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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Saturday, August 15, 2009 - 09:44 pm:   

I'd like to dedicate this post to Craig for being an all-round good egg. And let's face it, all good eggs are round. So a round of applause all round to, er, a good, uh, egg . . .

Anyway . . .
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Saturday, August 15, 2009 - 11:42 pm:   

Reading Banquet for the Damned. Pretty good so far.
Eliot Coldwell seems to be a combination of Aleister Crowley and Colin Wilson.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.169
Posted on Saturday, August 15, 2009 - 11:44 pm:   

Just about to start Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.170.82
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 12:13 am:   

. . . but I still think Craig's the Antichrist ;-)

Don't think I mentioned this, but every day before I set to work on my new novel, I've been reading a chapter out of Nabokov's "Glory."
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.150.109.19
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 12:33 am:   

I had a reading round up while on holiday and completed....

Bullrunning For Girls - Allyson Bird
The Unblemished - Conrad Williams
Head Injuries - Conrad Williams
On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwen
The Straw Men - Michael Marshall (Smith)
Mindful Of Phantoms - Gary Fry

I just have 'How To Make Monsters' by Zed to finish up and I will be restocking at FantasyCon '09!

gcw
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.182.250
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 01:05 am:   

What did you think of STRAW MEN, gcw? Must admit, I loved it - it was the first MM(S) book I read...

Back on topic - currently halfway through Ally's book; recently finished King's collection (Just After Sunset).
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 67.116.103.241
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 01:13 am:   

Thanks, Gary. (This explains my love for the hardboiled detective genre, I guess....)

I'm just over halfway through INCARNATE - my reading pace is slow from many things, ennui probably most of all. But it's not the novel - the novel's quite amazing! Now only about 3/5's through, I'm discovering it's almost like, oh - 3 or 4 novels in one - but we'll see how it turns out....

I'm also again tackling the hefty FAERIE QUEENE. Half-way through Book 2. At the end of which, I left off the last time, a few years back... so we'll see how this goes....

When I'm not reading those, I'm defacing various Bibles and hangin' with my homies (i.e., the False Prophet and the Dragon - they do not like to be called "homies" to their face).
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Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 98.220.186.44
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 06:59 am:   

Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe, although technically I just bought it and haven't started it yet. I just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and The Inner Circle by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.64
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 11:01 am:   

Been reading some comics:

Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare -- Mark Waid and Fabian Nicezia. The world's superheroes have lost their powers and all memories of their worldsaving alter egos. Meanwhile civilians are gaining superpowers at such an alarming rate that nonpowered people become the exception rather than the rule. So-so superhero romp. I expect better from Waid.

Runaways: Deadend Kids. Joss Whedon steps in to write a story arc on the comic about superpowered streetkids. He sends them back in time to 1907 and adds typical Whedon flourishes but I still found the story underwhelming and didn't really care about the characters. Maybe if I'd been reading the comic from the beginning ...

Streets of Glory -- Garth Ennis. Ultraviolent western with ageing gunfighter and ex-cavalry officer Joseph P Dunn trying to tie up the loose ends of his life as comes to the end of his career while around him the Wild West succumbs to the advance of technolgy and civilisation. Might have been nice to have some more historical detail but it's an entertaining story with Ennis wearing his love of Clint Eastwood and Cormac McCarthy on his sleeve.

Back to Brooklyn -- Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti. When a highlevel mobster turns state evidence his former colleagues object and he races against time to rescue his family from reprisals. Brooklyn native Palmiotti supplies local colour but turns over scripting duties to Ennis who takes delight in marrying ultraviolence and sadism to discussions on loyalty and honour. Problem is Ennis has done this kind of thing a million times before and this time round it didn't quite grab me.
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Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts)
Username: Tom_alaerts

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.180.97.157
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 02:36 pm:   

Finished "The Nightfarers" by Mark Valentine which is one of the very best, most subtle supernatural collections of the last few years. If there is any justice this should be on the awards lists.
Also finished: Scalzi's "Old Man's War" - entertaining Heinlein-like SF. Not particularly deep but real fun. Almost finished the sequel ("The Ghost Brigades") which is entertaining as well yet somewhat less so than the first part.
Another finished one: Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson. It began excellent (in fact the start is the PS Pub novella of a few years ago) but it lost quite a bit of its urgency as the story progressed. Not bad, but I had higher hopes for it.
Also read recently: "Child 44" - serial killer mystery in stalinist Russia. It's the stalinist russia part that makes this truly compelling reading.
Started reading: "Fiesta: the sun also rises" by Hemingway. Mandatory as I just visited Pamplona! Hemingway was an extremely impressive writer, he was in his twenties when he wrote this and already it displays his talent for crystal clear narrative that seems so much simpler to pull off than it is.
On the soon to be read pile: Simon's "cold to the touch", Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, Leo Perutz" "The Marquis of Bolibar" (check out Perutz - you will be amazed. Promised) and perhaps first "The Scalehunter's beautifl daughter" by Lucius Shepard.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.170.82
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:53 pm:   

"When I'm not reading those, I'm defacing various Bibles and hangin' with my homies (i.e., the False Prophet and the Dragon - they do not like to be called "homies" to their face)."

See? Told you so!

Ally . . . you have a book out? What is the title and publisher?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 160.6.1.47
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:56 pm:   

- Teletext
- Tags on clothing prior to washing
- Palms
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.76.121
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 08:11 pm:   

The False Prophet says he wants to know where you live, Thomas.

I assume you mean THE SUN ALSO RISES, by Hemingway, Tom?... One of the most, uh... what's the word?... "beautiful," that'll work. One of the most beautiful reading experiences ever, in the wide world of novels.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 08:14 pm:   

Flying through 'The Influence' and should finish it tonight or tomorrow. Ramsey's most tightly plotted and compulsive novel to date for me with a strikingly weird fairy-tale atmosphere at times that reminds me a lot of Val Lewton's 'Curse Of The Cat People' - when it isn't scaring me rigid!

So far it's like he took the creepiest elements from 'Incarnate' and coupled them with the child in jeopardy plot of 'The Claw' to create a near perfect horror tale. Will be sorry to finish this one...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.76.121
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 08:23 pm:   

So far it's like he took the creepiest elements from 'Incarnate' and coupled them with the child in jeopardy plot of 'The Claw' to create a near perfect horror tale. Will be sorry to finish this one...

The Susan storyline in INCARNATE is very similar to THE CLAW as well... children oppressed by parents who are seemingly slowly and subtly driven mad, cruel, demonic... an unsettling storyline....
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 09:08 pm:   

Children under threat is a theme than has run through the last 6 novels I'm realising:
'The Nameless', 'The Claw', 'Incarnate', 'Obsession', 'The Hungry Moon' and most explicitly 'The Influence' - as well as many of the short stories written at the same time.
Perhaps this was the result of fatherhood and the new found responsibilities/fears that go with it (I wouldn't know myself)? I wonder if other family men/horror writers go through a similar stage - did Stephen King?
Just surmising here...
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.123.190
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 09:33 pm:   

Hi Thomas! Thank you for asking.

Here is the publisher for the collection
http://www.screamingdreams.com/

And I'm working on a novel called ISIS UNBOUND.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.150.109.19
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 09:37 pm:   

"What did you think of STRAW MEN, gcw? Must admit, I loved it - it was the first MM(S) book I read..."

I too really loved it, I haven't read anything else by MM(S) - Just heard his name bandied about here, so when I saw the book for 50p in a charity shop I thought I would give it a go.

Glad I did, I will be reading more...

gcw
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.182.250
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 11:04 pm:   

gcw - the second in the series is, well, only ok, but the third back on form and pretty much as good as Straw Men.
MMS's SF stuff is also very good indeed - Spares for one - highly recommended purchase. Or you could wait until we next meet up and borrow a few...
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Michael_kelly (Michael_kelly)
Username: Michael_kelly

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 174.88.171.215
Posted on Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 11:46 pm:   

Cold to the Touch by Simon Strantzas. Very good, so far, but you all likely knew it would be.
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Simon Strantzas (Nomis)
Username: Nomis

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 99.227.90.149
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 12:02 am:   

Catacombs of Fear by John Llewellyn Probert. Very good, so far, but you all likely knew it would be, too.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.181.255
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 09:45 am:   

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Good -- definitely better than the McCarthy novels I read back in the mid-90s -- but I'm not entirely convinced it lives up to the massive hype.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 12:45 pm:   

I know I said I'd be starting on either Oscar Wao or Blood Meridian when I finished Music of Chance, I lied.

I've just started on The Glass Cell by Pat Highsmith and very good it is too.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 01:00 pm:   

She's great isn't she Weber!
I'm toying with two long term projects for my next read: a complete rereading, after too many years, of the Ripley Series or a first reading of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Saga.
Will be finishing 'The Influence' over lunch today - it is his best book so far for me.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 01:47 pm:   

Go for Ripley. I've not been able to get interested in anything Asimov wrote since I was 14 years old. I just started to find his writing incredibly bland.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 02:23 pm:   

Three-quarters through Banquet for the Damned, and enjoying it.
It's a lesson making the reader want to read on, without the clumsy
-all-too-obvious cliffhangers in which Dan Brown specialises.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.169
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 03:44 pm:   

Speaking of Highsmith....

-------

Title: DEEP WATER
Logline: Centers on a couple in a loveless marriage who hang on through an arrangement whereby the husband permits the wife to take lovers. Suspense builds as those lovers begin dying.
Writer: Joe Penhall
Agency: WME Entertainment
Studio: Fox 2000
Prod. Co: Film Rites Film 360
Genre: Thriller
Logged: 8/17/2009
More: To be adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1957 novel. Mike Nichols, Steve Zaillian and Ben Forkner will produce. Nichols will also direct. Fox 2000's Elizabeth Gabler & Carla Hacken will oversee.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 04:16 pm:   

I'm interested in your take on Asimov Weber - as I have to admit I read some of his stuff when I was young and sort of felt this obligation to try him again as an adult.
I've done the same with Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, H.G. Wells & John Wyndham and still love their work.
Where would you rank Asimov in that list? Bearing in mind I rank them all still...

To shoot off at a complete tangent I'm gearing myself up to brave Lars Von Trier's 'Antichrist' tonight with quite a few qualms - not about any potential shock value but about whether it's going to be a pretentious load of waffle or not?
You never know with Von Trier...
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 05:17 pm:   

That list is quite a good list of the gaps in my genre fiction. I read a few Wyndhams as a child and really enjoyed them. I much preferred him to asimov as there was a style to the writing. I've only read one Ballard and it didn't move me much one way or the other. The rest (hang my head in shame) I can't say I've ever read.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 06:26 pm:   

I shall go to my grave being a sci-fi novice. There's just so much of it. I've read the usual suspects, of course - Ballard, Wyndham, Bradbury, et al. But I simply can't get started on the rest cos it would require another lifetime. And I've only got half of mind left.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.79.235.202
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 06:50 pm:   

>>And I've only got half of mind left.

Hmm . . .
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.79.235.202
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 06:50 pm:   

I'm just starting KYDD by Julian Stockwin.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 79.79.235.202
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 06:51 pm:   

Stockwin left school aged 14, so it gives me a boost, reminds me I may be in with a chance after all.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 07:04 pm:   

Interest typo. Perhaps I meant it.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.210.209.169
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 10:45 pm:   

Gary (CW) - email me your address to stephenbacon(AT)hotmail.co.uk and I'll send you a copy of MMS Spares (I've got two copies somehow).
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 11:10 pm:   

Did I say I finished 'The Influence'.
Ramsey's most satisfying novel to date, loved it.

Before plunging into the dark world of Patricia Highsmith there's an early Clive Barker novel I have to read - 'Cabal' - which has somehow passed me by until now.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.15.230
Posted on Monday, August 17, 2009 - 11:53 pm:   

...Did I say I finished 'The Influence'.
Ramsey's most satisfying novel to date...


Published in 1988. So you're saying Ramsey's last 15 novels weren't as satisfying?!?

Wow... you got some gall, Stephen, coming in here saying that....
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.167.31
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 12:49 am:   

Yes, but we're talking about THE INFLUENCE here. I think it's one of Campbell's three best novels, and yes, possibly the best of all. To praise one is not to disparage the others.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.125
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 07:33 am:   

Kidding, Joel - I do understand, or assume I understand, that "to date" must mean to date for Stephen alone, in his reading of Ramsey's novels.

And I'm meaning to get me a copy of THE INFLUENCE next, and hope it's as good as INCARNATE!

So what do you think are the other two, Joel?...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.159.119
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 08:44 am:   

THE GRIN OF THE DARK and MIDNIGHT SUN. And of Campbell's non-supernatural novels, I'd point to SILENT CHILDREN as perhaps the most powerful.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.186.221
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 11:04 am:   

More comics and comics-related stuff:

The New Frontier Volume 1 -- Darwyn Cooke. Reworking the history of DC superheroes to reflect America's post-WWII mentality is an old idea but Cooke's storytelling gradually drew me in. And the fact that he's operating outside regular DC continuity means that he can kill off characters who would normally be untouchable. Pity the book ends just as it's getting good. I'll have to buy Volume 2 now.

Captain America -- Random issues of Mark Waid's second run on the book that I picked up cheap yesterday. Enjoyable lightweight superhero romps lifted by the fact that Waid really has a handle on Captain America's character. Brave, honourable, idealistic, aware of America's flaws and possessing a genuine desire to make the country better rather than just duking it out with supervillains. Of course if supervillains start causing trouble he'll sort them out double quick but he does so without coming across as Rambo in spandex.

Impossible Territories: An Unofficial Companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier -- Jess Nevins. Pointed out about a million literary references that I hadn't picked up on. (Also reread The Black Dossier but skimmed over the extracts from the actual dossier where Alan Moore apes Shakespeare, Wodehouse, Kerouac etc as I always thought these were the weakest parts of the book.)
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 11:10 am:   

My top 3:

The Influence
Incarnate
Grin of the Dark
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 11:40 am:   

Craig, I'm reading Ramsey's novels in chrono order for the first time having only previously read 'The Nameless' and several books of short stories as a teenager.
Up to now (for me) 'The Influence' has been "the best" of 9 consistently impressive horror novels.

I don't like ranking them as I've enjoyed every one but if I had to they'd be in the rough order:
1. The Influence
2. Obsession
3. Incarnate
4. The Nameless
5. To Wake The Dead
6. The Face That Must Die
7. The Doll Who Ate His Mother
8. The Claw
9. The Hungry Moon

Now I have to get my hands on a copy of 'Ancient Images'!

Meanwhile I raced through the first 6 chapters of 'Cabal' last night - brilliantly addictive prose. Remember being somewhat disappointed with the film at the time but if the book continues this good I'll be more than happy.
Got 'The Talented Mr Ripley' lined up next.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.0.243
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 04:36 pm:   

I'm at a disadvantage, having read not as many of Ramsey's novels, and then, so many yawning years apart from each other (started reading him in the late 80's!). But so far, INCARNATE has shot up to the top of the list, formerly held by (what you in the UK call) TO WAKE THE DEAD. I admired MIDNIGHT SUN, but found it to be too cerebral - too abstract - to warm to (pun intended): one's mind had to be constantly tensing to read it, as opposed to the relative lack of tensing reading INCARNATE, or another favorite, THE CLAW. MIDNIGHT SUN was exhausting to read, whereas I find INCARNATE exhilarating. Poor analogies all, but.... I am certain now I read THE INFLUENCE back when it came out, but the years must have erased it - it will be fun to revisit, if I can ever find a copy....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.191.22
Posted on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 04:48 pm:   

Craig - I got that from Midnight Sun, too. Thing is, I really sensed that for Ramsey it was something he really wanted to write. But as we all know, being ambitious about a thing can make it all the more determined to slip from your grip. Or something like that.
I'm not rushing the reading of my Ramseys either; I want them to last.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.170.82
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 12:06 am:   

"Ancient Images" has been one of my favorite RC novels (esp. the ending).

I'm up to mischief again over at the Red Room, this time spinning absurd fantasies about celebrity friendship (with George Clooney, no less): http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/friends-we-got-friends
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 12:58 am:   

Campbell top 5 then.

The Darkest Part of the Woods.
The Count of Eleven.
The Influence.
The Grin of the Dark.
The Long Lost.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.224.84
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 10:55 am:   

Is Ramsey's work readily available in England nowadays? In the early nineties you could find his books everywhere, even newsstands in railway stations usually carried a selection, and then he vanished from the shelves.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 12:10 pm:   

I know Hubert, that fact upset me as well.
I've been tracking them down in second hand shops and online since I started rereading him a few years back.
Only very recently did I spot his two latest novels 'The Grin Of The Dark' and 'Thieving Fear' in highstreet bookshops - snapped both up.
Must be a good sign though...
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Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin)
Username: Richard_gavin

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 65.110.174.71
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

Off the top of my head I'd list my favourite Ramsey novels as:

The Influence
The Grin of the Dark
Ancient Images
Incarnate

A few years ago I'd planned on reading or re-reading all of Ramsey's novels in sequence, but as usual time slithered away from me before I got very far along. I still think that would be a great project; seeing how new or different themes emerged, how his style evolved or was adapted to fit certain subjects, etc.

Stephen mentioned Thieving Fear. Any chance we'll be seeing a TOR or other North American edition of this novel, Ramsey?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 04:34 pm:   

Ramsey's books lend themselves well to reading in sequence because of the sense of cohesion in his work.
He paints a very dark view of the Universe in which the soul and the mind are under threat more often than the body but his stories always have a strong moral core to them that transcends the disturbing themes and imagery.
Like Lovecraft and all the best supernatural writers his work is as much dark surrealist fantasy as horror - increasingly so in books like 'Incarnate', 'The Hungry Moon' & 'The Influence'. There is also an increasing spiritual dimension to his tales... so far anyway.
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.150.109.19
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - 11:23 pm:   

If there is a Heaven, and I have been a good enough boy to enter it, my heaven will be to have the time to re-read all Ramsey's books in sequence.

gcw
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.123.190
Posted on Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 12:01 pm:   

For anyone close to London.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=120580366563&ref=nf
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 12:23 pm:   

Finished 'Lest Earth Be Conquered' (1966) by Frank Belknap Long.
An entertaining if slight little sci-fi novel about a psychic 14 year old boy uncovering an alien plot in his sleepy US hometown. Falls somewhere between John Wyndham and Stephen King in style - a fun read.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Friday, August 21, 2009 - 11:27 pm:   

Gary Fry: Finished Don Herron's story "Night of the Knives" in Noir 2. It was pretty good, written in a very chewy and entertaining Hammett-esqe pulp style; it's an actionful riff on the Continental Op tales.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Saturday, August 22, 2009 - 09:10 am:   

Thanks, Thomas. he'd better be good after the pastings he gives others. :-)
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 12:51 pm:   

Finished 'Cabal' - a great fast-paced read that is way better than the film. The imagery of the printed page being so much more potent. Has made me want to watch 'Nightbreed' again though to rejudge.

Decker was a great villain. Can only think of Hannibal Lecter as another evil psychoanalyst yet surely that very idea is what makes them so disturbing.
How much scarier is a psychopath who knows the workings of the human mind intimately and has professional training in exactly how to manipulate people.

Anymore out there I wonder?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 12:59 pm:   

Thought of another one!

Michael Caine in 'Dressed To Kill'. Anymore?
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.177.173.198
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 01:58 pm:   

Just finished Ally's collection, just started Bradbury's R is for Rocket, bought for a tenner from PS Publishing. I've not read the book since I was a teenager and I'd completely forgotten just how good it is.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 02:09 pm:   

Tom Conway's psychiatrist character in CAT PEOPLE is a bit of a rotter, but not a killer.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 02:12 pm:   

The actor who played the psychiatrist in the penultimate scene of PSYCHO was so bad he almost sunk the whole film. Does that count?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 02:16 pm:   

Boris Karloff in BEDLAM? He predates psychiatry, though.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 02:16 pm:   

Dr. Phil?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 03:09 pm:   

I think Hitchcock may have got there first (as usual) with 'Spellbound'.

I love that coda sequence in 'Psycho'. As I've said before it works perfectly as a moment of calm reassurance before the single most disturbing final shot in horror cinema floors the viewer all over again.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 03:14 pm:   

Really? I thought the superimposed skull gilded the lilly.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.220
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 03:15 pm:   

Most disturbing final shot? Yeah, you could be right there.
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Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey)
Username: Darren_o_godfrey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 207.200.116.133
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 06:29 pm:   

"The actor who played the psychiatrist in the penultimate scene of PSYCHO was so bad he almost sunk the whole film. Does that count?"

Ironically, that is the actor Hitchcock thanked for "saving" the film, after Sir Alfred had gone months thinking he was making his worst film ever.

On the gone-nuts psychoanalyst front: The killer in Friday the 13th Part 5. (Yes, it is embarrasing that I know that.)
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.160
Posted on Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 07:03 pm:   

Just finished Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. SF thriller set in a distant future where people can download their minds into other bodies.

Also Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, with Feeling Script Book.

And I'm a couple of chapters into The Drive-In: The Bus tour by Joe R Lansdale.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 02:13 am:   

Already a third of the way through 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and oddly I'm finding Tom not as strangely likeable as he was the first time I read it in my late teens.
I know what's coming and really feel for the poor innocent souls he so devilishly ensnares now where before I found them shallow oiks almost deserving of their fate.
Tom Ripley really is a brilliant creation. Forget Hannibal Lecter! This is the best serial killer with charm, brains and a taste for the finer things in life...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.235.171
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 02:33 am:   

This is the best serial killer with charm, brains and a taste for the finer things in life...

Sounds like Patrick Bateman. How is the Ripley movie with John Malkovich?... I've not seen it yet....
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.177.66
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 08:58 am:   

The finer things in life? Patrick Bateman? Are you winding us up? Bateman's taste is generic yuppie fodder. Everything he likes is shallow and glossy. He deserves the death penalty for his CD collection alone.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 09:56 am:   

>>>How is the Ripley movie with John Malkovich?... I've not seen it yet....

I thought it was poor.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 01:06 pm:   

I thought the recent movie of 'Ripley's Game' was much superior to Minghella's 'The Talented Mr Ripley'. Malkovich got the sense of suave menace just right I thought - similar to his role in 'Dangerous Liaisons' - and the film had a cracking pace and fine support performances from Ray Winstone and Dougray Scott.

However it still wasn't a patch on the book which comes third in the series with Ripley at the peak of his mephistophelian powers. In the first novel he's a relatively inexperienced youth "honing his trade" as it were.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.11
Posted on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 05:11 pm:   

I thought the recent version of Ripley's Game was better than Wim Wenders' The American Friend (which is of course the same story with Dennis Hopper as Ripley).

But then again I know nothing.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 09:57 am:   

Haven't seen that version Weber but it certainly has a fine pedigree. Dennis Hopper strikes me as perhaps too manic to play Ripley though, must try and see it.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 01:39 pm:   

I've gotten a bunch of Raymond Chandler stuff which I'm enjoying. Haven't read his work and thought I'd start. Just did some Hammett, and revisited The Dain Curse and Red Harvest. Where is my fedora hat? And comments here on Graham Greene has also made me want to read more of his work. Have gotten the Power and the Glory and the Quiet American on my TBR pile.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 03:19 pm:   

And I read Bradbury's 'Zen and the Art of Writing', which was great. His writing on his creative processes and memories from his childhood, all that stuff, coupled with his enthusiasm were great. Uplifting and full of energy. Especially his brainstorming techniques, and how that developed into stories, sometimes 25 years down the line.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.243.210
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 03:55 pm:   

The finer things in life? Patrick Bateman? Are you winding us up?

He thought he appreciated the finer things in life, like a finely-wrought, nicely presented chocolate candy. He was also the best music critic around... just ask Whitney Houston, Phil Collins, or Huey Lewis, they'll tell you....
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 04:31 pm:   

[Gives fastidious Lisa Simpson shudder.]
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:18 pm:   

Patrick Bateman is one of the greatest characters in modern literature but what a twat!

Tom Ripley would have him for lunch nevermind Hannibal.

Karim, there are only four crime writers I rank as great literature that transcends the genre (but then I am a right fussy sod):

1. Raymond Chandler
2. Patricia Highsmith
3. Arthur Conan Doyle
4. G.K. Chesterton

After reading those two Graham Green crime novels he could easily have joined and indeed topped their ranks but he had bigger fish to fry - and thank heaven for that!

I'm bracing myself here for a tide of disgruntled disapprobation lol.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.177.173.198
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:41 pm:   

You could add Jim Thompson, I reckon, plus Dorothy B. Hughes.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:43 pm:   

Dashiell Hammett outranks all of those in my view (and probably those of Chandler and Highsmith). Doyle was very good but lightweight and didn't come anywhere near the stature of Hammett or Chandler – or McCoy, or Cain, or Goodis. Chesterton is shit.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:48 pm:   

Thompson, like Woolrich, is superb when on form, but if you read too much of either writer you realise they wrote too much, too fast.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:54 pm:   

Too soon, they saw the whole of the moon.

Sorry, couldn't resist that.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 05:56 pm:   

I've not really read any Chesterton, he's the one who wrote the priest as detective stuff isn't he?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.4.215
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 06:06 pm:   

I greatly enjoyed THE DETECTIVE - that was the Alec Guiness Father Brown movie, wasn't it? It's a flawed, rather too mild movie, but I found Alec his usual entertaining self in it... worth finding....
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.177.238
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 08:41 pm:   

Crime writers who have "transcended" the genre into literature is a topic I hear bandied about quite a bit. Various candidates that come up in these discussions (aside from those already mentioned) include Ross Macdonald, James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, James Crumley, George Pelecanos and Richard Price. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure other writers have been mentioned.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 09:31 pm:   

Away a few days . . . suffering from insomnia and been doing extra reading to fill the sleepless hours: "Public Enemies" by Bryan Burroughs, the nonfiction account of the 1930s U.S. crime wave that brought us John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, and J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI (sounds like a bad rock band). This was source material for the recent Michael Mann/Johnny Depp movie. Going down like a fat bag of popcorn. Also "Coyote v. Acme" a collection of humorous essays by Ian Frazier.

And for those of you who are asking "Gee, I wonder what that Emery-town or whatever that Burchfield lives in is like?" I wrote a little about it this week at: http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/local-color-big-beer-a-small-room
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.236.46
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 09:46 pm:   

Ross McDonald is my favorite hardboiled detective genre (for lack of a better term) writer - not just because he's a transplanted Californian, either, he's truly a magnificent writer. I can't say he's the best, because I've not read a whole lot of others in the genre... and I'm so wary and so untrusting, that I get a feeling I never will...

Unless someone can name: Someone who's VERY similar to Ross McDonald, writing roughly in the same era (50's-80's), that they can highly recommend? Specific book/s?
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 09:57 pm:   

Donald Westlake--especially his "Richard Stark" novels which I've written about at: http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/whatever-mask-he-wore-donald-westlake-1933-2 008

Start at the beginning with "The Hunter." They will singe your hair and freeze your blood.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.236.46
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 10:08 pm:   

Alright - I'll go try and find THE HUNTER today. I sure hope you're right, Thomas....
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.31.153.8
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 10:17 pm:   

I've just received the full 1944 version of John Keir Cross' The Other Passenger, with some very weird colour plates to embellish the weirdness, and the latest story I've read from it is 'Miss Thing & The Surrealist' which is so gleefully perverse that it endears me to him even further.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 10:37 pm:   

Well, since you're the Antichrist, there's probably not much that can singe your hair.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.252.114
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:40 am:   

Well, since you're the Antichrist, there's probably not much that can singe your hair.

Au contraire! Holy water I find quite singe-ifying....
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 02:23 am:   

Donald E. Westlake is brilliant!
I'm a fan of the Dortmunder novels as much as the Stark books.
He's the Stephen King of crime fiction. Insanely prolific and with a genius for convincing characterisation.
There's one of his early comic novels I read as a teenager and can't remember the title of about the hunt for a batch of jade statues (only one of which is the original and worth a fortune) by a varied bunch of morons that I would love to read again.
Unoriginal as hell but with unforgettable characters and so funny I cried laughing.

Chesterton isn't shit by any means! Every one of his short stories is a perfectly constructed mini-masterpiece imho. He is the M.R. James of crime fiction.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 02:28 am:   

Speaking of John Keir Cross... I've only read two short stories and both frightened the wits out of me:
'The Other Passenger' and especially 'Esmeralda'. Would dearly love to read more of his stuff.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.87.75
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 04:36 am:   

My gosh - I just checked, and am reminded that Westlake's work is the basis of a bunch of movies I love - POINT BLANK, THE GRIFTERS, STEPFATHER/STEPFATHER II - and hey, what's this RIPLEY UNDERGROUND I've never heard of?!
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.188.184
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 08:10 am:   

Lord P, I have the same edition of The Other Passenger, with the plates. No dust jacket, though, alas.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.131.204
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 09:09 am:   

Me too.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.31.153.8
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 09:22 am:   

I am also dust jacketless
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:32 am:   

But one day your velvet jacket will be dust. Just place the book in your jacket pocket and wait for time to do its work.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.227
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 03:42 pm:   

I knew I'd forgotten someone off my artsy crime writers list. James Sallis; CRIME TIME were always touting him as a literary genius.

Craig, Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder books may do the business as a Macdonald substitute. Block is a big fan of Macdonald's. The series is set in New York, starting in the '70s and continuing to the present day. Block's own suggestion for newbies to the series is WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES from 1986. http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Ginmill-Matthew-Scudder-Mysteries/dp/0380728257/ref =sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251380107&sr=1-1

Also, for the Stark fans on the board Darwyn Cooke has done a comic book adap of THE HUNTER. Sample over at http://www.idwpublishing.com/previews/parker/
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.227
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 03:47 pm:   

Craig, if you fancy something more contemporary John Connolly is a huge Macdonald fan (his fave being THE CHILL). His Charlie Parker series is well worth reading.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 04:13 pm:   

Craig, there were 5 books in the Ripley Series charting the character's life and crimes from impetuous youth to "retirement" :

'The Talented Mr Ripley' (1955)
'Ripley Under Ground' (1970)
'Ripley's Game' (1974)
'The Boy Who Followed Ripley' (1980)
'Ripley Under Water' (1991)

If only Thomas Harris had taken a leaf out of Highsmith's book!
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.11
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 05:44 pm:   

The odd numbered books in the Ripleyiad are far better than the even numbered books IMHO. Knowing that number 5 was the last made the tension even more unbearable. In the first 4 you know for certain he'll survive and hget away with it because there's another book to follow. In RUW I was convinced he was going to finally get his comeuppance.

In Ripley under Ground everything seemed too easy for him and he didn't seem as clever as in the first book. Ripley's Game is as good as the first if not better. I was disppointed by TBWFR but I've never been able to put my finger on why.

They're all still better than most crime fiction and The talented mr ripley is probably still the greatest depiction of a psychopath ever set to paper.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.253.139
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 07:03 pm:   

So much to read!!! And so seeming little time to....
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 08:08 pm:   

Indeed. Good stuff. I have to admit that I liked the Father Brown stories very much. I found a nice collected hardback last year.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 08:15 pm:   

Stephen: That would be "Dancing Aztecs." My favorite of the "Westlake" novels.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 11:59 am:   

Thanks for reminding me of the title Thomas!

The thing I loved about that book was its sheer unpredictability. None of the characters were presented as out-and-out heroes or more sympathetic than any of the others so you never knew who was going to come out on top or even survive to the end.

Still one of the funniest laugh-out-loud black comedies I've ever read. Must try and find a copy...
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.168.189.118
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 11:59 am:   

I'm somewhat glum at the moment, finding it hard to read anything. Slowly getting through a Julian Stockwin naval yarn at the moment, and listening to a Jeffrey Deaver book, MANHATTEN IS MY BEAT, mainly because the reader's wonderful.

And in a haunted pub in the UK's only offical desert, I bought a copy of THE GHOST IT WAS, 1950 green and white paperback edition, with pages falling out. But it's the Penguin green and cream cover version, so a thing of sublime beauty.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 12:21 pm:   

I can imagine you in a desert, Mark, but a pub? :-)
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.110.58.21
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 12:31 pm:   

I only had half a lager, mate . . .
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 01:16 pm:   

That's surely enough to make the Lynchboy start getting all maudlin over his mates and picking fights with anyone who, like, gets in his face, innit, ya fuckas.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.110.58.21
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

Sad but embarrassingly true. I'm ready for falling over with even too much of a sniff of the hard stuff . . .

Mind you, at that wedding Michelle and I went to, I was still standing after one in the morning . . . (Okay, so it wasn't a free bar... But even so...)
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.26.90.161
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 01:27 pm:   

I'm the same lately, mate. God knows how I'll survive Fantasy Con. Perhaps I won't, and God will tell me how I ought to have gone about it. Or . . . Someone will.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.110.58.21
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 02:25 pm:   

The coroner. And if you hear him/her, then you know you're really in trouble . . .
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 04:51 pm:   

Fantasy Con sounds fun... wish I could make it.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Friday, August 28, 2009 - 08:18 pm:   

Stephen: I remember DA as a very sweet-natured book. What I remember most is it almost casual comic rhythms and its picaresque atmosphere.

Another "Westlake" favorite: "The Ax" (which actually may be his best), a much darker tale. Also "Kahawa" is a terrific "mercenaries-in-Africa" novel with this terrific line: "He's so mean. he'd melt his grandmother's hair down for the silver."
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 - 04:43 pm:   

Was it that book had the scene with a bunch of dumb hoodlums attempting to cure a nosebleed by tying a tourniquet around some bloke's neck?

That made me laugh out loud but it may have been one of the Dortmunder series, perhaps 'The Hot Rock'. It's been donkeys years since I read those books (like mid-teens) and I wonder are they still even commonly available?
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.174.143
Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 - 07:27 pm:   

"DA"? I don't recall that scene from any of the books of I've read. I was never too turned on by the Dortmunder capers (always preferred Parker . . . "he steals . . . he kills . . . it's a living.").
One dortmunder I did like a lot was "Jimmy the Kid" about the Dortmunder's gang kidnapping a little boy and using a Richard Stark novel as an instruction manual(!)
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.20.22
Posted on Saturday, August 29, 2009 - 08:46 pm:   

I loved any of the Parker novels I read and found the comic capers of the Dortmunder books like a pleasant antidote to their unrelenting brutality.

It says much about Westlake's talents as a popular writer to be able to master two such diametrically opposed types of genre fiction so perfectly.

Without knowing one would never suspect Stark and Westlake were one and the same writer! His work may not be great literature but it's amongst the greatest popular writing of the 20th century imo.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Tuesday, September 01, 2009 - 04:43 pm:   

Almost finished 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and Tom's ingenuity has started to win me over again but what a heartless bastard!

Ordered 'Ancient Images' which should arrive any day and will be my next read.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 05:21 pm:   

Anyone here read Harry Harrison's 'Deathworld' trilogy?

Seen all three in good nick for £1.50 each in my local Oxfam and didn't buy them. Now I'm thinking maybe I should have and hoping they're still there on the way home.

Worth reading anyone?
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 05:24 pm:   

I read Stainless steel Rat and a few of the sequels when I were a nipper and really liked them so he is a fairly good writer. I say go for it.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 07:44 pm:   

Just finished CRIME AND PUNISHMENT - which was amazing. Started Auster's NEW YORK TRILOGY.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.39
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 07:55 pm:   

Just started Joe Gores "Maltese Falcon" prequel "Spade and Archer." Not too good, I'm afraid. So far, it's mechanical, ponderous and feels forced and contrived.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.11.2
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 08:14 pm:   

A tangential question for you well-read mystery readers here, who might know:

I was just scanning various movies, and came across one listed called LA CHAMBRE ARDENTE (1962). It was based on a novel by John Dickson Carr, called THE BURNING COURT (1937); looking it up in Wikipedia, I see it was noted for a bizarre twist ending - they give the twist there (bastards!... though maybe there's more to it), so I won't repeat it, but - for anyone who's read it - is this really how the novel ends? It's odd, and I can't imagine it working out in a satisfying way... (though I can think of a few other movies that might verge on this kind of ending - again, won't mention them, or will probably ruin this as well).
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John (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 - 09:12 pm:   

Currently reading 'Needing Ghosts' for the first time - that's my train book just now. At home I'm reading War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, the anthology by Kevin Anderson, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and still working through a 900 page anthology of Ray Bradbury stories, and also some comics - The Marquis by Guy Davis, which I highly recommend.
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Simon Strantzas (Nomis)
Username: Nomis

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 99.227.90.149
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009 - 04:34 am:   

The Marquis by Guy Davis, which I highly recommend.

Davis's work is often awesome and "The Marquis" is no exception. The cross between religion, Lovecraft, and depravity has left images in my mind that cannot be scrubbed away.

I second the recommendation.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009 - 10:43 am:   

Crime and Punishment is indeed remarkable. The investigator Porfiry Petrovich is an amazing character as well. I thought it was impossible to put down. It was originally a novella, and then he burned a whole draft and started again. The original draft was in the first person. Allegedly Dostoevsky rushed through the final parts, because he had tempoarily sold all his past and future literary rights to someone in exchange for a loan. He dictated the remainder of the novel, which was typed up I think, by the woman he would eventually marry.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009 - 10:46 am:   

John I wish I was reading Needing Ghosts again for the first time. I cherish that novella very much. One of my favourite novellas.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009 - 10:50 am:   

Again for the first time- HA!
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, September 03, 2009 - 11:17 am:   

BTW R.N. Morris wrote a fine novel called 'A Gentle Axe' featuring the investigator Porfiry Petrovich from Crime and Punishment. It takes place a little time after Raskolnikov's story- and Morris sucessfully pulls in off. Well woth looking at.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Saturday, September 05, 2009 - 10:48 am:   

Two interesting book finds yesterday:

'Tales Of Hoffmann' by E.T.A. Hoffmann which I've long wanted to read because of his foreshadowing of Edgar Allan Poe and long-reaching influence on horror/fantasy generally.

'Checkmate' (1871) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu - an obscure late gothic thriller written at the peak of his powers i.e. it was followed by 'In A Glass Darkly'. I've already read and greatly enjoyed 'Uncle Silas' and 'The House By The Churchyard' so look forward to this one. His mastery of atmosphere and complex plot mechanics is second to none.

Then when I got home 'Ancient Images' was waiting in the hall for me - will start it today!

Finished 'The Talented Mr Ripley'. Still one of the most sublime psycho-thrillers ever written that relentlessly seduces the reader into thinking like and empathising with a psychopathic killer.
It's the glimpses of vulnerability we get and of a brilliant mind forever on the brink of devastating self-knowledge, as much as his cold-blooded ingenuity at evading the law, that makes Tom Ripley such a memorable creation.
You hate him and feel desperately sorry for the innocents whose lives he destroys but you just can't help liking the bloke as well and feeling strangely sorry for him... and there's another four books of his exploits to come.

I can see now why Graham Greene was such a champion of Highsmith's work. He may have saw in her a talent for characterisation and tight plotting that was the equal but polar opposite of his own. Where he tended to write of the moral dilemmas faced by inherently decent but fatally flawed individuals she created callous monsters devoid of conscience but with a taint of shared humanity that made them fallible.
This is what writing should be all about.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Saturday, September 05, 2009 - 01:16 pm:   

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - bewitching.
Banquet for the Damned - entertaining.
The Absence - not good...*

*Why on earth has this novel been so highly praised?
I realise that, as an unpublished writer, my opinion is perhaps valueless but really...I was distinctly unimpressed by this book.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.183.11
Posted on Sunday, September 06, 2009 - 10:24 am:   

More comics:

NEW FRONTIER VOL 2. Darwyn Cooke wraps up his tale of vintage superheroes in style.

SPYBOY by Peter David. OTT action hijinks with an awkward teenager who doesn't realise that posthypnotic commands transform him into a cool superspy -- but only for short periods. Lightweight fluff for kids with occasional spurts of ultraviolence sitting awkwardly alongside the strained wisecracks. Disappointng.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 11:17 am:   

I'm loving all the cinema and literary references in 'Ancient Images'. Thanks Ramsey, I'm sure you had a ball writing this one!

Read the first 10 chapters and so far finding this book Ramsey's most fast-paced and entertaining thriller since 'The Nameless' and I'm enjoying his return to the lone female protagonist point-of-view. Exciting stuff - I can see this one getting very intense!
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 11:42 am:   

I'm reading Wagner & Wise's Great Tales of Terror & the Supernatural, which has to be the best anthology of classic horror stories I've ever read - over 1000 pages, everything from Balzac to Hemingway and not a bad story so far.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 11:57 am:   

Colin Wilson's The Outsider, specifically the author's views on Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, which is my favourite novel.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.190.40
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 12:13 pm:   

Just to stick with rareifed atmosphere created by this discussion of lofty literary tomes by the likes of Balzac, Hemingway and Dostoyevsky I'd like to mention that I've just read the comic book adpatation of BATMAN BEGINS.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.165.182
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 12:22 pm:   

I really enjoyed ANCIENT IMAGES- it felt a bit of a departure for Ramsey, in some ways. I think it's his most overtly political novel, with some barbed social satire stirred very nicely in with an impassioned defence of the horror field. It'a also the one novel by the landlord where I've thought there should be a sequel-


SPOILER ALERT, DON'T READ ANY FURTHER STEPHEN!!!
:-)





-because of the final image of the land dying at the end. The thought of returning to that landscape five, ten, twenty years on is fascinating... and you just know Ramsey could pull something special off with that.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 12:22 pm:   



Don't worry, Stu - when I mention The Idiot, people usually assume it's my autobiography.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 02:29 pm:   

Quick send more messages so my eyes won't keep being drawn up to that blurred line I'm fighting desperately not to read!!!!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 03:19 pm:   

Must read 'The Idiot' soon.

Dostoevsky was the greatest writer of the 19th C. for me and quite possibly of all time and that's on the strength of only having read four of his books:

'Crime And Punishment' twice - as a young man and again a few years ago - and will no doubt do so again. I've always been drawn to the theme of redemption and Raskolnikov's story is the most profound in literature as well as being a cracking good crime thriller/psychological horror novel.

'The Double' which is the finest literary treatment of the ever scary doppelganger theme and another cracking read. One of the greatest and least appreciated horror novels ever written imho - even more intense than Ramsey Campbell!

'Notes From Underground' which came long before and is at least as good as any of the other great angst-ridden "outsider" novels from 'The Outsider' to 'Catcher In The Rye' to 'Catch 22', etc.

'The Brothers Karamazov' his immense, unforgettable family saga that includes everything in human life and quite a bit beyond (including a memorable appearance by Old Nick himself) and is such an abundance of riches I really must get round to rereading it as well.

Yeah, F.D. could very well be my favourite writer of them all...
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.39
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 06:29 pm:   

Yeah, "Ancient Images" is one of my favorite novels by Ramsey.

I usually finish every book I read (even a mediocre one), but I finally had to snap it shut halfway through Joe Gores' "Spade and Archer: the Prequel to the Maltese Falcon." Lurching and lumpy and ultimately irritating and boring.

I turned right to Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" (like I said I would) . . . Lord, what a difference!

AND for those of you who might be mulling a trip across the Big Pond (or from Wherever)to California, you really should consider stopping by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which I write about at http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/the-monterey-bay-aquarium-heaven-is-made-wat er
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.108.231
Posted on Monday, September 07, 2009 - 09:29 pm:   

Just finished Sarah Pinborough's 'The Language of Dying'. I have to say I enjoyed it, although I'm glad it isn't any longer than a novella (it's quite harrowing in places).

Just starting 'Cell' by Stephen King and Tim Lebbon's 'The Reach of Children'.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 12:31 am:   

Steve really wanted to read Lebbon's 'The Reach of Children' but I believe it sold out before it was even published :-(
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.108.231
Posted on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 12:41 am:   

Karim, sadly I think it may have been the final nail in the coffin of Humdrumming, the publisher.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 09:46 am:   

'The Reach of Children' is a truly astonishing piece of work. The bets thing Tim's ever written, IMHO.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.177.214
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 11:55 am:   

Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd. Absolutely amazing. And soooo sexy.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.177.214
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 11:56 am:   

'One spirt into the pail, and then another.'
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 12:08 pm:   

Far From the Madding Crowd is a book I've tried to read on three seperate occasions and not ever finished. It infuriates me.

I'm currently reading Cornel Woolrich's Rendezvous in Black.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 12:49 pm:   

Two thirds through 'Ancient Images' and loving it. The brilliantly paced cranking up of paranoid intensity to nerve-shredding levels is what made me fall in love with his early novels.

'To Wake The Dead' is the one it most reminds me of and I well remember the sleepless nights that book instilled. Marvellous stuff!!
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 02:35 pm:   

Lebbon's THE REACH OF CHILDREN is superb, yes. It can't have sold out before publication, as the author was flogging unsold copies on his website after Humdrumming went bust! It's well worth getting hold of.

Zed, if you finish RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK before Fantasycon then we can discuss it over a brandy or two. It's the bleakest novel I've ever read. Your blood oxygen count drops if you so much as hold it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.177.214
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 02:43 pm:   

But so beautiful. Woolrich is in some ways Hardyish now you mention him, welding setting to psychology in such a way as to feel inseparable.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 02:46 pm:   

Joel - I bought the Woolrich book after you recommended it on here some time ago. Hopefully I will be finished before the weekend, and brandies will abound!

Tim sold all his copies of The Reach of Children...I believe they went fast.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 05:45 pm:   

Hitler and the Holocaust by Robert S. Wistrich.
The best all-round book on the subject I've read, but by God, it's painful reading.
For years, I've been planning to write something - anything - on the Holocaust
but eventually my words stop and I can't go on writing; there is nothing in horror
fiction to compare with this tragic real-life episode.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 06:19 pm:   

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. The most terrifying book I have read in a long time- if not ever.

Yes, regarding Reach of Children, I had considered buying a copy from Lebbon, but they went fast.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 10:05 am:   

Finished RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK last night. Bleak stuff, indeed; I needed a cuddle when it was done. And where were you, Joel? Nowhere to be seen. Harumph! (I always wanted to write that word)
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 12:44 pm:   

That's one I remember Joel recommending and I have pencilled in for my long-running "psychopathic killer" season.

'The Killer Inside Me' by Jim Thompson is another one I'll have to get a copy of...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 01:18 pm:   

Zed: I'll make it up to you.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 01:28 pm:   

Woolrich's worldview is amply summed up in his comment: "Time is the killer who never gets caught." In his world, the bad guys are just the couriers of an inevitable death and destruction that God has spent history perfecting in order to give the human race the worst time imaginable. Cheerful lad, Cornell.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.177.214
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 03:20 pm:   

I think he was. The world he evoked was also incredibly beautiful in a way only those who have known euphoria can conjure.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 04:07 pm:   

Woolrich definitely wasn't a happy bunny.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 04:39 pm:   

Just picked up a mint condition copy of 'The Maltese Falcon' which I've never read and intend to forthwith.

This psycho theme is in danger of morphing into a pulp crime thriller wallow but I'm not complaining! Woolrich sounds like my kinda writer...
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 05:11 pm:   

I don't know whether to buy The Other by Thomas Tryon (it has an introduction written by RC, and a simply fantastic cover:

http://trashotron.com/agony/images/2008/08-news/05-19-08/tryon-the_other.jpg

...or to watch the film of the book on Youtube.
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Chris_morris (Chris_morris)
Username: Chris_morris

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 12.165.240.116
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 05:17 pm:   

Steve: The book's better. Tryon's HARVEST HOME is pretty good, too.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 05:18 pm:   

Thanks, Chris. :-)

I've read a number of book reviews now (all of them positive), so I think I'll take your advice.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 05:19 pm:   

Buy the book and read it, Steve. You won't regret it.

THE MALTESE FALCON is one of my favourite novels: a sardonic but oddly compassionate fable about the corrupting power of money. I used to use 'Joel Cairo' as an Internet handle.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.142
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 07:36 pm:   

Hanging my head in shame I had never heard of Thomas Tryon until I just googled. I have to say I was impressed by what I found. Former movie star, or B player, becomes critically lauded horror writer. That in itself would make a wonderful gothic novel.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.11.186
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 09:28 pm:   

Frank, do yourself a favour and read Harvest Home and The Other. I keep meaning to watch the filmed adaptations, but they keep eluding me.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.163.177.214
Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 11:34 pm:   

I couldn't get on with The Other at all. Way too self conscious and uninvolving. Harvest Home is more relaxed.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 01:19 am:   

I remember watching the brilliant TV mini-series of 'Harvest Home' [retitled 'The Dark Secret of...' if I remember correctly] with Bette Davis when it was first broadcast in the 70s.
Another one that scared the crap out of me as a kid!

Wasn't Thomas Tryon the husband in 'I Married A Monster From Outer Space'? One of the very best sci-fi movies of the 50s with arguably my fav title of all time. Maybe it wasn't him...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 01:24 am:   

Yes, it was him. :-)

I've not read either of his books, nor have I seen the film bersions. I do own THE OTHER, though.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.128
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:06 am:   

I Married A Monster From Outer Space is terrific. I think it's a very undervalued B movie. It's title belies it's subtlety and strength of storyline and acting.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:46 am:   

"I've not read either of his books, nor have I seen the film bersions."

Have you seen the film versions though?
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:49 am:   

No.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 12:49 pm:   

IMAMFOS would be in my Top 10 1950s sci-fi flicks.

Along with, off the top of my head: 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers', 'The Incredible Shrinking Man', 'The Thing From Another World', 'Forbidden Planet', 'This Island Earth', 'Tarantula', 'Them', 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' and ummm... 'It Came From Outer Space'. Every one a little ray of brilliance in the cinematic universe!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.254.173.35
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 02:55 pm:   

I'm reading a fantasy novel from Macmillan's new writing range, THE DOG OF THE NORTH, by Tim Strtetton. (He keeps a good writing blog, incidentally, at: http://timstretton.blogspot.com/, particularly worth reading for his review of Ken Follet's follow-up to PILLARS OF THE EARTH.)

And I'm reading a proof of OF BEES AND MIST, which is being promoted as a magical realist piece but to my eye reads a lot like Ray Bradbury's FROM THE DUST RETURNED so far. Quite good, though.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 02:57 pm:   

I'm waiting to ger Creatures from the Pool tomorrow, and will start reading it on Sunday. Huzzah!
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.254.173.35
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 03:00 pm:   

I'm jealous
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.145
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 04:58 pm:   

Stephen - your 'little rays of sunshine' are incredible movies, each one a classic, a gem of brilliance. At the top must firmly sit 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

To return to Craig's part of the thread with regards to Midnight Sun, I found it to be one of Ramsey's most emotionally draining novels. I also thought it an incredibly beautiful book, the writing simply blew me away. I was gutted by the ending, felt battered and bruised.

As for making a list of Ramsey's work into a top five, I can't do it. It's impossible. It'd have to be a weekly rotating list if just to do the governor justice.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.72.14.113
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 05:03 pm:   

I can live with the lovely feeling of expectation and it will no doubt be several years before I come to read 'Creatures Of The Pool'.

Meanwhile I'm rapidly approaching the climax of 'Ancient Images' and think if this is Ramsey trying to be populist then MORE PLEASE!! A quite brilliant and wonderfully entertaining horror novel. I'm sure I detect the influence of Joseph Payne Brennan's 'The Horror At Chilton Castle'?
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.145
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 05:08 pm:   

Ancient Images is that rarity, fun to read, scary as hell, and never compromises it's seriousness as art. A most precarious balancing act.
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Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.72
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 06:09 pm:   

Midnight Sun's Ramsey's best book. Nurr.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.39
Posted on Friday, September 18, 2009 - 07:24 pm:   

Finished "The Haunting of Hill House." Wonderful this time around, but quite a bit different than I remember, probably because the film makes such a strong impression. Mrs. Montague's (Markway in the film) portrayal is especially surprising.

Just started "Down There" (aka "Shoot the Piano Player" by David Goodis. Superb so far.
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Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey)
Username: Darren_o_godfrey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 207.200.116.133
Posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 12:19 am:   

'Just started "Down There" (aka "Shoot the Piano Player" by David Goodis. Superb so far.'

I'm a big fan of Goodis's fiction, "Black Pudding" being my fave of his short work.

I'm currently rereading McDowell's Blackwater series.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 04:43 pm:   

Finished 'Ancient Images' - a wonderful read!
Second only to 'The Influence' for me now. Means I was finally able to read SB's "spoiler" above lol.
The explanation of what the 'stick-things' actually were was inspired and took me by surprise. Of all his books I've read so far this is the closest to M.R. James territory. Don't know about a sequel though as I think things were wrapped up pretty thoroughly.

Started straight into 'The Maltese Falcon' and boy is it addictive. Can see me finishing this one in no time. It's Hammett's great hard-boiled dialogue (find myself wanting to read it aloud in Bogie's voice lol) and the vivid descriptions of his characters appearance and mannerisms that gets its hooks into you. His highly cinematic prose summons these people up in front of you and tells all you need to know about their motivations and thought processes. So far Sam Spade is coming across like a cold emotionless bastard - great!
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.143.168
Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 - 05:25 pm:   

I'm on the fourth book of George Martin's epic Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast For Crows. Loving this massive fantasy saga and Martin's handling of plot just leave me gob-smacked, how the man can keep this all in his head and get it down on the page without being confusing is beyond me.
Once I've finished this that will be it for the available volumes in the series so I will be taking a bit of a break from epic fantasy to plunge back into horror. I have a few unread Ramsey titles to explore so that will be a real treat.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 10:48 am:   

Just started Hilary Mantel's Fludd.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.7.50
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 10:55 am:   

Frank, do yourself a favour and read Harvest Home and The Other. I keep meaning to watch the filmed adaptations, but they keep eluding me.

Read these years back - HH was especially good. I can't recall clearly, but I think HH ended up as a mini-series on tv.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 11:23 am:   

I have 'Fludd' in my to-be-read pile having liked what I heard about it. Look forward to hearing what you think Weber.

It's a rare book that seduces you into "becoming" the main character but that's what I'm getting from 'The Maltese Falcon'.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.104
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 11:28 am:   

Grant Morrison: The Early Years by Timothy Callahan. Analysis of the themes and symbolism in Morrison's early comics work such as Zenith, Animal Man and Arkham Asylum. But strangely so far there's no mention of Zoids or the G.I Joe stuff he did.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.7.50
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 11:52 am:   

Just finishing Bradbury's "S is for Space", then it's the landlord's Creatures of the Pool!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.152
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 07:55 pm:   

Mick, I started S IS FOR SPACE earlier in the year but then got sidetracked. But what I read was good.

Btw the Morrison book does include a mention of his Zoids work after all. I know you were all worried about the possible omission.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.154.130.181
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 09:33 pm:   

Almost half way through 'Midnight Sun' which can stand right next to anything Blackwood produced which conveys that sense of awe of a power so huge it can barely be described. Very metaphysical in places.

Next i've got Thomas Ligotti's 'My work is not yet done' lined up. I've been looking online for his previous 3 short story collections which are supposed to be excellent but seem pricey. Are these worth it ?

I'm also tempted, extremely tempted, to splash out on Robert Aickman's 'The Wine Dark Sea', 'Painted Devils' and 'Cold Hand in Mine' collections. These,I know, are worth every penny !
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.39
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 09:48 pm:   

I have "Midnight Sun" on my TBR pile, right after Steinbeck's "Cannery Row."
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 - 11:47 pm:   

I can't believe Sam Spade only appeared in this one novel!!

Anyone know what Hammett's other books are like? I'm becoming hopelessly addicted.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 12:22 pm:   

Anyone here read the ghost stories of E. & H. Heron and their psychic investigator Flaxman Low?

[***SPOILERS***]

Read a disturbing little tale last night called 'The Story Of Medhans Lea' (1899) that features the hideously Jamesian spectre of a black cassocked predatory paedophile and an unseen crying child!
One of the characters is even driven mad by the sight of some unholy act in the shrubbery. Got to be ahead of its time this one...
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 02:11 pm:   

Just started 'Shrike' by Quentin S Crisp

Also, I had a dream last night that I was trying to read the landlord's 'Thieving Fear' while someone was trying to push me out of an aeroplane. I hope RC will be pleased to hear that at one point I was turning the pages between the finger and thumb of my right hand as I tried to pull a parachute on with my left.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.39
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 05:31 pm:   

Stephen Walsh: Actually, DH wrote four subsequent stories about Spade. Unfortunately, they're not very good: dry and mechanical. I believe he wrote them toward the ending of his writing days. Three of them are available in the collection "Nightmare Town."

For you military history buffs, I posted an essay on my visit to the aircraft carrier USS Hornet museum at:

http://www.redroom.com/articlestory/the-uss-hornet-bloody-battles-and-blue-seas
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.179.143
Posted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 08:18 pm:   

Comics stuff:

Irredeemable Vol 1 by Mark Waid. The most powerful superhero in the world turns evil and starts laying waste to his former comrades and anyone else who pisses him off. It's supposed to be an edgy dissection on the nature of superheroics but this first volume is a bit flat. None of the characters have much personality so it's difficult to care about them and the main character's reasons for turning evil seem a bit naff.

Fallen Angel by Peter David. A guardian angel who has been cast out of Heaven for disobeying orders now spends her time in the mystical city of Bete Noir drowning in booze and cynicism -- but the city's residents still keep coming to her for help. Wisecracking fantasy adventure combines with metaphysical musings. Not to mention swearing, nudity and graphic violence. Imagine Joss Whedon writing a series for HBO. But as a comic.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.194
Posted on Sunday, September 27, 2009 - 09:34 am:   

Norman Rockwell by Karal Ann Marling. Biography of the artist accompanied by tons of his illustrations.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.229.90.65
Posted on Sunday, September 27, 2009 - 12:41 pm:   

Vardoger by Stephen Volk. Brief & consumingly brilliant.

PS - this is NOT an advert for Gray Friar Press

Although that sentence might be
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Sunday, September 27, 2009 - 01:06 pm:   

I've just read the FS manifesto (AKA "In Conversation") and thought it was fascinating and utterly absorbing.

Progressing apace through the BFS Yearbook, which is very good so far.

Also, I've just started "Meat", by my new mate Joe D'Lacey - which is, so far, wonderfully bleak. :-)
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Sunday, September 27, 2009 - 01:54 pm:   

Nearly finished 'The Maltese Falcon'. I knew it would be an iconic read but didn't realise just how engrossing such a simple plot could become.

Character is everything here with the Falcon almost incidental to the action. No one in the book, not even Spade, is what they appear at first and the intricate interactions, pacts and double crosses between them build up a powerful sense of desperation with the possibility of a resort to violence evident on every page.

The suspense in the dialogue sequences is palpable with each player trying to worm a little more info from the next or trick them into a fatal slip while the location of the Black Bird and the reason why it is so valuable remains a mystery.

Like all the best stories this is a deceptively simple moral fable on the issue of trust and (as Joel said) the corrupting influence of a life-changing amount of money. Add to that characters who almost fight their way off the page into tangible existence and the result is a timeless classic.

Next up I've decided to read 'The Beetle' (1897) by Richard Marsh. Then back to Highsmith/Ripley country before 'Midnight Sun'. I love it when a plan comes togther lol.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Monday, September 28, 2009 - 09:46 am:   

Just finished RIP by Terry Lamsley - left me cold I'm afraid. I loved his earlier stuff but more recent stories haven't done a lot for me.

Just started Groaning Shadows by Paul Finch and the first story is a corker - it felt like a good episode of Hammer House of Horror
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.108
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 10:45 am:   

The script of Dr Who and The Talons of Weng-chiang.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 11:15 am:   

The script of Dr Who and The Talons of Weng-chiang.

Oh that's a GREAT story! Good old Robert Holmes - some of his dialogue was often cracking.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.108
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 11:28 am:   

Yeah, Holmes could be really funny. I'm trying to remember if I've still got the Dr Who book by Peter Haining which features an hilarious essay by Holmes about his time working on Who.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 11:31 am:   

No wonder I love Weng-Chiang. The BBC site's listed influences on the script are basically my childhood:

Pygmalion ('I'm trying to teach you').

Dracula ('Some slavering gangrenous vampire comes out of the sewers and stalks the city at night').

The Phantom of the Opera (especially the Hammer version).

The Face of Fu Manchu.

Jack the Ripper.

The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town.

The Good Old Days.

Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari.

The Projected Man.

The Lost World.

Dead of Night.

The Man with the Golden Gun (conclusion involving midget and giant laser gun).

It Ain't Half Hot Mum (the first mention of the Tong of the Black Scorpion!).

The Importance of Being Ernest (a hat box?).
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.108
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 11:39 am:   

>>The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town.

There should be a scene where the Doctor chases after Greel continually shouting, "'Ere, I wanna word with you!"
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.106.220.19
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 02:17 pm:   

Just reading Mark West's Conjure. Only twenty or so pages in but really enjoying it...
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 02:32 pm:   

Thanks, Mick, I hope the current level of enjoyment continues through to the end!
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Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.156.38.102
Posted on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - 06:10 pm:   

..I'm on 'Conjure' shortly too....

gcw
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 11:44 am:   

Excellent, gcw, hope you like it!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.176.91
Posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 06:21 pm:   

Going back to The Talons of Weng-Chiang I finally tracked down a clip of Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes. This BBC adap of The Hound of the Baskervilles was one of the things that got me into Sherlock Holmes in the first place. Although judging by this clip it's nowhere near as good as I remember it.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.11.186
Posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 10:48 pm:   

I've just finished reading the non-fiction book 'Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible' by Jim Steinmeyer. It's a compelling account of the history of stage magic from the Victorian age, right through to the arrival of television. If anyone on here's interested in the subject, I'd heartily recommend it.

Just moved on to reading 'The Rendezvous and Other Stories' by Daphne du Maurier. She writes so well about the little cruelties of life.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.198.192
Posted on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - 10:54 pm:   

I'm on it!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 12:20 am:   

"The Fungal Stain & Other Dreams" by WH Pugnuire Wonderful Lovecraftian outbursts, filled with energy and vitality.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 10:23 am:   

Cern Zoo. Some absolute gems here. Review coming soon.

Order the book here:

http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/nemonymous_prices.htm
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 10:47 am:   

Just starting Into the Dark by Mark Billingham. A standalone crime novel by the writer of the DI Thorne series. V good so far.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 01:48 pm:   

In The Dark.

Not "Into the dark"
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 10:25 pm:   

Reading Lenore Terr's 'Too Scared to Cry' about childhood trauma for a film project- Filled with lots of insights from a long career in working with very troubled children. The main case she draws upon is just terrifying or terr-i-fying- 26 California school children were kidnapped and buried alive for motives never explained.In the mid seventies. All the children survived, and she spent ten years treating these children, and wrote a book about the effects of terror on children. Happy non fiction reading...
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 10:33 pm:   

And to not go completely bonkers, I re-re-re read 'The Willows'-ahhh.
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.11.186
Posted on Thursday, October 01, 2009 - 11:13 pm:   

Just started reading 'Houses on the Borderland' edited by David A Sutton.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 03:40 pm:   

I found a strange hardback Algernon Blackwood collection in my local Oxfam last night called 'Tales Of The Uncanny And Supernatural' (1963) published by Spring Books.

It contains over 20 short stories none of which I've read and only 2 of which I've even heard of; 'The Man Whom The Trees Loved' and 'The Glamour Of The Snow'.

Sadly it doesn't include 'The Willows' which I've never owned or had a chance to read and I'm beginning to feel fated never to...

Is this some kind of rarity? Only cost me £2.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.245.221
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:05 pm:   

Sadly it doesn't include 'The Willows' which I've never owned or had a chance to read and I'm beginning to feel fated never to...

Here you go, Stephen:

http://books.google.com/books?id=j3kQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Algernon+bl ackwood&lr=#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:07 pm:   

Here's The Willows, Stephen. :-)

http://arthursclassicnovels.com/arthurs/blackwood/willow10.html
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:12 pm:   

Thanks for that Craig - you're a mate.

But I hate reading things off the screen and want to wait until I own a copy of this story in printed form for myself.

By its reputation I know I'm in for something special and don't really mind the waiting (in fact I thrive on the anticipation).

Is there a definitive Blackwood collection I should order?
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:13 pm:   

Thanks Steve... I feel bad now (still gonna wait though).
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.101.248
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:39 pm:   

Cycled along the Danube where that story was set. I wish I'd had it with me at the time. Mind you camping along the river edge - perhaps not.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 04:54 pm:   

You are so lucky Ally. Was it blue or brown?

I've been meaning to ask you about two writers I'm unfamiliar with (except as names) that you mentioned as inspiring BRFG - Boccaccio & Christina Rossetti. Could their work be described as weird fiction or are they just personal favourites who fired your imagination? Weren't they poets?

I've read your other poetic influences; Virgil, Blake, Keats & Yeats and love their work so might try these out too.

Dante Alighieri, a certain William Shakespeare, John Milton & William Blake are my own favourites - I'm a bit of a classicist that way. Have you ever thought of writing poetry yourself?
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.179.216
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 06:58 pm:   

The Gates by John Connolly. An eleven year old kid discovers that his neighbours are Satanists who have accidentally opened the gates to Hell in their basement. Good fun so far.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 08:43 pm:   

Is Connolly doing out-and-out horror now, Stu?
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.99
Posted on Friday, October 02, 2009 - 09:15 pm:   

This one's a kid's book with lots of science and philosophy thrown in. No, I didn't know that was a good selling point for children's books either.

His short story collection, Nocturnes, is Horror. And his Charlie Parker novels are becoming less coy about the supernatural aspects -- I'm guessing that his publishers have resigned themselves to the fact that the series sells so they might as well let him put the supernatural stuff in even though the books are marketed as crime novels.

I actually meant to ask him about this at the signing he and Mark Billingham did last night but I forgot.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Saturday, October 03, 2009 - 07:20 am:   

'Cycled along the Danube where that story was set. I wish I'd had it with me at the time. Mind you camping along the river edge - perhaps not.'
____

I don't think I'd have the nerves to read it then, Ally!
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.6.13
Posted on Saturday, October 03, 2009 - 07:21 am:   

Thats like reading 'The Langoliers' on an airplane- which I did.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 02:30 pm:   

Came across a book I've been looking for for some time yesterday. One of Graham Greene's rare ventures into weird fiction 'A Sense Of Reality' (1963).

It's a short collection of one novella 'Under The Garden' and three short stories; 'A Visit To Morin', 'Dream Of A Strange Land' & 'A Discovery In The Woods'.

It will be interesting to see how his realistic writing style adapts to the genre.

As the blurb states: "In these four stories Graham Greene, one of the masters of modern English fiction, has allowed himself the liberty of fantasy, myth, legend and dream. The results are, quite simply, superb." - we shall see...
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 02:41 pm:   

A 'collection' of stories by our own Frank. Really superb stuff, and far better than my own (this is not some kind of false modesty - Frank's writing provided a valuable lesson to me).
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 02:51 pm:   

I'm currently reading the future in the entrails of dead chavs.
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 90.203.130.147
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 03:07 pm:   

I'm reading 'Transplanting A Girl's Brain Into A Gorilla The Easy Way'. The hard way involves doing it on a Merthyr Tydfil housing estate.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.179.61.66
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 04:14 pm:   

I'm currently reading the future in the entrails of dead chavs.

You'll get nothing from those except maybe the future price of a tin of Kestrel lager.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.222.21
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 04:41 pm:   

Sorry. Only just spotted this. 'I've been meaning to ask you about two writers I'm unfamiliar with (except as names) that you mentioned as inspiring BRFG - Boccaccio & Christina Rossetti. Could their work be described as weird fiction or are they just personal favourites who fired your imagination?

Fired the imagination, Steve. Came across them whilst studying Eng Lit at uni.

'I've read your other poetic influences; Virgil, Blake, Keats & Yeats and love their work so might try these out too.'

You can't go wrong with them - wonderful.

'Dante Alighieri, a certain William Shakespeare, John Milton & William Blake are my own favourites - I'm a bit of a classicist that way. Have you ever thought of writing poetry yourself?'

Me - write poetry, No. Like reading it though :>)
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.233.32
Posted on Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 05:01 pm:   

I'm currently reading the future in the entrails of dead chavs.

Cool. Me, I'm currently reading between the lines of my enemies' painfully-extracted responses.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2009 - 02:19 pm:   

Re-reading Alan Garner's ELIDOR for the first time since I was about eleven. It's the single most formative book of my childhood, and a poetic joy to revisit now. My favourite novel ever, I think.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2009 - 03:20 pm:   

John Berger's Ways of Seeing. Tremendous book.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2009 - 04:59 pm:   

Zed, Alan Garner is a genius and the only writer of children's fantasy in between Tolkien/Lewis & Pullman whom I rank as one of the Great Writers!!

My own personal favourite is 'The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen' which I well remember scaring me rigid in primary school. The sequel 'The Moon Of Gomrath' is equally great as are all his subsequent books. A marvellously vivid and emotional writer of exceptional insight and imagination.

His books are so frightening, bleak and disturbing for children I really can't see them ever being revived - which is a tragedy...
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Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.11.186
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 12:17 am:   

Just started reading 'Cold Skin' by Albert S Pinol. I think it was recommended on here by Richard a while ago, so I thought I'd check it out. I'm glad I did. I read about a third of it in the first sitting. It will not let go. Quite beautiful.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.231.167
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 12:37 am:   

When it comes to Garner I'm more a Red Shift kid. The mix of the weird and the mundane. Dialogue that breaks your heart. Impossible to classify: is it supernatural, SF or both? A major influence on the likes of M. John Harrison and Nicholas Royle. And it has my favourite pun ever.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.18.104
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 04:30 am:   

Whatever happened Alan Garner?
Is he even still writing... or with us for that matter!

The guy had serious talent to burn. One of the greatest fantasy writers of the last century for me. So why isn't he still recognised as such?!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.155.203.26
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 07:29 am:   

He keeps getting depressed, and REALLY takes his time.
I'd say much of Greene's work has that 'magic' sense.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.233.98
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 09:06 am:   

The BFS gave Alan Garner its Karl Edward Wagner Award for lifetime achievement a few years ago.

Tony is right: Garner has struggled with bipolar disorder for a long time, and was on medication that left him unable to write. Because publishers and many readers are only interested in new work, his great books gradually slipped off the radar. I have his more recent (adult) novel Thursbitch and will let you know what it's like.

In these days, when the shelf life of a new book is less than that of a pack of cheese slices and the 'buzz' of publicity fades in a week, only relentless over-production gets you anywhere. Two years of silence and you're toast.

Another writer who must have been strongly influenced by Garner is Graham Joyce.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 09:30 am:   

I would love to publish Garner, the man is clearly a genius and one of the most profoundly good fantasy writers around.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 12:05 pm:   

That's sad news about Alan Garner but strangely not surprising. The thing that makes his books so haunting and weirdly beautiful is the sense of loss and melancholy that pervades all of them.

He writes like someone born out of time himself. One of my very, very favourite authors.

Meanwhile I've only the last story of Greene's equally poetic 'A Sense Of Reality' left to read. Thoughts to follow...
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.165.182
Posted on Thursday, October 08, 2009 - 12:43 pm:   

Been working my way through various of the wheelbarrow-load of books picked up at Fantasycon, but taking a break to re-read Bradbury's The October Country again. What a writer. What. A. Writer. Writing that just leaves you in awe, telling story, establishing mood and character and atmosphere all within a few inimitably lyrical lines. I'd forgotten how unsettling stories like 'Skeleton', 'The Jar', or 'The Small Assassin' are. Or 'The Lake', which I reread for the first time in years last night. Still deliberately delaying the moments when I re-read 'The Next In Line' and 'The Scythe'- for me these are Bradbury's masterpieces.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 09:40 am:   

Ordered Cold Hand in Mine yesterday. Looking forward to my first 'taste' of Robert Aickman's writing. :-)
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.222.21
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 10:25 am:   

Steve. Get the collection - THE WINE DARK SEA. You will never regret it :>)
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.191.140
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 11:47 am:   

Fight to the Death: Battle of Guadalcanal by Larry Hama. Comic book detailing the heroes and battles of this area of the Pacific Theatre.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

Waaaaaa, how come Aickman books are so expensive?
I mean, 390 quid for the Collected Strange Stories?!?!&%^!?
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.10.20.129
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

Read the Gray Friar Christmas special chapbook from 2007 I think. Lots of great stories by several writers from this board.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.10.20.129
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 01:35 pm:   

Also liked the Royle tale. Very disturbing- a confusing London underground, lots of alcohol, christmas, and then some more confusion that ends with bloodshed. All the stories were good. Sort of a very early Christmas special...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 01:47 pm:   

Regarding Aickman: look for second-hand ex-library collections and more recent paperback editions. The Wine-Dark Sea is a 'best of' and not an authentic collection... it is extremely good though.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.222.21
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 03:00 pm:   

Steve - I've just seen it on Bookbrain. Available from Waterstones...Blackwell. £14/£16.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Friday, October 09, 2009 - 10:53 pm:   

Thanks, folks. :-)

Reading three books by the photographer Simon Marsden: The Haunted Realm, Phantoms of the Isles & The Journal of a Ghosthunter. Magnificent photography accompanied by beautiful, heartfelt writing; Marsden is a true Romantic:

'In the remote, quieter corners of our landscape there is a strange feeling that we are not alone, and as we pass by some ruined mansion or moonlit abbey at nightfall, we know that within the crumbling walls there still lurk dark spirits from the distant past...watching...waiting.'

Simon Marsden Picture Library:

http://www.marsdenarchive.com/library/
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.180.67
Posted on Saturday, October 10, 2009 - 11:27 am:   

Just reread Grant Morrison's Animal Man run -- Animal Man, Origin of the Species and Deus Ex Machina. Starts off with Animal Man gaining an interest in environmentalism thanks to his animal-derived powers and then the metafiction and metaphysics kick in as he delves into the nature of reality and storytelling.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Sunday, October 11, 2009 - 12:48 pm:   

Just started 'The Beetle' by Richard Marsh (Robert Aickman's grandfather!) and it has ripping yarn written all over it.

The first appearance of the "whatever it is" in Chapter 2 - as it crawls up Robert Holt's body in a pitch dark room and attaches itself (Alien-like) to his face - had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck!! The writing is wonderfully M.R. Jamesian in the tangible quality of the horrors described.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.42
Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 - 02:29 am:   

"The Winde Dark Sea" has a great cover though (at leasat my American edition does).

I finished "Cannery Row" and have gone from John Steinbeck's 1940s Monterey to Ramsey Campbell's modern England: "Midnight Sun":

"Spiky drystone walls, which put him in mind of the spines of dinosaurs, separated fields crumbed with sheep."

God, that's lovely. . . I'm really gripped.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 - 11:57 am:   

After 6 chapters of 'The Beetle' I was beginning to smell a rat and thought that this was some clever hoax penned as a mickey take of late Victorian pulp literature at its most derring-do.

The language and some of the allusions appear too "knowing" and contemporary to be true. I've found myself laughing aloud and thinking "someone's taking the piss here." But I've checked and Richard Marsh does appear to have been a real person and this book was first published in 1897.

All I can say is it's a riot! Quite splendiferous!!
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 10:52 am:   

This book is completely demented and unputdownable...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 04:04 pm:   

Anyway... back to 'A Sense Of Reality' (1963) by Graham Greene.

'Under The Garden' is a haunting dark fantasy novella involving profound ruminations on encroaching death. The protagonist, a rich globetrotting playboy, is told he has only months to live due to an inoperable tumour and returns for the first time since childhood to the old family estate he has shunned through adulthood due to some terrifying experience as a boy. We are then told in flashback of his capture and imprisonment in a warren of underground tunnels by a hideous one-legged old troll and his duck-lipped quacking wife, what he learnt from them about the true nature of reality, how he escaped and the real reason for his subsequent world travelling. All highly weird and chock full of disturbing Freudian imagery with an underlying and beautifully unforced poignancy about the fragmentary nature of childhood memory and how we build our own personal mythology from these glimpses of a simpler time.

‘A Visit To Morin’ is a short sweet imaginary encounter between Greene as an old man despairing of his faith and the philosophical hero of his youth, the Catholic theologian of the title, and develops gently into perhaps the author’s most self-questioning examination of the very concept of religious belief. Deep, witty and wise.

‘Dream Of A Strange Land’ is a bleak and yet oddly beautiful little Kafkaesque parable featuring a shunned leper and the fastidious doctor who refuses to treat him. Through a weird juxtaposition of physical circumstances the perfect illusion is created that this leper has been transported to another world that, however, is the very same world he has already inhabited… Greene follows through the logical ramifications of this “misunderstanding” with his trademark steely realism but the final impression is one of ultimate transcendence. A one-off stroke of profound genius imho.

‘A Discovery In The Woods’ is my favourite story here and a slice of classic science fiction. The similarities to Pierre Boule’s ‘Planet Of The Apes’ (1963) are profound yet I am not sure whether this story predates it. What I can say is that this tale has the same timeless poetic quality as William Golding’s ‘Lord Of The Flies’ in its depiction of childhood innocence cast adrift in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world in which nature has reasserted its dominance over humanity and they are left bereft of adult rules having to fend for themselves. There are five iconic characters; the brave natural leader who has to hide his insecurities, the loyal but easily manipulated best friend, the envious leader in waiting, the sniping killjoy old and cynical beyond his years and the one girl who acts as the caring sensible lynchpin holding them all together while also unwittingly being the cause of primal division. They go blackberry picking in the woods, stray into uncharted territory and make a startling discovery they don’t even realise the significance of… but we do. A genuinely heartbreaking masterpiece!!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.155.206.8
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 04:15 pm:   

I ordered this today! Sigh - sort of wished I hadn't read that review...
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 04:48 pm:   

Shit sorry... but there aren't really any spoilers.

More appetite whetters with the stories open to such a variety of interpretations you may come away with a completely different reading of each tale. There are no templates here believe me!
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 09:03 pm:   

Well, I've just read my very first Robert Aickman story (The Swords) and I've realised that
a reader can become 'lost' in the man's work and what it appears to suggest.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 09:05 pm:   

For instance, Aickman's story had me looking up, oh, E.T.A Hoffmann, Remedios Varo, Salvador Dali, Leonora Carrington, tarot cards, the Male Gaze etc etc etc.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.240.106
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 09:51 pm:   

Re-reading MIDNIGHT SUN.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.222.21
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 11:23 pm:   

'Well, I've just read my very first Robert Aickman story (The Swords) and I've realised that
a reader can become 'lost' in the man's work and what it appears to suggest.'
Very true.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 11:34 pm:   

Steve, did you see what I meant about the echoes in your own story?

Aickman is almost indescribably good. Of those I've read it's a toss-up between 'Ringing The Changes' and 'The Inner Room' for my favourite but I haven't read a single story by him yet that was anything less than wonderful.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 11:43 pm:   

Absolutely, Stephen :-) It happens that so much of my writing is about the mindset of creative males and their perception of women; I can't help but view The Swords as similar to this.

I'm probably reading far too much into Aickman's story but...I wonder if there's a connection between the character 'Madonna' and the Mater Dolorosa ('Our Lady of Sorrows'), symbolically pierced by seven swords...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Sorrows
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.0.106.15
Posted on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - 12:00 am:   

I'd say you're definitely onto something there Steve.

Aickman was certainly interested in religious iconography as the nightmarish little tale 'The Cicerones' will attest.
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.42
Posted on Thursday, October 15, 2009 - 10:09 pm:   

Wow, Steve Jensen, your first? I envy you.

I just finished "Glory" by Nabokov, my first run through of that curious gem; now I'm just tarting on "Laughter in the Dark." (I like to read a bit from VN before sitting down to work on my new novel. It inspires me to try harder.)

Deep into "Midnight Sun." It reminds me somewhat of "The Darkest Part of the Woods" in its portrayal of an alienated, distressed family and its entangled roots in nature's mysteries. Would it be too much to say that humanity's fraught relationship with Nature and her forces is a "Campbellian" theme?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.229.232
Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 - 08:35 am:   

I found a copy of Joyce Carol Oates' THE MUSEUM OF DR. MOSES, a recent collection of "tales of mystery and suspense," though it looks (from where they were published) like much of it is horror. Didn't even know she had a new anthology of such fiction - I know it'll be good already, but anyone else read this yet? Any particularly good ones?
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 - 02:03 pm:   

Just started Carn by Patrick McCabe. One of the most disconcerting things about reading any Paddy McCabe book is that you very quickly get a psychotic Ardal O'Hanlon reciting the story in your head as you read it. I think that's actually a good thing.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 - 02:05 pm:   

Still re-reading MIDNIGHT SUN (slowly; thoroughly savouring the experience), and just whizzed through David Moody's HATER - which was suprisingly good.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.178.176
Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 05:48 pm:   

The Pre-Raphaelites by Christopher Wood. History of the PRB and their associates plus loads of sumptuous colour plates.

'Miss Marple Tells A Story' by Agatha Christie.

'The Snail Watcher' by Patricia Highsmith.

And of course there's got to be at least one comic in my list:

Sin City: Booze, Broads and Bullets by Frank Miller. Selection of short strips in glorious black and white.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.47
Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 05:57 pm:   

The Snail watcher is a fantastic story.

I remember getting very strange looks when I walked into my local book shop and asked for a copy of The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder. They thought I was winding them up till they looked it up.
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 194.75.171.106
Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 07:02 pm:   

Just read HATER as well- thought it was excellent. Genuinely unsettling. Before that it was THE NIGHT WATCH and THE DAY WATCH (extremely good) and now finally embedding myself in the landlord's THIEVING FEAR.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.176.6.55
Posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - 10:27 pm:   

Finished Mark West's Conjure, which I really liked - and now nearly at the end of The Face of Twilight by Mark Samuels, bought simply because of how good I think The White Hands is. Excellent novella.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 12:04 pm:   

Read a biography of Joseph Merrick, known as 'the Elephant Man'. A very moving book, of course. What particularly fascinated me was the fact that Joseph, deprived of human contact because of his condition, 'lost himself' in reading, in the make-believe world of books and in the whole 'atmosphere' of the arts. An example: his friend and benefactor the surgeon Frederick Treves once took Joseph to see a spectacular pantomime. Aftwards, Joseph would ask Treves: 'Do you think that poor man escaped from the Prince's dungeon?', 'Do you think they all lived happily ever after?'

Predictably, people would view such naivety as childish & childlike, but Joseph's pure imaginative vision has much to teach us - as people, as writers. His 'childish' sense of wonderment is something we should strive to recapture as adults, I think. The world, factual and fictional, would be a better place for it.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 12:17 pm:   

I read Aickman's The Houses of the Russians last night. Wow: Aickman does gore.

A brilliant story, with so many apparent (and not so apparent) meanings.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.189.21
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 03:08 pm:   

It's an excellent story, isn't it? I've dreamed about this story, of walking around that island and seeing the strange characters who inhabit it. Have you read 'Wood' and 'The School Friend', Gary? They are two of his strangest and most unsettling stories, I think.
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Simon Strantzas (Nomis)
Username: Nomis

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 38.113.181.169
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 03:16 pm:   

The latest issue of "Wormwood" has an interesting examination of "Bind your Hair".
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 03:23 pm:   

Read those, Huw - there are a handful of Aickman's I haven't yet read, and I dip into them from the Tartarus set every now and then. Wood and The Stain are two of my favourites.
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Stephen Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 04:32 pm:   

'Ringing The Changes' and 'The Inner Room' for me... though I've only read about a quarter of his output.

To be honest if he'd only written those two stories (or even one of them) I'd still consider him a more than noteworthy author.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.23.139
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 05:15 pm:   

Favourite story for the moment - The Wine-Dark Sea.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.176.69
Posted on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 07:08 pm:   

Ah yes, Tal, Lek and Vin! That's one of my favourites as well. Most of Aickman's stories are of the same high standard, I think. A few are not quite as successful as the others, but even they have their good points and are worth reading.

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