourselves, with the world- A stripping away that collapses the self, into a tighter and tighter configuration, like a cochlea or a seashell.

A both unsettling and humorous tale.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 12:16 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 3
________

The assistant to dr. Jacob

'I no longer trust the memory' Here we have a line that carries through effectively from the first two stories.

'...his home, a secret kingdom sheltered from prying eyes' Then an underlying sexual tension in the seemingly innocent garden? '...blush, bloom, blood lilly, tongue, button hole, burst.'

Cross-pollination of the garden and the human body. Also in the beginning: the seasons turning in the bones, the summer and spring of youth.

'...intimacy of a photograph' vs the intimacy of memory, and those things that are shut out, for a time- until they return and haunt the protagonist.

Here nature is initially romantic, idealized and hides something dark, and unimaginable- but for the frozen images, fragments in time.

This was a very disturbing and beautifully written tale. And it has a cat called Whiskers.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.188.138
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 03:18 pm:   

No idea if this of any use to anyone here but there's a Radio 4 programme about the role of metaphorical language in healing at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nfq2l/Metaphor_for_Healing/
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.42
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 10:01 pm:   

Well, if we're not going to 666, who's going to be the Anti-Christ?

Finished "Public Enemies" by Bryan Burroughs (my favorite popcorn book of the year, so far. Should have been an HBO series, not a Johnny Depp movie!). On to "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" by Robert Caro--research for my WIP.

AND: for those of who who resisted or are resisting the idea of the "Where the Wild Things Are" movie, I've posted an indirect response to it at

http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/in-which-we-are-introduced-a-certain-bear-an d-a-dubious-notion

You Brits may appreciate my parody of one your most beloved institutions.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 10:28 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 4
________

Buffet Freud

'I puzzled and fretted at the position this would put me in, regarding our doctor/ patient compact.'

Social gathering with analyst and patient. Schism of social class, age, gender.

Childhood and transformation. 'Unreliable narrator.' Play therapy.

'A fake paradise, is better than no paradise at all.'

This was both a fun and bitter piece, a farce on the subject/object relationship and of identity and gender; a continuation of the investigation from the previous tales on the nature of identity, memory- both real and constructed. An emerging gestalt? We also have images of 'unmasking' as it relates to childhood, carrying through from the previous tale.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 11:05 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 5
__________

Ice Age

A devastated inner and outer world.

'He realized that he had no idea what he would do when he reached the city, no plan other than try and find warmth, to escape the creeping cold that followed him like a shadow.'

This is a bleak and devastating story. The reoccurring images of the creeping cold, and frost-covered streets, are made all the more bleak by the desperate and destructive longing for the warmth of human contact and companionship. 'Let the cold world rush back in.'

The 'shivering' building is particularly effective at the end of the tale. 'Horses crunched in slow circles, their heads hooded by the fog of their breath' is another powerful image of Coppard's condition. I liked this story very much.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 11:56 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 6
________
The vanishing life and films of Emmanuel Escobada

The Brazilian born filmmaker's influence by the Italian 'Giallo' films. And now he speaks 4 languages of course.

'...the misunderstandings that result from language barriers.' - That is not even an understatement when it comes to the Swedish dubbed actor!

The gruelling two week schedule'- poor old man! And to cast him as Satan! Not even Werner Herzog would do that, not even during the filming of Fitzcaraldo in the jungle! Or maybe he would.

'...none of the characters seem surprised by the presence of a telepathic squirrel' HA!

This is a laugh out loud funny story that has a lovecraftian subtext lurking. This story is also an excellent companion to all the previous tales in its 'investigation' of identity/biography, but then here in this tale, all the witnesses seem to have gone.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.163
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 12:37 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 7
____

Berenice's Journal

'(I had to lay down on the floor and press my ear to the carpet to hear above the noise of the furnace vents)'

Berenice is fascinated with her new neighbour who might be a banker because of his 'smart clothes' and good hair. 'The finest specimen of a man.'

Pills. Disability check. Compulsive brushing of teeth. Unhappy about the rest of body.

This piece, presented as a series of journal entries/ autobiography, is also an interesting variation on the other tales and works effectively as an extension from the previous Escobaba biographic tale. In this case solipsism, fantasy and 'construction' of experience is turned first inwards, and then outwards towards an unsuspecting other.

The sequencing of the tales so far has been very effective and has created interesting dynamics in meaning and perspectives, a polyphony of voices working around the theme of identity and experience. I am skipping the 'late-labelling' from Volume one so as to not spoil any surprises in the future.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 12:50 pm:   

Just about to leave the small town of Carn for The City and The City by China Meiville.

Carn has been a great book and I recommend it highly.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 01:09 pm:   

Weber, I have to disagree with you about 'Ripley Under Ground'. I only started it a few days ago and am already two thirds of the way through with all my other books having been set aside.

SPOILERS

I didn't get before just how blackly funny this instalment is and I'm finding it a joy to read again. Tom really does get himself tied up in knots in this one and his unwilling accomplice Bernard Tufts is both pathetic and hilarious as his mind slowly unravels causing more and more problems for Tom to sort.

My theory is that Highsmith, when she decided to resurrect the character after 15 years, thought she would have a bit of macabre fun with him after luck being on his side throughout TTMR. She pulls it off brilliantly imho.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 01:50 pm:   

Thanks, Karim, for the pleasant surprise of encountering your Real-Time Reviw of Nemonymous Two so far.

nemo2
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 02:26 pm:   

I may need to revisit Ripley Under Ground. It is a while since I read it.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 10:57 pm:   

Des, I am enjoying the experiment, and will add some thoughts on my experience of real-time reviewing at the end.
_____________

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 8
____

Showcase

'High above the road reared on concrete limbs, traffic streaming along its spine...'

A woman wanders through a ghostly park filled with electric emporiums, carpet palaces, pet stores, pizza outlets, car parks and movie theaters: Bleak descriptions provided by a troubled spectator?

Then the spectator becomes a participant, and the situation spirals towards something even darker and disturbing.

'The spine road','mouths of buildings',
'...gleaming on the face of a washing machine.'

'The Lady of Shalott'

A Ballardian ghost story, a consciousness trapped in a loop, as in the films that cycle at the Showcase multiplex. The tragic fate of the protagonist is projected onto the bleak modern urban landscape to great effect. Photography is also used as a very disturbing device in this tale, as in the dr. jacob story.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 11:45 pm:   

Karim, I really don't understand the whole concept of what you're doing.

I could look it up but would like it better if you explained it to me. What is meant by "real time".
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 11:54 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 9
____
Eyes like water like ice

'A thousand people had crossed the country to listen to the talk from a small group of Indian mystics.'

The arrival of the other, of something outside the sphere of the ordinary and mundane. As in the previous tale, we are moving towards something spiritual, pertaining to another realm.

'...middle class audience listened attentively
... planned what they would say to their friends at the after-talk gathering over a bottle of wine.'

A mutually sanctioned encounter of different cultures: the author presents a rather ambiguous stance however, on one hand farcical on both sides of the encounter: 'the Indian mystics headed for another city, another hall', an audience enthralled,' they'd laughed when the men made a small joke- bright eyes like water like ice, laugh like a child, cuddly like an animal.'

However 'The man in beige' seems to bypass the more 'frivolous' aspects of the ceremony- Quite literally.

This was a disturbing tale mainly due to certain satirical aspects being turned upside down to great effect. A mysterious tale.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 11:59 pm:   

Stephen, sorry didn't see your post. This is something Des birthed. By real-time I am reacting to the tale as I'm reading it, enganging with the story, making notes, taking down impressions 'as' I move through the tale for the first time. Makes sense? Check out Des's Weirdmonger site for reviews on other collections- he does it much better than me and in an even more personal and articulate manner.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 12:14 am:   

I won't highjack the thread for much longer, I can move it to another thread. This thread is called 'What are you reading?' and people are reacting to stuff, so I thought it would be fun to try Des's method on a Nemonymous anthology here. If this works out I thought of doing something similar with the landlord's most recent story collection...
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 01:26 am:   

Stephen, best to see it in the flesh here: Des's real-time review of Ghosts and Grisly things:

http://www.knibbworld.com/campbelldiscuss/messages/1/2308.html#POST31576

I am just a young inexperienced jedi.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 11:01 am:   

For any regular RCMB member reading Karim's real-time review of NEMONYMOUS TWO above, can ask me for a free copy to be sent to them -- the first seven such requests being the maximum.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 11:26 am:   

I'd like a copy Des!

This idea has me genuinely intrigued...
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 11:33 am:   

Please contact me at dflewis48@hotmail.com with your address.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 08:05 pm:   

Have done so sir... thanks!
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.196.50.157
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 08:25 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 10
____

Earthworks

'Seagulls and crows told the story of my early years. They are scattered like punctuation throughout the narrative; sets of black-and-white quotation marks perched in opposing pairs above the lines.'

Digging a hole in the earth- almost two meters deep, birds perched in the surrounding trees above the hole.

Shift in time. Back to the years in school? The digging of the hole referring to a sort of archaeological investigation of a personal history?- digging down through the layers.

'Being the hypotenuse in a love triangle is a messy business. At school, geometry was made to sound so clean.'

Repetition of the shape of the hole, fragments from school. 'Spirals of poverty', 'a pattern started', 'the escape tunnel.'

A childhood filled with illness: 'I still half suspected the birds. Although true, it was a circle that got me in the end.'

And then in adulthood, shapes have a different meaning indeed.

'I think about the layers I have come through. Each age deposits its own debris.'

This was a story rich with feeling and imagery, beautifully imagined and with a poetic complexity that worked to forward the story very effectively. Another variation on autobiography, time and experience from the previous tales. Also of childhood. Who wrote this I wonder? Curious to find out at the end of these reviews.

___________
These real time reviews will resume after the weekend. Have a good Halloween.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Friday, October 30, 2009 - 09:23 pm:   

These real time reviews will resume after the weekend. Have a good Halloween.

==================
And to you, too, Karim. :-)
des
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 64.180.64.74
Posted on Monday, November 02, 2009 - 02:35 am:   

I finished John Llewellyn Probert's Against the Darkness last night, and loved the thing! LOVED, I tells ya!

To learn more of this book of wonderfulness, head here: http://www.johnlprobert.com/site/80.asp

To order one, head here: http://www.screamingdreams.com/
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Monday, November 02, 2009 - 09:33 am:   

Just started 'The 17th Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories' and for the first time in my rereading of these Pan/Fontana tomes a very familiar name has made its presence felt: Stephen King with the affecting little tale 'The Reaper's Image'. Reminded me in structure of '1408'.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.167.96.190
Posted on Tuesday, November 03, 2009 - 01:13 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 11
_____

Striped Pajamas

'The clothes you wear are perm-press, the only other item in your bag is the pair of striped pajamas that belonged to your father'

A woman checks into a hotel room. We are presented with a catalogue of belongings, both from the private and public sphere, each one with their memories. The tragic significance of the pajamas is hinted at towards the final lines of the tale. The longing for escape we also encountered in an earlier story 'Ice Age'.

A tale filled with much sorrow and powerlessness. 'The man who monitored your life.' There is a suggestion however that there will not be an escape, but a return to a desperate state of affairs perhaps: 'Things that colour the hallway leading to heaven for the old and ailing, theirs a palette of oatmeal greys, at best.' This is in an earlier instance of the tale where the woman describes her conversation with her mother, but it seems to project forwards towards the end of the tale.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.248.207
Posted on Tuesday, November 03, 2009 - 08:13 am:   

Am greatly enjoying a book by one of you Brits, and one of my favorite literary/cultural thinker-writers: THE MEANING OF LIFE, by Terry Eagleton (2007). What's it about? That! It's a tiny little book, divided into bite-sized paragraphs; and despite its scope and profundity, tongue-in-cheek, funny, and a breeze to read. So far, I can thoroughly recommend this....
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 03, 2009 - 12:10 pm:   

Thanks Des, NEMONYMOUS TWO was waiting for me in the hall when I got home last night (a beautifully produced little book) along with (by happy coincidence) 'Best New Horror : Volume 1' which I ordered over a week ago. My plan is to start into it as soon as I finish the Fontana Horror books (only the 17th left). I see Ramsey included what I consider to be one of his most disturbing stories from 'Waking Nightmares', the downright vicious 'It Helps If You Sing'.

Now how do I get my hands on a copy of NEMONYMOUS ONE?
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.167.96.190
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:50 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 12
______

The Drowned

This is the only story that I have encountered previously, and it is also the only author to have work presented twice in Nemonymous two so far.

'Worchester is a town surrounded by farms, which produces a certain insular mentality and fear of city life.'

Travel is its own country, and the protagonists want to get away from their claustrophobic community.

'Underneath Kevin's idealistic statements about how 'mankind' needed to wake up or the evils of capilaism and pollution, I always sensed a struggle against a deep sense of futility'

This notion of what lies hidden beneath the surface carries through to the image of water and swimming, to what moves in the blood, what is hidden in the depths of the sea.

'One slightly strange thing that developed between us was that Kevin liked watching me swim and dive. He had a fear of water-not showers, but any body of water deep enough to drown in.'

Kevin is terrified of water, and he doesn't like the 'chemical' smell of swimming pools. Gradually however, he learns to swim, never feeling at ease in the water.

The swimming pool is exchanged with the expanse of the sea.

'There was always more going on with Kevin than was visible on the surface.'

This line from earlier in the tale also reflects the mystery and darkness that Kevin feels when he is surrounded by chemicals and the dead fish in the sea, which he describes in a moment of panic: 'They'll pull us under, make us join them'

And towards the end of the story:

'Our conversations became brittle and light, almost whimsical: the fear of depth had taken us both over.'

'I don't think people can ever really save each other, but they can help each other to keep above the surface.'

This was a tale rich with imagery and nuanced characters. With a just a few lines, the author manages to make these characters jump off the page as real living human beings of flesh and blood. Despite its pessimisms, this tale is strangely uplifting. Travel here, could also be understood as an exploration of the self as it relates to the other previous stories. The notion of escape also carries through from the previous tales.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 09:31 am:   

This is the only story that I have encountered previously, and it is also the only author to have work presented twice in Nemonymous two so far.
========================

Karim -- the author of 'The Drowned' has only ever had one story in the Nemonymous canon so far.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 09:51 am:   

:-)You mean supernatural forces are behind the earlier tale?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 10:06 am:   

Karim, If you mean ESCOBADA, it is genuinely anonymous by on-going request of its author. But I can at least confirm that its author is not the author of THE DROWNED.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 10:15 am:   

HA! ok Des.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.69
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 12:46 pm:   

Still trying to read and can't at all. It's terrible.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 12:56 pm:   

Read something light and funny... a comedy crime caper by Donald E. Westlake or some Tom Sharpe perhaps?
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:12 pm:   

Karim, you may have been misled by the fact that my recent novella THE WITNESSES ARE GONE was partly inspired by 'Escobada'. There's a clear acknowledgement of that in the book. I can tell you most definitely that I did not write 'Escobada'. Not in this life anyway.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.82.44
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:19 pm:   

Why are you trying to read when you don't want to, Tony? Listen to yourself and what you really want to do - it may be something you've never done before.

I'm reading non-fiction about scientific investigations into the afterlife. One investigator published an encrypted message in the newspaper, sealed the key to the message inside an envelope, then went home and gassed himself with the intention of relaying the key to a number of mediums (media?). None of the keys the mediums received produced anything but gibberish from the encrypted message.

Another spiritualist died of a heart attack arguing with a sceptic at a conference panel in London. It's hard to avoid the suspision he was just underlining his point.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:22 pm:   

Tony, sorry to hear that. Is it an eyestrain/stress problem or a mood one? If the former, I would recommend a few days' break from the screen, which messes up your focal length and makes the physical task of reading print more difficult. I have trouble with that too. If the latter, read other things – perhaps lighter, as Stephen suggests, and definitely more fluent and engaging. Maybe some non-fiction?

Can I take this opportunity to recommend DELETE AT YOUR PERIL by Bob Servant to all RCMB readers? One man's journey across the shark-filled waters of Internet spam... very, very funny indeed.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

I have been illuminated! Thanks Joel, for a second there I though Des was playing a Jedi mind trick on me :-)
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 01:42 pm:   

Tony how about graphic novels and comics?- Sure the lettering is smaller, but less intense perhaps on the eyes?
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.235.87
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 04:08 pm:   

Stories from Datlow and Windling's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #11 which I've just picked up second hand for two whole Euros. Most of the contributors I've never heard of, but there are also stories by Royle (three, yet!), Womack and even Bradbury that I've never seen. Wow.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 05:09 pm:   

The City and the city - I'm more than halfway through now but there's something I can't quite place wrong with this book. In King Rat and the Bas Lag novels the novels were driven by the strength of the prose as well as the strength of the storyline. In this, the storyline is great, some fantastically weird ideas and a nice gradual reveal of how the fantasy works, but the prose isn't hitting the spot. I'm still reading for the story, not the words.

Does that make sense?

It may be that it's because it's a first person narration by someone who's first language isn't English and the strange sentence construction is deliberate, but it's not exciting me the way his prose has done in the past.

It's a shame but if it continues like this it's going to be a 6 out of 10, could try harder.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 05:39 pm:   

Just about to start 'Midnight Sun' by the man himself along with 'Foundation' by Isaac Asimov. Have had the 7 volumes of the series for a while now and want to see what all the fuss was about.

Apparently that Stephen King story, 'The Reaper's Image', was first published in 1969 and made its first UK appearance in the Fontana Ghost series - years before 'Skeleton Crew'.
This has to be one of his earliest stories, anyone here know when King had his first work published?
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 05:44 pm:   

1892.

He's older than he looks.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.42
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 07:53 pm:   

I just finished "Midnight Sun." Really good, one of his best novels; so much dread, I actually got anxious when I picked it up (though the climax with Ben in the forest seemed a little sluggish and over-parsed. I kept thinking a more spare approach at that point would have strengthened the emotional impact.

Now I'm to an American noir novel "The Devil's Redhead" by David Corbett. Very emotional and intense, very reminiscent of David Goodis so far.

And I'm continuing with "Laughter in the Dark."
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.167.96.190
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 10:45 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 13
______

Adult Books

'Walter gazed around the poorly-lit space, searching, catching glimpses from the corner of his eye, glimpses of something that moved just beyond his field of vision.'

Walter finds himself in a shop along a city's decaying harbour district. He appears to be in a strange state...'felt himself drifting back into that fog, back into a white space that had no boundaries...', 'immersed in confusion.'

We get the sense that Walter is 'looking for a girl,' but he is obscure both about the identity of this girl, and his reasons for his quest.

The shopkeeper then gives us one of several clues. In a final twist that will not be revealed here, we understand both Walter and Dan McMurtry's 'passion' and 'quest'. At atmospheric and disturbing tale with a comic finale.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.167.96.190
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 11:13 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 14
______

Nothing

'One day he noticed the dust motes floating through the air and remembered that dust was mainly made up of bits of human skin. Bits of them were floating through the house like lost souls.'

The protagonist has lost his wife and daughter in a fire: 'only charred and unidentifiable fragments.'

He is revisited by moments, memories, images of family life. His world begins to fall apart: giving up work, contact with other people, he hardly eats, becomes disoriented.

A childhood dream/ flashback. The bucket and God's act of creation.

This was an unsettling story about loss. As the protagonist's life comes to a standstill, we are given the impression that something else starts to stir, real or imagined. This had some very carefully selected key images that were used to great effect.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.7.108
Posted on Wednesday, November 04, 2009 - 11:38 pm:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 15
______

The secret

A wizard and his apprentice:

A sort of Socratic dialogue between master and student: The Rainbow Man and Muura.

Discussion of an initially frivolous nature- hairstyles, turns to issues pertaining to the survival of the species, the arts, politics, religion. A short comic piece that comes at just the right time in the sequence of stories.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.7.108
Posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009 - 12:25 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 16
______

A spot of tea

'With ritual grace, Frank would play 'mother' and serve up tea, much to the continuing delight of his java-swinging American Brethren.'

Private Frank Worthy, a canadian serving in the US army, has a weakness for tea, and a fiery mat of red curls.

'The year was 1918, and sadly enough, all the tea in China could not change the fact that the war against the Germans was looking grim'

Junior is wounded in a surprise German attack. Frank's tea appears to do a little more than just keep the Allied soldiers warm against the cold French night.

A German, just a boy, is wounded as he sneaks up on the Allies.

'For whatever reason, we've been given this gift, and it's something that's meant to be shared.'

A meditation on war, mercy, and a portrait of a handful of soldiers surrounded by a little bit of magic in the otherwise grim reality of the trenches.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.7.108
Posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009 - 12:44 am:   

Real-time review of Nemonymous 2- story nr. 17
______

White Dream

'Like any strange little girl might do, Jennifer had always wanted to die in the snow.'

Jennifer does not want her death to be a 'public' occasion, like her grandmother's funeral.

On a Christmas Eve, the landscape covered in snow, Jennifer sneaks outside when her parents are asleep. She finds a tree in a park.

'She grabbed hold of the lowest branch and climbed up into the body of the tree....It was magical to be above the earth'

This is a tragic tale, and the image of the tree returns to us from the very beginning of the collection.

There is a final tale, or section called 'Four minutes and thirty-three seconds'- four blank pages. I found myself thinking of that girl in the tree as I turned the final blank pages to the end of the collection. I'll add some thoughts on real-time reviewing soon and look up the authors of the collection!
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 81.155.107.1
Posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009 - 09:22 am:   

Let me know, Karim, if I can copy and paste your Nemonymous 2 (2002) real-time review into a unit on my blog?
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009 - 02:25 pm:   

Yes Des, by all means! I'll add some comments on the stories now that I have checked out the list of authors.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - 01:22 pm:   

I'm finding Asimov's first volume of the 'Foundation Saga' extremely addictive - so much so I'm nearly finished it already.

The writing is of a fast pulpy style but with the emphasis on labyrinthine political intrigue and double-crosses rather than straight action/adventure (though that does play a part). So far I'm struck by the similarities to Robert Graves 'Claudius' novels more than anything and can think of no higher praise for this kind of work!

The sheer scope and ambition of the book (written in 1951) is breathtaking while the scientific restraint shown is also notable. The story is set millennia from the present day at a time when the human race has colonised the known galaxy but has yet to make contact with any other intelligent lifeforms.
We are so far in the future that the origins of the race have become shrouded in myth with archaeologists arguing about which star system we really originated in.

One man, the mathematical and socio-political genius Hari Seldon, works out that the Galactic Empire is in the last throes of supremacy with entropy, fragmentation and interstellar warfare inevitable. So a grand plan is hatched to save the accumulated knowledge of the race by gathering a vast team of great minds together and setting them up on a barren planetoid at the furthest flung corner of the galaxy where they will set up a neutral Foundation and protect themselves from all aggressors by the power of their new scientific advances.

All very noble but the best laid plans of mice and men, as they say... politics, religion, economics, psychology, racism, evolution, philosophy are all grist to Asimov's mill as the death of the old order and the rising of the new unfolds in all its epic grandeur.

He may not be a literary writer but as an ideas man and an entertainer Asimov was second to none.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.150.116
Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - 04:08 pm:   

Shorts - a wonderful one by Mervyn Peake called Same Time, Same Place. Positively Aickmanian. I loved it. And another by August Derleth called The Lonesome Place. Also excellent. Currently searing through Barker's Dread - ace, wasn't he? So bloody smart.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - 04:20 pm:   

I have the single volume edition of 'The Gormenghast Trilogy' in my "to be read soon" pile.

I gather it's where gothic horror meets epic Tolkienesque fantasy which sounds good to me!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 11:12 am:   

Finished 'Foundation' and starting straight into 'Foundation And Empire'.

The first volume spanned several lifetimes with the originators of Hari Seldon's grand plan all dead and the ethos he stood for already starting to factionalise.

The scariest part of the work is the battle between science/rationality/honour (those who understood Seldon's equations and stay true to his goal for the betterment of the race) and religion/materialism/self-interest (those who achieved individual power under the regime he created and want to build on that power).

As the memory of the man and his goal diminishes into the mists of time he becomes more and more of a Christ figure and the whole merry-go-round starts up again. Pure genius and that's after only one of seven volumes!
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.155.111.216
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 09:13 pm:   

Which Arthur.C.Clarke books should i read ? Gimme a top 3 please.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 09:55 pm:   

I read 2001 recently and it absolutely blew me away. a wonderful, wonderful book. And I'm not really into SF.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.198.215
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 10:44 pm:   

If I had to choose just 3 Clarkes: Rendevouz with Rama (a novel), Tales from the White Hart (light-hearted shorts) and Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! (his collected non-fiction).
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.198.215
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 10:45 pm:   

2001 is good, too, though.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.195.43
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 11:39 pm:   

Asimov only occasionally works for me ('Nightfall' being an obvious classic), but I agree his work is rich in ideas and perspectives.

It's odd to reflect that Osama bin Laden is such a massive Asimov fan that he called his organisation Al-Qaida ('Foundation') in tribute. That's not a joke.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 08:30 am:   

You mean the CIA named it that way, Joel, surely?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.210.239
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 09:56 am:   

"Al-Qaida"

That's mad. Maybe we should just pit the Scientologists against the Foundationists and be done with both of them.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.228.92
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 10:45 am:   

2001, by all means. The sequels aren't very good. The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, a hefty paperback.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.228.92
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 10:54 am:   

One of the many good things about 2001: a Space Odyssey is that you are taught so much about astronomy and technology in general. The same applies to Asimov's novelization of Fantastic Voyage, where one learns a lot about the technological marvel that is the human body.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.187.80
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 01:40 pm:   

I can find no evidence that Bin Laden has even read Asimov, let alone that he named Al Quaeda after his writings! There was merely an article in The Guardian speculating on whether at some point Bin Laden may have read Asimov - there was nothing concrete (at least not that I could find) to back it up.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.225.209
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 04:41 pm:   

Clarke's fiction has all the meat of non-fiction facts; his non-fiction has all the poetry of fiction.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 04:55 pm:   

Flying through the second 'Foundation' equally quickly and the action has really cranked up a gear. It's now all-out War as the Empire finally wises up to the threat the Foundation poses.

The story is being presented from their point-of-view in this one with the heroic starship commander Bel Riose the first to realise the danger inherent in this seemingly insignificant movement spreading out from Terminus like a cancer eating away at the edges of the galaxy.

He surely must have been one of the inspirations for James T. Kirk. This is great stuff - truly thrilling storytelling!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.184.176
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 10:59 am:   

Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell. Ex-con gets involved with a pair of teenagers who intend to set up a blackmail scam and need some muscle. Meanders a bit, I'm halfway through the book and they still haven't started the scam, but there's some good one-liners.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 11:59 am:   

Joel, thanks for telling me about the Al Qaeda link to 'Foundation'. I didn't know that and the parallels (coincidences?) really are quite striking!

Check it out here: http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=2488&IssueNum=1
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 12:33 pm:   

Vardoger, by Stephen Volk. Cracking fun so far.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.178.83.10
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 01:39 pm:   

Stains by Paul Finch - gfp - had this for ages but only now starting it - an excellent read so far - really enjoying it.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.15
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 01:49 pm:   

I'm with Harlan Ellison - this Asimov/Bin Laden thing is "a stretch" to say the least! Interesting reading, though.
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Alexicon (Alexicon)
Username: Alexicon

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 88.106.106.80
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 02:06 pm:   

Some anthos are in the house but the wolverine has denied access to them till Xmas. One is 'Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror'. Contributors include Gary Bushell and Uncle Ramsey(!).

Should go down well with the Christmas pullet.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 02:41 pm:   

It's somehow appropriate that Bushell is featured in a book titled Vile Things.
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Alexicon (Alexicon)
Username: Alexicon

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 88.106.106.80
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 03:24 pm:   

Jury's out on that one,Steve.I have to read his contribution first. I mean, there are other vile individuals we know of,who write extremely well.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 03:32 pm:   

Huw, hardly a stretch when the first translation of the original 'Foundation' into Arabic in 1952 was actually titled 'Al Qaeda'.

We're back in mind-blowing coincidence territory if Bin Laden just happened to name his movement after the very anti-Galactic Empire (read US Empie) movement Asimov wrote about.

Even if Bin Laden hadn't read the book that (initially innocent) phrase has already passed into the larger human consciousness now and I guarantee you that Arabic reading sci-fi fans will be drawn to it for that very reason.

I'm with Asimov though: "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."

I must point here to all you 'Star Wars' fans that the phrase Galactic Empire does not automatically mean the word "Evil" should be appended. In fact Asimov's humanistic and cool scientific non-judgementalism about either side is one of the biggest appeals about this quite magnificent series of books.

Halyway through Volume 2 now and about to face the Rise of The Mule (whatever that means).
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 03:36 pm:   

"I have the single volume edition of 'The Gormenghast Trilogy' in my "to be read soon" pile.

I gather it's where gothic horror meets epic Tolkienesque fantasy which sounds good to me!"

Actually, Stephen, it's nothing like Tolkein - no overt fantasy, for a start. I've always thought its roots were in Dickens at his most Gothic. But it's certainly wonderful.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 04:22 pm:   

Jack Cady's By Reason of Darkness from the Prime Evil anthology.
Tremendous story reminiscent of the film Apocalypse Now and of course Heart of Darkness.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 04:29 pm:   

Finished "Vardoger" at lunchtime - cracking little novella. "Hungry Hearts" and "Skywalking", by Dale Pollock, up next.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 04:32 pm:   

Ramsey, well I love Dickens and am working my way sequentially through his works (very slowly as a mega-long term project) - so that's me in clover!

Next one I have to start is 'Dombey And Son' while my favs so far are 'The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Barnaby Rudge' though I've loved them all.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.117.174
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 06:50 pm:   

Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan.
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov.
Enjoying them both so far.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.155.111.216
Posted on Saturday, November 14, 2009 - 02:58 am:   

Children of the Night by John Blackburn.
October Country by Ray Bradbury.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.10.250.234
Posted on Saturday, November 14, 2009 - 01:05 pm:   

Just finished Ghost Realm by the mighty Paul Finch - seriously good stuff

Now it's

Tales of Terror by Guy de Maupassant
Gothic Short Stories ed by David Blair
In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan LeFanu
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.162.43.93
Posted on Saturday, November 14, 2009 - 03:40 pm:   

Reading Under the Dome by King and just received Pictures of the Dark by Mr. Bestwick, Mindful of Phantoms by Fry and Cold to the Touch by Strantzas in the mail this week, all of which I'm looking forward to read up to Christmas. I am very impressed BTW with the Tartarus book- gorgeous and effective design indeed. Also just read Clive Barker's 3D comic Seduth which was just ok, the visuals however, were effective.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:10 pm:   

Just started the final Fontana Horror Book (17th) and for the first time a certain Ramsey Campbell is amongst the authors included: 'Reply Guaranteed' (1968) which I'm not sure if I've read before.
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Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer)
Username: Matthew_fryer

Registered: 08-2009
Posted From: 90.195.182.161
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:42 pm:   

One by Conrad Williams.
Breathtakingly good.

Next up is Conjure by Mark West. Looking forward to it.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.188.223
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:42 pm:   

I am still reading Thieving Fear (slowly but surely) and enjoying it very much. I have just started dipping in to Just Behind You, which looks superb. I'm glad that it includes 'Feeling Remains', one of my favourite of the more recent shorts. Next I'll be reading Creatures of the Pool.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.182.89
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:51 pm:   

Battlefields Volume 1 by Garth Ennis. Omnibus edition of three comics mini series set during WWII, each illustrated by a different artist (Russ Braun, Peter Snejbjerg and Carlos Ezquerra).

Night Witches tells of a squadron of female Russian bomber pilots. As well as depicting the perils faced by the pilots the story also follows the German troops on the receiving end of the bombing raids and the devastating effects the attacks have on their morale. Emotionally wrenching story with all the bloood and guts of Saving Private Ryan but with a better plot and none of the cheap sentimentality. One of my all-time favourite Ennis stories.

Dear Billy has a nurse writing a letter to her sweetheart explaining the atrocities she faced when captured by the Japanese and the horrific way she tries to come to terms with it when rescued. Dark, powerful storytelling.

Tankies features an inexperienced London tank crew during the Battle of Normandy fighting both the enemy and their commander's impenetrable Geordie accent. The least of the three stories. Ennis tries to hang too many incidental scenes off the main plot with the result that the story gets diluted and none of the characters get to develop beyond caricatures.

Still, all three stories contain lots of research into WWII and Ennis supplies a short essay pointing out which bits are fact and which are fiction as well as a bibilography of thirty or so books he used to research the stories. Throw in sketches by the three artists and the John Cassaday alternate covers from the original mini series and you've got a winner.
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Alexicon (Alexicon)
Username: Alexicon

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 88.106.44.52
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:54 pm:   

Heller's 'Closing Time',as directed by Mr. Walsh.

Disappointing so far,Stephen. Probably something to do with the time and context in which the mighty 'Catch 22' was originally read by me.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 04:40 pm:   

And a little thing called expectations I suspect.

I was lucky in that I came to both novels about the same time so the indeed mighty 'Catch 22' hadn't a chance to grow in my mind.

I guess I just like Heller's voice... same thing I get from Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Anton Wilson (as mentioned elsewhere). Bleak, cynical, wise, charming and very funny.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 05:04 pm:   

Alex, as a true fan of the novel I'd be interested to know your opinion of the 1970 film version with Alan Arkin.

I've always loved it from a very young age but didn't read the book until well in my 20s.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.228.92
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 07:49 pm:   

'Reply Guaranteed' (1968) which I'm not sure if I've read before.

Gawd, how I envy you! I'd like to hear what you think about it.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.167.117.66
Posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 07:54 pm:   

...Just finished Creatures Of The Pool and started on Zed's Different Skins last night.....

gcw
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Alexicon (Alexicon)
Username: Alexicon

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 88.106.34.157
Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 02:17 am:   

Stephen: without going into deep comparison,I found the film...what?...unsatisfying. The elements were there,and Mike Nichols and the cast (and,wow,what a cast!) did a splendid job. But what I saw on screen was not what Heller had already embedded in my psyche. And I bet you feel the same.

It happens often,doesn't it? Think of 'The Shining' or 'Wolfen'(discussed right now on another thread). IMO,if you've read what you've considered to be a great book,don't expect too much from the film. Two honourable exceptions to that dictum which spring to mind are 'The Excorcist' and 'The Godfather'.
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Alexicon (Alexicon)
Username: Alexicon

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 88.106.34.157
Posted on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 02:34 am:   

Stephen - 'I guess I just like Heller's voice...'

Absolutely agree with that and the sentiments it precedes.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 05:53 pm:   

Read two brilliant short stories in a row last night:

'The Laocoön Complex' (1937) by J.C. Furnas which was worthy of Franz Kafka as an increasingly disturbing surreal allegory that should make no sense but really gets under the skin with a feeling of some deeper truth. Utterly brilliant!

'Firstborn' (1981) by David Campton which is a "man-eating plant" story with a profound difference I don't want to spoil. Truly twisted, darkly comic and unforgettable!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 05:59 pm:   

What collection is that David Campton story in? I love the man's plays (Cook from Little Brother Little Sister is my favourite ever part I've played) and I only recently found out he did short stories. I have one called Goat in a compilation at home which is a really weird, twisted story of impossible murders.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 07:21 pm:   

It's in 'The 17th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories'.

The tale is worthy of Clive Barker in its raw physicality and nightmarish (verging on the absurd) quality. Along with 'Meshes Of Doom', 'Green Thoughts', 'The Green Umbilical Cord' and 'Amanda Excrescens' [name the authors] this is one of the best evil plant stories I've read.
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Skunsworth (Skunsworth)
Username: Skunsworth

Registered: 05-2009
Posted From: 78.149.95.215
Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 07:34 pm:   

Just started the Summer of the Ubume, which is taking its time to get going but looks good and is at least just keeping my attention. Have also just finished Mark Ronson's Ogre, an early eighties NEL 'classic'. Man, it's an odd book and not a very good one... Disjointed, with a weird ending and some strangely anticlimatic scenes and only one or two really good bits. I should resist these things when I see them in the second hand bookshop...

S
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 01:22 am:   

Tearing through 'Second Foundation' (Vol. 3 of the Foundation Saga) and almost finished 'Midnight Sun'.

I fancy a bit of Alan Garner next and plan to reread a book I have only subliminal memories of from a very young age: 'The Owl Service'.
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Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer)
Username: Matthew_fryer

Registered: 08-2009
Posted From: 90.195.182.161
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 08:10 am:   

I recently read the Owl Service for the first time - it was my wife's childhood favourite - and I loved it. A very creepy, atmospheric book.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 12:10 pm:   

Just finished White Tiger by Aravind Wotsit. I have to say it was a quick read but forgettable and uninspiring. I really must stop reading Booker prize winners. I never really enjoy them.

Just starting The Day Watch by that Russian fellow with the long name. Hopefully it should be up to the standard of Night watch.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 12:32 pm:   

Scratch that comment about Booker prize winners. just remembered Peter Ackroyd's Kelly Gang and Yann Martell's Life of Pi were both Booker winners and they're incredibly good books. Plus of course Hilary Mantel's just won it and she's normally pretty good.

The Orange prize however...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 12:55 pm:   

I believe it takes about 20 years for the true literary merit of a novel to become apparent.

That's part of the reason I'm a good 20 years behind in my reading and also why I tend to avoid "award winners".

Only when I've come to trust the author implicitly (as with Ramsey or Clive Barker or Jonathan Carroll) will I go out of my way to read a "new" book.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.189.134
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 01:03 pm:   

Reread Garth Ennis's War Stories, treating them as a companion piece to his Battlefields comics.

Archangel. After accidentally infuriating his CO a RAF fighter pilot is assigned to fly escort to a Merchant Navy fleet. All he has to do is cope with is seasickness, hostility from the Navy, tackling the Luftwaffe single-handed and trying to reach dry land before his fuel runs out and he has to bail out into freezing water.

Screaming Eagles. Tired of their superior officers living the easy life while they do all the hard work a squad of battle-weary US paratroopers use a quiet patrol to sneak in some unoffical R&R in the dying days of WWII.

Johann's Tiger. German tank crew decide to desert their post and race to surrender to the Americans before they are captured by bloodthirsty Russian troops or their own equally vicious military police.

J is for Jenny. Pilot and co-pilot of a Lancaster bomber bicker about whether they should take pleasure in bombing German civilians or if it is merely a necessary evil by which to win the war.

Nightingale. The disgraced crew of a Royal Navy destroyer seek to redeem themselves as they escort a Merchant Navy convoy past enemy U-boats and battleships. Atmospheric writing and artwork make this almost a WWII ghost story.

D-Day Dodgers. Allied forces in Italy are scorned for avoiding the D-Day landings even as they face a suicidal battle against overwhelming odds.

Condors. A German fighter pilot, a Spaniard, an Irish fascist and an English socialist all seek shelter in the same shellhole during a battle in the Spanish Civil War. Forming an uneasy truce they discuss how their differing ideologies led them to fight in the war.

The Reivers. SAS squad take on the Afrika Korps in increasingly dangerous missions as their CO revels in his bloodthirsty antics.

All good although offhand I think that only Nightingale and Johann's Tiger really match the Battlefields stories for intensity. But it's still nice that Ennis explores different different theatres of war as the comics offer little slices of history that are not always that wellknown. Espcially since recent examples of WWII in popular culture are defined almost exclusively by Hollywood's perceptions of the conflict.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, November 23, 2009 - 02:19 pm:   

Weirdly, book 2 of the Night Watch trilogy opens with the opening scene of film 1 of the series - but a different character visiting the witch.

Does anyone know if there are plans to film Twilight watch? or the fourth book in the trilogy - the Last Watch?
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 03:23 pm:   

Orange Prize winners that I've read - The Road Home - Rose Tremain - the story of an economic migrant to Britain, in soap opera terms this would be Hollyoaks or Corrie rather than eastenders. the lead character doesn't run into any obstacles on his travels. Astounding, even the boss of the strawberry picking farm he works on is a fair minded man who isn't taking advantage of the maigrant workforce. Disappointing at best.

the other 2 are

Small Island - Andrea Levy - Opposite problem to The Road Home. According to this book, every white person in England is a screaming racist except for one woman who (while being racist) also has a fetish for black men. Apparently having difficulty understanding a thick accent that you've never heard before qualifies you as the worst type of racist in this book.

We Need to Talk about Kevin - Lionel Shriver.

I agree with Ramsey on this one. Indeed my most unpopular amazon review is about Kevin. Hearing Ramsey talk about this book is very funny and he can vent his spleen much more eloquently than I can.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.4
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 03:32 pm:   

I can be neither pushed nor encouraged into reading any book. I have to find them all by myself.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 04:18 pm:   

I tend to go by comparisons to authors I already know I like by people whose opinion I trust and that strategy hasn't let me down yet.

I can't imagine anything worse than forcing myself to finish a book I know after a few chapters I don't like.

That's also the reason I avoid book clubs - even though in an ideal world I would find the idea immensely appealing.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.178.4
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 05:05 pm:   

And do you think it fair if a publisher or agent tosses your book aside after a few bad lines? I do. Absolutely. I'd rather ride with a lull mid-book than follow one that starts poorly.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 05:27 pm:   

This all comes down to personal taste and publishers/agents are paid to put their own personal taste aside. It's a line of work I could never contemplate.

If I start a book and it doesn't speak to me I should have no obligation to stick with it and that says nothing whatsoever about the book or the author but merely about my own taste... or perceived lack of it.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.182.38
Posted on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - 06:19 pm:   

Scarlet in Gaslight by Mike Powell and Seppo Makinen. Comic where Sherlock Holmes and Van Helsing team up against Moriarty and Dracula. Good fun.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.225
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 10:33 am:   

Reread The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. An ageing Batman comes out of retirement to tackle a host of enemies both old and new. Gothic meets noir with a little dollop of cyberpunk thrown in as Bats prowls through the gargoyle-adorned city, delivering his hardboiled narration whilst using an array of hi-tech gadgets that would make James Bond green with envy.

Full of powerful setpieces -- a thunderstorm lashing Wayne Manor as Bruce Wayne relives the events that first caused him to don his costume, Batman galloping in on horseback to quell a riot, Superman wrestling a nuclear missile -- the list goes on. Throw in some satire, a discussion on the pros and cons of vigilantism and a call for a return of community spirit and it becomes clear why the comic is a classic. Plus it's funnier than anyone gives it credit for.

Of course being nearly 25 years old it may not seem as cutting edge to new readers who have become used to seeing a darker more complex Batman thanks to the Christian Bale films but without TDKR (and Batman: Year One, also by Miller) the Bale films would never have been so grim and gritty in the first place.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 12:46 pm:   

You're right of course Stu.

'The Dark Knight Returns', 'Batman: Year One' & Alan Moore's 'The Killing Joke' have always been my favourite Batman stories.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.139
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 02:49 pm:   

I've got to admit I was slightly underwhelmed with The Killing Joke. Moore's version of the Joker's origin was fantastic but the overall story felt kind of inappropriate for a Batman tale. Plus Moore was rehashing a lot of his narrative tricks from Watchmen; more out of habit than from necessity I felt. Without the same density of plot as Watchmen to almost overwhelm the techniques TKJ allowed the scene transitions and other tricks to become obvious and heavyhanded.

Still has some great writing of course. Plus Bolland's art.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 03:24 pm:   

'The Killing Joke' was actually the first of the modern Batman reinventions I read and what led me to seek out Frank Miller's stuff.

I thought story, dialogue and artwork were all exceptional but then I think Alan Moore is an absolute genius. 'Watchmen' is of course his masterpiece.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.139
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 04:02 pm:   

I read the Miller stuff before TKJ so that influenced my reaction to the story. "Why has Gordon suddenly turned into a wimp? How comes the Joker lasts so long against Batman in a fistfight? Etc, etc." Plus, the ending hinting that Batman's a nutter. Sorry, I don't like my mainstream superhero stories to be THAT revisionist. If you're going to do something like that the general rule is to make it an "imaginary" story set in some alternate universe. Using it on "real" characters (unless they're really minor league) is a bit of a no-no in publishing terms.

Indeed Moore wasn't allowed to use established superhero characters for Watchmen as he orginally intended. DC had just bought up the old Charlton Comics characters and Moore wanted to use them but that would have rendered the characters unusable so he was told to create analogues of the existing characters -- Captain Atom = Dr Manhattan, Blue Beeetle = Nite Owl, Rorschach = The Question, Nightshade = Silk Spectre, Peacemaker = The Comedian, Thunderbolt = Ozymandias.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 04:19 pm:   

Gordon's daughter had been kidnapped and tortured thus leaving him impotent.

Batman knocked seven bells out of the Joker once he got his hands on him after being held at bay by a few tricks.

And surely Batman is a nutter with the ending showing a momentary crack in his cool exterior which, for me, made him appear all the more human.
This was elaborated on in the later 'Arkham Asylum' story.

I didn't know that about 'Watchmen'. Fascinating stuff - thanks for the info Stu!
'Watchmen' wouldn't have had half the impact with already established characters imho.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.139
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 05:01 pm:   

Okay, this is just my opinion, take any ranting with a pinch of salt.

>>Gordon's daughter had been kidnapped and tortured thus leaving him impotent.

Fair enough. Although in Year One he manages to keep it together when his baby son is kidnapped and he's been shot in the shoulder. Still, it's not quite the same thing -- in Year One he's more mentally prepared and is a fair bit younger -- so okay, fair enough.

>>Batman knocked seven bells out of the Joker once he got his hands on him after being held at bay by a few tricks.

I dunno, Bats shouldn't have fallen for the tricks in the first place. He's way tougher and more skilful than the Joker plus he knows all his tricks. Even allowing for luck and sneakiness there's no way the Joker can even begin to hold his own against Bats mano-a-mano. That's why the Joker always has loads of henchmen, he's pretty much useless in a scrap. Evil genius, yes. Fighter, no. The fight just felt like padding and a concession to the need for an action scene.

>>And surely Batman is a nutter with the ending showing a momentary crack in his cool exterior which, for me, made him appear all the more human. This was elaborated on in the later 'Arkham Asylum' story.

Sharing a joke with the man who crippled his best friend's daughter doesn't make him look more human, it makes him look like a sick fuck. And Arkham Asylum shows him coming to terms with any mental trauma he has suffered. Apparently Morrison intended the story as a refutation of all the grim and gritty post-Dark Knight stories so he starts off with Bats all moody as per the late 80s trend but after confronting all kinds of Jungian archetypes which I never would have spotted if they hadn't been pointed out to me he emerges victorious with his Self fully integrated. Kind of a Dark Knight of the Soul. Morrison went on to portray Bats as a coolly efficient Zen-focused superhero in JLA. I'm not really up on the recent stuff where he introduced Bats's son and had Dick Grayson take over as Bats but I gather that was a continuation of his JLA characterization.

Obviously with a long-running character such as Batman there are many different interpretations and even in these days of continuity obsession not all the current writers agree with each other. I'm just trying to give you some sense of how I view the character to explain why TKJ didn't quite do it for me.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 05:36 pm:   

But as 'The Killing Joke' took place before Batman got his head fixed in 'Arkham Asylum' then surely his momentary "breakdown" fits in.

For me it was a moment of self-awareness (or the mask slipping) when he saw the Joker as a real human being who, like himself, had been fucked up in the head by personal trauma earlier in his life. Perhaps the only time the two characters came close to fully understanding one another.

Anyway it worked for me especially given Moore's inspired and quite moving origin of the Joker.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.184.145
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 - 07:16 pm:   

>>But as 'The Killing Joke' took place before Batman got his head fixed in 'Arkham Asylum' then surely his momentary "breakdown" fits in.

Again, it's just my opinion but I don't really see that. Bruce Wayne became Batman because his parents were shot and killed. That means he doesn't like violent criminals, especially ones who use guns. It also means that behind his grim demeanour he feels a lot of empathy for victims of violent crime and their friends and relatives. This is why he doesn't kill people or even carry a gun. A few writers have depicted his choosing to become Batman not only stemming from a desire for revenge but from survivor's guilt -- his parents died but he survived. Jim Starlin even did a story adding an extra layer of guilt where Bruce has an argument with his dad and yells, "I hate you! I wish you were dead!" His dad later manages to smooth things over and takes the family out to see The Mark of Zorro by way of apology. On the way home Mr and Mrs Wayne are shot dead. On a conscious level Bruce knows that it's not his fault but on a subconscious level he can't forget the wish he made. All this is a long way from being a psycho-killer like the Joker. Or to put it another way Batman may have some emotional hangups but he's not crazy.

And although I like your idea of Batman sympathising with the Joker and seeing him as a real human being you've got to
remember that Batman hasn't been privy to the Joker's origin; only the reader gets to see how he became the Clown Prince of Crime. All Batman gets to see is the Joker shoot and cripple Batman's best friend's daughter who is herself one of Batman's closest friends. It's doubly disturbing for Bats as Barbara is also Batgirl, a superb athlete who will now be confined to a wheelchair because she chose to follow in Batman's footsteps. It's pretty clear how he's going to feel about that. All he hears from the Joker is some self-pitying gibberish. Still, he initially visited the Joker in an attempt to break out of the deadly cycle in which they had become locked and so when Gordon entreats him to bring the Joker in "by the book" in order to score a moral victory he is prepared to do so. He is also prepared to reopen his discussion with the Joker about how they might end their ongoing battle without resorting to killing each other. That's how much moral fibre the character possesses. So to then burst out laughing at the Joker's gag? No. Not with all that the Joker has done to Batman's friends. It would have made more sense for the Joker to burst out laughing and Batman to just look on sadly, knowing that attempting to cure the Joker was a lost cause. Keeps the thematic unity of the book, keeps Batman's empathy for the Joker but doesn't completely fuck with Batman's characterisation. (Oh god, I'm rewriting Alan Moore. For me that's the equivalent of telling God where he went wrong in creating the universe.)

Anyway, that's just my take on it.

Btw, Grant Morrison originally wanted Brian Bolland or an artist with a similar style to draw Arkham Aslyum. Apparently Dave McKean not only made the artwork darker and more surreal than Morrison intended but placed a different emphasis on certain events. Eg in the original script Morrison apparently called for Batman to prick his hand with some glass to help bring himself back to his senses, due to some of his emotional problems distracting him whereas McKean chose to depict this as Batman shoving a shard of glass through his palm and looking like a complete nutjob.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.165.109
Posted on Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 01:35 am:   

I just finished a cool book "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much," by Allison Hoover Bartlett; nonfiction about a real-life book thief, the book dealer who sets out to capture him and the reporter caught in between. Good stuff.

Also reading "The Wolfer" by a western novel by Loren D. Estleman.

AND: I published a bunch of mini-reviews on my web page at http://www.redroom.com/blog/thomas-burchfield/books-read-things-seen
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.165.109
Posted on Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 02:04 am:   

Oh, forgot to add: I also provide a mini-review of "Midnight Sun."
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.255.28
Posted on Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 10:10 am:   

Rapidly approaching the climax of 'Midnight Sun' myself and should finish it today.

Ramsey's best written novel up to that time as well as his most subtle and multi-layered... not to mention chilling (groan).
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.155.105.158
Posted on Saturday, November 28, 2009 - 06:15 pm:   

Agreed. That & The Count Of Eleven are top notch.

gcw
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.165.109
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 12:21 am:   

"Count of Eleven" I only have in PB; haven't seen a hardcover of it around; I'm anxious to read it but Ramsey is a highly regarded member of my "Only in Hardback" club.

PS: I have the PS edition of "Thieving Fear."
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.243
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 09:29 am:   

Thomas - I got my special edition hardcover Count of Eleven (the jacketless one in red binding) from Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage - he might have another oine
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.165.109
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 08:30 pm:   

Thanks, John! I might look into it (when I get some money)
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.108
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 08:45 pm:   

Thomas - I got my special edition hardcover Count of Eleven (the jacketless one in red binding) from Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage - he might have another one.
_______

I got my copy there as well. He still has one or more in stock:

http://www.coldtonnage.com/?CLSN_3127=125952379431276f2e233c41459ecf8e&keyword=t he+count+of+eleven&searchby=title&page=shop%2Fbrowse&fsb=1
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.243.85.108
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 08:47 pm:   

If you want the other first. ed hardback for a tenner
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.107.17
Posted on Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 11:03 pm:   

Finished 'Midnight Sun' and see it as a major step forward in Ramsey's writing. A beautiful piece of work that haunts the mind after reading.

It also strikes me as his most personal work to date with all the emotional intensity that implies - though more subtly, I would even say poetically, conveyed than ever before. I imagine a few demons were exorcised in the writing of this one.
I've ordered 'Needing Ghosts' to read next...

Also finished the original 'Foundation' trilogy (insanely gripping stuff!) and about to start Volume 4: 'Foundation's Edge'.

But tonight I'm settling down with 'The Owl Service' by Alan Garner.
Like 'Midnight Sun' a book where supernatural horror and fairy-tale fantasy merge together to create something altogether magical and unsettling.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Monday, November 30, 2009 - 12:50 am:   

I'm currently re-reading MIDNIGHT SUN, too. Wonderful, isn't it? the prose is a joy; the mood and atmosphere are palpable. The cold seeps off the page.

NEEDING GHOSTS is probably my favourite book of Ramsey's, Stephen. Be interetsed to know what you make of it.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.107.17
Posted on Monday, November 30, 2009 - 01:53 am:   

I've heard nothing but good things about 'Needing Ghosts' so can't wait!

RC was on one hell of a roll at that time. 'Midnight Sun' makes it three modern horror masterpieces in a row for me.

How would I rank them now?

1. Midnight Sun
2. The Influence
3. Ancient Images
4. Obsession
5. Incarnate
6. The Nameless
7. To Wake The Dead
8. The Face That Must Die
9. The Doll Who Ate His Mother
10. The Claw
11. The Hungry Moon

...imho of course.

Incidentally has anyone else ever commented on the similarity between 'Midnight Sun' and 'Lucky's Grove' by H.R. Wakefield? That story, the cosmic horror of Lovecraft and 'The Ceremonies' as well as the spirit of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and E.T.A. Hoffmann all forcibly sprang to mind during this book yet out of those ingredients Ramsey created something entirely new and uniquely disturbing. Wonderful literature!!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.115
Posted on Monday, November 30, 2009 - 11:03 am:   

Just finished the landlord's section from Night Visions 3.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 193.89.189.24
Posted on Monday, November 30, 2009 - 11:31 am:   

Stephen 'RC was on one hell of a roll at that time'
___

I think he's on one hell of a roll right now.
:-) Or rather he hasn't really stopped being on a roll, since he started rolling, which is a great deal of rolling when you think about it- rolling that is.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.205
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 - 10:14 am:   

Reread Green Lantern/Superman: The Legend of the Green Flame by Neil Gaiman.

Also working my way through Waking Nightmares.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 - 10:19 am:   

Fangland by John Marks. A remarkable novel.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.50.55
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 - 10:31 am:   

Mikhail Bulgakov - Black Snow. Interesting caricature of Stanislavsky.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2009 - 11:26 am:   

Half way through 'The Owl Service' and what a great, great book!

There is no way a "children's book" with so much palpable dread in it would be published today. The accumulation of supernatural incidents from that first scratching heard in the attic (shades of 'The Exorcist') is indescribably creepy.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, December 03, 2009 - 05:51 pm:   

More than half way through Day watch and loving every word of it. This is a great book and almost completely unrelated to the film of the same name.

Where nightwatch told three stories following members of the Nightwatch around, this one follows members of the Day Watch.

I've just reached a point where he's just very casually killed off one of the lead characters from Night Watch and it came as what you might call an extreme shock.

He's upped the game in this book from an already excellent start with Nightwatch. I really do need to get the next two books in the trilogy now.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.202.210.68
Posted on Thursday, December 03, 2009 - 09:57 pm:   

I'm still immersing myself in old gothic stuff. Now it's

A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread by R Murray Gilchrist

Some lovely stuff in here - the pages can't decided whether to bleed or rot before my eyes.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 04, 2009 - 10:46 am:   

'Foundation's Edge' - excellent!!

Asimov knew how to satisfy his fans.
After a long gap between Vols 3 & 4 he nails the one plot thread that was niggling at the back of my mind from the start of the series in the first few chapters and sets up what has to be the ultimate outer space Quest.
Highly addictive reading!
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Friday, December 04, 2009 - 11:41 pm:   

Just started Ira levin's ' A Kiss Before Dying'. I do believe I'm in for a real treat!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.107.17
Posted on Saturday, December 05, 2009 - 02:13 pm:   

Read it not that long ago as part of my "inside the mind of a killer" season.

It's an absolute classic, Sean!
Also read 'Crime And Punishment', 'The Collector', 'Psycho', 'The Face That Must Die', 'Brighton Rock, and working my way through the 'Ripley' books.
I've also been recommended and intend to read; 'The Killer Inside Me', 'The Scarf', 'Black Alibi', 'Rendezvous In Black' and Ramsey's 'The Count Of Eleven' (coming up soon), 'The Last Voice They Hear' & 'Secret Story'.
Always on the lookout for more...
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.155.105.158
Posted on Saturday, December 05, 2009 - 02:39 pm:   

I recently finished Zed's quite superb 'Different Skins' and have just started Joel Lanes'The Terrible Changes'.

I wish I had the time to re-read Ramseys 'Midnight Sun' - I first read it over Christmas when it came out (1990?). Certainly the best time of year to appreciate its wonders.

gcw
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.163.225
Posted on Saturday, December 05, 2009 - 08:34 pm:   

I finished another of Loren D. Estleman's westerns "The Wolfer" (the guy still has yet to write a book I haven't liked).

Now I'm reading an extremely dark comedy by a good friend of mine, American stage hypnotist John-Ivan Palmer: "Motels of Burning Madness" (Drill Press) about the emotional and romantic travails and obsessions of a professional male stripper. John did quite a bit of onstage research. Definitely in the realm of Charles Bukowski and other underground writers. Wow! so far.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.219
Posted on Sunday, December 06, 2009 - 11:12 am:   

Stephen, I've not read it but In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes is supposed to be good for a psychological portrait of a killer.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, December 07, 2009 - 11:48 am:   

Also try Chicago Loop by Paul Theroux - I remember thinking it was on a par with Ripley when I read it many many moons ago.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Monday, December 07, 2009 - 11:52 am:   

Just finishing my re-read of MIDNIGHT SUN (gosh; it's even better than I remember). next up is Holdstock's MYTHAGO WOOD.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.184
Posted on Monday, December 07, 2009 - 09:27 pm:   

Just finished 'Apparitions' edited by Mike Kelly. Contains many great tales, several by members of the RMCB. Nice work.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.12
Posted on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - 11:00 am:   

Blazing Combat by Archie Goodwin. 1960s homage to the old EC war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. Short strips from various conflicts including The American Civil War, The War of Independence, WWI, WWII, The Korean War and The Vietnam War. The stories are tight, if a little dated, with emphasis on historical detail and the human cost of warfare. Gorgeous black and white artwork, much of it by EC stalwarts such as Reed Crandall, George Evans, Wallace Wood, Russ Heath, Joe Orlando, Alex Toth and Al Williamson. Frank Frazetta's original covers are reprinted in disappointingly small size in the book's intererior but details from two of them are shown on the inside covers. Interviews with publisher Jim Warren and writer Archie Goodwin round off the collection. Good stuff.

The Question: Riddles by Dennis O'Neil (writer) and Denys Cowan (artist). Volume five in O'Neil's '80s revamp of the ruthless Objectivist vigilante as a conflicted Zen crusader. As with the previous volumes it's a bit of a curate's egg with heavyhanded philosophy, awkward characterisation and clumsily drawn fight scenes battling it out with smart ideas, snappy dialogue and atmospheric artwork. Flawed but interesting.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 - 12:32 pm:   

Finished 'The Owl Service' and the ambiguous/controversial nature of the ending went completely over my head as a child.

Can't stop wondering what it all means and what Garner's intentions were. This is very much a supernatural horror story dressed up as a children's fantasy. A classic battle between scientific rationalism and primitive superstition in which the author's sympathies are fascinatingly hard to gauge. Anyone any spoiler-free thoughts on this book?

Also started 'Ripley's Game' over the weekend and already two thirds of the way through... to call this a compulsive thriller with edge-of-the-seat suspense sequences is somewhat of an understatement. I think it may be the best of the series so far!
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Wednesday, December 09, 2009 - 08:11 pm:   

I read EC's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's 'The October Game' last night in 'Shock Suspenstories' no. 10 (1990's reprints). What a great little psycho shocker! I must hunt out this tale in print. I have most of his short story collections but this one tale doesn't seem to appear in any of them!
Stephen, based on this fab EC rendering it would certainly hold it's own amongst those other illustrious authors of your 'Mind of a killer' fiction collection.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 11:38 am:   

It's in the Small Assassin collection if I remember correctly - which probably puts it in the Arkham house collection Dark Carnival - which is quite difficult to find.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 12:25 pm:   

Actually, I think it's moe likely to be in the October Country collection than the Small assassin.

I didn't remember correktly after all.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 12:39 pm:   

James Ellroy's American Tabloid. Scintillating read.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 01:19 pm:   

Finished 'Ripley's Game' and Patricia was obviously madly in love with the character by that stage. The book plays brilliant tricks with the reader's sympathies and Tom has never been more fascinating or contradictory. A tour-de-force of crime writing!!

Just started 'Methuselah's Children' (1941) by Robert A. Heinlein (his first novel I believe)... a writer I've long intended getting more into after reading 'Stranger In A Strange Land' many moons ago. So on a bit of a classic sci-fi kick at the minute.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 01:33 pm:   

MYTHAGO WOOD. Finally.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.202.210.68
Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 06:43 pm:   

Well I started A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread by R Murray Gilchrist but that suffered a terrible accident and hasn't dried out very well so now I'm reading:

Different Skins by Gary McMahon!!!
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 01:53 am:   

I had started reading Levin's 'A Kiss Before Dying' which is addictive as hell. Then I casually picked up John Fowles' 'The Collector' and read the first few pages. Now I don't know which bloody book to read through first. Arrrrghh!!

Incidentally, the cover of my copy of 'A Kiss before Dying' depicts the same girls face 3 times with different hairstyles and outfit. Now I've only read the first few chapters but I reckon this friggin' cover is giving the twist away!? I may be totally wrong about this , god I hope so. Don't tell me either way! Just an observation.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 09:41 am:   

Read 'A Kiss Before Dying'... I'm just glad you haven't seen either of the film versions.

That's become something of a rule for me this last lot of years: if I haven't read an acknowledged "classic novel" first - by everyone from Dickens to Highsmith - then I avoid at all cost any movie version or TV adaptation to avoid spoilers.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 10:39 am:   

Now reading Necropolis by Basil Copper - which is ripping good fun - and Grandville by Bryan Talbot, which is also ripping good fun. Love a bit of Talbot me, and he showed me the pages for Grandville before the book came out.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:26 am:   

You've reminded me I have 'The Great White Space' in my to-be-read pile.
Might give it a whirl next.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:29 am:   

The Devil of Nan-King by Mo Hayder
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:35 am:   

"The October Game" is in Long After Midnight, folks. I recently wrote the foreword to a new edition of the book, in fact.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:49 am:   

This might be opening up a minefield but would I be better to get those BIG Bradbury anthologies out at the minute (are they even complete?) or track down all the individual collections (and if so, just how many are there?!).

I'd love the thought of reading all the short stories in chrono order but what an undertaking...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:50 am:   

Thos BIG bradbury antho's are best ofs. He's published well over 500 short stories...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 11:56 am:   

Gulp... I'll give the big ones a miss then.
Would have got them if complete.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 12:00 pm:   

* The October Game, (ss) Weird Tales Mar 1948
AHMM Jun 1957
Long After Midnight, Knopf 1976
Deadly Nightshade, ed. Peter Haining, London: Gollancz 1977
The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Knopf 1980
The World Fantasy Awards Volume Two, ed. Stuart David Schiff & Fritz Leiber, Doubleday 1980
13 Horrors of Halloween, ed. Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg & Isaac Asimov, Avon 1983


Different sources for reading the October game...

I never realised it was written in 1948!!! To put it politely - fuck me! he was well ahead of his time...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 12:05 pm:   

Quite a few of his early horror stories have turned up in the Pan/Fontana anthologies and every one (I mean every one) so far has been a solid gold ***** classic!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 04:58 pm:   

Fast paced, exciting, ingenious, literary, anarchic, disturbing, decades ahead of its time and very funny... Heinlein's first novel.

I think I'm going to enjoy the adventures of Lazarus Long & co.

I'm detecting a big influence on the style of Kurt Vonnegut & Robert Anton Wilson. This is set a couple of centuries in the future when a secret society of inbred super-long lived individuals (around since the late 19th C.) have their cover blown to the wider human populace who demand their "secret of immortality" and set about victimising this race of "jumped up Methuselahs" as a "minority group".

It's completely bonkers but the sheer verve and fizzing originality of Heinlein's writing carries you along effortlessly. Highly entertaining and not a little thought provoking.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.142
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 07:07 pm:   

I seem to recall Robert Anton Wilson quoting Heinlein in at least one of his books so you may well be right about the literary influence.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 - 09:45 pm:   

Thanks for that Bradbury book list Weber! I'll try to track one of the cheaper ones down asap. Although if the new edition Ramsey refers to contains more stories I haven't read I may get it. I thought the EC version of 'The October Game' was first class but i'm only too aware of the fact that,as good as it is, the short story must be unbelievably tense. Your spot on about it being ahead of it's time in 1948. I couldn't get over reading this in what was seen as a 'kids' comic!
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.184
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 12:10 am:   

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. And Coffin Nails by Lord Probert.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 89.240.60.180
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 12:53 am:   

The English Civil War - Dianne Purkiss; Alone With The Horrors - Ramsey Campbell; The Audacity of Hype - Armando Iannucci; Memento Mori - Muriel Spark

I'm enjoying them all so much I don't want any to end...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.22.249
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 08:34 am:   

Nearly all my Bradbury books are Panthers bought in the 70ies:

The Small Assassin
The October Country
The Illustrated Man
The Martian Chronicles
Fahrenheit 451
The Machineries of Joy
Long After Midnight
I Sing the Body Electric
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Golden Apples of the Sun
Dandelion Wine
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.202.210.68
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 09:14 am:   

Thanks Mr Bacon!

I'm trying to read the Tartarus Press Robert Louis Stevenson book The Suicide Club et al but it's too heavy.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.187.3
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 11:06 am:   

Re-read Dark Blue by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jacen Burrows (artist). A cop becomes increasingly deranged in his efforts to nail a killer while around him events become ever more sureal and nightmarish as reality begins to disintegrate.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Saturday, December 12, 2009 - 06:05 pm:   

My Bradbury collection is comprised of those 70's Panther volumes too Hubert. I'm only missing 'Long after Midnight' and 'Machineries of Joy'. I think eBay is due a visit.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.202.210.68
Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009 - 10:24 pm:   

Btw when I said the RL Stevenson book was too heavy I meant I can't pick it up - I have to sit at a desk to read it.

So I've moved onto something lighter - William Fryer Harvey's The Double Eye
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.190.2
Posted on Monday, December 14, 2009 - 09:47 am:   

Dipping into Robert Greenberger's The Essential Batman Encyclopedia.

Also read the first two issues of Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty by Mark Waid (writer) and Ron Garney(artist). Tells forgotten tales of Cap's adventures from WWII up to the present.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - 01:08 pm:   

'Methuselah's Children' really is meaty stuff underneath the pulp sci-fi adventure trappings.

A book written in 1941 about a group of people being stripped of all civil rights, arrested and herded into concentration camps because of the jealousy of the rest of humankind. Here it is because of their perceived "secret of immortality" but it could just as well have been their "chosen people" status.

Some of the political dialogue in this book is remarkably prescient and chills to the bone. Heinlein was a very fine writer indeed and, it appears to me, a fine human being as well!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - 04:19 pm:   

Oh My God... the slingshot around the Sun first happened in 'Methuselah's Children'!!!!

The man is a fecking genius...
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.165.191
Posted on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - 09:01 pm:   

Seriously, 'A Kiss Before Dying' is awesome storytelling! How on earth did I let this gem slip through the radar for soooo long?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 12:38 pm:   

Finished 'Methuselah's Children' last night and felt like standing up to give a round of applause afterward.

I will be scanning the second-hand bookshelves for this man's name above all others after this!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 02:47 pm:   

Just started Blood meridian
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 02:49 pm:   

Heilein's early stuff is, on the whole, pretty good. Unfortunately in his mid to later period he became very right-wing indeed and this shows in his fiction.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 02:56 pm:   

Weber - I'll be interested to hear what you think of Blood Meridian. I think it's a modern American masterpiece.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.155
Posted on Thursday, December 17, 2009 - 04:50 pm:   

The Complete New Statesmen by John Smith (writer) and Jim Baikie, Duncan Fegredo, Sean Philips (artists). I remember reading an instalment of this as a teenager and being decidedly unimpressed but since then I've heard that it's a cult classic so when I saw the whole story in Oxfam I decided to give it another go.

TCNS is an '80s comic with flawed superheroes, sex, violence, politics, prose at the end of each chapter -- sound familiar? There's some good stuff in here but pretentiousness and lack of discipline keep undermining the story and often the writing and art completely fail to mesh. I'll probably read through it again at some point to try and really seperate the wheat from the chaff but right now the overriding impression is that of the poor man's Watchmen.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 04:26 pm:   

Heinlein's early stuff is, on the whole, pretty good. Unfortunately in his mid to later period he became very right-wing indeed and this shows in his fiction.

Interesting that the next Heinlein book I've picked up is 'Farnham's Freehold' (1964) - from his mid-period - so I can't resist getting stuck straight in to compare with his early work.

The same thing has been said about Ray Bradbury so maybe it is true that the older you get the more conservative you get. Explains all those grumpy old men...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.234.195
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 04:55 pm:   

Finished 'Methuselah's Children' last night and felt like standing up to give a round of applause afterward.

Picked this up secondhand recently, in pristine condition strangely enough.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.151.116.69
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 04:57 pm:   

'The Complete New Statesmen by John Smith'

I remember really liking New Statesmen when it first came out in Crisis in the late 80s/early 90s. It doesn't really hold up that well in retrospect though. Most of it is pretty forced and obviously a quick Watchmen copy without the class. It does start to get interesting towards the end though with John Smith finding his voice. Sadly, he wasn't able to continue it so a lot of those interesting strands are left hanging leading to the book feeling pretty messy. John Smith is a fantastic, under-rated comic writer though, and went on to some great stuff. He never quite cracked America though, so was left a bit hanging when Morrison, Milligan etc went on to conquer. Smiths single issue of Hellblazer, the John Constantine comic, is without a doubt the best issue in its 250 odd issue run in my opinion.

I'm reading Nick Cave's 'The Death Of Bunny Munro' at the moment. Only a couple of chapters in but its as sleazy as expected so far.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.126.207
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 06:22 pm:   

After Shocks by Paul Finch. I'm halfway through and it's all really good stuff, but one story in the collection, "Devils of Lakeland", is absolutely superb.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.220.55
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 07:17 pm:   

Just finished reading John L Probert's 'Coffin Nails' and I thought it was fantastic - the most enjoyable collection I read all year. Highly recommended, folks, if anyone is considering it. John really puts the 'super' in supernatural.

Next up will be 'Groaning Shadows' by Paul Finch.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 - 12:36 pm:   

I'm near the end of MYTHAGO WOOD, and am enjoying it a lot. Great novel.

Next I'll read a few short stories before diving into UNDER THE DOME, which I'm expecting from Santa.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.143
Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 - 04:54 pm:   

>>Smiths single issue of Hellblazer, the John Constantine comic, is without a doubt the best issue in its 250 odd issue run in my opinion.

Don't think I've read that one. Definitely don't own a copy. Have to keep a look out for it.

Currently reading Marathon Man by William Goldman. Seen the film several times but never got round to reading the novel. Lots of twisty-turny plot developments, most of which are familiar from the film, but some are new to me.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 - 10:06 pm:   

Just finished MYTHAGO WOOD.

Wow.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.151.116.69
Posted on Monday, December 21, 2009 - 11:45 pm:   

>>>Smiths single issue of Hellblazer, the John Constantine comic, is without a doubt the best issue in its 250 odd issue run in my opinion.

>>Don't think I've read that one. Definitely don't own a copy. Have to keep a look out for it.

Issue 51. Set in a launderette. Extremely chilling. I've still yet to catch up on Peter Milligans last 10 issues. I've only read it sporadically the last few years but Milligan is a great draw for me.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.186.3
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 12:30 am:   

"Get Real," Donald Westlake's last novel.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.126.207
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 12:45 am:   

MYTHAGO WOOD is excellent; I read it on its publication - I've still to read the sequel(s) though.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.126.207
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 12:46 am:   

Stu - would you recommend the book of Marathon Man? I loved the film but haven't yet tried the book.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.182.234
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 09:45 am:   

>>I've only read it sporadically the last few years but Milligan is a great draw for me.

I've always been sporadic with Hellblazer. Some of the Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Eddie Campbell, Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins, Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey. And Brian Azzarello who was absolutely awful in the stories I read.

>>Stu - would you recommend the book of Marathon Man? I loved the film but haven't yet tried the book.

It's good but having already seen the film spoiled it for me. I could remember too many of the plot developments so most of the twists just didn't have the impact they would normally have done. That said the prose is very readable. I don't regret reading it, it's still enjoyable, but my enjoyment was slightly diluted.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.182.234
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 10:11 am:   

Clive, there's an essay on Hellblazer 51 at http://mindlessones.com/2008/04/06/dee-do-dough-don%E2%80%99t-dee-dough-or-why-h ellblazer-51-is-the-title%E2%80%99s-best-issue/ I've not read it yet as I'll try to get hold of the issue first but judging by the webpage's title the writer is pretty keen on the story.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 01:16 pm:   

Thanks Jonathan, I've just received 'The Ghost Light' by Fritz Leiber in the post and will be reading it over Christmas.

My first experience of the man's writing and looking forward to it very much!
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 02:10 pm:   

Splendid. I'm sure you'll have a marvelous time with it Stephen.
Over Christmas I shall be reading a Peter Straub collection before moving onto some work catch-up reading.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 05:02 pm:   

Okay, I'm a third of the way through 'Farnham's Freehold' and can see why some people could have problems with it. This is one of those books in which the author makes no apologies for his characters whatsoever and bows not one iota to the perceived ideas of popular taste.

In other words... this is a novel with real balls!

So far it is turning into by far the best pop-apocalypse sci-fi novel I have ever read. This (now tired) theme is given real power by the fact the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Missils Crisis and the assassination of JFK. I admire Heinlein for tackling head-on the major political realities of his time - he did the same in 'Methuselah's Children' with regard to the Holocaust (at a time when most governments still hadn't acknowledged what was going on [like Bosnia in the 1990s]).

What we have is a viciously racist, redneck, ultra right-wing American family and their negro "servant" and an innocent woman who happened to be passing plunged into an unimaginable scenario where they are (quite possibly) the last people alive on Earth.

We've seen the theme done before (the brilliant 50s sci-fi movie 'The World, The Flesh And The Devil' springs to mind) but I have never before experienced anyone brave enough to treat each of the "stereotyped" characters as REAL HUMAN BEINGS. To give each of them an equal voice and to steadfastly refuse to make us sympathise or empathise more with one over any other.

This is brilliant writing and characterisation worthy of Dickens at his most noble and unwilling to judge.

We need more brave (read un-PC) literature like this in the modern era for the human race to really come to terms with itself, get over the mistakes of the past and truly progress forward to a better more all-inclusive future.

Heinlein was a lone wolf crying in the wilderness and unashamed of his own pariah status. We need more like him imho.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.151.116.69
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 05:06 pm:   

>>I've always been sporadic with Hellblazer. Some of the Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Eddie Campbell, Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins, Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey. And Brian Azzarello who was absolutely awful in the stories I read.

The comic has had some great writers and some definite high points but i've always thought that it never reached it's full potential consistently. The short Morrison story was great, with a very english Wicker Man feel. Ennis is great at character and brought a lot of heart to it. I really liked the first story arc that Azzarello did, with Constantine in a US prison, but it rapidly went down hill from there. Interestingly, the Azzarello issues are Alan Moores favourites as he feels they are closer in spirit to the character he'd created. I might attempt a read of the whole series soon, same as some of my other favourite comics from the time, Shade, Doom Patrol etc. I was shocked to realise that many are 20 years old and i'm curious as to how they stand up.

>>Clive, there's an essay on Hellblazer 51 at http://mindlessones.com

Thats an excellent essay. Great to see someone else feels the same way i do about the issue! I really should check out the Mindless Ones blog as a friend occasionally writes for it and it was started by a group who used to frequent the same message board as me.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.186.3
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 05:24 pm:   

Merry Holidays, Everyone! I'm off to Pasadena for five days! I posted a year-end book review with a mention of this board at: http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/the-generic-year-end-book-review-and-a-chris tmas-note
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.43.214.156
Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 05:55 pm:   

I'm on to it Thomas! Have a great Christmas!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.186.64
Posted on Wednesday, December 23, 2009 - 04:30 pm:   

Clive, yeah, one of the reasons I'm sporadic in my reading of Hellblazer is that the quality seems inconsistent. And god knows why Moore thinks Azzarello's Hellblazer stories are good. Next thing you know he'll be raving about the Constantine film.

As for rereading old comics I'm hoping to get a chance to reeread Dangerous habits which is my fave Ennis Hellblazer tale. And I've been lending Hitman to a friend and rereading each batch before handing them over. Sheer class. Way better than Preacher imho even though that's the book that really made Ennis's name.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.184.9
Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 10:59 am:   

Clive, the banned Warren Ellis issue of Hellblazer is at http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~jp/comics/shoot/ if you haven't already seen it.

God, what a thing to link to at Xmas.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 12:27 pm:   

Chapters 8 & 9 of 'Farnham's Freehold'... one of the most powerful passages of literature I have read in any genre - hairs standing up on the back of your neck, lip trembling powerful.

I feel quite guilty now for describing this family as "viciously racist"... ignorant but decent at heart would have been more accurate. I desperately want this book to end happily for all of them now - all of them that make it.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 12:34 pm:   

SLIGHTS by Kaaren Warren. Only 60 pages in but so far it's superb - reminds me of esrly Peter Straub.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 89.243.240.210
Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2009 - 09:35 pm:   

Reading a lot of short stories at the moment- most recently a Peter Haining-edited collection of John Buchan's horror stories. Some bloody good stuff there, most notably 'No-man's-land'- very reminiscent of Machen's 'Novel Of The Black Seal' and 'The Wind In The Portico.' 'The Grove Of Ashtaroth' is another fine tale, although marred by Buchan's racial attitudes. The same's true of the 'The Green Wildebeest' to an extent, although in neither case is he anywhere near as bad as Lovecraft...

Also re-reading 'Dark Voices 5', one of the first anthologies I read when I was getting back into horror fiction in the late 90s. The opening story is by the late, great Robert Holdstock, which is strangely, and sadly, appropriate...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, December 26, 2009 - 01:26 pm:   

Read my first ever Fritz Leiber story last night - 'The Ghost Light'. What a weird and beautifully enigmatic spin on the classic "haunted painting" tale.

On the strength of this he seems to inhabit a strange territory all his own somewhere between the subtly disturbing magic-realism of Jonathan Carroll and the intense family based psychological horror of Ramsey Campbell. I am very impressed and look forward to the rest of the book... one a night for Christmas methinks!

Meanwhile I'm nearly finished 'Farnham's Freehold' and don't want the book to end. I had no idea Heinlein was such a powerfully literate writer (must reread 'Stranger In A Strange Land' as I was clearly too young to appreciate its greater strengths).
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.168.160.202
Posted on Saturday, December 26, 2009 - 01:37 pm:   

Reading 'Cinnabar's Gnosis'. This book will go down in Weird / Horror literature history.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, December 27, 2009 - 01:29 pm:   

Checked out Waterstones for Fritz Leiber yesterday - not holding out much hope - but picked up the single volume edition of the complete 'Lankhmar' series of fantasy novels!

Last night read 'Coming Attraction' which couldn't have been more different from the first story - a highly imaginative and atmospheric slice of dystopian science fiction which was like Raymond Chandler mixed with Philip K. Dick. I love writers with this kind of effortless versatility.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, December 27, 2009 - 05:18 pm:   

Even better - 'Lankhmar' appears to be a massive collection of sword & sorcery short stories in the tradition of Robert E. Howard. I can see this taking pride of place alongside 'The Complete Chronicles Of Conan' on the old fantasy shelf.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, December 28, 2009 - 02:00 am:   

Approaching the climax of FF... intensely emotional stuff. The journey they have taken defies the imagination and drags the reader along relentlessly. I love this book!

Brian W. Aldiss is quoted in the blurb: "Science fiction to call all man's preconceptions and conventions in doubt" - I couldn't agree more!

Read this book and you'll never forget these characters: Hugh, Grace, Duke, Karen, Barbara, Joe & Dr Livingstone (the cat)... and what happens to them after the bombs fall. Awesome writing.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.188.53
Posted on Monday, December 28, 2009 - 12:00 pm:   

The Dan Simmons section from Dark Visions.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.153.117.204
Posted on Monday, December 28, 2009 - 12:22 pm:   

Just finished Straub's brilliant brilliant collection Magic Terror and Doom Patrol: On Paradise Street. Now catching up on some work reading with the second part of McKenna's Lescari Revolution series, Blood In The Water.
Also have a collection of EF Benson ghost stories to dip into.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.224.155
Posted on Monday, December 28, 2009 - 03:55 pm:   

I envy anyone reading the Lankhmar series for the first time.... <---- (that's me not getting to again)

Wait till you get to his full-length novel THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR, Stephen - oh yeah!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 04:06 pm:   

Holy #$&@!!!!

Think it's time for something a bit less emotionally punishing. Just started 'The Great White Space' by Basil Copper - a nice bit of Lovecraftian horror to see in the new year.

Fritz Leiber's 'A Deskful Of Girls'... quite possibly the weirdest and most original ghost story I can remember reading. This man knows his paranormal references.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.126.207
Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 05:41 pm:   

The Great White Space is very enjoyable, Stephen - a favourite of Copper's for me.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 05:45 pm:   

Can anyone recommend anything else by Davis Grubb? I've read Night of the Hunter and it was by far one of my favourites last year (that and Toby Litt's bleak masterpiece Journey Into Space stand head and shoulders over everything else I read last year). I want to know what else of his to look out for.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 06:30 pm:   

The only other Davis Grubb novel I'm aware of is 'Fool's Parade' (1969) - a western filmed with James Stewart by Andrew V. McLaglen in the early 70s. The book is meant to be far superior to the film which is enjoyable but routine.

Apparently several of his short stories were also adapted for 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' & Rod Serling's 'Night Gallery'.
The couple I've read are classics of their kind: 'The Horsehair Trunk' & 'Where The Woodbine Twineth'.

Must get a copy of 'Night Of The Hunter'.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.185.159
Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - 06:51 pm:   

Weber, his collection Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural is very good, and includes the stories Stephen mentioned above.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - 05:40 pm:   

Well I've ordered the Barefoot Man and The Watchman off the interweb - both hardback US first editions and the two books in total are costing me the princely sum of £16.42 inc P&P.

can't really complain about that.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 12:38 am:   

I'm currently blazing through the last 50 pages of Kaaren Warren's SLIGHTS, and unless it suddenly falls apart at the end it's one of the best novels I've read this year. Staggeringly good, actually.

Next up: either UNDER THE DOME or CREATURES OF THE POOL.
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Alansjf (Alansjf)
Username: Alansjf

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 93.96.45.148
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 01:06 am:   

Don't worry, Slights holds up right to the very last word. One of my top picks of '09 as well. I'm looking forward to seeing what Warren has in store with her next two novels, both due next year.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 12:07 pm:   

Just finished SLIGHTS. One of my top 2 or 3 novels of the year. Brilliant.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 02:00 pm:   

'The Great White Space' is just what the doctor ordered - a gloriously old-fashioned ripping yarn of high adventure in some far flung corner of the world. Not just Lovecraft but Verne, Wells, Haggard & Conan Doyle all spring to mind. Great stuff!

Picked up a rich Christmas haul in my fav second hand bookshop yesterday:

'Starburst' by Alfred Bester (which completes my collection of all his short stories)

'The Golden Apples Of The Sun' by Ray Bradbury (one ends another begins - though I've read loads of his stuff before I've never actually owned any)

'Jizzle' by John Wyndham (been searching for this collection for years which almost completes all his stories)

'Job : A Comedy Of Justice' by Robert A. Heinlein (late period novel from 1984 that I'm fighting the urge to plunge straight into)

...and another one of those happy bookshop coincidences:

'The Swords Of Lankhmar' by Fritz Leiber (I swear I've never even seen a copy of this before yesterday and it continues on exactly where all the short stories in that single volume edition end - also means I still have to get the two much later collections 'Swords And Ice Magic' & 'The Knight And Knave Of Swords')

Happy New Year everyone!!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 02:33 pm:   

That's a fucking good little bookshop - that's the technical term I believe.

GAOTS is a great collection. The Fruit at The Bottom of the bowl from that is one of my favourite ever Bradbury stories
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 03:52 pm:   

I read quite a bit of Bradbury from the library in my teens/20s and been meaning to revisit him properly for many years. He has quite a few stories in the Pan/Fontana anthologies which have reawakened my interest of late.

TGAOTS is one I missed so a good place to start.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 06:54 pm:   

Just started CREATURES OF THE POOL. The first three chapters have me hooked immediately.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.202.7
Posted on Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 06:58 pm:   

It's great Zed.

Just finished the equally superb 'The Terrible Changes' by our Joel, and have started on a (rare) re-read of 'A Clockwork Orange'.

It's a toss-up between Conrad Williams 'Decay Inevitable' next or the landlords' 'Just Behind You'.

gcw
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Friday, January 01, 2010 - 06:40 pm:   

I thought Hungry Hearts was on your reading list?
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Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell)
Username: Matthew_fell

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 142.179.13.171
Posted on Friday, January 01, 2010 - 08:25 pm:   

I'm aware that the odd horror fan has a liking for football, so here's a chance to mix the two: Graham Joyce's goalkeeping reminiscences, SIMPLE GOALKEEPING MADE SPECTACULAR. Simply brilliant.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simple-Goalkeeping-Made-Spectacular-Footballing/dp/18459 64470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262199934&sr=8-1

Christopher
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.202.7
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010 - 12:15 am:   

"I thought Hungry Hearts was on your reading list?"

'Tis, It looks like a holiday read to me, so may have to wait til I piss off to Jamaica in May!:-)

gcw
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010 - 03:24 am:   

'Space Time For Springers' showed yet another side of Fritz Leiber's versatility. A very funny, charming and ultimately poignant anthropomorphic fairy-tale about a kitten that thinks it will grow up to be a human being.

That was followed by a wonderfully knowledgeable ode to the Bard and the most traditional ghost story in the collection yet - 'Four Ghosts In Hamlet'. An almost Dickensian character study of a washed up old alcoholic actor that captured the backstage atmosphere perfectly and has a memorably chilling denouement.

You never know what to expect next with this collection which I'm finding a joy to read.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.109.39.8
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010 - 06:45 pm:   

I'm reading Whitley Strieber's THE GRAYS, and I'm really pleased to say it's a retrun to his top form. His best thriller since BILLY, in my opinion. The guy does eerie and pacey and the oddly beautiful wonderfully. Really enjoying it.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.171.240.161
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010 - 07:57 pm:   

'The Golden Apples of the Sun' is great Stephen. I second Weber's choice of 'The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl' from that particular collection.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 86.140.240.57
Posted on Saturday, January 02, 2010 - 09:38 pm:   

I'm hopefully starting a short course on 'Gothic Mythologies' in a week or so so i'm brushing up on some gothic literature with 'The Gothic (Blackwell Guides to Literature)' by David Punter and Glennis Byron and both the Cambridge and Routledge 'Companions to....' along with the Joshi edited 'American Supernatural Tales' for starters.

Really looking forward to the course. The lecturer is a specialist in Folklore and Early and Modern Magic along with Cetic studies so looks like an interesting person to meet.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.179.207.45
Posted on Sunday, January 03, 2010 - 01:55 am:   

Finished Paul Finch's AFTER SHOCKS - loved it! Now reading Graham Rinaldi's big book about Will Hay.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.10.7.83
Posted on Sunday, January 03, 2010 - 12:44 pm:   

>>>so may have to wait til I piss off to Jamaica in May

Please don't tell me you've booked with BA, mate . . .
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.202.7
Posted on Sunday, January 03, 2010 - 03:45 pm:   

No...

Thomson....Are BA in trouble?

I know they have had a lot of strike threats...i'd better catch up on the news.

gcw
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.10.7.83
Posted on Sunday, January 03, 2010 - 04:00 pm:   

They could be in trouble, yes, if the merger with Iberian Airlines doesn't work out.
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Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 82.22.70.137
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 06:09 pm:   

Books I'm reading at the moment are:

Wagner's 'In a Lonely Place' - excellent collection of stories - not a bad one so far.

Black's '5th Black Book of Horror' - good, if flawed anthology, but still the second best in the series.

Stewart's 'The Mephisto Waltz' - one of his better novels, but I enjoyed 'Star Child' much more.

To read - Jeffrey's The Kult, a biography of James Harding Agate and the Ghostwriter edition of Guy N. Smith's 'Night of the Crabs'.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.176.211
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 06:32 pm:   

In a Lonely Place is a modern classic, in my opinion. As you say, not a bad one in it!
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.172.181
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 07:07 pm:   

Peter Straub - 'Poe's Children' and all of it has proven excellent, so far...
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.10.7.83
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 07:10 pm:   

He's still a plagiarist. :<0
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.235
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 09:33 pm:   

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. Good fun but was a bit disappointed that Doogie Howser wasn't in it.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, January 04, 2010 - 11:56 pm:   

Starting another Heinlein myself - 'Job : A Comedy Of Justice' (1984) which appears to be a satirical sci-fi retelling of the biblical story of Job?! Everyone from Arthur C. Clarke to Stephen King to Robert Bloch to Isaac Asimov are quoted raving about it in the blurb.

Just finished 'Foundation's Edge' and I'm still trying to take in the monumental plot twist at the end. Asimov is a crafty bugger who had me completely hoodwinked. Anyone who's read these books before will know what I'm talking about. This puts the centuries-spanning events of the previous three volumes in a completely different light. When people talk about "a sense of cosmic awe" this is exactly what they're referring to... can say no more.

The next two Leiber stories went from Faustian horror/sci-fi set in a weird far future casino - 'Gonna Roll The Bones' - to my first taste of Lankhmarian sword & sorcery - 'Bazaar Of The Bizarre'.
Both were marked by exciting narrative drive, nightmarishly surreal imagery, heady eroticism and, in the latter case, a surprisingly playful sense of humour. There was a great sword fight too described with a vividness worthy of Robert E. Howard or Karl Edward Wagner - for me there is no higher praise for this kind of writing.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 11:00 am:   

Now I'm in a quandary. The 2 Davis Grubb books I ordered arrived in the post yesterday and both look excellent. I've no idea what to read next. My TBR pile is out of control.

As Glanton observed in Blood Meridian (close to the end and loving it) "Aint that the drizzlin shits".
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 12:36 pm:   

Stu, I suppose you know that 'Starship Troopers' was written as one of "Heinlein's juveniles" specifically aimed at older children. Haven't read it but given the controversial subject matter I wasn't surprised to learn it was initially rejected for publication then went on to win the Hugo Award for best novel.

I'm finding him a fascinatingly hard to pin down maverick of a writer with an incredible no-holds barred imagination. Nothing is sacred to him and I love that!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 12:47 pm:   

They've just told us we can all go home at 12. Yipee. I can finish Blood Meridian easily this afternoon now.

Strange in a book as beautifully written as this, with so many great sentences, the quote that springs to mind first is "ain't that the drizzlin shits."

Probably says a lot more about me than the book.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.186.3
Posted on Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 09:08 pm:   

Hope you all had a Great Chritsmas and New Year's (pretty hectic for me; I just finished my shopping *yesterday*)

And thanks for dropping by my page, Ally!

Finished "Get Real." Given that it was Donald Westlake's last novel, sorry to say that it wasn't my favorite of his.

I'm on to my annual read of a Great Classic of Literature: This year it's the completed collected fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. So far . . . wonderful . . . .
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.43.214.156
Posted on Tuesday, January 05, 2010 - 09:42 pm:   

My pleasure - Thomas!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 - 11:41 am:   

This is great stuff... Heinlein is really sticking the boot into right-wing pseudo-Christian bastards like Jimmy Swaggart with this one - and the brainless morons who followed him (like Ronnie Reagan all the way to Armageddon lol).

Fantastic satire - laugh out loud funny as well as very, very clever!

A poor hapless ordinary schmo from an alternate reality ruled by strict Born Again Christian dogma is accidentally warped into our reality and finds himself at first shocked and then rather enjoying the experience - apart from the hangovers. Brilliant!!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 - 11:50 am:   

Finished Blood Meridian last night. A very impressive book, the language is fantastic but (Like outer dark) I came away from it feeling like it was a parable whose meaning I hadn't quite grasped. Still an excellent read though.

Started dexter in the Dark last night, already more than halfway through and really enjoying it. I needed something light after a dose of Cormac.

i know some people have criticised DITD for externalising Dexter's demons, but (so far) the way I'm reading it is that the whole book is a first person narration by Dexter, from a time where he knows everything that happened, and his externalising the demons is his own way of removing his responsibility for what he does.

I'm probably reading too deeply into it though.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 01:06 pm:   

'Job' is one of the most beguiling, unpredictable and hilarious novels I've ever read - end of story! Richard Dawkins would love this book. The ultimate feelgood fantasy for agnostics and atheists everywhere...

Quentin Tarantino should film it in the style of 'Inglourious Basterds' with Steve Carell playing Alex, Carrie-Anne Moss as Margrethe, Sacha Baron Cohen as Satan and Clint Eastwood as Jehovah - it would be bloody awesome!!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 05:37 pm:   

Nearly finished Dexter, I think I'll try for another quick book next, maybe fight club - which believe it or not I've never read - only seen the film.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 85.210.148.163
Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 09:43 pm:   

Read Paul Auster's short and bittersweet Xmas book and am now on with Paul Hoffman's fantasy novel THE LEFT HAND OF GOD, a book that I can't decide about. Sometimes i really enjoy it, other times i cringe at the writing. "He scrambled on" apears three or four times in three succesive paragraphs. Not good, huh? The book's full of such things, stock phrases and cliched lines. Yet the plot's engaging me.

Also made the mistake of downloading Roddy McDowall's sterling reading of Whitley Strieber's BILLY from i-tunes, but alas it's in M4B format and I can't put it on a player, so have to listen on Michelle's computer, which is unfortunate because Striber's an outstanding audio interpreter of Striber's prose.

Also dipping into short stories from various sources: Ramsey's new collection, JUST BEHIND YOU; Joel Whatshisname's THE LOST DISTRICT (at last -- been meaning to start it for quite a while); and Charles De Lint's MUSE AND REVERIE.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 11:03 am:   

'Midnight By The Morphy Watch' is probably my fav Fritz Leiber story so far... a lovely little Dickensian/Capraesque sentimental fantasy with hints of darkness under the surface that would also make a great episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. An old man who lives for chess is magically endowed with the ability of a Grandmaster able to beat anyone - but at a price. Magical writing!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 12:27 pm:   

Started on Fight Club. Better than the film, although I almost wish I didn't know the twist as it would make the experience so different. This is a book that reads totally differently when you know what's really going on than when you don't. the same goes for the film.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 01:18 pm:   

Great book, although I think it's one of the few cases where the film is better than the novel.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.149.172.181
Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 03:39 pm:   

Just started Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Snow Image and Other Supernatural Tales'. I've read most of them before, but this is my first Tartarus Press edition of anything, so I'm really salivating over the book rather than the contents (although I love a bit of Hawthorne).
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, January 09, 2010 - 02:59 pm:   

Heads up, Weber!

By happy coincidence that Jimmy Stewart film 'Fools Parade' based on the Davis Grubb novel is on the FIVE USA channel at 3.50 today. Well worth watching or recording if you haven't seen it before.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.196
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 11:47 am:   

Reading last year's Best New Horror.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.43.214.156
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 12:04 pm:   

Nathaniel...I would love to be able to buy more Tartarus books and have been meaning to subscribe to WORMWOOD for ages. In fact - my birthday is coming up in February - I'll put it on the list!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 03:16 pm:   

Thanks again, Jonathan.

Finished the last story in 'The Ghost Light' last night and it was up to the same high literary standard as the rest of them.
I don't know what genre 'Black Glass' rightly belongs to... surreal fantasy, satirical sci-fi, apocalyptic horror, poetic ode to New York City - all of these and more. Prose to haunt the mind.

Just the autobiographical essay left to read and I'll get the book back to you.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 03:30 pm:   

The fact that so much of the story was set in - and looking from - the World Trade Centre makes 'Black Glass' even more haunting in retrospect than Leiber could ever have intended!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 04:38 pm:   

'The Ghost Light' is a belter, isn't it? Leiber is one of my favourite writers in any genre, I think.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 04:53 pm:   

Yeah, the story and the book are exceptional.
His writing is like no one else I've encountered - there are so many different elements to it. His voice keeps shifting perspective and tone yet is always completely involving - like a mind overflowing with ideas.
I can't believe he passed me by until now!

Think I'll get stuck into the 'Lankhmar' series next...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 06:16 pm:   

"Night's Black Agents" is a killer collection.
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Alansjf (Alansjf)
Username: Alansjf

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 93.96.45.148
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 06:38 pm:   

This is well worth considering for anybody unfamilar with Leiber:

http://nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=158

Meanwhile, I'm reading Tartarus Press' superb Strange Tales Volume III. About three quarters of the way through; highlights so far are Daniel Mills' 'Sanctuary Run', Gary McMahon's Bergman-inspired 'The Good, Light People', A.J. McIntosh's 'Melting' and Joel Knight's 'Yet No Greater Love or Promise'.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.7.196
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 08:43 pm:   

That collection certainly does look like a collection of the best! You could transcribe that list, and find them on your own, and you'd have the perfect essence of Leiber's shorter work....

Me, I want to find his horror short-story "The Button Molder," having recently read Ibsen's PEER GYNT (a magnificent fantasy!), to which I'm assuming this story alludes either obliquely or directly...?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 11:28 pm:   

That's one of the things impressed me most about Leiber's stories - his sheer knowledge and understanding of the wider Arts.

His use of direct references and subtle allusions to earlier sources and inspirations is always relevant and bang on the money... shining a new light on those works and giving us a direct pathway into the author's own inner world and creative process. There is a deep love of literature, art, music and philosophy in his writing and a palpable fascination with the paranormal.

When Leiber quotes Shakespeare you know it isn't merely showing off but because he has read the lines, been touched by them and thought deeply about their meaning then tried to expand upon those thoughts through his own writing.

As well as freewheeling originality there is a wisdom, an honesty and crucially a self-deprecating sense of humour in his fiction that makes one warm to him as a person when reading it. A trait he shares with Kurt Vonnegut imho.
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Alansjf (Alansjf)
Username: Alansjf

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 93.96.45.148
Posted on Monday, January 11, 2010 - 12:17 pm:   

It is a shame 'The Button Molder' isn't included in the Nightshade Best Of. Maybe if they do a companion volume ...

Finished Strange Tales Volume III. I'll add Gerard Houarner's 'The Other Box' and Nina Allan's 'The Lammas Worm' (which I should have mentioned before) to my list of the best it has to offer, but most of everything else is good/very good too.

Still playing catch up with a few more '09 books: the Sean Wallace & Paul Tremblay anthology Phantom, then Postscripts 20/21 and Lucius Shepard's new collection Viator Plus. That lot should keep me out of trouble for the rest of the week.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, January 11, 2010 - 04:07 pm:   

Shame you missed the film, Weber.

I watched it again (for the first time since my teens) and was struck by the similarities to 'Night Of The Hunter'. It isn't spoiling anything to say that once again we have innocents being pursued by an implacable force of evil - in the form of a man who professes to speak for God.
One Stewart line stuck in my mind as particularly effective: "God uses bad men, bad men use God".

The film isn't a great work of art but is very entertaining with great performances by James Stewart, George Kennedy (in chilling 'Thunderbolt And Lightfoot' mode) and a very young Kurt Russell. Look out for it being repeated on FIVE USA.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.167.95
Posted on Monday, January 11, 2010 - 04:28 pm:   

That Night Shade collection looks like an abbreviated version of the Dark Harvest Leiber retrospective The Leiber Chronicles: 50 Years of Fritz Leiber. A truly comprehensive collection of Leiber's weird fiction is long, long overdue. The Midnight House volumes are great, but are almost impossible to get hold of nowadays. What's needed, in my opinion, is a two or three volume paperback set of his best supernatural/fantasy fiction, like the Richard Matheson ones that came out a few years ago.

There are dozens of great Leiber stories scattered through his out-of-print collections, anthologies and magazines. Aside from The Ghost Light, Heroes and Horrors, Night's Black Agents, Shadows with Eyes and The Book of Fritz Leiber are all worth looking out for on the secondhand market.

Stephen, have you read any of his novels? Our Lady of Darkness and Conjure Wife were issued a few years ago in a two-in-one format volume under the title Dark Ladies. Needless to say, they are both brilliant!

Craig, 'The Button Molder' does indeed refer to Peer Gynt. It's a superb piece of writing, and quite possibly the best of his later stories.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, January 11, 2010 - 04:47 pm:   

From a publisher's point of view I imagine Leiber's incredible versatility makes him hard to market.

'The Ghost Light' is a rare collection in that it makes no bones about lumping together all the disparate elements of his fiction - veering wildly and refreshingly between horror, sci-fi, fairy-tale, surreal fantasy and sword & sorcery.

I hadn't read any of his material before this book and am now relishing the thought of ploughing through the 'Lankhmar' series (happily picked up at Christmas).
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

I’m quoting this passage of ‘Job’ in defence of Robert Heinlein – hoping to put to bed the myth that he was a raving right wing Reaganite nutjob.

The central character, Alex, is reminiscing about his old life in the alternate universe he came from in which the pseudo-christian stranglehold that always threatens our America has risen to rule supreme with the unbending infringements of civil rights that inevitably follow. In that life Alex worked happily for the powers that be:

“I had enjoyed my work and the deep satisfaction over worthwhile accomplishment that went with it. We had achieved our best year since the foundation was formed – I refer to the non-profit corporation Churches United for Decency.

The past year had seen the following positive accomplishments:

(a) A federal law making abortion a capital offense;
(b) A federal law making the manufacture, sale, possession, importation, transportation, and/or use of any contraceptive drug or device a felony carrying a mandatory prison sentence of not less than a year and a day but not more than twenty years for each offense – and eliminating the hypocritical subterfuge of “For Prevention of Disease Only”;
(c) A federal law that, while it did not abolish gambling, did make the control and licensing of it a federal jurisdiction. One step at a time – having built this foundation we could tackle those twin pits, Nevada and New Jersey, piece by piece. Divide and conquer!
(d) A Supreme Court decision in which we had appeared as amicus curiae under which community standards of the typical or median-population community applied to all cities of each state (Tomkins v. Allied News Distributors);
(e) Real progress in our drive to get tobacco defined as a prescription drug through the tactical device of separating snuff and chewing tobacco from the problem by inaugurating the definition ‘substances intended for burning and inhaling’;
(f) Progress at our annual national prayer meeting on several subjects in which I was interested. One was the matter of how to remove the tax-free status of any private school not affiliated with a Christian sect. Policy on this was not yet complete because of the thorny matter of Roman Catholic schools. Should our umbrella cover them? Or was it time to strike? Whether the Catholics were allies or enemies was always a deep problem to those of us out on the firing line.
At least as difficult was the Jewish problem – was a humane solution possible? If not, then what? Should we grasp the nettle? This was debated only in camera.
Another matter was a pet project of my own: the frustrating of astronomers. Few laymen realise what mischief astronomers are up to. I first noticed it when I was still in engineering school and took a course in descriptive astronomy under the requirements for breadth in each student’s program. Give an astronomer a bigger telescope and turn him loose, leave him unsupervised, and the first thing he does is to come down with pestiferous, half-baked guesses denying the ancient truths of Genesis.
There is only one way to deal with this sort of nonsense: Hit them in the pocketbook! Redefine ‘educational’ to exclude those colossal white elephants, astronomical observatories. Make the Naval Observatory the only one tax free, reduce its staff, and limit their activity to matters clearly related to navigation. (Some of the most blasphemous and subversive theories have come from tenured civil servants there who don’t have enough legitimate work to keep them busy.)
Self-styled ‘scientists’ are usually up to no good, but astronomers are the worst of the lot.
Another matter that comes up regularly at each annual prayer meeting I did not favour spending time or money on: ‘Votes for Women’. These hysterical females styling themselves ‘suffragettes’ are not a threat, can never win, and it makes them feel self-important to pay attention to them. They should not be jailed and should not be displayed in the stocks – never let them be martyrs! Ignore them.
There were other interesting and worthwhile goals that I kept off the agenda and did not suffer to be brought up from the floor in the sessions I moderated, but instead carried them on my ‘Maybe next year’ list:
Separate schools for boys and girls.
Restoring the death penalty for witchcraft and satanism.
The Alaska option for the Negro problem.
Federal control of prostitution.
Homosexuals – what’s the answer? Punishment? Surgery? Other?
There are endless good causes commending themselves to guardians of the public morals – the question is always how to pick and choose to the greater glory of God.”

Some people just don’t get Satire…

Needless to say Heinlein portrays Alex as an over-earnest and hopelessly naïve dickhead with an awful lot of rude awakening to do. Never has a character’s fall from grace been more entertaining.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, January 14, 2010 - 02:05 pm:   

Finished Fight Club - I think I agree with Zed that the film is better, now that I've finished it.

Started on First Among Sequels - book 5 of the Thursday next novels - by Jasper Fforde. Three belly laughs and a half dozen snortles on the first 5 pages - a good average for any comic novel.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.71.159.85
Posted on Thursday, January 14, 2010 - 09:44 pm:   

I met Jasper the other year. Has the same sounding voice as Derren Brown. Was very self-assured. But in a good way. I kinda liked him but his books aren't really my thing. My girlfriend like shis stuff. he signed a book to her for her birthday, sor of. Wrote happy birthday Michelle in it and forgot to write his name afterwards. So it could be from anyone!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.71.159.85
Posted on Thursday, January 14, 2010 - 09:48 pm:   

just read an early Charles De lint book: THE WILD WOOD. Felt like a YA really, very short, simple language, but with some self-help/positivity new agey stuff in it and what would come to be his recurring use of artists as protagonists. A breezy book, light and airy like a Milky Way bar . . . The book you can eat between meals.

Starting on Phillep Petit's TO REACH THE SKY now, one of my childhood true-life heroes for his crazy wire walking stunts. he's the guy who performed he breathtaking and beautifully insane act of walking without a safety line on a tightrope strung between the Twin Towers in the 70s.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.155.107.188
Posted on Thursday, January 14, 2010 - 11:07 pm:   

Should I get Robert.E.Howard's 'Complete Chronicles of Conan' and his companion book 'Brethren of Conan' (Solomon Kane,etc) with my Waterstones voucher ?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 11:09 am:   

I love Howard's writing... it's so vividly imagined, energetic and brilliantly un-PC.
He makes his characters and worlds seem so real you can almost smell the sweat and the blood.

I grew up reading those old Sphere editions in the 70s and will always love the Conan stories. Howard's originals only mind - not so keen on the myriad of tribute stories that followed his death and continue to this day (same goes for Sherlock Holmes imitations).

First I've heard of 'Brethren Of Conan'!!
Is it in the same format and what stories does it contain? Must check it out...
I have the Wordsworth editions of the complete Solomon Kane stories and his horror collection 'The Haunter Of The Ring' but there's an awful lot more material out there.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.147.148.35
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 02:09 pm:   

Partly because of the effusion of some of the members of this board, I've just started 'The Maser and Margarita'...
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.147.148.35
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 02:09 pm:   

That was meant to read 'Master'...
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.109.185
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 02:20 pm:   

Nathaniel. I love that book.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 02:22 pm:   

I'm thirsty now. I could just use a cocktail.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 02:56 pm:   

Finally got through the pile of work books I had to read in my spare time to catch up.
So now reading The Collected Ghost Stories of EF Benson and One Million Tomorrows by Bob Shaw.

J
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.147.148.35
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 03:08 pm:   

So far, Alison, I do too... (Although I'm only a few chapters in)

And the post just brought me a Ray Bradbury collection and The Birthing House. Hooray!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 03:48 pm:   

Which Bradbury collection?

And did they send the birthing house brick by brick as a sort of home construction kit?
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 05:05 pm:   

Just finished "Hungry Hearts" by Gary, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Natt - I read "The Birthing House" by Chris Ransome last year, really didn't enjoy it at all. If that's the book you mention, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.147.148.35
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 05:31 pm:   

The Bradbury collection is called Classic Stories 1, and I think it's made up of The Golden Apples Of The Sun and R Is For Rocket. It's currently very cheap at Waterstone's website (it was just over £3 when I bought it).

Mark, that is the book. I bought it mainly off the back of the extended article on it they did in the last Cemetery Dance, and because it looked like the sort of thing I might be able to tempt my wife with (that sounds wrong...). I'll let you know what I think, but I've got The Master And Margarita to get through first...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 05:34 pm:   

I'm sudenly thirsty again...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.23.134
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 08:43 pm:   

Re: Fritz Leiber - imho this is no bad deal if you can afford it: http://www.darkmidhouse.com/id1.html
This set is bound to become even pricier in a few more years . . .
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 81.159.129.56
Posted on Friday, January 15, 2010 - 11:33 pm:   

I plumped for 'The Complete Chronicles of Conan' and Michael Moorcock's 'Elric of Melnibone'. I have always intended to get stuck into some Moorcock and Elric seems to be the place to start. Then there's his epic 'The Eternal Champion' series set across the multiverse.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Saturday, January 16, 2010 - 02:27 pm:   

Just started UNDER THE DOME.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, January 17, 2010 - 02:24 pm:   

Just spent the last couple of days engrossed in Fritz Leiber's brilliantly written autobiography in 'The Ghost Light'.

Painfully honest, poignant and very funny - the man was a fascinating mass of contradictions (rather like his fiction). He writes with cool precision and understatement about the most awful times in his life (often appearing cold to the point of autism - the Germanic way?) and then floors you with a throwaway comment that cuts right through all the trauma he must have been experiencing. Then the next moment you're laughing at some crazy anecdote or cringing with embarrassment at some youthful sexual disaster.

Leiber doesn't write of himself as a particularly warm or even likeable person - with more than his share of weaknesses - and that unflinching but wry honesty is what I found so appealing in his stories. A great writer!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.23.22
Posted on Monday, January 18, 2010 - 12:19 pm:   

Those Liebers make me want to start handcopying them from the library and printing them up myself. It's like the recent Doctor Who figures of the original Doctors - £25 each for what would usually be £7 or so. It's horrible, like getting a v's up from a passing rolls. :-(
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 03:41 pm:   

Nearly finished 'The Great White Space' & 'Job : A Comedy Of Justice'.

A thoroughly entertaining pastiche of classic Lovecraftian horror/fantasy & one of the best written satirical comedy novels I have ever read that I just wish I knew someone else had read so I could discuss it with at length.

In case anyone was wondering I'd rank Heinlein as most definitely one of the Greats - on a par with Leiber or Campbell but existing completely in a world of his own.

Best summation for me is this quote from the New York Times; "An exhilirating romp through the author's mental universe" - and they used the word UNIVERSE advisedly! Incredible literature!!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.114
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 03:51 pm:   

Nearly finished First Among Sequels. It's not the best in the series which is a shame. I had high hopes for this after Something Rotten was anything but. Books 1 and 2 (Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book) in the series are fantastic. Book 3 (Well of Lost Plots) was good but not great, book 4 (Something Rotten) was a return to form and an easy fantastic (the bit where she takes Hamlet to Starbucks and realises that he really can't make hs mind up about even the easiest choices is worth the price of the book by itself. I was crying laughing.)

This one is better than book 3 but not in the same league as the others, unless the ending pulls something great out of the bag.

My next book will bne Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.144.195.243
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 04:44 pm:   

Just finished Ellen Datlow's 'The Best Horror Of The Year'. Found it patchy, but there was some really good stuff from Glen Hirshberg, Steve Duffy, Nicholas Royle, Daniel Kaysen, Ray Russell, Margo Lanagan, and a heart-stopper from Simon Bestwick.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 04:49 pm:   

I think these "Best of" anthos are patchy by nature - personal taste comes into it a lot.

hey, you know who edited the original anthology Simon's "The Narrows" appeared in, don't you?
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.144.195.243
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 05:15 pm:   

I do now I've looked at the Aclnowledgements page. Congratulations, that was a truly excellent story, and I was contemplating buying that anthology just the other day...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - 05:25 pm:   

I can recommended it highly, sir.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.164.5
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 12:53 am:   

<<< First I've heard of 'Brethren Of Conan'!!
Is it in the same format and what stories does it contain? Must check it out...>>>

It's actually called 'Conan's Brethren' Stephen and it's the same hardback revised text format as the 'Complete Chronicles of Conan' tome. It's due out early 2010. Check out the contents here...

http://www.stephenjoneseditor.com/book2009-conansbrethern01.htm
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.128.39
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 01:07 am:   

Fucking fabulous.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 10:32 am:   

Just started "The Judas Goat", by Robert B Parker - the bloke was one of my favourite writers and now there won't be any more Spenser!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - 10:43 am:   

Thanks for the info, Sean!
That looks fabulous but when it says "the complete collection" it can't be because not all the Solomon Kane stories and fragments are included while surely there were more King Kull & Bran Mak Morn stories than the sampling here?

This looks like a 'best of' the non-Conan fantasy material but could still be well worth getting for the loose stories.
I've longed for years to read the complete Kull & Bran Mak Morn stuff...
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.164.5
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 01:41 am:   

You could be right Stephen. Or has editor Stephen Jones adopted the same policy he followed with the Conan collection by only including material completed 100% by REH ? If he has omitted some genuine REH tales then it's a seriously missed opportunity and this companion volume, good as it certainly is, will fall just short of perfection. So near...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.211.109
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 09:09 am:   

'The complete collection' may be a typical publisher claim meaning 'this is all you need'. I think it has all the Howard-completed stories within these sequences that really matter, minus the sketches, fragments and knock-offs that dilute other volumes. There's a place for completist REH volumes (see the recent big collections from Del Rey), but I think it's a good idea to present 'the good stuff' in a durable format.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.211.109
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 09:10 am:   

An added bonus being that the volume is solid enough to brain your foes with, without them quibbling over the ToC as they perish.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.12.129.14
Posted on Thursday, January 21, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

First Among Sequels did pull it out of the bag at the end. Several belly laughs in the last 70 odd pages and an intriguing set-up for the the next Thursday Next book. Like several of us on this board it sags in the middle a bit but is well worth the effort. Some of what I thought was padding in the middle turned out to be laying the path for the next book.

As it said on the page after the story finished Thursday Next will soon be appering in... and then gives a list of 30 possible titles followed by ... or maybe a book with an entirely different title, I haven't decided yet.

Whatever it's called I'll certainly be checking it out. I'm also really looking forward to his new series - Shades of Gray is the title of the first book and it was released last week.

Child 44 is EXCELLENT. 200 pages in and I'm completely hooked. It's a murder mystery set in 1953 Russia with a disgraced MGB officer trying to investigate a serial killer who the state refuses to accept exists as Crime doesn't exist in a communist state.

I reccommend it very highly so far - I just hope he can keep this standard going till the end.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, January 22, 2010 - 09:32 pm:   

I went to bed last night intending to make a start on 'Needing Ghosts'. Two thirds through I had to force myself to put it down. Thanks for a sleepless night, Ramsey!

I don't know if I'm right in saying this but this story feels like it was written in one intense burst of creativity following some whacked out nightmare on the back of a particularly stressful day in Ramsey's life!!

It is like nothing I have read by him (or anyone else) before... the darker cinema of David Lynch perhaps springs to mind as the prose is so richly visual and deeply unsettling. I've felt weirded out all day after reading it and can't wait to finish the job tonight. The man just keeps getting better!!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, January 22, 2010 - 11:28 pm:   

Yeah, it has the quality of a story written from a dream like that Lovecraft short 'The Festival' but sustained to almost unbearably claustrophobic levels.

I see Ramsey describes it as "comic" in the intro... I'm not laughing!!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 12:02 pm:   

Finished 'Needing Ghosts' in two nights. The finest piece of writing I've read by Ramsey Campbell yet. What else can I say... this is serious headfuck literature that I almost feel compelled to read again it is so dense and unfathomable. Incredibly good!

Starting 'The Getaway' today by Jim Thompson after Joel fired my imagination on the mercifully deleted thread. Peckinpah's film version is my favourite Steve McQueen movie.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.0.114.254
Posted on Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 12:24 pm:   

Stephen, some trivia --

>>>I don't know if I'm right in saying this but this story feels like it was written in one intense burst of creativity following some whacked out nightmare on the back of a particularly stressful day in Ramsey's life!!

Ramsey has said this is the fastest tale he's ever written - think it took a month.

>>>It is like nothing I have read by him (or anyone else) before... the darker cinema of David Lynch perhaps springs to mind as the prose is so richly visual and deeply unsettling.

I asked Ramsey at a reading which piece of his fiction he'd like to see filmed and by whom . . . and he replied Needing Ghosts by David Lynch.

I guess that makes you perceptive!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, January 23, 2010 - 12:42 pm:   

Gary, you've just made my day - Thanks!

It's an amazing piece of writing.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 02:49 pm:   

Child 44 was fantastic till about three quarters of the way through - then he threw in the stupidest plot twist I've seen in many years. And then he gave it the worst Hollywood-happy ending ever.

Very disappointing.

Now reading Kent Montana and the Once and Future Thing by Lionel Fenn.

Other books in the Kent Montana series include

Kent Montana and the Mark of the Moderately Viscious Vampire
Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing from Mars
668 the Neighbour of the Beast

The series is written by Lionel Fenn.

5 points to the first person who can give the name by which we on this board know him best.

They're very entertaining spoofs by the way.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.144.205.110
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 03:49 pm:   

Mark - Just so that you know, I've just finished The Birthing House, and it's the worst book I've read in many years, if not ever. Everything about it is wrong.

It was spectacularly bad in every conceivable way.

The characters are empty stereotypes, who often behave in indecipherable ways, and the dialogue is so awful it made me laugh out loud at least four or five times.

The book is bereft of anything really chilling or scary, and everything is signposted from miles off (except the bizarre sexual encounters). There was one effective piece of horror writing. It happens on page 185. The rest wasn't disgusting enough to shock (just enough to make me think I don't ever want to meet the author), or well-crafted enough to scare (yes, we've all seen scary Japanese films with long-haired ladies).

His metaphors were what kept me reading. They were so extraordinary I thought that maybe this was a big, publishing joke. "She was bleeding from just below her equatorial center, maybe Tanzania on the globe of her belly." I kept reading after the first 60 pages just to see what hilariously inapposite imagery he could come up with next.

The whole novel seems to be driven by a puerile misogyny, posing as honesty, and the story is satisfying in no way whatsoever.

Really, however, I blame his editor. Someone should have noticed that his sentences don't mean what he thinks they mean, that his main character veers between annoying and confusing, and that the whole thing is a fairly unpleasant exercise.

In short, this is an almost illiterate book in which very little happens, and what does is told badly. No wonder people do not think much of the genre, if this is an example of a 'crossover work' from a major publisher.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.144.205.110
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 03:50 pm:   

I'm now reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem, and Wilkie Collins' The Haunted Hotel to get the taste of The Birthing House out of my mouth.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 05:54 pm:   

Flew through 'The Getaway' - one seriously unputdownable book!

The prose is cool and precise, the characters so real you can see them and the action fast and incredibly vicious. A masterpiece of a thriller that put everything else out of my mind this past couple of days!

*** SPOILERS ***

It was fascinating to compare this novel from 1958 with the classic 1972 film version. I thought that movie was brutal but it has nothing on the book. For a start McQueen's character (Doc McCoy) in the book is every bit as much a cold-blooded psychopathic killer as his demented pursuer (Rudy Torrento) - in fact in many ways he is the more smarmily detestable of the two. It's not surprising that the Hollywood system, even in the anything-goes 1970s, couldn't stomach their blue-eyed boy playing the real McCoy.

On one level the book works as a straight knuckle-whitening rollercoaster ride of a chase thriller across America after a bank heist in which everyone rips everyone else off - there is not one honourable character in the book. Heartless killer McCoy and his naive young wife Carol escape with the loot pursued by the law and their terrifyingly sadistic former accomplice Rudy. Along the way they do whatever it takes to survive irrespective of innocent bystanders but Thompson still manages to keep us hooked by the sheer unpredictability of the action and depth of his characterisation - our sympathies swing backward and forward constantly.

But on another level this is a brilliantly conceived allegory of a Faustian descent into Hell. The journey Carol takes after her initial choice to go down this route (from a life of conformity) sees her lose every shred of self respect and morality in the name of love for a man who becomes more irredeemably demonic as the plot progresses. The final chapter is as pure a picture of an arrival at a personal Hell on Earth as anything I have read in literature - truly chilling.

I'm hooked on Jim Thompson now...
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.156.38.66
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 06:27 pm:   

Just finished read 'The Rise & Fall Of The wall Of Sound - The Phil Spector Story', a fascinating insight into a genius producer & seriously flawed human being.

Now resumed reading 'Just Behind You' By RC.

gcw
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 07:46 pm:   

Stephen – yes indeed. Death and afterlife. One seriously weird book.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 07:53 pm:   

GCW, it's interesting to reflect how many geniuses of studio record production are or were basically nuts. Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Kevin Shields... It may have to do with the weird blend of power and isolation that playing about with recorded sound creates. If you're even slightly unstable, it seems to be a likely road to losing the plot.
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Coral (Coral)
Username: Coral

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 90.215.237.82
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 09:28 pm:   

Over the last week or so:
The Fog
The Encyclopaedia of True Crime
The Deep Well
The Making of the English Countryside
A Halloween Tale
The Witches
Getting stuck to know what to read next.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, January 25, 2010 - 10:53 pm:   

Joe Meek, Martin Hannett, Arthur Lee...

Starting three new books:
'The Boy Who Followed Ripley',
'The Time Machine' (for the first time!)
'European Tales Of Terror' (1968)
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.90
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 11:22 am:   

Demons by Daylight by The Landlord. Creepy, surreal and disorienting.

Double Play by Robert B Parker (who died last week). Novel about an ex-marine bodyguarding Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player of the modern era. Starts off well but as the story progresses the plot becomes increasingly familiar if you've read Parker's other novels.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. The plot didn't really grab me but Sam Spade is fascinating. He's a card, isn't he?

And a sampling of short stories:
Keeping In with Vosper by PG Wodehouse
Chester Forgets Himself by PG Wodehouse
Abreaction by Theodore Sturgeon
Columbus was a Dope by Robert Heinlein
The Giocanda of the Twilight Noon by JG Ballard
Yani's Day by Jeremy Dyson
Out of Bounds by Jeremy Dyson
Come April by Jeremy Dyson
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 02:46 pm:   

The plot is secondary in 'The Maltese Falcon', Stu. That is one book where character is all!

It deserves every ounce of its reputation imo.

Would love to know what you're making of Heinlein?
I think I may have discovered one of my Top 3 or 4 authors in him. I just love his writing style and unbridled imagination - literally anything goes!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.187.42
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 03:02 pm:   

The Maltese Falcon seems to be a slowburner for me. I've seen the film twice but not never really took to it and the book was more interesting for Spade than for anything else BUT ... the book's got me looking up clips from the film on Youtube and enjoying them immensely and I'm having fun trying to figure out exactly how much of a git Spade is supposed to be as well trying to pin down the point of the story of Charles Pierce and the falling girder.

As for Heinlein I've not read a lot but I've had to reassess the opinion I formed of him from the novel I read by him back in the '90s. The Cat That Walked Through Walls annoyed the hell out of me and stopped me from reading anything else by him until recently.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 03:08 pm:   

I can understand that... he seems to almost go out of his way to be as controversial as possible in whatever era he is writing - always pushing boundaries.

That's a quality I admire hugely in any artist!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.187.42
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 03:14 pm:   

It wasn't so much that I found the novel controversial, I just didn't enjoy it. That said, there's lots of authors I didn't like in the '90s who I've ended up enjoying after giving them a second chance in the last couple of years.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 03:50 pm:   

What should my next book be. It's not going to take long to get through the Lionel Fenn.

Should I choose

Blinding Light - Paul theroux
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Lisey's Story - Steven King
Tide of souls - some bloke who hangs round in waterstones
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.23.22
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 03:50 pm:   

I used to think there was something wrong with me for not having really enjoyed The Maltese Falcon as a teen. Thought I had ADD (which I still do, but the film didn't help).
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Patrick_walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 92.40.170.35
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 09:19 pm:   

Hello friends. I'm new here and don't know anyone yet. But I was extremely excited to discover a discussion forum for Ramsey Campbell fans. So I thought I'd kick start my time here with a rundown of the few books I've read in the past fortnight:
Jack Ketchum: Only Child
Jack Ketchum: Hide and Seek
plus a few of his short stories, the best of which, The Box, was simply magnificent.
Richard Matheson: Earthbound
Jens Peter Jacobsen: Niels Lyhne
Julian Barnes: Before She Met Me.
The latter I finished reading at work today and was better than I anticipated. Frightening, upsetting, truthful and often laugh-out-loud funny.
Has anybody else read any of these?
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.156.38.66
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 09:23 pm:   

Hi Patrick - Welcome to the Board!

gcw
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Soozy (Soozy)
Username: Soozy

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 86.156.38.66
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 09:31 pm:   

Hello Patrick!
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.10.77
Posted on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 10:10 pm:   

Hello - good to see new blood.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.114
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 11:18 am:   

Read 'Cold Earth' by Sarah Moss over the weekend. Stunning. A group of archeologists are on a dig in Greenland, investigating the remains of the Norse settlements there. An epidemic has broken out, spreading across the globe. It might be the end of it all. They're isolated in Greenland and preparing to face a winter they aren't even remotely equipped for, and to cap it all they may be haunted by the angry spirits of the dead Greenlanders. The book basically consists of the main characters' final letters home to their loved ones. It's the apocalypse as quiet horror- taut, unsettling and moving.

Then went and re-read 'The Road'. Given that I'm writing a post-apocalyptic novel of my own at the moment, this is about as good an idea as reading 'Lord Of The Rings' while working on a sword and sorcery quest novel. Sigh. But somehow I'll get the damn thing finished, even if weeping over my own inadequacy in the process.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.0.114.254
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 11:26 am:   

Patrick, I've read the Barnes novel. Isn't that the one in which Barnes describes objects as being "full of absent people"?

A brilliant writer.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:06 pm:   

Natt - sounds very similar to my reaction. My biggest worry was, this was in supermarkets and being given a really big push.

Just started "The Godwulf Manuscript", another Parker novel, as I'm waiting for a manuscript to critique.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 86.142.184.215
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:52 pm:   

I'm alternating between two fantastic short story collections.

The recent 'In The Valley Of The Kings' by Terence Holt. Just stunning so far. In 'Logos' a five year old child is brought into a small town America hospital with strange markings on her head and hands. She dies and this is the start of the end of the world as whoever reads the 'Word' on her forehead catches the plague. In 'Charybdis' we here the hear the last thought of a doomed astronaut plunging towards Jupiter and the inane twiterings of Nasa now coming though hours after they were sent. Holt is a wonderful poetic, 'literary' writer. Reminded a bit of Borges, maybe Nabokov. Very highly recommended.

Also just received the Tartarus Press collection of William Sansoms stories 'Various Temptation'. Wonderful so far. I can see how he was seen as the British Kafka in the 40s.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:02 pm:   

Charybdis sounds very like the ray Bradbury story with the astronauts floating through spade after their ship explodes.

I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but it was turned into a fabulous radio play.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 06:30 pm:   

Hi Patrick - have you seen the film of The Box and if so, wot did u tink of it like?
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 92.40.20.19
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 09:23 pm:   

Hi. No, I haven't. And I can't stay that I was plannning on doing so.
Are you about to persuade me otherwise?!
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 92.40.20.19
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 09:43 pm:   

Hold on, I took it that you were referring to the film based on the Matheson short story, Button Button. Where as the short story I mentioned above was The Box by Jack Ketchum. Apologies.
So which The Box were you talking about?!}
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.164.239
Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 10:19 pm:   

I'm reading this and i think you all should too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnbYcB9ctu8
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.84.5
Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 02:40 am:   

HAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

A little bit heavy-handed, Clive, but pretty damn funny....
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.196
Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 09:38 pm:   

Started reading Mark West's 'Conjure', and the ARC of 'The Passage' by Justin Cronin.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 10:19 pm:   

Just heard the news of J.D. Salinger's death so I think it's about time I finally read 'The Catcher In The Rye'!

It's been in my TBR pile for too many years...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.78.235
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 06:25 am:   

I've never read anything by Salinger, believe it or not....

I've broken through my own long burn-out of reading to some degree, with the help of Tanith Lee's so-far brilliant collection THE GORGON AND OTHER BEASTLY TALES. I had read only "The Gorgon" before, and admired it again as a perfectly crafted horror story. I then read "Meow" and "Anna Medea," and encountered two more near-perfect horror stories. I jumped ahead to "La Reine Blanche" and "Qat-Supp," and encountered near-perfect horror/fantasy and horror/sci-fi stories respectively. Yow! - are they all going to be this good?! I'm loving this one!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.23.22
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 07:22 am:   

Catcher is a lovely, still-fresh book.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:03 pm:   

I didn't think much of Catcher. It was certainly an easily readable book, but I finished it with a sense of "Is that it?". To sum the book up, he runs away, nothing dramatic happens (except he nearly gets into a fight but decides not to) and he goes home.

Very "Meh!" IMHO
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.44.33
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:26 pm:   

I think it's a lovely book too, Tony. I read it when I was sixteen and then again in my twenties, but haven't read it since.

Nobody except Ian has commented in the Salinger thread I started. Maybe everyone thinks he's.... overrated? :-/
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 89.240.59.35
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:28 pm:   

I didn't think much of Hamlet. It's certainly watchable, but...

To sum the play up he wonders whether or not to kill his uncle, nothing much happens, he keeps wondering, and then everyone gets killed.

Meh...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:32 pm:   

Check out Something Rotten by Jasper FForde. Hamlet is one of the central characters - pulled out of fiction and wandering round 1988 Swindon, completely unable to ever make a decision, even over what to drink in the cafe, "a tea or not a tea, that is the question..."
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.0.114.254
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:33 pm:   

And that War and Peace, all it's about is Russia. Tsk!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 02:55 pm:   

At least Russia's interesting, not just some whiny kid wandering about, whining constantly. CITR just left me completely cold at the end. Like I said, very "Meh!". IMHO of course.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.221
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 04:05 pm:   

And what's that one book?... Jews wandering here, and there... captured here, there... a bunch of guys blathering for big portions of it, busy-bodies all up in everyone's biz... then some dragons and whores and the end... whatever it was, I'll say one thing, it was LONG....
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, January 29, 2010 - 04:36 pm:   

Is it 'The interfering Goldsteins meet the six headed dragon of doom' - A forgotten masterwork by Charles Dikkens the famous dutch author with two K's?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, February 01, 2010 - 12:22 pm:   

I don't care if I'm teaching my granny to suck eggs but I've just read and been hugely impressed by H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine'.

It works very much like a "Lovecraftian" horror story as well as being the earliest post-apocalypse sci-fi novel I am aware of (incidentally preempting the big twist of 'Soylent Green' by 80 odd years)... nevermind inventing the concept of a "time machine".

Wells is always hailed as the father of science fiction but he was also one of the greatest horror writers of the golden era of the genre and deserves credit as such.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.164.239
Posted on Monday, February 01, 2010 - 01:32 pm:   

'as well as being the earliest post-apocalypse sci-fi novel I am aware of '

Mary Shelly's 'The Last Man' has got a good 50 years or so on it i think. I can't think of any earlier.

Time Machine is indeed great, as is all Wells early stories. My favourite is still 'The Island Of Dr Moreau'

I'm still reading and greatly enjoying William Sansoms short stories. Wonderful stuff.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, February 01, 2010 - 01:43 pm:   

Theologus Autodidactus
Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (The Treatise of Kamil on the Prophet's Biography), also known as Risâlat Fâd il ibn Nâtiq (The Book of Fâdil ibn Nâtiq), was the first theological novel,[51] written by Ibn al-Nafis and later translated in the West as Theologus Autodidactus. This work is one of the first Arabic novels, considered an early example of a science fiction novel, and an early example of a coming of age tale and a desert island story.[8] This novel was written sometime between 1268 and 1277 CE.[52]

[edit] Plot
The protagonist of the story is Kamil, an autodidactic adolescent feral child who is spontaneously generated in a cave and living in seclusion on a deserted island.[8] He eventually comes in contact with the outside world after the arrival of castaways who get shipwrecked and stranded on the island,[53] and later take him back to the civilized world with them. The plot gradually develops into a coming-of-age story and then becomes the earliest example of a science fiction novel when it eventually reaches its climax with a catastrophic doomsday apocalypse.[8]

[edit] Themes
Ibn al-Nafis uses the plot to express many of his own religious, philosophical and scientific themes on a wide variety of subjects, including biology, cosmology, empiricism, epistemology, experimentation, futurology, geology, Islamic eschatology, natural philosophy, the philosophy of history and sociology, the philosophy of religion, physiology, psychology, and teleology. Ibn al-Nafis was thus an early pioneer of the philosophical novel. Through the story of Kamil, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to establish that the human mind is capable of deducing the natural, philosophical and religious truths of the universe through reasoning and logical thinking. The "truths" presented in the story include the necessity of God's existence, the life and teachings of the prophets of Islam, and an analysis of the past, present, and future, including the origins of the Homo Sapien species and a general prediction of the future on the basis of historicism and historical determinism. The final two chapters of the story resemble a science fiction plot, where the end of the world, doomsday, resurrection and afterlife are predicted and scientifically explained using his own empirical knowledge of biology, astronomy, cosmology and geology. One of the main purposes behind Theologus Autodidactus was to explain Islamic religious teachings in terms of science and philosophy through the use of a fictional narrative, hence this was an attempt at reconciling reason with revelation and blurring the line between the two.[8]

Ibn al-Nafis described the book as a defense of "the system of Islam and the Muslims' doctrines on the missions of Prophets, the religious laws, the resurrection of the body, and the transitoriness of the world." He presents rational arguments for bodily resurrection and the immortality of the human soul, using both demonstrative reasoning and material from the hadith corpus to prove his case.[54] The novel also includes references to his new physiology and his theories of pulmonary circulation and pulsation, which he uses to justify bodily resurrection. Some have thus argued that it was his attempts at attempting to prove bodily resurrection that led him to his discovery of the pulmonary circulation.[55] Later Islamic scholars viewed this work as a response to Avicenna's metaphysical claim that bodily resurrection cannot be proven through reason, a view that was earlier criticized by al-Ghazali.[54]

The plot of Theologus Autodidactus was intended to be a response to Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), who wrote the first fictional Arabic novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus) which was itself a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Ibn al-Nafis thus wrote the narrative of Theologus Autodidactus as a rebuttal of Abubacer's arguments in Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic individuals spontaneously generated in a cave and living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on a desert island for the rest of the story in Philosophus Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in Theologus Autodidactus, developing into a coming-of-age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel. The purpose behind this changing story structure in Theologus Autodidactus was to refute Abubacer's argument that autodidacticism can lead to the same religious truths as revelation, whereas Ibn al-Nafis believed that religious truths can only be attained through revelation, which is represented through Kamil's interactions with other humans.[56]

I think that trumps Mary Shelley
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.164.239
Posted on Monday, February 01, 2010 - 02:23 pm:   

'I think that trumps Mary Shelley'

Ha! It certainly does! It sounds fascinating.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 04:54 pm:   

But surely if that novel - fascinating as it sounds - culminates in apocalypse it can't then be considered a post-apocalypse sci-fi novel.

I'd be interested to learn more about the Mary Shelley story as well - never even heard of it!

Flying through 'Ripley' & 'Catcher' and completely at a loss what to read next... fancy a classic horror novel I think.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 04:59 pm:   

If you're really stuck, there're three plays} wot I writed on my website. www.efilsgod.piczo.com

Just follow the link that says plays.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.238.252
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 02:43 am:   

Stephen - you seem to read a LOT and you seem to read FAST - how do you do it?!? Can you teach me?...

I like to fantasize I'm just doing it wrong, rather than utterly fatigued by it all....
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 64.180.64.74
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 03:13 am:   

Currently swapping back and forth between Christopher Fowler's Psychoville and the new edition of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan Vol. 3: The New Scum. Not sure what the two have to do with each other, other than potentially speaking about sociological undercurrents of humanity.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 12:52 pm:   

Craig, it comes from having no ties and too much free time during the week to fill in lol. I read everywhere: on the bus, during work breaks, in the pub, in the bath, in bed and I usually have a couple of novels and anthologies on the go at the same time.

I'm veering towards 'The Lurker At The Threshold' next and trying to resist the new Heinlein I just picked up, 'The Number Of The Beast' - I don't want to OD on the man but by God he's good!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 05:20 pm:   

Before, I just thought 'The Boy Who Followed Ripley' was distinctly weird but now I think it may be the most psychologically disturbing of the series.

The insights into Tom's deeper motivations and closet self-loathing are on one level the height of black humour and on another deeply unsettling - not only in what they say about him but about what they might say about the author. By this stage Patricia Highsmith (imo) so closely identifies with the character that the two are virtually interchangeable. Fascinating stuff and, as ever, supremely entertaining!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 05:33 pm:   

I may have to re-read that one. I remember not really liking it as much as the others when I first read it. Maybe because (at 22 years old) I was younger than the "boy" of the title.

I was hooked by Ripley Under Water though. Knowing it was the last Ripley novel, I didn't know if he was going to get away with it again which racheted the tension up to another level. When you know there's another book in the series you know it's going to end well for your lead character.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.247
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 06:04 pm:   

Like the SAW series, Weber?
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 06:13 pm:   

You always know Jigsaw (whichever one it is) is going to win through in the end - so yes.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 06:57 pm:   

Actually, Weber, the boy is only 16 and completely naive which is what makes Tom's interest in him so deeply unpleasant on a psychological level.

The character is utterly devoid of conscience - even when he believes he is acting "honourably".
He is one of the most fascinating creations in literature for me.
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 92.40.16.25
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 08:27 pm:   

I've just read Ian McEwan's debut, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites. I'm absolutely overwhelmed at what I've just read. Such an atmosphere of dread pervades these tales that I thought that they'd appeal to other fans of thoughtful horror. Anyone read these?
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 09:13 pm:   

McEwan's early stuff is fantastic. You're right, a very heavy sense of dread and eeriness to them. Thats the second time today i've come across people mentioning how they liked that collection (the others were Nicholas Royle and M. John Harrison on Harrison's blog). Time for a re-read i think as it was many years ago i first read them.
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 09:34 pm:   

After a re-read of Walter de la Mare's 'Seaton's Aunt' tonight (one of my all time favourite writers) i'm going to make a start on 'The Sad Tale Of The Brothers Grossbart' by Jesse Bullington. Sounds great...

'In the plague-wracked and devil-haunted darkness of Medieval Europe, an elite few enjoy opulent lives while the majority eke out a miserable existence in abject poverty. Hungry creatures stalk the deep woods and desolate mountains, and both sea and sky teem with unspeakable horrors. For those ill-fated masses not born into wealth, life is but a vicious trial to be endured before the end of days. Hegel and Manfried Grossbart could give a toss. Being of low birth means little, after all, when the riches of the mighty wait just inside the next crypt.'
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Clive (Clive)
Username: Clive

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 81.104.165.168
Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 10:50 pm:   

Scratch that. Going to read Conrad Williams ' Decay Inevitable' before 'Brothers Grossbart'. Too impatient.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 89.240.59.35
Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 12:29 am:   

Just finishing off Just After Sunset, and Strange Tales III, which I'm reviewing for the BFS. Tomorrow brings either the Mammoth Book of Wolf Men or the Wordsworth Edith Nesbit Tales of Terror, not sure which, yet...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.89
Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 08:21 am:   

Halfway through a simply amazing book by one of you Brits, Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Professor Eagleton has always been one of my favorite writers, but he's un-topped here, as he eviscerates Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, where they present themselves as anti-God-ers (he refers to them throughout the book as a single creature he terms "Ditchkins"); Eagleton basically discards them as anti-compassionate, simplistic, and egregiously unfair in their misrepresentations of religion and religious belief - and Eagleton's a more radical atheist than both of them! Enough books like this, hell, I might just become a Marxist yet....
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 12:08 pm:   

I've been thinking recently about why Richard Dawkins annoys me... even though I agree with a lot of what he says.

Robert Heinlein was a lifelong radical atheist too who liked nothing more than sticking the boot into pseudo-religious hypocrites (we have more than our share in Northern Ireland as recent headlines amply demonstrate lol) but - like Eagleton it appears - he believed first and foremost in human liberty of thought and expression. His first novel 'Methuselah's Children' (1941) - I just recently learned - won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for "Best Classic Libertarian Sci-Fi Novel" (1997) and is deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Jews at that time.

I think that's the difference. I can take Heinlein taking the mickey out of religion because he does it with humanity and is always sympathetic to his characters (even poor misguided Alex lol) while militant atheists, like Dawkins, would ultimately outlaw religious expression and become nothing more than a new "Rationalist Inquisition" if they ever attained any level of power!

Religion and the State should never mix but also the State should never dictate the "Right" way of thinking - that was the basic message of 'Job'.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 01:55 pm:   

Finished 'The Catcher In The Rye' last night and I've felt affected by it all morning. I want to implore people to read this book.

It is one of the most beautiful, humane novels I have ever read. So simple, so direct, so profound and heartbreaking. A wonderful, wonderful book - one of those entrancing experiences that will live with you forever more once read.

I was touched most by Holden/Salinger's lack of emotional grandstanding and simple statement of the facts leaving the reader to gauge what was going on on an emotional level - so much more powerful than describing the character's inner anguish. Bloody hell but this is magnificent writing and, yes, the kind of book that could change a life... I'm feeling shaken, sad and overwhelmed with the joy of great literature after reading this. Everyone should!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.114
Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 03:03 pm:   

I still think he was just a whinger.
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 89.240.59.35
Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 03:08 pm:   

I went with Edith Nesbit, and have been surprised by how powerful a lot of it is. I had assumed that it would all be rather genteel, but there are some real shocks in these stories (one sentence in 'The Three Drugs' is one of the most effective scares I've read).

Stephen, could you point me to where either Richard Dawkins or christopher Hitchens suggests that they would outlaw religion? As I understand it, the Eagleton position (with which I sympathise) is that their criticisms of religion are based on a crude caricature of religious thinking. However, to suggest that they want to suppress religion when there is no evidence of that, merely of them trying to convince people that religion is nonsense, is misleading.

I think that the term 'militant atheist' is bound up in this. It attempts to posit a similarity between religious fundamentalists (who almost always are in favour of using the legal system to suppress behaviours they do not like) with people who are vociferous about their contempt for religion. It's a false analogy, but one that's gaining a lot of currency nowadays.

This can be seen in the hysterical journalistic reactions to, say, the Twitter protests about Jan Moir. Apparently, expressing your disagreement with someone is now an attempt to 'censor' them. The same can be seen in the Facebook group in which people have stated that they will not buy The Independent if Rod Liddle becomes editor. In the eyes of the media, this voluntary action of people spending their money on the newspaper with whose values they agree is 'censorship', and an 'attempt to silence' Liddle. (Also check out a lot of the reactions to the NSS petition against the Pope's visit, or the RATM Christmas single).

Disagreeing with someone, and saying so in whatever language you choose, is not attempting to censor them.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.114
Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 03:22 pm:   

Is deliberately bad writing ever good comedy or is it always just bad writing? In the case of the Lionel Fenn books, I have to go for good comedy, but then again the writing is only superficially bad. You quickly get the joke and the books become very cleverly written spoofs, taking potshots at every genre cliche going.

I think Dan Brown took writing hints from the style of the Kent Montana books, without realising that Lionel Fenn (aka Charles Grant) was actually taking the piss.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 12:47 am:   

I've been struck by synchronistic parallels between the two books I just finished: 'The Catcher In The Rye' & 'The Boy Who Followed Ripley'.

Both concern a deeply troubled 16 year old boy grasping for some sense of identity and suffering a "long dark night of the soul".
Holden Caulfield's trouble emanated from not communicating his disaffection except to us the readers (if he had whinged more in his life people would have realised how troubled he was, Weber) while Frank Pierson's mistake was in reaching out for help and baring his soul to the devil incarnate - Tom Ripley. Interesting...
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.160.167
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 01:43 am:   

I'm still reading Borges' complete fictions, but I'm also reading "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" which is, in its own way, excellent.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 02:26 pm:   

Nathaniel, my problem with Dawkins, and others of his ilk, stems from his OTT attacks against honest agnostics - like myself. He said once that agnostics were as much a part of the problem as religious believers because they denied what was, for him, patently obvious - or words to that effect. If that ain't missionary zeal I don't know what is!!

For me the only rational response to an unfathomable Universe that we lack the intelligence and sensory awareness to ever quantify beyond the concept of Infinity is to say - "I don't know".

Militant atheists who attack agnosticism profess to KNOW just as much as the most right-wing Bible basher. I respect the more humble views and erudition of atheists like Heinlein, Eagleton or Jonathan Miller more than Dawkins damning arrogance. All imho.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.235.100
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 04:23 pm:   

Swing to Bop by Ira Gitler. 317 pages of oral history by the musicians who witnessed the transition in jazz in the 40ies.
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Coral (Coral)
Username: Coral

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 90.216.127.4
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 10:33 pm:   

Hubert, I think you must be VERY dedicated to music!

Hello Patrick, nice to meet you.

Anyhoo, I'm struggling a bit at the moment. I've got that feeling you sometimes get when you look at your shelves and think that it's all so familiar and you've read it a million times. Do you know that one? I'm champing through crappy true crime stuff at a dozen a day. Anybody got any suggestions? Not even necessarily sensible suggestions, I'm at tha tmuch of a loss.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 11:51 pm:   

Coral, the best true crime book I ever read (and one of the best books period) is 'The Complete History Of Jack The Ripper' by Philip Sugden.

It reads like a gripping novel that takes you right back to that period in incredible detail and is the definitive word on the subject with no wild personal theorising.

Well written and researched true crime books are an occasional guilty pleasure of mine... I also recommend 'The Ultimate Evil' by Maury Terry as a cracking good read on the "Son of Sam" murders.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, February 06, 2010 - 11:59 pm:   

Me, I've just started two new books today...

The brick of a single volume collection of all Fritz Leiber's 'Lankhmar' stories up until 1968 &
'The Lurker At The Threshold' "by" Lovecraft & Derleth.

Both are brilliantly atmospheric so far!
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 217.39.80.245
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 02:48 am:   

I'm continuing to be surprised by Edith Nesbit. It's all a little more gruesome than I was expecting.

I agree that Dawkins' position on agnostics is silly. The Bertrand Russell example he often gives: that we don't know that there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun constantly opposite the Earth because we can't see it also doesn't help his case.

He suggests that it's unreasonable to take the position that 'we just don't know' about the teapot because it's hugely unlikely. I'd suggest that it's equally fruitless to spend your life writing books called "The Teapot Delusion" about something ultimately unknowable.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.45.74
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 03:42 am:   

Glad you're enjoying the Nesbit, Natt - she wrote some effective stories - 'In the Dark', 'John Charrington's Wedding', 'From the Dead', 'Man-Size in Marble', 'Oke of Okehurst'. And yes, she could be quite gruesome. Not surprising, given the kind of life she led.

Stephen, have you tracked down any more of Leiber's supernatural fiction yet?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.13.68
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 03:52 am:   

Nathaniel, Eagleton's book is quite short, but hugely complex, and there's no way I could adequately summarize it. He does make a good point, that Dawkins/Hitchens are both backwards in their conceptions of God - they straw-man God: what they're actually doing, is stuffing the fabric dummy with our own latter-day, pseudo-religious-but-actually-secularly-decadent God-theories as straw. And to be perpetually obsessed with the presence or not of God, is to miss the whole point entirely - centuries of religion are testament to that. He goes on (Eagleton) to critique the point, but I like how he says that you must engage your critical enemies on their best, and surest ground... or what kind of argument are you ever really having, but a one-sided one?
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.167.172.190
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 09:51 am:   

Reread 'Good Omens' by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I mean a book that starts off: 'It was a nice day...' No less fun this time around.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.0.114.254
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 11:24 am:   

Craig, Eagleton was having a one-sided argument with Martin Amis recently. Simply refused to see the context.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.187.113
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 11:27 am:   

I'm more struck by Dawkins' observation that religious believers are more hostile than atheists to religious beliefs in general, with the exception of the religion – and within that, the sect – to which they subscribe. Everyday experience bears this out: it's a generally accurate observation, not a theoretical statement. I remember a Catholic friend of mine telling me years ago that Protestants are 'worse than atheists' because 'they pretend to be Christians'. No-one is more inclined to the banning of religious freedom than believers reacting to religious practices that differ in the least regard from their own. This tells us a great deal about the social and political nature of religious culture. The mistake is to get engaged, especially in a satirical way, with theological arguments. Theocracy needs to be challenged through democracy, not through abstract arguments about the nature of reality.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.150.111.206
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 12:29 pm:   

religious believers are more hostile than atheists to religious beliefs in general, with the exception of the religion – and within that, the sect – to which they subscribe
============

As an atheist, I would agree wih that.
But surely that is true with all deep personal convictions - whether they are religious or political.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.235.100
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 03:52 pm:   

Hubert, I think you must be VERY dedicated to music!

I suppose I am, Coral Penultimate year of the local music academy, lots of standards we've studied and played (some devilishly difficult), various local stints in the casino and such . . . Right now I get more satisfaction out of music than writing or translating, although I will never stop to scribble.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.21.235.100
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 03:56 pm:   

@ Huw: And yes, she could be quite gruesome. Not surprising, given the kind of life she led.

I'm kind of intrigued, Huw. I only ever read "Man-sized in marble" and I've never seen any collection or other book by her.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.1.38
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 05:17 pm:   

I don't know much about Martin Amis, but he does seem to dislike him, Gary, judging by this book.

Theocracy needs to be challenged through democracy, not through abstract arguments about the nature of reality.

Yes, Joel. What could become disturbing, is to realize that this "democracy" is itself a tenuous state of being - if the masses suddenly want theocracy, we've got a theocracy-by-democracy. Also (vastly simplifying what Eagleton says), tolerance is passive, whereas conviction is active. Liberal enlightenment cultures are tolerant of all points of view... that includes intolerant ultra-conservative religiously-backwards POVs... if they're not tolerant of the worst views out there, then they're by definition, just as intolerant... and mild-mannered, cold-blooded passives are ever under the threat of being eaten up by passion-frenzied, blood-thirsty actives....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.1.38
Posted on Sunday, February 07, 2010 - 05:28 pm:   

(One last note: Is it possible that Eagleton has missed entirely a super-subtle ironic point that perhaps the very intelligent Dawkins/Hitchens are making?... that they are casting themselves in the role of religionists, using religionist modes of communication - intolerance, vituperation, sloppiness with the evidence, blindness, etc.?... exactly to make a point, missed on all?)...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, February 08, 2010 - 11:22 am:   

"I'm more struck by Dawkins' observation that religious believers are more hostile than atheists to religious beliefs in general, with the exception of the religion – and within that, the sect – to which they subscribe. Everyday experience bears this out: it's a generally accurate observation, not a theoretical statement"


My experience of the catholic church does not bear this out in the slightest. there are(is) a small vocal minority in most churches who speak out in the way Joel decribes. But for the vast majority of people in the churches (including most priests I've known) these people are an embarassment. Tolerance is one of the key messages of the Church.

An outsider's view of any organisation/religion/whatever is always formed by seeing the extremes.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.165
Posted on Monday, February 08, 2010 - 11:49 am:   

My son's theory of God is that he wasn't there at the beginning but grew gradually, then went back in time and started things off because he'd grown strong and clever enough to do it.
I enbcounter a lot of religious old ladies in my life and line of work and they're all lovely and open minded, and not at all judgemental.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - 12:47 pm:   

That's a lovely theory, Tony.

My own is that we lose sight of the wood for the trees with the wood being Infinity - something that can never be given a shape, a mass, a quantity no matter how close we think we are to cracking it. Scientists are driven by their own intellectual conditioning to want to measure everything to a final solution which is why so many of them go stark raving mad when it comes to grappling with the Infinite - it simply can't be done outside of philosophical paramaters.

Agnosticism can only ever be passive, tolerant and all-encompassing due to the basic honesty of its position.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.165
Posted on Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - 02:13 pm:   

Howard Jacobson said in this article the other week that without God we wouldn't be very creative - or indeed happy. He's not religious, either, but thinks we need that 'open window' to it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.250.208
Posted on Tuesday, February 09, 2010 - 04:52 pm:   

Atheists are determined to poke down to the dark core of God/religion, and "want to measure everything to a final solution which is why so many of them go stark raving mad when it comes to grappling with the Infinite" in the words of Stephen, with which I agree.

But it's purely selective to choose God/religion. The more you poke down to the atomic core of national pride, love, fidelity, pity, political convictions, faith in friendship/s, etc (and science! how many scientific certainties are overturned every day!)... the more unknowable, tenuous, frightening, and uncertain all those become as well....

For every conviction or base of faith or ground of being, there is a brink past which no one wants to - or, really, should - or ever really does - cross.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 12:42 pm:   

Three stories into the 'Lankhmar' collection and I'm thoroughly addicted - the young Fafhrd and Mouse haven't even met yet!

It took me a little while to readjust to Leiber's style of fantasy writing - more surreal and humorous than Robert E. Howard but just as vivid, sexual and bloody with the same gift for pure storytelling. Next up is 'Ill Met In Lankhmar'... when the legend really begins.

Also half way through 'The Lurker At The Threshold' which may just be a Lovecraftian masterpiece I'm enjoying it that much. August Derleth deserves nothing but praise for this gripping and scary novel!
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Nathaniel Tapley (Natt)
Username: Natt

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 78.146.213.182
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 01:02 pm:   

Just started the Stephen Jones edited MAMMOTH BOOK OF WOLF MEN...
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.141
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 01:09 pm:   

"Howard Jacobson said..."

... that all humour is about cruelty. Eddie Izzard asked about surreal humour. Jacobson said that that's being cruel to reality.

Ahem.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.162.7
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 01:18 pm:   

Stephen, I have a couple of spare copies of Leiber books (mostly horror/supernatural) that you're welcome to. Let me know if you're interested.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 02:43 pm:   

Huw, I'm not just interested I think it's my birthday come early! Thanks so much!!

You've reminded me I have to return Jonathan's copy of 'The Ghost Light'.
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 92.40.75.173
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 10:40 pm:   

Speaking of Howard Jacobsen, I just read The Act of Love. A reviewer in The Guardian said something like "he nearly didn't finish the book; it nearly finished him". I know what he meant. I haven't felt that way since reading Hanif Kureishi's Intimacy. It's not for everyone and some will roll their eyes or scoff but for some it'll be an uncomfortable or distressing experience.
Highly recommended nonetheless.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.213.27.210
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 10:46 pm:   

Currently reading Justin Cronin's 'The Passage' and 'Raven Black' by Ann Cleeves.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.157.25.236
Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 11:11 pm:   

I've just started the 'Dancing on Air' collection by Frances Oliver, Ash Tree Press 2004.
Also started a real-time review of it: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/dancing_on_air__by_frances_oliver.htm
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.164.249
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 12:16 am:   

Stephen, email me at huw.lines@gmail.com
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.138
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 11:21 am:   

Captain America and the Falcon: Brothers and Keepers by Priest and various artists. Cap and the Falcon deal with espionage skullduggery as the US government make yet ANOTHER attempt to recreate the super-soldier serum that turned skinny Steve Rogers into Captain America. Bit disappointed with this as I used to like Priest's work back in the days when he was still called Jim Owsley. Particularly disappointed with his edgy bad boy version of The Falcon as I have a soft spot for the kinder, caring version he did in Falc's mini-series back in the '80s. Probably the most interesting thing about the story was trying to work out if this is the first time a black writer wrote Cap in an ongoing series.

The Uncanny X-Men Annual #11 by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis. Look, I don't care if it's got clunky dialogue and the X-Men sometimes act out of character, it's Chris Claremont and Alan Davis! Together! Writing and drawing X-Men!

Doom Patrol #27 by Grant Morrison and Richard Case. First chapter of 'The Painting That Ate Paris' -- I missed this issue when the comic originally came out so it's nice to finally have read it. Fun and surreal. And it's only going to get weirder.

Sandman: The Doll House by Neil Gaiman and various artists. Finally managed to continue my rereading of the Sandman series (I think this is my third time through). Not my favourite volume but still good value with folk tales, superheroes, serial killers, nightmares and monsters all woven into the story.

Also dipping into Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts and Dennis Etchison's The Dark Country.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 12:27 pm:   

I believe that in the Dolls House, when you see the lead girl's bookshelves up close there's a copy of Jonathan Carroll's Bones of the Moon visible...
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.138
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 12:40 pm:   

I'd have to check but I didn't spot Bones of the Moon. Did see Sleeping in Flame though.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 12:59 pm:   

Apparently gaiman had written the Doll's House story, sent it for the artists to start drawing and then he read Bones of the moon - which also has a serial dreaming storyline. He decided to pull the story because of the similarities but when he told JC about it, JC told him not to pull it, that it was his take on the same idea and it wasn't the same story. So NG inserted the JC book on the girl's shelf as a tribute. and that was the only change.

That's why I thought the book was Bones of the Moon.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.138
Posted on Thursday, February 11, 2010 - 03:24 pm:   

It took me a while to figure this out but the Sandman story that mirrored Bones of the Moon was A Game of You not the Doll's House. Thanks for reminding me of the anecdote though, I'd completely forgotten it.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.187
Posted on Friday, February 12, 2010 - 11:34 am:   

Sandman: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman and various artists. Collection of single issue stories including 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 03:07 pm:   

Finished 'The Lurker At The Threshold' and, while it isn't near Lovecraft at his peak, it is about as close to him as any posthumous work could get. The "gradual possession by ancient evil" plot, multi-perspective structure, archaic language and atmosphere of cosmic dread are all close to perfection.

Derleth does slip into overly reverent self-parody at times but never fatally so and overall I found the novel palpably superior to most other imitations I've read including Copper's entertaining 'The Great White Space'.
An essential read for all Lovecraft fans but still a long way behind 'The Ceremonies'...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 03:30 pm:   

It always struck me as a poor remake of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 03:57 pm:   

That's what struck me too, Hubert.
Not exactly poor but definitely inferior - I still really enjoyed it, though, clichés and all.

Loved the idea of the tower and the window acting as a focussing device for the force that resided in the stone circle and I thought the slow "schizophrenic" possession of Ambrose Dewart was nicely detailed and convincing. A predictable but highly enjoyable read.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.230.177
Posted on Sunday, February 14, 2010 - 04:37 pm:   

The idea of the tower and window were lifted verbatim out of Lovecraft's "Commonplace Book", if I remember correctly. I'd have to look it up as I haven't read Derleth's pastiches since I was a teenager. Most of them are vastly inferior to the genuine article, but I quite like "The Ancestor", "The Shuttered Room", as well as the beautiful "The Lamp of Alhazred" and "Fisherman at Falcon Point".
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.165
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 04:36 pm:   

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, the second of the Martin Beck books. Just as ace as the first. It's making me want to go to Budapest.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Monday, February 15, 2010 - 11:14 pm:   

I'm reading Cell by Stephen King. It's ace so far.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:22 am:   

It's time for a bit of the main man again - just starting 'The Count Of Eleven'.

I can't get over how good these Lankhmar stories are - wonderful entertainment in every respect. Exciting, compulsive, magical, funny, charming, etc... and I love the way each one flows into the next with perfect continuity giving the collection the feel of an epic novel.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:37 am:   

I absolutely adore them.
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Ian Alexander Martin (Iam)
Username: Iam

Registered: 10-2009
Posted From: 64.180.64.74
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 02:05 am:   

Currently inhaling Terry Pratchett's The Truth after reading Guards! Guards! before that. Oddly I've never read anything by Sir Terry other than the co-written Good Omens. Much fun to be had here, especially as there's another 33 or so titles… should keep me going for a week or two…
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:32 am:   

Pyramids is my favourite Pratchett novel. The piss-take of the Eleatic philosophers is really rather erudite.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:37 am:   

'Good Omens' is the only Pratchett novel I've read also - and Gaiman for that matter.

One of my favourite horror comedies, absolutely inspired. I also remember being very fond of Rankin's Brentford Trilogy when I was young. Wonder how they hold up now? My all time fav comedy author is Tom Sharpe though - humour as black as pitch and side-splittingly funny.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 11:44 am:   

Rankin is great! Much dafter (and nastier (and weirder)) than Pratchett! The Brentford Trilogy still holds up.

But Tom Sharpe... Yes! Porterhouse Blue!

I also highly recommend The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W.E. Bowman -- if you can find it! Screamingly funny!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:05 pm:   

I've read a couple of Rankin, they just feel too adolescent. I thought the funniest/cleverest things about them were the titles.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:14 pm:   

'The Throwback' was always a fav of mine - borderline horror - but I love em all. I only found out a few months back that he's still writing, with a new novel out last year, apparently up to his usual depraved standard lol.

I prefer nasty black humour to sweet whimsical humour which is why Rankin always appealed more than what I picked up of Pratchett - with 'Good Omens' an honourable exception because the idea was just so irresistible.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.188.43
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 12:17 pm:   

I liked Rankin when I was a teen but he has been writin the same book for about 20 years now.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.79
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:13 pm:   

I've never really got on with Pratchett, Rankin, Holt etc. Give me Douglas Adams any day.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:24 pm:   

Believe it or not I've never actually read any Douglas Adams... loved the Hitchhiker TV Series at the time but was distinctly underwhelmed by the big movie version.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.79
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 03:48 pm:   

Personally I think the books are the best version of the story. Although to be fair I've never heard more than a quick snippet of the original radio programme.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.24
Posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - 09:19 pm:   

Gee, I haven't read Tom Sharpe in years. "The Throwback" brings back fond funny memories. Another favorite is "Flashman" by George MacDonal Fraser.

Just started "A Dark Matter" by Peter Straub

On my Red Room page, I just published a review of the novel "Motels of Burning Madness" by stage hypnotist and literary author (bet you've never read *those* two phrases together before). It's a latter-day "Satyricon" about the bumbling exploits of a male stripper that might appeal to some of you.

At: http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/secrets-professionally-naked

Thanks!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 04:05 pm:   

Okay, I'm already picking up disturbing similarities between 'Midnight Sun', 'Needing Ghosts' & 'The Count Of Eleven' that have me wondering was Ramsey going through some kind of artistic high/mental breakdown around the time he wrote these books!!

All concern an artistic family man going through a crisis of confidence that descends into ever more surreal bouts of madness threatening the people he loves most - his family (usually with the wife as stabilising influence fighting a losing battle). The writing has reached a whole new plane of intensity, psychological depth and humanity that is increasingly heartbreaking.

If I hadn't already got to know what a rational family man Ramsey is reading these books would have made me very afraid of the mind that created these nightmares... the mark of a truly inspired horror writer.

Incidentally, I can tell this book is meant to be "comedic" but I'm still not laughing...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 05:26 pm:   

Nearly finished Tide of Souls and very good it is too.

One question - on page 268 where it says "A couple of bottles or two of cheap scotch", is that deliberate or is it a mistake the editor should have pulled?

Surely it's either a couple of bottles of... or a bottle or two of cheap scotch. I'm afraid it jerked me completely out of the book.

Other than that it's been a really good read, fast paced, sick and vile in a good way, good characterisations, and everything you need from a zombie novel (and with much better prose than you normally expect - with the notable exception quoted above)
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, February 19, 2010 - 01:16 pm:   

Could that not be read as a tongue-in-cheek reference to four bottles?!?!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, February 19, 2010 - 01:48 pm:   

It could be I suppose. It just seemed very clumsy compared with the high standard of the rest of the book.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Friday, February 19, 2010 - 01:50 pm:   

Take it as a compliment Simon, there are several authors whose standards are low enough that I wouldn't have thought anything of this. It stood out because the standard of the rest of the book is very high indeed.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, February 19, 2010 - 05:05 pm:   

Ben Sterling - Simon Mottershead - Jack Orchard

Three characters who, on the surface, would appear to have it all but who each lose their identity and sense of connection to the world around them due to a threat from within perceived as a threat from without... just a theory but was this Ramsey's way of dealing with the painful memories of his mother's illness so powerfully chronicled in the intro to 'The Face That Must Die' - and the natural fears those memories would engender? Was Simon's surname in 'Needing Ghosts' more than just chance?

This may all be me reading a lot of psychobabble nonsense into these wonderful books but it is their very psychological intensity (both in characterisation and allegory-rich plot devices) that makes me think this way and the reason I rank Ramsey so highly as an author. I for one believe his reputation is assured...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, February 22, 2010 - 01:21 pm:   

Doh, I've just clicked the meaning of Nehwon (I pronounce this "nevon"). It was reading about Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon' in the intro to Wells' 'A Modern Utopia' that made me twig...

A third of the way through the Lankhmar collection (made up of the first four books in the series) and there's been something to cherish on every page. This pair of rogues are something else. Absolutely sublime and timeless entertainment! Fav story so far is 'Ill Met In Lankhmar' with its seamless segue from drunken buffoonish humour to chilling Lovecraftian horror - and the unpredictable callousness with which Leiber kills off central characters one has bonded with - brilliant.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.166.9
Posted on Monday, February 22, 2010 - 01:44 pm:   

Glad you are enjoying Lankhmar, Stephen. You should have some more of Leiber's supernatural fiction to read soon - I couldn't send the books last week due to everything being closed over the lunar new year holiday, but I'll be dropping by the post office on my way back from the hospital tomorrow. Let me know when they arrive!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.56
Posted on Monday, February 22, 2010 - 02:02 pm:   

Is it time for a new WAYR thread? This is a bit unwieldy now.

If so, let's end this one where it started - with Mo Hayder. Currently reading Ritual - the first in a sort of trilogy - the second part of which is Skin - where this thread started. So this thread now techically finishes before it started.

Very readable and gruesome, a horror story by most standards though it's marketed as crime.

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