What Are You Reading (5) Log Out | Topics | Search
Moderators | Edit Profile

RAMSEY CAMPBELL » Discussion » What Are You Reading (5) « Previous Next »

Author Message
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Friday, July 09, 2010 - 07:45 am:   

Here's what I've had my head in.

Couple of Ken 'Ireland's Most Celebrated Crime-Writer' Bruen books, Cross, and The Devil, the latter being something of a horror story - though Bruen prefers to quote David Lynch and call it 'The Further-Out genre'. Anyway, interesting prose stylist. Short sentences, short paragraphs interestingly constructed on the page, resulting in very short books. When it works, it simply flies. When it doesn't, it certainly doesn't. But I found these two oddly diverting. I'll stick with him a while.

Gone by Mo Hayder. Another Jack Caffery novel, and better than her last one, Skin.

Peter Mayle's The Vintage Caper, in which a crime is committed but everyone is so nice (except the person whose gear was stolen) that when the culprit's identified the protagonist makes sure he comes to no misfortune in the eyes of the law. A slim book that's be all the slimmer without the descriptions of food and Provence.

Buy Jupiter, a collection of short stories by Issac Asimov. Fun pieces for the most part, mostly dating from the 50s. Interstingly, in one of the introductions, the Good Doctor expresses his fear (dating back to the 50s) that the original anthology market was killing fiction magazines, making it harder for writers to get their first break as he did in a pulp publication.

Mark Kermode's autobiography/filmisation. In which Ramsey gets a passing mention!

Lee Child's 61 Hours, in which Child keeps writing 'It was an orphanage. For children,' and in which Jack Reacher, a man who seems to suffer annual amnesia, returns and wishes he had a coat during a freezing South Dakota winter. Not one to miss a trick, when he realised he'd got a long book on his hands, Child seems to have split it in two, leaving a cliffhanger ending. To be continued on the real birth date of great men (Ed McBain note you got it wrong but nearly right).

Brian McGilloway's Bleed A River Deep. Seocnd book of his I've read. Writes a bit like Jack Higgins. Pared down, doesn't much finesse his stuff, gets it across all right, without ever really setting the page alight. I'm still in two minds as to whether to keep reading him.

The Severance (early draft form) by some bloke called Gary Fry. Some superb ghostly imagery in a neat new take on the old zombie novel.

And others I can't recall at the moment.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, July 09, 2010 - 12:45 pm:   

Just finished, last night, Joel's 'The Earth Wire And Other Stories' - a magnificent collection of highly literary weird tales of urban angst, doomed love and despair that reads more like European or Latin American fiction than British imo. The book has had me compulsively re-reading many of the stories to extract their meaning and noticing all kinds of subtle conceptual links - and I can think of no higher praise than that.

Three quarters through the equally beautiful prose of J.G. Ballard's 'The Unlimited Dream Company'. An ecstatic high fantasy inspired by the visionary poetry and artwork of William Blake and his hallucinatory visions of an altered London. Imagine 'The Prisoner' set in Shepperton with No.6 as a messianic Christ figure, unable to escape but able to warp reality within that bubble however the whim takes him. One of the author's most original and fascinating books.

Just started 'The 20th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' having finished the generally excellent 'Cornish Tales Of Terror' from Fontana - best story, Du Maurier's 'The Birds'.

Over halfway through Dostoevsky's 'The Devils' - so engrossed in this one and its epic story of political idealism giving way to violence and bitter internal feuds that it's become like a regular soap opera to dip in and out of at my leisure - like hopping in and out of a time machine. Wonderful all-too-human characters and writing of almost supernatural power.

Three quarters through the epic 'Lankhmar' collection by Fritz Leiber having just finished the extraordinary novella 'Adept's Gambit'. I'd now rank him third after Robert E. Howard & Karl Edward Wagner (Kane is second only to Conan imo) when it comes to this kind of vividly imagined blood 'n' thunder heroic fantasy.

Next up is 'The Killer Inside Me' by Jim Thompson.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.2.211
Posted on Saturday, July 10, 2010 - 05:28 pm:   

fwiw: Nearly done with Darkness, and here's my assessment as it stands - I'm singling this anthology out, because it's Ellen Datlow's choice of the best horror stories of the last 25 years, so it's not quite just your usual anthology.... Anyway, here's how I rank the contents:

Sublime: (those stories by) Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Gene Wolfe

Excellent: Edward Bryant, George R.R. Martin, Dan Simmons, Stephen King, Dennis Etchison, Joyce Carol Oates, Ramsey Campbell

Okay: Pat Cadigan, Joe R. Lansdale, Kathe Koja, Michael Marshall Smith, David J. Schow, Kelly Link

Could Take or Leave Them: Thomas Ligotti, Lucius Shepherd, Neil Gaiman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Terry Dowling

(Unread Yet): Poppy Z. Brite, Elizabeth Hand, Glen Hirshberg, Joe Hill
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.131.109.205
Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 09:57 am:   

We talk about 'the zone'. We know it when we go there in writing. But is it what we feel when we read a good short, that we are going there? Is it what makes a good short 'good'?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 213.81.118.182
Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 04:13 pm:   

Young Men in Spats by PG Wodehouse. Mishaps, mayhem and mirth with Mr Mulliner and Co.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.249
Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 06:21 pm:   

'Mr Vertigo' by Paul Auster.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.209.76
Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 06:58 pm:   

Here are my latest:

The Fifth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories Robert Aickman

The Ninth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories R Chetwynd-Hayes

My Name Is Death & Other Stories Charles Birkin

The Triumph of Night Edith Wharton

Great Tales of Terror & The Supernatural Wagner & Wise
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.22.75.99
Posted on Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 07:21 pm:   

At Mains Mansion the selection has been:

Biography of Eliza Lynn Linton by Herbert van Thal
The Day of the Robot by Frank Belknap Long
The Kill Dog by Jonathan George (John Burke)
Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl
The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook by Peter Haining
Suffolk and Norfolk by M R James - which is probably one of the most delightful things I've read in a long, long time.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.239.148
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 01:02 am:   

Just finished reading Among Thieves by Mez Packer, an offbeat thriller with echoes of Irvine Welsh and Dashiell Hammett, about small-time Coventry drug dealers stepping into a wider criminal world they are not ready for. Beautifully written, comic, touching and insightful. Graham Joyce's blurb calls it 'brilliant', and I would agree.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 01:51 am:   

Currently reading the latest Gary McMahon (well, it was the latest when I got it last week ;-) for critique but it's so bloody dark, I'm also reading a thing about the 100 greatest albums of the 80s to try and balance things out.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 03:53 am:   

Joel, I can't imagine Dashiell Hammett being merged with Irvine Welsh as being anything other than a maddening dumbing down of Dashiell Hammett. Welsh is, for me, the most bafflingly overrated writer of the last 20 odd years. Just my opinion, but he's all modern "edgy" technique and no substance, whereas Hammett is as timeless on the human condition as Shakespeare. And I say that having listed the film of 'Trainspotting' in my Top 10 Movies of the 1990s.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 04:24 am:   

As much as I am loving and completely immersed in Ballard's 'The Unlimited Dream Company' I'm finding myself distracted by some of the lovelier imagery and praying that no one (please, God) ever tries to make a movie of this book as it would inevitably turn out the most sickeningly twee CGI-fest vision of a saccharine heaven I could ever imagine. I am reminded strongly of Peter Jackson's abysmal adaptation of 'The Lovely Bones'.

I can only hope that the darker elements of the story - the beastiality and paedophilia and profligate semen spurting - dissuades anyone from ever attempting it... yes, including Cronenberg!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.235.250
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 07:03 am:   

(Oh hey, Joel and Stevie, since you both seem to be up on Hammett - I had read "The Gutting of Couffignal" in this anthology, and really loved it, as much as I remember loving "Fly Paper" in another anthology, the only two I've really read by Hammett (sadly, shamefully). Can you guys real quick tick off for me your opinions on Hammett's very best short-stories/novelettes/novellas? I'm pretty sure I already know what his best novels are (all of them?), but I saw a couple great collections of his shorter work recently, and didn't want to just venture in and have to flail around for the good stuff. Sorry to hijack the thread for this, but I've been meaning to ask... and I thank you in advance.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 95.131.110.102
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 08:22 am:   

Still reading Flicker - near the end now and loving it - highly recommended.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 03:45 pm:   

Joel is the expert on Hammett, Craig. I'm only coming to him for the first time recently myself. Read 'The Maltese Falcon' for an object lesson in creating instantly iconic characters that penetrate straight to the heart of the human condition. It is as profound a "crime thriller", on that score, as anything by Greene or Highsmith.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.156.16
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 03:57 pm:   

The outstanding Hammett short story that I've read is 'Nightmare Town', title story of a recent collection.

I was a bit disappoinrted by the collection The Continental Op – early stories from before his approach had quite gelled.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.248.6
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 04:21 pm:   

Cool, Joel! I'll look for that one. I like others to do the heavy-lifting for me, when possible, when it comes to reading.... MALTESE FALCON someday soon, I hope, Stevie.

Just read the Poppy Z. Brite story (see my post above): it goes into the "Okay" category.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 217.171.129.68
Posted on Monday, July 12, 2010 - 06:35 pm:   

I've been really excited about reading the biography of Clarence Darrow, The Old Devil, but 50 pages in I've had to stop because, in places, it's just so bad. I may go back to it but just skip straight to the three big trial sequences. Has anyone else chanced upon this one yet? Next up in any case is A Disaffection by James Kelman. I read Busconductor Hines about three years ago and loved that, so I'm going at him again.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - 05:56 pm:   

Partial Eclipse by Graham Joyce and Embrace by Mark Behr.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 188.28.89.113
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 01:20 am:   

Oooh. I got an advance proof of the new Graham Joyce today. It's called The Silent Land.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 02:49 pm:   

Into the final chapters of 'The Unlimited Dream Company' and the action has taken an unexpectedly sinister and shocking turn. The final sentence of Chapter 27 is the most disturbing line of Ballard's I have read to date. It completely alters the meaning of the book and my sympathies toward the narrator, Blake, in a way that sent shivers down my spine. This is turning into one of my favourites.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 03:20 pm:   

'The Unlimited Dream Company' remains my very favourite Ballard novel. There's something disturbingly pure and uncensored in its obsessions that's admirable despite the dark turns it takes.

Not sure how much you know about Ballard's life, Stevie, but his wife died very suddenly in 1964. This roughly coincides with the end of his early disaster novels and the start of his darkest period, which gave us novels like Crash, High Rise and The Atrocity Exhibition.

The Unlimited Dream Company comes at the end of this period, and feels lot like the final stage of Ballard sort of writing himself out of the shadow cast by his wife's death. The description of the character of Miriam sounds a lot like Ballard's wife, Mary, and the events of the novel play out a lot like a sort of rebirth both for Ballard and his wife.

Not essential to enjoyment of the novel, but I always found this an interesting way to look at it.

In terms of my own reading - Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year volume 2. The Gemma Files/Stephen Barringer, and Reggie Oliver stories are the strongest so far. Next up is The Faculty of Terror by someone who's no stranger to these boards, and then after that I may tackle Reggie Oliver's Dramas for the Depths, although there's 900+ pages of that, so may take a wee while to get through.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 121.219.174.115
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 03:23 pm:   

Halfway through 'Banquet for the Damned' - so far this is brilliant. The 'night terror' sequences are terrifying, the overall atmosphere creepy, and the more graphic scenes really pack a punch. Will have to pick up his latest, 'Apartment 16', asap.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 03:52 pm:   

I'm reading Aparment 16 at the moment, and it's even better than Banquet with the Damned.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 04:03 pm:   

John, I've been reading Ballard's novels in chrono order and have read up quite a bit about him. I've loved the guy ever since discovering his weird and haunting short stories as a teenager - each one a brilliantly constructed puzzle that repays countless re-reads.

I've always found his novels painfully honest and emotional in how they deal with the traumatic events of his life, primarly his boyhood experiences during the war and the psychological devastation he suffered after the death of his wife. I've yet to read anyone with a greater, or even similar, ability to translate the workings of the subconscious mind into such startling and vivid imagery. He paints with words.

I found the mental anguish (grief is not a strong enough word) he poured out obliquely in 'The Atrocity Exhibition' & 'Crash' to be intensely powerful and not at all easy reading, though starkly hypnotic and utterly impossible to forget.

I've been finding TUDC his brightest, most optimistic novel to date - often beautifully transcendent - and felt it was a sign of him finally coming to terms with his loss. But now... there was so much darkness in that man's soul, inextricable from his humanity. He is unquestionably the greatest British author of the modern era imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 05:43 pm:   

I agree completely, Stevie.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.104.142.59
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 05:48 pm:   

Dipping into all the Ash Tree collections (wonderful) I bought at WHC and will start Indigo by Graham Joyce.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 06:10 pm:   

The first copy I had of Indigo vanished while I was reading it. I had to buy a second copy. I put it down by my bed when I went to sleep, in the morning it was gone.

When you consider the theme of the book, that's quite appropriate.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.170.165
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - 09:18 pm:   

Finally gave up on the boilerplate thriller I was reading and continued on with "American Fantastic Tales" ed. by Peter Straub. Also enjoying "The Power of Ideas" by Isaiah Berlin and having a great time with "The Power Broker: Robert Moses . . . " by Robert Caro.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 02:49 pm:   

Just finished 'The Unlimited Dream Company' which is now vying with 'The Crystal World' for my fav Ballard novel. A work of mind-boggling genius!

About to start Jim Thompson's 'The Killer Inside Me', with bated breath...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2010 - 02:55 pm:   

I suspect we have very similar bookshelves, Stevie. I've got 'The Killer Inside Me' sitting waiting as well.

Back to Ballard - you said you're reading his novels in order. Does that mean you haven't read any of the ones after 'The Unlimited Dream Company'? You've got some treats ahead. 'Running Wild' and 'Super-Cannes' are probably the best. The last couple are fairly forgettable, though. I had to look up the plot of 'Kingdom Come' just to remind myself what it was about...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, July 16, 2010 - 03:55 am:   

John, I found myself filling up in the last pages of TUDC, and purely because I knew what he was getting at with the whole transformation of Miriam. It is the most emotionally affecting of his novels I have read to date - like reading a man creating his own spiritual reality, out of aching necessity. Next up, a return to apocalyptic sci-fi with 'Hello America' and then the long awaited (by me) 'Empire Of The Sun', when he finally tackled the "conscious" mind of childhood memory. Ballard is one author for whom knowledge of his personal life adds immensely to the power and pleasure of his fiction imo.

Meanwhile, the first chapters of TKIM are a powerhouse of subtly frightening characterisation. I get the impression I've worked with people like this guy on numerous occasions - one of the perfectly possessed...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.252.158
Posted on Monday, July 19, 2010 - 04:44 pm:   

NORTH OF BOSTON (1914), by Robert Frost. Less a collection of poetry, than short-short stories, that's how they read - poetry even for poetry-haters. Wonderful collection, written I believe while he was living in Britain....

Finished now the Joe Hill story (see antho in my post above): Wow, it started off in the "Excellent" category, and for a few brief moments, flirted with "Sublime"... then swiftly plummeted down to "Could Take or Leave It." The prose is lucid and wonderful, but... I just have no patience at all for complete randomness, masquerading as depth....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 02:27 am:   

*** SPOILERS ***

Finished 'The Killer Inside Me' and, like 'The Getaway', it is another apparently straightforward crime thriller that works on two distinct levels; as a disturbing first person narrative that takes us deep inside the warped values and self-deluded vanity of a vicious psychopathic killer, who gets his kicks by beating women to death with his fists & as a chilling examination of small town corruption and the way officialdom will move mountains to turn a blind eye to blatant criminality when the criminal happens to be one of their own... like good old boy, Deputy Lou Ford.

The character is a thoroughly detestable ignorant thug, a strutting monster in uniform (when I think of him I keep visualising the menacing state trooper in sunglasses at the start of 'Psycho'). Yet, in his narration, this sadistic animal believes himself to be loved and respected by all, he's the most popular guy in town, a friend to rich and poor alike, affable, reliable, always willing to help, a loyal upholder of the law and fine upstanding pillar of the community - the cretins! However, it becomes obvious fairly quickly, that absolutely everyone is on to him from the beginning - he's just too thick to realise it - and the only thing protecting him is that he hasn't been caught red handed and, all too plausibly, that, as long as he doesn't go too far, his "losses of control" will be swept under the carpet by his fellow wielders of local power, to become nothing more than whispered small town gossip... because he is the Law, and his downfall would threaten the whole damn house of cards.

It was fascinating to read this book so soon after finishing the Ripley series. Lou Ford shares many of the cold blooded character traits of Tom Ripley and commits his murders with the same sudden, unconcerned brutality but he entirely lacks the ever resourceful intelligence and finely honed survival instincts that gave Tom such an edge over the Law. Unlike Ripley, Lou’s attempts at deflecting suspicion or planting evidence or eliminating witnesses are so patently obvious and riddled with mistakes they actually point the finger of guilt ever more steadily at him, presenting an ever more tangled problem for the authorities to sort out - the driving force behind the book's cracking suspense.

The final chapters are a tour-de-force of shattered arrogance retreating into complete mental breakdown, showing us the irreparably damaged human being behind the facade - extremely powerful, and ultimately moving, stuff! And the final, expertly delivered twist took me completely by surprise. A magnificently bleak and harrowing novel that paints an all too convincing picture of the dark side of the human psyche - individually and collectively.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 02:34 am:   

Time for another bit of Heinlein... about to start his sword & sorcery epic, 'Glory Road' (1963).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.16.11.218
Posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 01:22 pm:   

Bad Boy. Written by Frank Miller, illustrated by Simon Bisley. A little boy tries to escape the clutches of the mad scientists who want to perform experimental brainwashing techniques on him. Not Miller's best work -- slick but insubstantial.

The Mirror of Love. Alan Moore's poem describing the history of homosexuality from ancient times up to the modern day, accompanied by Jose Villarrubia's photos.

Silverfish. Written and illustrated by David Lapham. Teenager Mia hates her new stepmother Suzanne and so rummages through her belongings to see if she can dig up any dirt from her past. But Mia gets more than she bargained for as she finds herself plunged into a nightmare of lies, larceny, fake identities and psychotic killers. Good fun with nicely built suspense and a few twists and turns to the plot. Although I thought the silverfish motif that gives the book its name didn't really work.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 05:08 pm:   

Just finished Maus by Artie Speigleman, reading Do Unto Others by J. Gonazales also Brain Cheese Buffet by Ed Lee.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 12:05 am:   

Already 6 chapters into 'Glory Road' and this book is bloody brilliant, a pure joy. One of those books that rattles along at a furious pace and has me hugging myself with pure pleasure after every paragraph. Heinlein was a fucking genius!

An unwilling, horribly scarred and naturally disgruntled Vietnam veteran (in 1963!) finds himself transported (ingeniously) to a primitive world that would give Robert E. Howard nightmares and somehow has to survive, armed to the teeth with 20th Century weaponry, limited by ammo & his own inherent decency, while having no idea why he is there, where he is, or even if he is dead or dreaming... but the women!!!!

Mystifying, exciting, earthy, wonderfully satirical, laugh out loud funny (Heinlein plays the old culture clash trick to the max), incredibly sexy (how he describes those women!), brutal, gory, spectacularly imaginative, chock full of quotable lines already ("I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it's not his choice."), gloriously un-PC and most of all ENTERTAINING to the Nth degree... It's official, I love Robert A. Heinlein and don't care who knows it!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 10:31 am:   

This is great stuff:

"I found there the blade that suited me the way Excalibur suited Arthur.
I've never seen one quite like it so I don't know what to call it. A sabre, I suppose, as the blade was faintly curved and razor sharp on the edge and sharp rather far back on the back. But it had a point as deadly as a rapier and the curve was not enough to keep it from being used for thrust and counter quite as well as chopping away meat-axe style. The guard was a bell curved back around the knuckles into a semi-basket but cut away enough to permit full moulinet from any guard.
It balanced in the forte less than two inches from the guard, yet the blade was heavy enough to chop bone. It was the sort of sword that feels as if it were an extension of your body.
The grip was honest sharkskin, moulded to my hand. There was a motto chased onto the blade but it was so buried in curlicues that I did not take time to study it out. That girl was mine, we fitted! I returned it and buckled belt and scabbard to my bare waist, wanting the touch of it and feeling like Captain John Carter, Jeddak of Jeddaks, and the Gascon and his three friends all in one."

coupled with...

"I picked up the Tommy chopper, checked that it was empty, started stripping it. It seemed almost new, just fired enough to let the moving parts work in. A Tommy isn't much more accurate than a pitched baseball and hasn't much greater effective range. But it does have virtues - you hit a man with it, he goes down and stays down. It is short and not too heavy and has a lot of firepower for a short time. It is a bush weapon, or any other sort of close quarter work.
But I like something with a bayonet on the end, in case the party gets intimate - and I like that something to be accurate at long range in case the neighbours get unfriendly from a distance. I put it down and picked up a Springfield - Rock Island Arsenal, as I saw by its serial number, but still a Springfield. I feel the way about a Springfield that I do about a Gooney Bird; some pieces of machinery are ultimate perfection of their sort, the only possible improvement is a radical change in design.
I opened the bolt, stuck my thumbnail in the chamber, looked down the muzzle. The barrel was bright and the lands were unworn - and the muzzle had that tiny star on it; it was a match weapon!"

All that against hostile natives, evil sorcerers, shambling Lovecraftian monstrosities, fiendish plots, and more on a suicide quest through treacherous terrain on an utterly alien world... why hasn't someone filmed this?!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 06:11 pm:   

Just been reading some Joe Lansdale shorts - the Writers of the purple rage collection. Love Doll and In a Cold Dark Time are two of my favourites. Although Bubba Ho-Tep was pretty darned good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.91.114
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 06:20 pm:   

Is Heinlein another genius, Stevie, or one of the many you've mentioned before? :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 06:32 pm:   

He's rapidly turning into my favourite genre writer... rollicking good stuff!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.188.73
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2010 - 09:18 pm:   

After putting aside the rather boring potboiler I was reading, I sampled some more from Peter Straub's "American Fantastic Tales" (including "The Jolly Corner") before picking up "Thieving Fear" by the Honorable Landlord of this site. I'll likely review it for my Red Room Web page.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 01:27 pm:   

*** possible SPOILERS ***

How does he do it? The wrestling match with Igli the stinking golem somehow combines all the excitingly imagined, sweat and dirt detail of Howard with the priceless hilarity of a Mad magazine spoof!

"I looked Igli over more carefully. He resembled that scion of the man from Dundee, all chin and no forehead, and he combined the less appetizing features of those giants and ogres in The Red Fairy Book. I never liked that book much. [Note to self: must get a copy]
He was vaguely human, using the term loosely. He was a couple of feet taller than I am and outweighed me three or four hundred pounds but I am much prettier. Hair grew on him in clumps, like a discouraged lawn; and you just knew, without being told, that he had never used a man's deodorant for manly men. The knots of his muscles had knots on them and his toenails weren't trimmed.
"Star," I said, "what's the nature of the argument we have with him?"
"You must kill him, milord."
I looked back at him. "Can't we negotiate a peaceful co-existence? Mutual inspection, cultural exchange, and so forth?"
She shook her head. "He's not bright enough for that. He's here to stop us from going down into the valley - and either he dies, or we die."

What follows kinda has to be read to be believed...

How can a writer combine the absurdist humour of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' books with the nightmarish cosmic dread of Hodgson's 'The Night Land'? Somehow, Heinlein manages it and the result is already one of the most wildly imaginative and entertaining fantasies it has ever been my unmitigated pleasure to wallow in!

As further example: the mean, bemused hero is called E.C. "Easy" Gordon (the E.C. stands for Evelyn Cyril, but don't mention it or he'll tear your head off) and when asked to pick a hero's name for himself, he replied "Oh... Scar" and goes through the rest of the book being called Oscar, much to his chagrin [poignant, as he was horribly disfigured by a machete blow to the face in 'nam]. See what I mean! I suspect RAH may have been experimenting with some of those mind altering substances so popular at the time...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 02:47 pm:   

Just started a quick reread of To Kill a Mockingbird. Last read in 1984 for GCSE English
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.20
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 04:17 pm:   

Almost everyone here I know had to read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in school at some point, Weber. I didn't, don't know how I skated by.... I did see the film some time later, and am probably alone in disliking it.

Another one was CATCHER IN THE RYE, yet another one I somehow missed, but everyone else I know had to read.... When they make a movie of that, I'll watch it.

Reading at a snail's pace, a rather good book so far: ON BORROWED TIME, by Nicholas Mosley, about the year leading up to WWII.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 04:20 pm:   

I love the book personally. the film ain't too bad but the book beats it hands down.

I also once saw a stage version starring sally Webster from Coronation Street (an English soap) as Scout. That was quite good as well.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.20
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 04:30 pm:   

Whooooops! That was supposed to be Leonard Mosley!

I recently saw another movie with Gregory Peck in it, Hitchcock's THE PARADINE CASE... another courtroom drama that, to me, was uber-sub-par. I guess Peck-lawyer's just not one of my favorite film roles.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, July 23, 2010 - 06:35 pm:   

Never read 'To Kill A Mockingbird' but I adore the film, more after the second viewing having been vaguely underwhelmed the first time - expectations and all that. Watched again I got a lot more of the movie's beautifully understated nuances.

I read 'The Catcher In The Rye' for the first time earlier this year and it remains my "best new read" of 2010, so far, including the magnificent pulp extravaganza I'm currently enraptured by...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.71
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 08:41 am:   

Yep. Had to read Mockingbird at school, which put me off it of course. But Scout's a great character, in some ways a female Tom Sawyer, and I've recently felt a hankering to reread it.

It'll be better than the new Jeff Lindsay Dexter book, Dexter Does Dallas or whatever it's called, which I'm on with now. Also dipping inand out of Jeremy Dyson's The Cranes That Built the Crames.

Len Deighton's Bomber beckons as well, but I've promised myself I will develop He-Man muscles and read Under The Dome soon, which was an Xmas gift to me in hardcover.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.91.114
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 09:35 am:   

I liked 'Mockingbird - did it for A level. Certainly better the set novel we did: Jane Eyre - or Wane Drear, as it should be called.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 09:59 am:   

Mark- currently reading Under The Dome. It's a massive beast but excellent so far- King playing to his strengths and writing what is, in effect, an angry impassioned commentary on the Bush years, Iraq and post-9/11 America. (That's how I read it, anyway; it could, on the other hand, just be a book about a town that gets cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible barrier...)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 02:32 pm:   

*** SPOILERS ***

'Glory Road' continues to astonish me! Three quarters through and the quest to find the Egg of the Phoenix (think about it) has come to an end with the climactic, and fantastically exciting physical and psychological battle with the Never-Born, Eater of Souls, already behind us... I have to say that sequence also includes the best written and most thrilling swordfight I have ever read, lasting five glorious pages (our Bob was a champion swordsman in real life so he knows what he's talking about).

Anyway, now Heinlein is getting down to the real philosophical nitty gritty of what Gordon's whole experience was about. This book uses all the tropes and high octane energy of the greatest pulp fantasies of Edgar Rice Burroughs & Robert E. Howard, et al, to examine the very structure of reality and what constitutes science for some of us and magic for others - in a truly literary way. He rationalises black magic sorcery as a new kind of engineering that utilises energies we are yet unable to tap into and gives the whole world of Nevia, with its fire-breathing dragons, underwater zombies & giant rats, etc, as solid and workable a base in reality as the tommy gun he so lovingly described, and that they in their turn take as his own baffling brand of magic.

In most fantasy quests the object they seek is merely a maguffin but Heinlein is such a perfectionist he insists on telling us what the Egg actually is - in physical, nuts and bolts terms, how it works, why it was lost to the forces of evil and what its all-important function is. Meanwhile, our hero is slowly starting to twig that everything he has been told so far may be a lie and that his greatest battle, to get back home again, has yet to come... I really wish I had a kid to read this one to, hmm, apart from the sex, that is!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.91.114
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 11:04 pm:   

I'm looking . . . I've looked again . . . but . . .

You didn't use the word 'genius'.

What's up, dude? The prose not doing it for ya now? :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joelmurr (Joelmurr)
Username: Joelmurr

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.169.25.44
Posted on Sunday, July 25, 2010 - 11:41 pm:   

I also liked To Kill a Mockingbird (even though it was assigned reading in high school). I reread it later, and didn't change my opinion. The film left me cold. Gregory Peck is excellent, as usual, but the movie itself is merely workmanlike and earnest, like many (or most) film adaptations of great novels.

I just reread Fritz Leiber's "Our Lady of Darkness" (thanks to What Are You Reading thread no. 4). I first read it in my early teens and quite a bit of it went over my head. Reading it now was a revelation.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.254.173.35
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 01:57 pm:   

>>Mark- currently reading Under The Dome. It's a massive beast but excellent so far- King playing to his strengths and writing what is, in effect, an angry impassioned commentary on the Bush years, Iraq and post-9/11 America. (That's how I read it, anyway; it could, on the other hand, just be a book about a town that gets cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible barrier...)

I'm looking forward to it, SImon. Heard good thigns about it. Just building up my physiotherapy exercises in the hope I'll be strong enough to open and read the bloody thing now!

Incidentally, anyone any thoughts on the UK paperback covers? I've noticed the book's not selling well in the supermarkets. Dunno if it's cos they've gone for similar covers to the great Mandarin (I think it was) Steinbeck covers and they look too literary, or James Patterson's finally won and the only people who buy books form supermarkets need single sentence paragraphs to get to the end of a book.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 04:13 pm:   

Not long to go now <sniff> and the book has taken a really poignant turn... I'm at a loss what I could read to follow this one?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 04:24 pm:   

Joel (No. 2), 'Our Lady Of Darkness' is one of the great ones. It's a book I find haunting my mind at odd times with its weird otherwordly subtleties. I can see me having to re-read it in years to come as well. I'd put it up there with 'The Ceremonies' and the best of Ramsey Campbell ('The Influence'/'Midnight Sun'/'The Long Lost') as one of the greatest modern horror novels I've ever read.

Incidentally I'm now into the closing stages of the 'Lankhmar' collection with an extensive review and pick of my fav stories to follow... Leiber's use of humour in the genre is not unlike that of Heinlein's, only not quite so zany.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 05:31 pm:   

"I'm at a loss what I could read to follow this one?"

Go for something completely different - The Blunderer by Highsmith or The Minotaur takes a cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill.

I think the other Joel is actually a Joe with a middle initial L
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 06:35 pm:   

Haven't got a copy of 'The Blunderer' but it's high up there on my "must get" list. I was thinking of a good modern horror novel, perhaps 'Harvest Home' by Thomas Tryon...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joelmurr (Joelmurr)
Username: Joelmurr

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.169.25.44
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 09:47 pm:   

One of the many great things about "Our Lady of Darkness" is that it inspired me to read M.R. James. I realised I'd never read any of his fiction - I've no idea why!

The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories are a riot. Last year, I read the ones collected in the First Book of Lankhmar (the Fantasy Masterworks series). The Second Book is waiting in the bookshelf ...

Actually, I answer to both Joe L. and Joel. :-) ... (The latter is my given name.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Monday, July 26, 2010 - 10:22 pm:   

Never read Our Lady of Darkness but the praise it's received here was enough to send me off to order a copy. Another one for the pile.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 02:10 am:   

*** SPOILERS ***

Finished 'Glory Road'...

The final chapters are amongst the most achingly sad I have yet read from Heinlein. Gordon's return to Earth, still clutching his trusty blade - the Lady Vivamus, brings feelings of dislocation and utter uselessness and an inability to communicate the enormity of the experience he has been through, presenting the perfect allegory of many a returning Vietnam vet (again, I stress, in 1963!).

On a return to his old college:
"The campus felt smaller and the students looked so young. Reciprocal, I guess. I was coming out of the malt shop across from Administration when two Letter sweaters came in, shoving me aside. The second said, "Watch it, Dad!"
I let him live."

He ends up a sad, broken-spirited old man before his time, stacking dishes for a crust of bread while living in a grotty bedsit, memories of Nevia fading, getting all scrambled up in his head, until:

"Then I stood and looked at the Lady Vivamus.
"Dum Vivimus, Vivamus!" Whistling, I buckled her on, drew blade, felt that thrill run up my arm..."

The ending is as sublime, and oddly logical, as every other part of this wonderful book. One of the most magically entertaining and enthralling fantasies I have ever had the pleasure to read.

Time now for a bit of classic supernatural horror: 'Harvest Home' (1973) by Thomas Tryon.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.231.151
Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 01:06 pm:   

Currently leafing through The Best Horror Stories (Hamlyn 1977), the companion volume to The Best Ghost Stories. Picked it up for one whole euro. It doesn't look like it's ever been read. Some inevitable overlap - Poe, Machen, Bradbury - but most of the stories in this 751-page book I've never seen before.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 01:02 am:   

'Harvest Home' is my kind of horror novel and, so far, one of the best written and most gripping examples of my favourite theme, so popular in the early 70s i.e. 'The Wicker Man', Thriller's 'A Place To Die', 'The Events At Poroth Farm', etc...

Could this be the best Stephen King novel Stephen King never wrote? It certainly reads as good as any of his early novels imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 04:16 pm:   

Plowing through Ed Lee's Infernal series and then I have a high dose of Laymon demanding my attention.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 12:29 pm:   

Already almost half way through 'Harvest Home', a compulsive page-turner if ever there was one. I'd describe this as a fine example of literary craftsmanship that, like the works of Stanley Ellin or Ira Levin, works because it is so sublimely, relentlessly predictable and the outcome one can see coming so insidiously chilling. The fun is all in the detail and willing the hero to catch on and get him and his family the fuck out of there!!

Thomas Tryon is proving a writer of rare descriptive skill with a flair for sympathetic characterisation and nail-biting suspense, I love it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 02:09 pm:   

Just finished reading Dagon by Fred Chappell, a 1960s novel (I have a 1980s paperback copy) that offers a literary take on Lovecraftian themes. A clergyman with academic interests falls under the influence of a scuzzy white-trash family whose interests include prostitution, bootlegging and the worship of a fish-god. Madness, addiction, murder, ugly sex and tattooing ensue... but these are merely staging posts on the road to an encounter with the unknown. Beautifully written, sensual, uneasy, rich in imagery and saying more in its 180 pages than most horror novels manage in three times the length, Dagon is an example of what Lovecraftian fiction can be when it gets beyond the mindset of anaemic fanboys with telescopes. Essential reading.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.111.129.71
Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 02:28 pm:   

I have to get a copy!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, July 30, 2010 - 03:07 pm:   

One to make note of... thanks, Joel.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 91.103.168.21
Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 04:38 pm:   

Hi Stevie. Harvest Home is one of the best and most frightening horror novels I have ever read. As for the other things you mentioned, I've read "...Poroth Farm", but what is "A Place To Die"?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.250.150
Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 05:23 pm:   

Finished Ellen Datlow's Darkness with two novelettes:

Glen Hirschberg, "Dancing Men" - okay.
Elizabeth Hand, "The Erl-King" - excellent in almost every way. Whereas Barker's was film-ic in its leanness and relentlessness, Hand is the second-most film-ic writer, in this anthology at least, by her richness of vision; a vision that is, again, visually rich, film-big (intentionally? one would almost assume so), and wonderfully detailed. I've never heard of her or read anything by her before this antho, but... I suppose I should go about looking for more....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 07:37 pm:   

Patrick, 'A Place To Die' is a classic supernatural horror episode of Brian Clemens' 'Thriller' TV series, first broadcast on 26th May 1973. That was the same year 'The Wicker Man' came out, there must have been something in the air...

The plot is very similar to 'Harvest Home' with a young couple moving into a quaint English village where all the locals are just a tad too friendly, they keep finding these creepy straw dolls hidden about the place and there are strange goings on in the woods as harvest festival approaches. Great stuff!

The theme of an unwitting individual/couple/family arriving in a (usually) remote and outwardly charming community that hides a dark secret and from which they find themselves unable to escape is my very favourite in horror literature - there's something uniquely satisfying about it for me.

Compare also with H.P. Lovecraft's masterpiece 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' (1931), John Sturges' 'Bad Day At Black Rock' (1955), the novel 'The Devil's Own' (1960) by Norah Lofts, filmed by Cyril Frankel as the unfairly neglected Hammer Horror gem 'The Witches' (1966) with a script by Nigel Kneale, Ira Levin & Roman Polanski's 'Rosemary's Baby' (1967 & 68), Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs' (1971), Amando de Ossorio's 'Night Of The Sea Gulls' (1976), Jonathan Carroll's inspired debut novel 'The Land Of Laughs' (1980), T.E.D. Klein's contender for horror novel of the century 'The Ceremonies' (1984), the Ramsey Campbell short story "Merry May" (1987) from his great 'Scared Stiff' collection & his novel 'Ancient Images' (1989), The X-Files episodes 'Gender Bender' (1994), 'Arcadia' (1999) & 'Roadrunners' (2000), and countless other examples. I'd also cite Series 1 of 'The League Of Gentlemen' and the recent 'Hot Fuzz' as great comedy versions.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.179.157
Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 07:54 pm:   

I just got all the Thrillers today, thanks to a certain board member! Turns out every second ep is set on a train with a young female American tourist and a man who might or might not be a killer.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2010 - 07:59 pm:   

And how could I have forgotten Stephen King's scariest and best short story 'Children Of The Corn' (1977)... the film was shit though.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.16.9.12
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 09:49 am:   

Been reading James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series. I tried them back in the '90s but couldn't get on with them but decided to give them another go and this time round I'm enjoying the hell out of them. Tore through the first seven titles in just over a fortnight and am just taking a quick breather before plunging into number eight.

Fore those of you who haven't read any of the books Robicheaux's an ex-alcoholic Louisiana cop who writhes in Catholic guilt while his DT's conjure up conversations with dead loved ones as he tries to track down various murderers, drug dealers and rogue CIA hitmen. The books also contain lyrical descriptions of Louisiana and New Orleans, meditations on morality and redemption, reminiscences of Robicheaux's tour of duty in Vietnam and the occasional burst of violent action. Cool titles too -- Black Cherry Blues, Dixie City Jam, Cadillac Jukebox etc. Right now he's my favourite new author.

Even if I did first read him over 10 years ago.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:23 am:   

Don't forget Midnight Sun, Stevie! Or Hungry Moon!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:24 am:   

Mark Morris's Longbarrow is good, too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 03:56 pm:   

'The Hungry Moon' yeah and 'Midnight Sun' certainly isn't far off it, though the threat came more from the thing in the woods than the community.

I've heard there's also a seminal version of this theme by Richard Matheson that I haven't read and can't remember the title. Anyone know it?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 04:51 pm:   

Er, The Distributor, maybe. Which puts me in mind (as it did King) of Needful Things. :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.39
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 05:17 pm:   

I think "The Distributor" is the polar opposite of Stevie's examples, right?... But a disturbing story, nevertheless, especially for its emotionless, clinical/journalistic story style.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 06:00 pm:   

I think it's a short story about someone, maybe a couple, arriving in a remote town in the backwoods and uncovering something horrific. I've been told it bears a striking resemblance to 'Children Of The Corn'. One I would dearly love to read.

Another example I really shouldn't have forgotten is Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' of course!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 07:24 pm:   

SPOILER!

Hold on, there's a story in Shock 1 about a couple who get pulled over by the cops and the guy gets taken to a house in which there are local residents' portraits on the walls . . . each with fangs. Then the room in which the guy has been locked gets hotter . . . and hotter. It's an oven, and he's lunch.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 07:25 pm:   

One of my favourite RM tales is Big Surprise. Loved that one.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 10:58 pm:   

And after all those examples, I'm finding 'Harvest Home', at two thirds through, threatening 'The Ceremonies' as the best novel version I've read to date - completely spellbinding and increasingly scary, real scalp-prickling stuff. Why isn't Thomas Tryon more feted in horror circles? I have got to get a copy of 'The Other' after this!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.209.220.27
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:10 pm:   

Isn't the Matheson story 'The Children of Noah'?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:29 pm:   

Steve- that's the one!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 - 11:30 pm:   

Thanks, Steve, that's the one! As soon as you said the title I knew that was it. Must get a copy.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.23.27.152
Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 08:04 am:   

What do you mean, 'thanks Steve'? I fucking identified it!! That Bacon steaming in and stealing all the glory again!! :-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.179.157
Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 09:03 am:   

I think Thomas Tryon is ok. I loved Harvest Home when I read it in the seventies but The Other just grated on me recently for some reason (I think it might have been because I'd been reading a lot of Capote at the time, who does this sort of thing so effortlessly and invisibly. I really wish someone else here read Capote as well!).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.179.157
Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 09:06 am:   

And can i say that Capote is a superb horror writer. It's not out-and-out horror, but it has the eerie other-world atmosphere so many horror writers strive for and we even think accomplish, till we stumble on someone like Capote and find we were wrong.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 12:53 pm:   

Gary, so that story about the fanged people is 'The Children Of Noah'?

Tony, I've read one Capote horror/ghost story and it is a perfectly crafted mini-masterpiece of startling originality; 'Miriam' (1944) in the 6th Fontana Horror Book. I also remember watching a near flawless adaptation of it as part of the old 'Twilight Zone'. A genuinely creepy gem.

I also have 'In Cold Blood' in my TBR pile and consider Richard Brooks' enthralling film version to be one of the key movies of the 60s (along with 'Bonnie And Clyde', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'The Wild Bunch', etc) that pointed the way to the no-holds-barred adult cinema epics of the 70s.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.170.179.157
Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2010 - 09:06 pm:   

Capote was unread by me till last year. It felt like a sun coming out, a wonderful discovery after having given up thinking I'd discover someone who could make me forget I was reading ever again.
(sorry - what a bumpy sentence!)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.12.32
Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2010 - 01:50 am:   

Tony, I had that with Stanley Ellin, recently, and somewhat with Woolrich (though I've since read a clunker, "After-Dinner Story"), so I'd like to discover it with Capote. Certain authors just strike someone at some point in their reading lives, maybe there's no adequate explaining why, exactly. I've only ever read Capote's ss "A Tree of Night," an excellent quiet piece of horror, I'd say, and... must go back for more, surely....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2010 - 03:33 pm:   

Fractured by Karin Slaughter. If that's her real name it's incredibly appropriate. She writes some of the better forensic crime novels out there and this one so far is one of her best. the usual doom and gloom atmosphere is punctuated by some refreshingly grisly humour which makes the characters more alive and likable.

Reccommended.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.188.73
Posted on Thursday, August 05, 2010 - 11:03 pm:   

No sooner than I put down "Operation Mincemeat" than I picked up "The Power of Ideas" by Isaiah Berlin, which I'd been nibbling through off and on for a couple of years.

And no sooner than I closed the cover on that one than I picked up P.D. James's "Talking About Detective Fiction," which I swallowed in two gulps (tasty, but the paper cuts on my tongue were something else. The band aids should come off soon).

Now I'm on to "More Information Than You Require" by American Humor Practitioner (and Minor TV Personality) John Hodgman, while still nibbling away at "Despair" by Vladimir Nabokov.

Finally, I'm more than halfway through Ramsey's "Thieving Fear." I'm liking it very very much and will have more to say about it later.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, August 06, 2010 - 11:40 am:   

'Harvest Home' has me by the short and curlies! The adrenaline surge of suspense in the final quarter is something to experience.

A horror masterpiece - no arguments!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, August 06, 2010 - 11:57 am:   

I must also say that the Widow Fortune is the most memorable horror villain I have encountered since Rosie in 'The Ceremonies'.

Her dark presence dominates every page of this book, even in the long passages she does not appear, like Dracula in Stoker's masterwork. Surely that is the mark of any great writer, to create characters who appear able to step off the page. I remember Bette Davis scaring me stiff in the role as a child (1978 TV version) and would love to see a serious cinema adaptation of this book attempted with someone like Anjelica Huston reprising the role. Twould be great...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, August 09, 2010 - 04:09 pm:   

Into the final chapters and the sense of impending doom is palpable. Hair-raising stuff!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.31.8.83
Posted on Monday, August 09, 2010 - 04:17 pm:   

I've never read this, to my shame.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 124.181.74.186
Posted on Monday, August 09, 2010 - 11:58 pm:   

Finished 'Banquet for the Damned' last night. Brilliant! Highly recommended. A perfect combination of atmosphere and out & out horror.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.121.214.11
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 04:24 pm:   

I'm reading Wolf hall which is good so far...

Also reading the play Sylvia's wedding by Jimmy Chinn, preparing for my next foray into the realms of live theatre in early November at Farnworth Little theatre.

Tickets very reasonably priced.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.229.30
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 05:31 pm:   

Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977). I casually picked this up... read the part on the number 23... read the part on the Puck-ish "Mescalito"... read more... and so find myself hopelessly drawn into this odd thing now....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 05:37 pm:   

RAW is brilliant and very funny!

Once you get sucked into his mad (but knowing) conspiracy mongering there is no going back...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 06:45 pm:   

Reread Dark Hallow last week.
Finished a couple Ed Lee collections over the weekend.
Started Dead Lines by Skipp and Spector.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 89.240.140.137
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 07:46 pm:   

Rereading 'The Wasp Factory' and just about to start 'I Am Legend'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 91.103.168.21
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 08:02 pm:   

Just finishing The Solitude of Prime Numbers. It has been my favourite read of the year along with M J Hyland's This Is How.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.14.48.5
Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 09:05 pm:   

Craig, Cosmic Trigger was the book that got me into Robert Anton Wilson. Enjoy.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.229.55
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 12:27 am:   

It's blowing my mind, every page... I keep wondering... is all this real?... I mean, is this RAW writing what really happened to him, recording real events through his own perception?... or is he fabricating even the supposed autobiographical data? Are the "facts" in here correct? How much of this is sci-fi, how much non-fiction?...

Did anyone see THE NUMBER 23, with Jim Carrey? I didn't, but liked the script, and kind of want to now, after reading some of this. It must have been inspired by this book, right?...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 12:33 am:   

'City Of Blok' by Simon Louvish- possibly my favourite writer- sequel to 'The Therapy Of Avram Blok' and precursor to 'The Last Trump Of Avram Blok'. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant- angry, funny, ingenious heartfelt. A stew of black and bawdy humour, political and philosophical allusions, social commentary, the magic realist and the surreal. Reads like an unholy hybrid of Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Swift, with just a smidge of Harlan Ellison thrown in. All this and hugely funny too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.11.92.186
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 10:07 am:   

Craig, yeah, it does mess with your head a bit doesn't it? I went into it a sceptic -- I was only reading it as research for a story idea -- but after reading the quote in the foreword about believing nothing and accepting everything I decided I would try to read the book in that spirit. It was a real headtrip, like being a kid again, suddenly believing in magic and aliens and stuff, the world suddenly ripe with possibilities. Even after the novelty wore off and I returned to my former scepticism I found myself with an interest in science, psychology and magic which I hadn't previously possessed. So, although I don't agree with all his ideas, some of which are quite frankly mental, I do owe him for opening up my "reality tunnel."

Simon, do you still read Mark Timlin? I see he has a new Nick Sharman novel out.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 10:20 am:   

Hi Stu- not read Timlin for a while. The last really good Sharman novel was Paint It Black back in 1996- after that the novels read like a stale, tired rehash. His heart didn't seem in it anymore. Maybe I should have another look to see if he's got his mojo back.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.11.92.186
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 10:27 am:   

He's also got a new non-fiction book about TV cop shows.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 06:57 pm:   

*** possible SPOILERS ***

Finished 'Harvest Home' - what a visceral shock to the system that ending delivers! Ned's discovery of "what no man may know nor woman tell" is truly harrowing, that scene has seared itself into my brain, but Tryon tops even it in the final chapter with one of the most subtly chilling codas in horror fiction. A remarkable work that leaves powerful resonances in the mind and would make for a great re-read to spot all the missed clues. This is the horror of every man's worst nightmare made real and reminded me, in no small measure, of Fritz Leiber's other secrets-of-the-fairer-sex horror classic 'Conjure Wife'. Read this and you'll never look at your wife or girlfriend or daughter in quite the same way again, ulp...

Now for a chapter by chapter duel between 'Red Harvest' (1929) & 'The Man Within' (1929) - two debut crime novels from either side of the Atlantic by Dashiell Hammett in the red corner and Graham Greene in the, erm, green corner.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.4.252
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 07:21 pm:   

It was a real headtrip, like being a kid again, suddenly believing in magic and aliens and stuff, the world suddenly ripe with possibilities.

That's a great way of putting it Stu, because that's exactly how I feel reading this! I love how he refers to himself as "The Skeptic," or "The Materialist," or "The Atheist," and so on... those are all aspects of me, the reader, and it's an utterly succinct way of at all times saying: "Okay, on this side all the facts against what I'm going through, but on the other hand...." Instead of putting a page of conflicting data, he'll just have "The Materialist," say. On an aesthetic level, that's a brilliant technique, it keeps the headlong action/momentum going, without ever needing to slow down....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 07:25 pm:   

You've been bitten, Craig, there's no going back now so enjoy the trip, I envy you...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 01:39 am:   

Hammett's opening paragraph as a novelist (aged 35):

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called a shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better."

& Greene's opening paragraph as a novelist (aged 25):

"He came over the top of the down as the last light failed and could almost have cried with relief at sight of the wood below. He longed to fling himself down on the short stubbly grass and stare at it, the dark comforting shadow which he had hardly hoped to see. Thus only could he cure the stitch in his side, which grew and grew with the jolt, jolt of his stumble down hill. The absence of the cold wind from the sea that had buffeted him for the last half hour seemed like a puff of warm air on his face, as he dropped below the level of the sky. As though the wood were a door swinging on a great hinge, a shadow moved up towards him and the grass under his feet changed from gold to green, to purple and last to a dull grey. Then night came."

Could you have two any more different prose styles, Hammett cocky and conversational, Greene falling over himself in his eagerness to create a sense of pursuit and danger from the start. 'Red Harvest' is narrated from the point of view of a hard-nosed and dedicated detective investigating murder and civic corruption with a firm sense of duty, he's not particularly likeable but admirable in his steadfastness. 'The Man Within' centres on a craven criminal on the run from his former cohorts following a betrayal that led to one of their deaths, he is portrayed honestly without any attempt to make him sympathetic, rather the reverse in fact. I'm gonna enjoy this...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 121.214.129.83
Posted on Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 08:22 am:   

I'm waiting for 'The Well', by Jack Cady, to arrive, so I've started a couple of short story collections - 'Just Behind You', by Ramsey and 'Pelican Cay & Other Disquieting Tales', by David Case.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.2.69.232
Posted on Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 09:48 am:   

Just read the Landlord's The Doll Who Ate His Mother and The Parasite. Only read Ramsey's short fiction up until now so I was curious to see how his novels would compare. Doll was interesting for the ambiguity of the supernatural element and the fact that the whole thing read more like a crime novel, with the intrepid gang of amateur sleuths out to catch the killer. Parasite meanwhile was interesting in the way the inventive prose was at odds with the commercial plotting. And after the multiple viewpoints in Doll it was interesting to compare the use of a single POV in Parasite. Also enjoyed the New Age/occult elements, with all the references to the Golden Dawn (RAW's influence on my interests showing through again). I thought the story's pacing was a bit off but after reading the afterword it turned out that Ramsey wrote the book at his agent's prompting in order to have a bestseller and so ignored a lot of his natural instincts as a writer then made a lot of cuts to try and salvage the story. Consequently he isn't happy with the way the novel turned out. Actually, he was more critical of it than I was.

Anyway, I enjoyed both books enough that I want to read some more of his novels.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 12, 2010 - 11:43 am:   

Stu, I found 'To Wake The Dead' (The Parasite) almost unbearably intense and identified completely with that poor hapless heroine. Yes, the prose and pacing has its flaws, like all young writers, but they are charming flaws in their eagerness to communicate with the reader the sheer excitement of creation. I don't think Ramsey was ever more in-your-face terrifying than in his first five or six novels - they make up for their lack of subtlety with a pure entertainment value (if you can call it that) that makes me inordinately fond of them.

I'm finding the same quality in the first few chapters of Graham Greene's 'The Man Within' - call it youthful exuberance. Meanwhile 'Red Harvest' is by far the more mature novel, with Hammett displaying a control of his technique so fresh it is invigorating.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.69.238
Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 10:15 am:   

Punisher War Zone: The Resurrection of Ma Gnucci. Written by Garth Ennis. Illustrated by Steve Dillon. Ennis ditches the probing character study and social commentary of his Punisher MAX run to return to the black humour and silliness of the Marvel knights version. Paraplegic mob boss Ma Gnucci has risen from the grave to wreak revenge upon the Punisher. Or has she? Meanwhile a vigilante also plans revenge on the 'Nam veteran turned one man army. Plus, lesbian cop Molly von Richthofen struggles to balance her relationship with her bisexual lover with her assignment to the NYPD's Punisher Task Force. Of course all these threads tie up to be resolved in a huge gunbattle. Slick but shallow fun with the Punisher's merciless violence at odds with his occasional displays of humour and sentimentality.

Green Arrow/Black Canary: A League of their Own. Written by Judd Winick. Illustrated by Mike Norton. I quite enjoyed what I'd read of Wincik's early run on Green Arrow but this has too many characters and too much exposition for the story to take hold (to be fair it's the second half of a story and I haven't read the first half). Winick seems to be better when working with a smaller cast so he can get his teeth into the characterisation and fire off his one-liners. Disappointing.

Brave and the Bold Vol 1: Lords of Luck and Vol 2: The Book of Destiny. Written by Mark Waid. Illustrated by George Perez. This revamp of Brave and the Bold alters the concept so that instead of Batman teaming up with a different co-star each month pretty much any combination of DC heroes can appear in any given instalment. And as the story revolves around a mystical artifact that keeps zipping across time and space you get superhero mash-ups such as The Blackhawks/The Boy Commandos in WWII, Superman/Silent Knight in mediaeval England and Green Lantern/Adam Strange/Supergirl in outer space. Waid does his best to find the emotional heart of each team-up but cramming in so many different characters and locations leaves the story feeling both overcrowded and underdeveloped. Perez's art doesn't help -- although nice to look at the amount of panels he squeezes into each page doesn't always leave the scenes enough room to breathe. I can't help feeling that either some of the bit-part players should have been ditched or else extra pages added to the story. Not a bad comic but it could've been better.

Batman: International. Written by Alan Grant and Mark Waid. Illustrated by various artists. Three Batman stories originally published separately but collected together as they all feature Bats in foreign locales. Grant's Edinburgh-based tale is a story of revenge revolving around Scots immigrating to America and the ancient secrets of the Knights Templar. Waid's story sees Batman pursuing Killer Croc to Barcelona as the mutated villain attempts to fulfil an ancient legend. Grant's second tale features flashbacks to Bruce Wayne seeking to learn Taoist fortune-telling in China and the bearing this has on Batman's current case. (Quite why a sceptic like Batman would put stock in fortune-telling is never explained.) All the stories are workmanlike with any interest arising from their emphasis on history and legend rather than brilliant storytelling.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 12:26 pm:   

Currently reading "Blonde On A Stick", by Conrad Williams.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.45.171
Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 02:59 pm:   

Currently reading Mark West's story in "Where The Heart Is"!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gcw (Gcw)
Username: Gcw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.238.131
Posted on Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 06:27 pm:   

Struggling to read at the mo...Too much buzzing around in my head. Biographies seem to work though.

gcw
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 12:24 am:   

Hope you're enjoying it, Mick!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.45.171
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 01:01 am:   

I did, Mark - an excellent story in an excellent collection.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 07:52 pm:   

Cheers, Mick, thanks for that!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 08:01 pm:   

Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny. Not horror, of course, but it deservedly won a Pulitzer.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts)
Username: Tom_alaerts

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 84.197.166.202
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 10:45 pm:   

Roughly 1/3 into the first two volumes (published otgether) of Haruki Murakami's latest: 1Q84.
Very good, his best one perhaps so far even if some passages could be a bit shorter.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.22.75.99
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 11:00 pm:   

Reading a pike attack novel called "Devour" and Conrad's "Blonde on a Stick".
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.93.9
Posted on Monday, August 16, 2010 - 11:30 pm:   

>>Reading a pike attack novel called "Devour" and Conrad's "Blonde on a Stick"<<

I remember reading something years and years ago about a man-eating pike on a rampage but I'm fairly sure it wasn't called 'Devour' which leads me to conclude that there must be an entire sub-genre of killer Pike fiction that I have yet to discover!

"Bet your life I'll meet a pike who'll wolf me down for tea tonight."

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 07:45 am:   

Degsy- could it be Cliff Twemlow's imaginatively-titled 'The Pike' you';re thinking of?

Or, on a lighter note, you could have a listen to this:

http://www.darksmile.co.uk/Mp3/MapandSteads/2%20-%20Map%20&%20Steads%20and%20The %20Irwell%20Pike.mp3

Who on earth wrote that rubbish? Oh, hang on...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.93.9
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 09:11 am:   

Aha! Just gooogled a cover of Twemlow's 'The Pike' and you're spot-on Simon, that's the one I remember.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 03:42 pm:   

Flying through 'Red Harvest' & 'The Man Within' now and finding both books thoroughly gripping character studies of polar opposites: Hammett's frighteningly indomitable force of justice, relishing bringing the bad guys to book & Greene's morally bankrupt, snivelling wretch, digging an ever deeper hole for himself as he squirms to avoid retribution (spiritual as much as physical). Both books are best read as basic templates for all that was to follow in 20th Century crime fiction - driven by natural storytelling flair and a knack for potently primal characterisation, though somewhat rough-edged and simplistic compared to the later works of both writers.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 04:17 pm:   

The experience of reading these together is doing funny things to my head: I keep seeing the Continental Op closing in on poor old Andrews - like Bogie confronting Peter Lorre lol.

Brownie points to Greene for turning genre stereotypes on their head: the token homosexual character (Mr Farnes) is an incorruptible church-going man of the law here, while the ruby-lipped femme fatale is the bored prosecutor's woman rather than the gangster's moll. Her taunting seduction of Andrews is powerful stuff! Greene's writing is inferior to Hammett's in this one but his themes are writ far larger.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 08:52 pm:   

Funny thing is, yesterday I was in my spare bedroom going through my bookshelves and picked up "Farenheit 451" by Bradbury and now the video has become Viral!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.93.9
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 08:56 pm:   

Nice one Simon! Just listened to 'Map & Steads and the Irwell Pike' and me sides are sore.

Random quote:

"That bloody fish, it swallowed an XR-2! It has two chavs inside..., and it was tuned to Galaxy!"

So I was right. There is an entire sub-genre of killer Pikes that I have yet to discover! (I'm sure sometime in the distant past someone out there must have brought out 'The Angling Times Book Of Fishy Horror' or suchlikes, with the byline: 'When Roach go BAD'.)

Incidentally, the most horrifying fishy story is, in fact, not fictional at all (see below).

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2551/can-the-candir-fish-swim-upstream- into-your-urethra

>>CRINGE!<<
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.209.76
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 09:20 pm:   

I am currently reading Simon Raven's 'Remember Your Grammar & Other Haunted Tales' to Lady P at bedtime. It's engagingly written and deliciously debauched and I think I'll tackle 'Doctors Wear Scarlet' (I know I do) next.

When she's asleep I'm reading Tenebrous Tales by Christopher Barker.

Have you finished it yet, Ramsey?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 10:10 pm:   

Between the day job, proofing and editing, and writing a new novel, I'm manging to slip in a few pages of "Remember You're a One-Ball" by Quentin S. Crisp. And it's fabulous.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.122.209.76
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 10:24 pm:   

Ah! We've got Quentin's All Gods Angels Beware from Ex Occidente and Kate liked what she's read of him in there. I liked his Tartarus 'Morbid Tales'
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.93.9
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 10:58 pm:   

>>Ah! We've got Quentin's All Gods Angels Beware from Ex Occidente and Kate liked what she's read of him in there. I liked his Tartarus 'Morbid Tales'<<

I thought about ordering this. But sadly, my copy of 'The Man who Collected Machen' from Ex Occidente never arrived from the publisher (a quick google shows that I'm not alone).

And to compound things further, Crisp's 'Morbid Tales' can't be had for love or money now it's out of print. But like Zed, I too am currently consoling myself with his 'Remember you're a One-Ball!' from Chomu Press.

'Consoling' is probably the wrong word to describe a book that is as dark and relentless as 'The Harm' by Zed (another recent purchase). I can see why Crisp had trouble getting this into print!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 11:34 pm:   

Quentin's a real talebt; technically speaking, he's just about the best writer in the indy press.

Hey, Degsy - I hope you liked The Harm (enjoyed is probably the wrong word).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - 11:40 pm:   

talent, even...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.93.9
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 12:52 am:   

I've really enjoyed all the stuff by Crisp that I've managed to get hold of over the years - there's something about his pared-down aesthetic and his laconic prose style that really does it for me. My real frustration is that all of his recent collections have been limited editions and hence mostly out of my price range.

'The Harm' was strong stuff Zed, and it took me to all sorts of uncomfortable places.

I'm still trying to piece together my feelings for the various characters...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 12:57 am:   

That's music to my ears, sir.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.4.55
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 07:07 am:   

Found online (easy to do - takes 2 seconds of a google search) the original spec script for the movie SALT, back when it was called EDWIN A. SALT, and the lead protag was male instead of female, as it became with Angelina Jolie starring. But wow - what a nifty little power-packed script! If you like total mind-f*ck movies, this one action-packed, that keep you back and forth guessing until the very end... I'm hoping, when I finally see it, they did a good job on this, and the movie stands up....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 12:05 pm:   

I'm beginning to wonder if Hammett's 'Red Harvest' (ever filmed anyone?) wasn't the inspiration behind 'Yojimbo'/'A Fistful Of Dollars'? The parallels are unmistakeable.

A lone resourceful hero with a strong sense of honour arrives in a small town riven by corruption and organised crime, with various rival groups vying for power. He then sets about craftily ingratiating himself with the various factions and ruthlessly playing one side off against the other in his grim determination to bring them all down and return the town to the hands of decent god-fearing people. Bogart would have been a natural to play the role but perhaps the Continental Op's unscrupulous methods were thought unsuitable for popular cinematic entertainment in the 30s/40s? Although a lawman he deems the criminals unworthy of honourable treatment and uses every nefarious trick in the book to wreak "justice" on them - I'm finding the character very much an anti-hero and genuinely menacing in his implacable ruthlessness.

So could Kurosawa have been influenced by Hammett? I don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.18.206.172
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 09:06 pm:   

As far as I know the influence goes full circle from Red Harvest (gangsters) to Yojimbo (samurai) to Fistful of Dollars (cowboys) to Last Man Standing (gangsters).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.176.19
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 09:34 pm:   

I'm reading Tony Richards' collection Passport to Purgatory, a Gray Friar Press title from 2008. Absolutely superb. Horror, crime and weird SF. Ghosts, nightmares, murder, jazz, the shadows of the world's cities. Beautifully controlled and weighted. Not an excess syllable. Let's hope Richards' current success with novels leads a mass-market publisher to do a big collection of his short stories. Meanwhile, this book demands your attention.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 09:44 pm:   

His stories in the Fontana Ghost Books really stood out from the other "new" authors Chetwynd-Hayes selected (apart from Ramsey, of course). I was particularly impressed with 'Our Lady Of The Shadows', which made Paris a truly frightening place to be wandering alone in...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 10:18 pm:   

I thought the first Tony Richards story I'd read was 'Going Back' in TTA when I reviewed it a few years ago. Then I bought the collection and realised I'd actually been reading Tony's stuff for years, in anthologies by Mary Danby and Richard Davis among others. But for some reason, I always seemed to think they were by Richard Matheson (or in one case, John Wyndham!) Luckily Tony was very flattered when I told him this... He's a superb writer and one of those who shows you what it's all about. I love that deceptively simple style of writing where it all looks so obvious, so natural, so straightforward- it's not until afterwards that you realise what an incredibly high level of both art and craft has been employed.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 10:22 pm:   

Joel - I'm currently reading Passport to Purgatory, too - started it last week, at the back end of my holiday. Top-notch, isn't it? Tony's a wonderful writer.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.139.117.246
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 01:28 am:   

I held 'Carrion Comfort' by Dan Simmons in my hands today. Is this as good as the blurb says? I haven't read any of his output at all ...yet! I've a niggling feeling i'm missing out.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 24.254.201.25
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 03:05 am:   

You know, Carrion Comfort has been recommended to me by several people. I may now have to check it out.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.18.198.121
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 10:25 am:   

Justice League of America: That was Now, This is Then. Written by Roger Stern. Illustrated by John Byre and Mark Farmer. An immensely powerful alien named Titus arrives on Earth claiming to be a god and challenging the deities from the world's religions to fight him. When no gods accept his challenge it is up to the Justice League to stop him. But can mere mortals defy a being with the power of a god? And why does Titus claim to know the Justice League when no one has any memory of him? The story cuts between the present day and a mission by a previous incarnation of the League as the truth is revealed. Stern delivers non-stop thrills with only the briefest of moments for quiet reflection, this is very much a case of showing character through action. As such there are no real surprises; the villain is villainous and the heroes are heroic, albeit with distinguishing traits -- Superman is nobility personified, Green Arrow cocky and impetuous, The Atom wisecracking but pragmatic. The dialogue feels a little clunky in places but behind the awkward one-liners and the super-powered fisticuffs Stern works in themes of religious tolerance, the abuse of power and the nature of faith and prayer. If you really want to start reading stuff into it he even touches on the varieties of godhood -- monotheism, polytheism and pantheism. Not bad for a story which is just an extended punch-up.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 10:33 am:   

Sean and Skip- Simmons is damn good. Try his collection 'Prayers To Broken Stones'- it's got some great stories, including the novella 'Carrion Comfort', which was the basis of the novel.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 10:39 am:   

I've tried to read the novel Carrion Comfort three times, and never finished it. The beginning is excellent, but it gets bogged down about half way through, IMHO. The original novella is far superior - superb, in fact.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 10:40 am:   

Read Simmons' Song of Kali instead: one of the best horror novels ever written. Hollow Man is great, too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.200.131
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 10:55 am:   

I agree, Song of Kali is a must read.

I have only dipped into Passport to Purgatory, but I've liked what I've read so far.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:24 am:   

Stu, I was afraid someone would mention 'Last Man Standing' - a film so bad it defies belief imo! All cod-style and no substance whatsoever - Willis has never been more irritating. Sadly this was the movie that convinced me Walter Hill was all washed up as a director.

I've just checked Wiki and see I wasn't the only person to notice the similarities between 'Red Harvest' & 'Yojimbo'. Also RH was filmed, unfaithfully, as 'Roadhouse Nights' in 1930 with Jimmy bloody Durante, of all people!! They also mention 'Miller's Crossing' as being influenced by the novel but I think that's stretching a point.

I see that Greene's 'The Man Within' was also filmed, routinely in 1947, with Richard Attenborough as Andrews & Michael Redgrave his crimelord nemesis Carlyon. Is there any Greene novel that hasn't been filmed?!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.18.198.121
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:29 am:   

>>Stu, I was afraid someone would mention 'Last Man Standing' - a film so bad it defies belief imo!

Sorry for mentioning such an awful film but you did open the door. Now console yourself by watching 48 Hours.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:32 am:   

I'd rather take some 'Southern Comfort'...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.18.198.121
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:42 am:   

Did Powers Boothe's film career totally dry up after Walter Hill pretty much stopped directing films?

Oh, wait -- he was in Rapid Fire with Brandon Lee and Sin City with Bruce Willis.

(Hmm, mentioning Walter Hill makes me want to watch Trespass again. Not seen it for years.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.68
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 12:26 pm:   

"They also mention 'Miller's Crossing' as being influenced by the novel but I think that's stretching a point."

I think so too! It's very much an unofficial version of The Glass Key (though if anything the Stuart Heisler version is even more uncompromising).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 04:19 pm:   

Haven't yet read 'The Glass Key', Ramsey, but recently acquired a copy and will do so after 'The Dain Curse'. Is it possible to get a definitive collection of Dashiell Hammett's short stories, or is that a stupid question?

Just finished 'The Man Within' at lunchtime. Greene betrays his immaturity with a stupendously melodramatic finale, but, despite myself, I still felt a moistness around the eyes at how things turned out.

This exchange, between the wretch seeking redemption and the woman he has doomed by his cowardice, stood out for me:

"'Go on talking to me. While I hear you all this chaos,' he put his hand to his head, 'is smoothed out.' He looked up at her suspiciously, expecting her laughter.
Elizabeth asked with a small puzzled frown, 'What do you mean by chaos?'
'It is as though,' Andrews said slowly, 'there were about six different people inside me. They all urge different things. I don't know which is myself.'
'The one who left the knife and the one who stays here now,' she said.
'But then, what of the others?'
'The devil,' she answered.
He laughed. 'How old fashioned you are.'"

Even a genius has to start somewhere...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.45.171
Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:58 pm:   

Finished "Where The Heart Is" and thought it was a superb collection - well done everyone involved!
Now about to start Mark West's "In The Rain With The Dead", which by rights I shouldn't be reading for several years yet (Mark sent it to me last year) as there're loads of books I got before that one, but I leapfrogged it up my tbr pile as I thought it would be a bit embarassing to meet up with Mark at FCon and still not have read it!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, August 20, 2010 - 01:00 pm:   

Soon be finished the quite brilliant and relentlessly brutal 'Red Harvest' and in a bit of a quandary what to read next... it's between 'The One Safe Place' (1995) by Ramsey Campbell, 'The Dreaming Jewels' (1950) by Theodore Sturgeon or to get stuck into the final three volumes of the Foundation Saga with 'Foundation And Earth' (1986) by Isaac Asimov. Maybe I'll just roll some dice.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 62.254.173.35
Posted on Friday, August 20, 2010 - 03:52 pm:   

THE HUMBLING by Philip Roth. Alas, it’s an old man writing out a dry sex fantasy about screwing a lesbian and it all going wrong. At least it’s short.

NEED TO KNOW by Timothy Good. Good collects an enormous number of pilot, military, and intelligence community testaments relating to the actuality of strange things flying about our skies. It’s a bit dry, and any potential awe gets bludgeoned to death by his matter-of-fact account, after account, after account. Interesting. Many governments have testified to the reality of UFOs, it seems.

THE MAGDALEN MARTYRS by Ken Bruen. An Irish noir unrelenting pulp bashabout. Fun when it works, a bit not fun when it doesn’t.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.171.253.12
Posted on Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 03:04 pm:   

Cheers, Mick . Hope you like it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.104.135.73
Posted on Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 03:44 pm:   

Going to read INDIGO by Graham Joyce. The sun is shining....I've the house to myself so I'm going to sit in the garden with a glass of wine. Peace.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 02:15 pm:   

As it's Ray Bradbury's birthday I've decided on a long overdue (by about 30 years) re-read of 'Dandelion Wine'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, August 23, 2010 - 12:23 am:   

'Dandelion Wine' is the very definition of the sublime, and I am struck, more forcibly than ever, how profound an influence Bradbury's writing had on the homespun Americana of Stephen King's fiction - only with all the artistry put into the creation of a mystical otherworldly atmosphere, rather than straight narrative and overwhelming attention to detail.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

Finished 'Red Harvest' and can't for the life of me understand why this textbook perfect crime thriller has never officially been filmed. It certainly transformed the art of thriller writing like no work before or since and had a profound influence on film noir and macho action cinema in general.

Hammett's knack for cinematically descriptive detail and the authentic dialogue of the streets, the labyrinthine twists and turns of the plot, the searing shootouts and action sequences, the casual blood-soaked brutality that permeates every page and swaggering charisma of his hard-boiled characters must have sent shockwaves through the literary world of the 1930s. The last chapters take an unexpected turn that had me flipping the pages with suspense and seeing the narrator in a completely different light - one mean bastard, and then some. Often imitated, never bettered - a real belter of a crime novel that has lost none of its power to grip.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.250
Posted on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - 08:07 pm:   

I just picked up "Invitation to a Beheading" by Nabokov and "The God Patent" by Ransom Stephens, one of the first of the major "e-novels" to be published last year. Quite promising so far.

Stevie: The story of why "Red Harvest" has never been adapted directly for the movies is a long, mysterious one. Most of it seems to center around who owns the film rights. One version I heard from Hammett's grandaughter is that producer Alberto Grimaldi ("The Good, the Bad & the Ugly" et al) claims he bought the rights from Hammett years ago and won't let anyone even get a fingertip on it without paying a huge fee.

Another version of this story can be found here: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/02/28/hammett

Until someone somewhere gets it together, we'll have to be satisfied with Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", Leone's a "A Fistful of Dollars' and Walter Hill's mediocre "Last Man Standing", all three indirect adaptations of "Red Harvest." The first two are definitely worth anyone's time. There's also "Miller's Crossing" by the Coen Brothers, a splicing of both "Red Harvest" and "The Glass Key" and equal to "The Maltese Falcon" in capturing Hammett's spirit.

Hope that enlightens.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 11:44 am:   

Thanks, Thomas. That does explain the mystery.

I knew nothing about the plot of 'Red Harvest' before reading it and, being an avid movie buff, was struck by the similarities (mostly in the first half) with 'Yojimbo' & 'A Fistful Of Dollars'. They got the double cross elements and casual violence just right but what they lacked, as unofficial adaptations, was the sense of mystery in the novel and the brilliantly paranoid "did he or didn't he" element of the final chapters. Of all the classic novels I've read this is the one that most cries out for a faithful cinema adaptation - the script would virtually write itself and I could think of no one better than the Coen Bros to bring it to life. We can live and hope...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 04:44 pm:   

What a lovely book 'Dandelion Wine' is... half-way through and I've found myself filling up with conflicting emotions at several passages - not knowing whether to smile or cry. I can see how this kind of sentimental fantasy might not be everyone's cup of tea but for me it's absolutely gorgeous. Bittersweet and mysterious with a perfectly judged undercurrent of subtle menace. I can think of no other writer of weird fiction who can perform such a fine conjuring trick on the reader. A book to treasure like none other.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 213.81.123.238
Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010 - 04:51 pm:   

Been reading some James Sallis.

Cypress Grove and Cripple Creek are about a city detective turned small town deputy. The novels take all the hardboiled cliches -- troubled yet compassionate detective with ridiculously impressive qualifications and life experiences (psychotherapist, former convict and ex-special forces soldier) who is forced out of retirement and uncovers murder and intrigue -- then shoves the tired tropes into the background while the hero concentrates on telling anecdotes about his past and how he is settling into the small town.

Also read Drive. A stunt driver turned getaway driver is double-crossed while working his latest heist and has to stay one step ahead of the crooks who want him dead. All while the narrative keeps flip-flopping between the present day and the events that led to him becoming a wheelman.

Also reread Sallis's The Long-Legged Fly about New Orleans PI Lew Griffin. Griffin works various missing persons cases over the course of four decades while falling in love, committing murder, being hassled by cops for being black and hassled by activists wanting him to aid the civil rights movement. In fact back in the '90s when I first read this I remember seeing copies in Forbidden Planet stocked under 'Black Fiction' despite Sallis actually being white.

All the novels contain sparse prose with a poetic streak accompanied by philosophical musings and the occasional wisecrack. Good fun.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.24.31.17
Posted on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 05:29 pm:   

Punisher Max: Six Hours to Kill. Written by Duane Swierczynski. Illustrated by Michel LaCombe. This is the first story I've read in Marvel's 'mature readers' version of The Punisher since Garth Ennis left the title. Unfortunately Ennis's depiction of The Punisher's mental scarring and the mirroring of his one man war on crime with the futility of the conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan has been abandoned in favour of sex, violence and gimmicky high concepts. So in Six Hours to Kill the Punisher is injected with a slow-acting poison and will only be given the antidote if he uses his remaining hours of life to kill a crooked local politician. The writing and art are functional, with the odd burst of creativity, but the whole thing feels soulless -- just cram in as much cynicism, gore and gratuitous nudity as possible, that'll keep the fanboys happy. The backup strip, Force of Nature, continues the high concept approach -- how does the Punisher get intel out of crooks who won't succumb to torture? Cue psychological trickery. Then finish with a pointless action money shot and a totally out of character one-liner.

Ennis used this series to make a serious point, Six Hours to Kill seems designed only to make money.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 05:58 pm:   

Horns by Joe Hill. Very good so far: funny, edgy and original.

Just finished Quentin S. Crisp's Remember You're a One-Ball, which was bloody brilliant.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 85.222.86.21
Posted on Saturday, August 28, 2010 - 10:59 pm:   

Ghost Story at the moment, one of the most bold, beautiful and imaginative novels of the genre, and outside of the genre; the prose is beautiful. A truly gorgeous tome.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Sunday, August 29, 2010 - 05:09 pm:   

What a lovely book 'Dandelion Wine' is...

I agree. It's one of my personal favourites, too, mainly because it reminds me so much of my own pre-adolescent childhood. We had our little gang composed of neighbourhood kids, and a summer was an eternity in itself filled with incredible adventures, some of them indeed bordering on the horrific. Those afternoons in the blistering sun were endless, every single one of them filled with new experiences, whereas now . . . one blink and an entire day has passed me by.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, August 30, 2010 - 02:27 am:   

Just finished 'Dandelion Wine', and I have to agree, the memories it brought back of those two blissful months off school in the summer holidays, risking life and limb with my mates, were just magical. A seriously captivating and emotional read that has a little bit of everything in it - tragedy, comedy, romance, excitement, horror and pure poetry. Ray Bradbury stands in a league of his own.

Now for 'The Dreaming Jewels' by Theodore Sturgeon...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 01:36 pm:   

The Emerald Burrito of Oz by John Skipp and Marc Levinthal
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 03:48 pm:   

Thinking over 'Dandelion Wine' I'm struck by the fact that Douglas Spaulding (i.e. the thinly disguised Ray Bradbury as a 12 year old boy) was so obsessed with never wanting to die and the fact that Ray has reached the age of 90, with his faculties intact.

When you think of the stress that was put on the death of wise elderly characters in the book, compared to Doug's effervescing youth, it makes the experience of reading it now even more poignant.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 03:56 pm:   

Check out Farewell Summer now - the long delayed sequel to DW - let us know what you think.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 05:08 pm:   

So there's a sequel! Thanks for the info, Weber. I imagine it must be some tearjerker.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - 05:10 pm:   

You'd imagine... yes
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 - 11:35 am:   

Okay, I'm well ensconced in 'The Dreaming Jewels' and two authors spring immediately to mind, if you can imagine Clive Barker writing in the style of one of Roald Dahl's children's books, that's what this intriguing fantasy reminds me of... they're all there, the evil step-parents, the misunderstood weird kid who runs away and the cavalcade of otherworldly freaks who take him in without judging. 'James And The Giant Peach' meets 'Cabal' - but this stunningly imaginative novel was written in 1950!

Only the second piece of fiction by Theodore Sturgeon I have read, following the uncategorisable short story 'The Other Celia', and I'm hugely impressed. Looks like another Heinlein or Leiber type revelation could be on the cards.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 03, 2010 - 11:20 am:   

I spent most of last night swallowed up by 'The Dreaming Jewels' and now three quarters through... an incredible novel. It has the humanity and emotion of Dickens, the primal power of a Grimm fairy-tale, the grotesque humour and deceptive simplicity of Dahl & the dark celebration of freakish otherness I get from Barker. If this is Sturgeon, I'm addicted!

And, thanks to Weber, I got another three books of this to come...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, September 03, 2010 - 01:24 pm:   

Stevie, Barker's early work drew heavily on the likes of Sturgeon, Matheson and Reamy. That's why I get cross when critics who don't know that stuff claim that Barker revolutionised the horror genre. He just took a strand of the postwar American horror genre and popularised it for the UK market.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, September 03, 2010 - 01:36 pm:   

I've just finished reading Nina Allan's collection A Thread of Truth. Wonderful stuff – one of the best and most individual 'slipstream' writers, weaving threads of weird and speculative fiction into narratives grounded firmly in realistic accounts of the lives of rather troubled and traumatised people. The book includes two really frightening understated horror stories – though the title story, which is about arachnophobia, turns out to be a haunting love story (love between humans, I hasten to add) rather than a horror story. Allan's style is distinctive, moving fluidly between past and present, objective and imagined, normal and weird. Hers is a world of buried memories, cryptic artefacts, tenderness and danger. Essential reading.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Friday, September 03, 2010 - 02:08 pm:   

She is good that Nina Allan. And she's contributing to my next anthology. Which is ace.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, September 06, 2010 - 12:29 pm:   

Finished 'The Dreaming Jewels' over the weekend - absolutely bloody brilliant!!

Just started 'The One Safe Place' by the man himself yesterday and within the first few chapters I'm completely gripped. A refreshing change to see Ramsey do a non-supernatural suspense thriller with the accent very much on suspense! I already fear desperately for that poor respectable American family unintentionally attracting the psychotic ire of the most monstrous family of Mancunian chav headbins you could possibly imagine... like the similarly themed 'Straw Dogs' I see this one getting very nasty indeed.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.225.78.195
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 04:09 am:   

Needed a Shirley Jackson fix, so started THE SUNDIAL, which I've never before read.

As well as some material on palliative care, as I'm about to start some volunteer work in the field...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.12.24
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 06:05 am:   

Hey, A, I just read We Have Always Lived In The Castle earlier this summer! I really liked it... the ending sort of petered out, in my opinion, but overall, a phenomenal little novel... makes me want to go out and read more....

Stephen King says in Danse Macabre that The Sundial was a major influence on The Shining - no, not The Haunting of Hill House, he said The Sundial - so do tell me if there's a similarity, it may make me pick that one up sooner.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 10:38 am:   

Currently reading Star Island by Carl Hiaasen - a spot on laugh out loud funny satire on the cult of celebrity. This also features the return of Skink (ex governor of florida now militant eco-warrior dishing out his own brand of rather vindictive justice on those he sees despoiling the everglades) and Chemo (6'7" tall moon faced weed-whacker handed serial killer turned bodyguard to the rich and famous while he can't make a living as a mortgage advisor).

I've neen giggling like a child all the way through this. A definite return to form after the slightly disappointing Skinny Dip.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 11:08 am:   

Stevie, Barker's early work drew heavily on the likes of Sturgeon, Matheson and Reamy. That's why I get cross when critics who don't know that stuff claim that Barker revolutionised the horror genre. He just took a strand of the postwar American horror genre and popularised it for the UK market.

Joel, while the authors Barker was inspired by deserve to be recognised and rediscovered for their originality - I'm still reeling from how ahead of its time 'The Dreaming Jewels' was - I still think Clive deserves recognition for his fearless modernising of those themes.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.225.78.195
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 08:16 pm:   

Craig -- thanks for that tidbit about SK and The Sundial! I'd never heard that before.

Personally I really loved WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE. And the low-key feel was a big part of why...

This one didn't suck me in quite as quickly, maybe because there are so many characters, which with my inability to remember names made getting into it a little daunting. But I'm loving it now! And feel like I might have an inkling of what SK was responding to as per the inspiration for THE SHINING -- for one thing, THE SUNDIAL features a wonderfully atmospheric hedge maze.
:-)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.218.59
Posted on Tuesday, September 07, 2010 - 09:06 pm:   

They cost a lot of money to build, they do. You need a hedge fund.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 12:38 am:   

Just finished Joe Hill's Horns, which was very good indeed - creepy, funny and oddly moving. Now I'm largeing it up old school (whatever that means) with Whitley Streiber's The Wolfen.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.5.8.159
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 02:19 am:   

Here's King's exact quote, Adrianna:

"The new American gothic provides a closed loop of character, and in what might be termed a psychological pathetic fallacy, the physical surroundings often mimic the inward-turnings of the characters themselves - as they do in The Sundial*.... *[footnote] Or in The Shining, which was written very much with The Sundial in mind."

Not just American - that first sentence applies oh so aptly to Ramsey's work!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.225.78.195
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 03:11 am:   

indeed.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Adriana (Adriana)
Username: Adriana

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.225.78.195
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 05:37 am:   

Just paused to read Tony Lovell's THE SHELL. Jesus Tony, when are you going to give the world a collection??? On the subject of Shirley Jackson, it never ceases to amaze me that much of what I crave in her work, I find in Tony's.

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.245.103
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 06:03 am:   

Another thing we have in common, A! I just read "The Shell" a month or so back, Tony had sent it to me, and I really loved it. Did he get it published (I hope!), or did he send it to you too? Or has it been published already, long before I got it? A superb story, and yes, S. Jackson does come to mind!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 - 10:22 am:   

I totally agree, Adriana. The little of Tony's fiction I've read is of an incredibly high standard - subtle, haunting, cerebral and otherworldly. His is a rare talent imo.

Where is he these days anyway???
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 09, 2010 - 11:08 am:   

Currently re-reading Derleth's masterly anthology 'Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos' (1969) and been blown away all over again at what an unmatched gathering of stories it is! Just finished Frank Belknap Long's 'The Space Eaters' and every story so far has been an absolute masterpiece. Could this be the single greatest horror anthology of the 20th Century? I would contend so...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 09, 2010 - 04:14 pm:   

I love the way Ramsey has introduced a serious critique of British society (circa mid-90s) as a double threat to a family of somewhat po-faced, but earnestly well-meaning, American intellectuals plonked down in the middle of simple working class folk from Manchester, in 'The One Safe Place'. From one side they are attacked by the old-fashioned establishment, who just don't understand their new-fangled fancy ways, and from the other, by a family of hilariously caricatured maniacs.

If there is any flaw in the novel so far it has nothing to do with pacing and narrative drive but rather from the black-and-white characterisation, albeit to make a valid Dickensian point. Slowly but surely Ramsey is morphing into Tom Sharpe - and I mean that as a compliment!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Thursday, September 09, 2010 - 05:36 pm:   

Talk about life imitating art - One of the central characters in Star island is a spoilt starlet called Cherry Pye who kind of sleeps around a lot. She tries to get her new bodyguard sacked by flirting with him and flashing etc etc.

What do I read in the news today? Britney Spears' ex bodyguard is suing her for being a sex pest...
http://www.metro.co.uk/explore/people/spears_britney
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.41.150
Posted on Sunday, September 12, 2010 - 02:55 pm:   

Anyone finished reading 'Tenebrous Tales' yet? As it's a bit pricey, I was wondering if it was worth forking-out for?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.104.135.73
Posted on Sunday, September 12, 2010 - 03:19 pm:   

'Read Simmons' Song of Kali instead: one of the best horror novels ever written.' It certainly is.

I must get hold of Nina's collection soon.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, September 13, 2010 - 01:22 pm:   

Half-way through and Ramsey has shocked me like never before with the unexpected BIG plot development in 'The One Safe Place' - it's left me a bit shell-shocked in fact.

The tone of this book is like nothing he's done before - a grotesquely satirical black comedy crime thriller with much to say on the nature of violence, its causes and ramifications - it also includes some of Ramsey's most skin prickling, edge-of-the-seat suspense sequences I've read to date!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, September 13, 2010 - 01:48 pm:   

You ain't seen nothin yet Stevie
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, September 13, 2010 - 02:04 pm:   

Currently read This Party's got to Stop by Rupert Thomson - his memoir.

Painfully honest hardly seems an adequate description. This is a warts and all telling of his relationship with his brothers, by turns heartbreaking and occasionally funny and always fantastically well written.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, September 13, 2010 - 03:36 pm:   

reading - not read. I wish I could type.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 03:23 pm:   

I'm finding 'The One Safe Place' an increasingly disturbing experience - it's the way Ramsey shifted the tone from outrageous black comedy to unrelenting ordeal horror that is so unsettling.

I've found his last four books - 'Needing Ghosts', 'The Count Of Eleven', 'The Long Lost' & this one - all work by skewing brilliantly observed grim and gritty reality into a nightmarishly absurd semblance of modern day Britain at its most hypocritical and grotesque. It's like he takes the most sensationalist tabloid headlines of the day and turns them into starkly satirical narrative with real bite, and not a little righteous contempt.

These books deserve to be better known outside the horror field as akin to what Dickens was doing with Victorian society imo - the Fancy family are as monstrous as any caricature villains the great man ever created. I say again - Ramsey Campbell just gets better and better!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.31.223
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 05:02 pm:   

>>>Half-way through and Ramsey has shocked me like never before with the unexpected BIG plot development in 'The One Safe Place' - it's left me a bit shell-shocked in fact.

Oh God no, not that scene . . .
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln Brown (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 139.168.48.84
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010 - 09:23 pm:   

Finished R.I.P, by Terry Lamsley, last night - one of the most depressing pieces of fiction I've read in a long time. I usually like 'bleak' - McMahon, Williams etc., but this just felt mean.
Started 'The Strain', by TelToro and Hogan. So far so good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, September 18, 2010 - 11:42 am:   

Know what you mean about depressing fiction, Lincoln.

If it wasn't for the black humour and gripping narrative drive in TOSP I'd be finding it too bleak even for my tastes... as it is, Ramsey can never be anything other than a thoroughly entertaining storyteller, first and foremost, imho.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, September 18, 2010 - 01:03 pm:   

Gary, if you're talking about Chapter 12, then yes that scene - in fact that whole sequence had my knuckles white and hands shaking reading it!

Powerful stuff, and again, highly cinematic imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, September 20, 2010 - 05:01 pm:   

Anyone who's read The One Safe Place knew which scene you were talking about...

I've just finished Rupert Thomson's very fine Memoir - This Party's Got To Stop. I recommend it very highly indeed.

Just started The Barefoot Man by Davis Grubb. Imagine crossing Cormac Macarthy with Ray Bradbury's style of writing and you'd be part way there.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 11:36 am:   

I'm also reading Sylvia's Wedding by Jimmie Chinn - in preparation for once more taking to the boards at Farnworth Little Theatre, Cross Street (just off Queen Street) Farnworth - between 6th and 13th of November - tickets very reasonably priced.

Not that I'm trying to plug this fantastically funny and brilliantly acted play.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 01:31 pm:   

"Just started The Barefoot Man by Davis Grubb. Imagine crossing Cormac Macarthy with Ray Bradbury's style of writing and you'd be part way there."

Grubb being a likely influence on both writers, of course – Night of the Hunter must have influenced Something Wicked This Way Comes. Though Bradbury's early short stories may have influenced Grubb.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 01:37 pm:   

I went to a "new" Used Bookstore in Norfolk yesterday and low and behold I found a Ramsey Cambell 1st US edition, hardcover of "Midnight Sun" and 4 dollars later it was in my hands and I was out the door.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 02:02 pm:   

Only 60 pages in but it's building to an event I suspect will be as emotionally shattering as THAT scene in The One Safe Place.

Davis Grubb has to be one of the most criminally ignored writers there is. Apart from Night of the Hunter his entire catalogue seems to be out of print - and these books are so good they certainly don't deserve that fate.

This is the third book of his that I've read - mainly because of availability - and it's shaping up to be the best one yet.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 03:13 pm:   

Does it explore his usual theme of childlike innocence versus monstrous evil?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 03:37 pm:   

The "evil" character isn't so clearcut evil in this one. He's almost sympathetic in his first appearance.

Just ordered Ancient Lights from Amazon.com. The plot description from the couple of reviews sounds ... erm... ahead of it's time.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 04:01 pm:   

Feck, that sounds right up my street, Weber! That synopsis makes me think of RAW, Dick, Vonnegut & Heinlein, at their most mischievously inspired - and for me there is no higher praise. I love soaring works of high fantasy that prick the bubbles of organised religion. 'Job : A Comedy Of Justice' springs to mind.

Thanks for drawing my attention to this clearly under-appreciated author!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 88.104.135.73
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 06:21 pm:   

Heather has just asked me to pass on to you, Ramsey, that she has just read 'Conversion' in THE YOUNG OXFORD BOOK OF SUPERNATURAL STORIES, edited by Dennis Pepper. She said it was very, very good :>).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.244.13
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 02:49 am:   

Picked up The Portable Tolstoy, and read his later tales: the stark fables "God Sees The Truth But Waits," "What Men Live By," "How Much Land Does A Man Need?"; the still shocking/offensive but gripping The Kreutzer Sonata; the heartbreaking tour-de-force Master and Man; the weirdly Lovecraftian (in its portrait of depression so acute, it's a madness) fragment "Memoirs of a Madman"... rereading, elsewhere, the chilling, moving The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (reminiscent, in its relentlessly pounding theme, of Bradbury's The Next In Line)....

Reading Tolstoy is like stepping into an elevator, and suddenly being let out on Mt. Everest. It's crystal clear, and immediately, why he's considered one of the greatest writers in history.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 220.138.164.189
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 03:39 am:   

Weber, have you got a copy of Grubb's Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural? It's a terrific collection.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 11:04 am:   

No

That's one I can't get hold of.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 12:59 pm:   

Huw, does that collection include 'The Horsehair Trunk' & 'Where The Woodbine Twineth'?
The only two pieces of fiction by Davis Grubb I have read, and both classics.

That 'Ancient Lights' book sounds an absolute must read for me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 04:02 pm:   

Having finished, and been somewhat traumatised by, 'The One Safe Place', I've decided to shelve my plan of plunging straight into Derek Raymond's Factory Series - for obvious reasons - and go for something just a wee bit lighter and more reassuring - Heinlein's classic fairy-tale fantasy, 'The Star Beast'.

If that isn't a sufficient antidote I don't know what could be...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.68
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 04:40 pm:   

"Heather has just asked me to pass on to you, Ramsey, that she has just read 'Conversion' in THE YOUNG OXFORD BOOK OF SUPERNATURAL STORIES, edited by Dennis Pepper. She said it was very, very good :>)."

Thank you very much, Heather!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 212.219.63.204
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 05:42 pm:   

I'm about halfway through Gary McMahon's "Rain Dogs" and loving it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.250
Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 07:50 pm:   

Just moved on to "World at Night" by Alan Furst after sampling another 5 stories from Peter Straub's "American Fantastic tales." (His "Blue Rose" collection just arrived in the mail.

Otherwise, I haven't been around--or posting essays etc.--because I've been diligently working through final edits on "Dragon's Ark" before sending it off to the interior designer.

But I shall return!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.171.240.58
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 12:11 am:   

Just started 'Mist Over Pendle' by Robert Neill.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.211.103.120
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 01:02 am:   

I'm currently enjoying The Terror and the Tortoiseshell by John Travis.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 01:09 am:   

Is that a horror novel or the true story of the Pendle witches, Sean?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.171.240.58
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 01:33 am:   

Stevie, 'Mist Over Pendle' is a novel based on the real Pendle Witches events. Robert Neill has dedicated it to Thomas Potts who wrote 'The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster' in 1612. How closely it sticks to the real story or even if characters in the novel are based on real people i don't know. I suppose I would have to read 'ye olde' tome mentioned above to find out. It is freely downloadable on the web.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.171.240.58
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 01:54 am:   

Just reading about the real Pendle witches on the web and there are several real names which are used in Robert Neill's novel. So it may be that he has mixed fact and fiction with this book. Reading it I am reminded very much of the look and gritty feel of 'The Witchfinder General'.
http://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 10:55 am:   

He's done it again... one chapter into 'The Star Beast' and I'm hopelessly hooked.
I wonder is this book where the phrase "ya great big lummox" came from?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 85.222.86.21
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 11:03 am:   

My reading recommendation for the week is a remarkable book, chilling, engaging, beautifully written, meaningful and ultimately one of the ost rewarding reads I've had in while. The book is 'Journeys In The Dead Season,' by Spencer Jordan.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 11:57 am:   

Read some of those details, Sean, and it really is chilling and surprisingly imaginative stuff - the piece of evidence where the accused claims to have been accosted by a talking black dog that demanded to suckle at her teat, and left it blue for a year afterward - seriously freaky stuff!!

Makes me wonder if there mightn't have been an outbreak of ergot poisoning in the area at that time - I learnt about that being a very real threat to close-knit primitive societies from an episode of the original 'Survivors', still one of the greatest, and most intelligent, sci-fi series ever made imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 23, 2010 - 04:57 pm:   

Two chapters in and RAH has made me fall in love with a big dumb alien brute, that goes about eating the neighbourhood dogs when he's unhappy, and a boy called John Thomas Stuart, who's starting to take a puzzling interest in girls, and neglect his former best mate. So far the action is extremely funny, effortlessly entertaining - with more than a touch of the macabre - and already completely charming.

This is my first taste of Heinlein writing for the young, target age group would be around 11-14 I would say, and he's canny enough not to write down to them, and to include enough hidden jokes for the grown-ups to make this an utter pleasure to read at any age.

What makes his stories so captivating is the effortless way he has of involving you directly in the essence of the developing plot, right from Page 1, while weaving in an astounding and completely convincing wealth of incidental detail, in the world creating and characterisation, without you even realising he is doing it. Within a few pages it's as if you've been living in this place and knowing these characters all your life. The fact that he unobtrusively educates and challenges the perceptions of the reader in the process is the final element that makes his books such a unique joy. I find reading Heinlein a completely immersive experience, that one doesn't want to end, and that surely must be the mark of a great writer imho. Hats off again to you, sir.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, September 26, 2010 - 08:36 pm:   

Nearly finished 'The Star Beast' and it has been almost ridiculously entertaining!

Not only 'The Iron Man' & 'E.T.' surely must have had their origin here, but also Nibbler from 'Futurama' is a direct reference to the cute alien with the insatiable appetite in this magical book. Very funny, genuinely exciting, intensely poignant, without ever sinking into Spielbergian sentimentality, and showing a surprisingly subversive cynicism toward authority, for a book aimed at young adolescents e.g. children, in this alternative future, are entitled to divorce their parents and the portrayal of nonsensical adult bureaucracy has an unflinching edge to it that makes me wonder how this was ever deemed suitable reading for the youth of 1950s America - parents, politicians, civil servants, judges, the police & military are all shown as either unnecessarily cruel or simply incompetent! The book is also the earliest source (I am aware of) of one of THE most iconic twists in sci-fi, let's just say 'Star Trek' used it on more than one occasion... A truly wonderful fantasy that has me yearning for kids to read it to. I was right, Heinlein really does have it all as a writer.

After this I'll be starting into the Factory Series with 'He Died With His Eyes Open' (1984).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - 12:42 am:   

The last sentence of 'The Star Beast' is priceless lol. It delivers a double twist that somehow manages to be hilariously funny, reverses the entire meaning of the book (so much so, I feel almost compelled to read it again), and is not a little disturbing, especially the more one thinks about it... a book that appeared to be an original reworking of the old "boy and his dog" yarn suddenly becomes something infinitely more sinister! Wonderful stuff!!

Already 6 chapters into 'He Died With His Eyes Open' and I already feel confident in stating that, of all the modern noir crime writers I have read, Derek Raymond is the only one who truly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. The prose and characterisation is exquisite!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.109.141.240
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - 09:18 am:   

Just finished reading The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce. As ever, a beautiful beautiful novel full of human warmth, compassion and poetry. I adore Joyce's novels.
Now reading Dark Matters by Terry Lamsley. Enjoying it so far.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - 09:38 am:   

Jon - Graham's next novel, The Silent Land, sounds exquisite. I can't remember the last time I was looking forward to a book this much.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.22.75.99
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - 10:02 am:   

The next few books on the list are

HARBOUR - J A Lindqvist
TALES OF GOOD AND EVIL - N V Gogol
LOST PLACES - S K Unsworth
TALES OF SUSPENSE - W Collins
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 85.222.86.21
Posted on Tuesday, September 28, 2010 - 12:04 pm:   

My next few are: The Deadly Space Between, Patricia Duncker.

Rosemary's Baby: Ira Levin (obviously stated on this forum).

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:26 am:   

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Rupert Thompson's Death of a Murderer, and it's absolutely fucking brilliant. I can't recommend this highly enough.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.236.84
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 02:20 am:   

Thanks for the "Nightmare City" rec, Joel - I read it, and it blew my mind, proving quite the surreal piece by the end of it... by the end, it had devolved into pure madness, reminding me of a zombie apocalypse....

There was a movie from 1930, called Roadhouse Nights: the very first movie ever to adapt Hammett's work, and it was based on RED HARVEST.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 10:53 am:   

Rupert Thomson is a certified genius. He's easily one of my favourite writers. I just finished his memoir recently and it almost reduced me to tears in places (for all the right reasons).

DOAM is one of his best. Have you read his Book of Revelation?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 12:54 pm:   

Half-way through 'He Died With His Eyes Open' and I'm finding this gradual unravelling of every intimate detail of a man's life totally absorbing and not a little moving. The way we learn as much about the unnamed narrator in the process, his cold-eyed worldweariness and the intense code of honour that keeps him going, and appears to make him and the victim kindred spirits, and the grim, unforgiving world they both inhabited, is the real meat of this novel. The mystery of his brutal murder is incidental to this dual character development and exploration of a world - the mean backstreets and seedy underbelly of 1980s London.

Having read this much, and the underrated 'Nightmare In The Street' (a ghost story disguised as a crime novel), I'd already put Raymond up there with the greats. This is writing of rare quality and emotional power, as close to the "thrillers" of Graham Greene as the crime novels of Chandler or Hammett. Just brilliant!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:04 pm:   

Weber - it's the first Thompson novel I've read, but it won't be the last. I'm planning to order everything he's written. I haven't been moved like this by fiction in decades.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 01:09 pm:   

You have a real treat coming.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 - 04:10 pm:   

The scene with the pig slaughtering almost made me throw up over my lunch there... how he makes you feel what the pig is feeling, and its luckier (so far) companions as they look on, and the horrified witness, unused to this barbarism, and the farmhands, for whom it is all in a day's work - the slow bleeding to death, by one careful puncture of the carotid artery, so they can collect the blood for the French equivalent of black pudding - is one of the most powerful passages of fiction I have read in a long time, not because it is necessarily profound, but because of the immediacy with which it paints a horrendous, though frighteningly commonplace, picture of the true nature of existence, life, death and survival.

The parallels with how the witness goes on to experience an even worse death, revealed bit-by-bit throughout the book in all its gruesome detail, need hardly be stated. This is marvellous writing!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 03:43 pm:   

Derek Raymond's unnamed Detective Sergeant is a brilliant creation; as tough and cynical as the Continental Op, as flippant and honourable as Philip Marlowe, as inherently decent and rebellious as Jack Regan. A seen-it-all, streetwise cop who feels more at home among the low-lives and criminals than he does with his fellow career officers, with their suits and ambitions. He should be a walking cliché but Raymond invests the character with real humanity and depth.

While the victim, Charles Staniland, reads, to my mind, like the author's own harsh judgement on himself back then - a murdered wino revealed as an upper class frustrated writer and intellectual with a self-loathing instinct for alienating people and spectacular self-destruction. This book is all about facing up to the truth, redemption and rebirth imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 94.196.173.228
Posted on Friday, October 01, 2010 - 05:27 am:   

Death of a Murderer is, along with M J Hyland's This Is How, my favourite novel of the past ten years at least.
In fact on the strength of reading it I went out a bought Thompson's entire backlist.

I'm currently reading Damon Galgut's Booker shortlisted In a Strange Room. I've got an event with him Monday week so thought I'd better get through this one as soon as possible. I'm actually loving it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch)
Username: Mark_lynch

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.171.129.70
Posted on Friday, October 01, 2010 - 07:09 am:   

I'm on with Alain De Botton's The Architecture of Happiness. De Botton's always worth a read. Not for startling insights into the human condition, but mostly because he elucidates the obvious and untangkes it from the clutter of our daily lives. He does what the best philospohers do and states the obvious, but carefully and precisely.

Ken Bruen's Priest. More from Bruen's Jack Taylor character. Irish noir that's compelling, silly, dark, unrelenting, and great at making you turn the page. Written in an interesting pulp prose style.

John Harvey's A Darker Shade of Blue collection, which for the first time has made me really appreciate his Jack Kiley PI stories. I've read most before but collected the tales really shine. (One was originally published by Joel too.) There are other non-Kiley tales in here too. Good stuff.

And as increasing numbers of successful novelists children seem to be publishing books these days, from Stephen King and Peter Straub, through Dick Francis and the James Lee Burke, I thought I'd give Elmore Leonard's lad Peter a try. He's not his dad, but some of his dad's skills have rubbed off on him. Lucky sod.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Degsy (Degsy)
Username: Degsy

Registered: 08-2010
Posted From: 86.134.41.203
Posted on Saturday, October 02, 2010 - 10:47 pm:   

Brendan Connell, 'Unpleasant Tales' - Wonderfully grotesque. I'm loving this.

Rosalie Parker, 'The Old Knowledge' - a slim, but nonetheless beautifully produced volume. Eerie dustjacket photo and sumptuous printed paper covers.

also: Supernatural Tales #17
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 94.197.140.195
Posted on Sunday, October 03, 2010 - 12:24 am:   

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut will remain, along with the two aforementioned books, one of the most memorable novels I've read in recent years. It's so incredibly haunting, evocative and moving that trying to talk about it seems futile.
I also just read The Painted Bird by Kosinski and I was not expecting what I read there at all. The relentless horrors described in this novel are far beyond anything I have read. If I ever do, it'll be a long time, I imagine, before I come across another such brutal and harrowingly-detailed compendium of cruelty, torture, lust, bestiality, rape, murder and human degredation between the covers of a book.
A great novel though.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, October 03, 2010 - 02:16 pm:   

Just finished 'He Died With His Eyes Open' and rarely have I experienced the banal sleaze of the criminal underworld, and its devastating emotional effect on human beings, as powerfully portrayed. This is profoundly moving and subtle character-driven literature, as far removed from the popular concept of plot-driven crime/detective fiction as it is possible to imagine. Comparisons to Greene, and even Dostoevsky, are not inappropriate.

Time now to continue Isaac Asimov's Foundation Saga with Volume 5 - 'Foundation And Earth' (1986).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Sunday, October 03, 2010 - 02:27 pm:   

It does indeed kick ass, Stevie. All I can say is that the major Factory novels get better and better as they go- The Devil's Home On Leave, How The Dead Live and I Was Dora Suarez are progressively and cumulatively more devastating. The last one, Dead Man Upright, is generally regarded as a bit underwhelming, but I think Raymond was quite ill by then.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.247.152
Posted on Sunday, October 03, 2010 - 05:41 pm:   

Thought I'd keep going with Hammett, so I'm reading the stories collected in THE BIG KNOCKOVER (1962), which seems to be the best collection of his shorter work, from what I've seen of the general consensus. So far, I'm not disagreeing, about it being superb....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.29.74.217
Posted on Thursday, October 07, 2010 - 11:20 am:   

Excuse me while I come over all fanboyish but I've been rereading some of my old X-Men comics written by Chris Claremont. Nostalgia heavily tints my reaction to his writing, I can easily overlook some of the clunkier dialogue and the way plot strands are started in X-Men but resolved in completely different comics or sometimes even forgotten altogether. But being as objective as possible I would say that for me a lot of his best work on the mutant superheroes is in the issues I've just reread: Uncanny X-Men #211-227. He still has the verbose dialogue and captions for which he's famous but here they're stripped down to their dramatic and poetic essence. The two-page description of a crashing jumbo jet that opens #215 is astounding, as is the tense, hallucinatory chase sequence that follows. And Claremont has a knack for nailing the heart and atmosphere of a new locale in a few well-chosen sentences, be it a New York nightclub, a Scottish pub or a New Mexico desert.

"Darlin', how can anyone be an X-Man and not be a romantic?" Wolverine

Emotion is what drives Claremont's writing, an unabashed romanticism. He makes us care about the characters, putting us inside their heads, letting us know them as well as we know ourselves before destroying their lives and breaking our hearts.

Some wounds are physical. Others spiritual. No less cruel. No less mortal.

Tragedy overwhelms the X-Men during this set of stories: Colossus spends most of the run paralysed, Nightcrawler lies in a coma and Kitty Pryde is being slowly killed by her own misfiring superpowers. Even those who escape physically unscathed have other problems to deal with: Wolverine has a breakdown, his rational side collapsing, leaving his animal instincts in ascendance. Dazzler frets that her former life as a pop star has left her pampered and weak, traits that could get herself and her teammates killed. Plus, there's the small matter of humanity hating mutants and wanting them dead.

"Every path, every option seems to end in blood." Storm

Storm has a particularly bad time of it. Stripped of her powers in an earlier storyline she continues to lead the X-Men against foes who could kill her with a flick of a finger. Grief-stricken over the injuries sustained by those under her command. Conflicted over her oath never to take a human life versus the increasing need for lethal force in order for the X-Men to survive. Shocked by the revelation that the only way to save the world from a mystical apocalypse is to kill the man she loves. Forget Halle Berry's anaemic portrayal in the X-Men films, here is Storm as she should be: a woman of great honour, dignity and passion.

"You ever wonder sometimes whether we even deserve to be saved?" Crimson Commando

Moral ambiguity lurks behind the drama and the pulse-pounding action scenes. A trio of superpowered vigilantes hunt criminals for kicks while rationalising it with talk of honour and Storm fears the only way she can stop them is to resorting to murder herself. Former criminals become government sponsored superheroes while the altruistic X-Men are branded outlaws. The X-Man Rogue is herself a former supervillain seeking redemption for past crimes including the attempted murder of her teammate Dazzler. Meanwhile many of the humans the X-Men save want them dead, baying for blood no matter what sacrifices the mutants make to save them.

"If we gotta go either way might as well make it mean something." Wolverine

But there is hope too, an idealism that may be battered and tarnished but never vanquished. The X-Men keep fighting, striving for equality and acceptance no matter what. Moral victiores are achieved -- Collosus and Kitty Pryde prevent a rampaging mob from killing an injured Nightcrawler not by blasting them with superpowers but by making them confront the immorality of their actions. On occasion humans even stand up for the X-Men, judging them by their actions not by the fact that they're mutants. Speeches abound, a Claremont speciality, imploring everyone to live in harmony.

"I beg your pardon. But don't you know it's impolite to shoot people?" Longshot

But it's not all moralising and speechifying. There's fun to be had as SF and fantasy blend together with the odd bit of horror thrown in for good measure. Humour and quirkiness sneaks in too with Dirty Harry and the Brigadier from Doctor Who making sly cameos. And when Dazzler tackles the unstoppable powerhouse Juggernaut he turns out to be a fan of her records and is more interested in getting her autograph than engaging in an epic super-battle.

So, classic superhero action. Superbly handled romance and drama. A plea for tolerance and an end to prejudice. Not to mention fantastic artwork from John Romita Jr, Rick Leonardi, Barry Windsor-Smith, Alan Davis, Jackson Guice and Marc Silvestri.

No wonder I love Claremont's X-Men.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, October 07, 2010 - 10:03 pm:   

You make it sound wonderful, Stu!

I'm already a quarter way through 'Foundation And Earth' and finding it as quick, easy and enjoyable to read as the previous volumes - while bubbling over with ideas, as ever. Asimov was an entertainer and a thought provoker first and foremost, whatever his writing style may lack in literary merit.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 82.22.75.99
Posted on Thursday, October 07, 2010 - 10:10 pm:   

Received a book through the door called HUMAN SECRETS by Linden Lewis. A SF/Thriller. As I don't read SF, the book is free to a good home. Here is a bit of the blurb. If you want it email me panbookofhorrorstoriesATgmail.com. First come, first served.

Humanity has a secret; a dark secret that has lingered undiscovered for millennia. When Guy Hewson, a young Professor of Egyptology uncovers a strange relic, the secret is destined to be revealed with catastrophic consequences.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Thursday, October 07, 2010 - 10:35 pm:   

Just finished Death Will Have Your Eyes by James Sallis (which was brilliant), and am back on the Becket - Waiting For Godot, to be exact.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 01:12 am:   

In the meantime, I've just finished Brian Lumley's "The Sister City" in 'Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos', am two thirds through Dostoevsky's 'The Devils', and onto the last story in the 'Lankhmar' collection, the novella "The Lords Of Quarmall".

'The Devils' is particularly gripping at the minute, with the malicious machinations of Peter Verkhovensky approaching fruition. I've known a few slimy customers like him in my time, and in future will flummox them by stating, "You're a right Peter Verkhovensky, aren't ya."
I still can't make up my mind about Nicholas Stavrogin; hero or villain, madman or visionary, in control or being used? The word EPIC doesn't begin to describe it...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 86.24.12.226
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 02:26 pm:   

>>You make it sound wonderful, Stu!

Mr Claremont did all the hard work. All I had to do was be honest.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.134.113
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 02:51 pm:   

Stevie, it's worth reading the short novel/long novella that Lumley developed out of 'The Sister City', Beneath the Moors. It's available in at least two Lumley paperback collections, Beneath the Moors and Return of the Deep Ones. It's not a masterpiece (hence its lack of a UK appearance for twenty-odd years), but it's a brave attempt to develop a Lovecraftian underground location in the North-East of England. And its bold use of biological metaphors offers a surprisingly visceral take on Lovecraftian horror.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.249.125
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 05:12 pm:   

Burning through this lovely Library of America hardback edition of Hammet's shoter work, Crime Stories & Other Writings. Neglected Hammett for too long, methinks... next up, it'll either be the novels, or on to Chandler....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 05:26 pm:   

Nearly finished The Barefoot Man and about to start on Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay - book 4 of the series. Then it'll be a quick reread of A Manhattan Ghost Story (TM Wright) in time for Halloween and then The Girl who Played with Fire.

I've also got Dexter is Delicious - book 5 of the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy - on my TBR pile. I think I'll get on to that after TGWPWF.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.153.163.179
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 10:08 pm:   

>Stevie, it's worth reading the short novel/long novella that Lumley developed out of 'The Sister City', Beneath the Moors. It's available in at least two Lumley paperback collections, Beneath the Moors and Return of the Deep Ones.<

I'll second that recommendation Joel. Brian Lumley has long been one of my favourite Mythos writers. Both the novellas you mentioned are great. I would also recommend 'Lord of the Worms' and 'The Burrowers Beneath'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 85.222.86.21
Posted on Friday, October 08, 2010 - 11:40 pm:   

Weber - The Girl Who Played With Fire is very good. I just wish that the prose wouldn't sink into the predictable the way it does 'sometimes.' Have you seen the first film adaptation? Superb stuff. Not that 'you' haven't seen this kind of thing before, but its unquestionably sophisticated genre work. Loved every minute of it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, October 09, 2010 - 04:06 pm:   

Joel/Sean, as much as I enjoyed 'The Sister City', and admire Lumley's fearless ambition, I'd have to say it was still the least effective story in the collection so far, going more into the fantasy side of the Mythos at the expense of the fear element imo. My favourite non-Lovecraft tale, thus far, is Robert Bloch's terrifying 'Notebook Found In A Deserted House' - an absolute masterpiece! Then Kuttner's 'The Salem Horror', Derleth's 'The Dweller In Darkness', Howard's 'The Black Stone', FBL's 'The Space Eaters' - ah, they're all brilliant!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, October 10, 2010 - 03:58 pm:   

Just read Lumley's other story in the collection, 'Cement Surroundings', a more traditional and scary Lovecraftian horror, great stuff!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Sunday, October 10, 2010 - 06:24 pm:   

Just stared reading The Insult by Rupert Thomson. I can't believe I'm only just discovering this chap.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.152.74.159
Posted on Sunday, October 10, 2010 - 06:36 pm:   

I've just started Julia by Peter Straub and now I'm 150 pages in. It's quite, quite splendid
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Sunday, October 10, 2010 - 07:59 pm:   

I haven't read Julia in years...remember loving it, though.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, October 11, 2010 - 12:02 pm:   

"Just stared reading The Insult by Rupert Thomson. I can't believe I'm only just discovering this chap."

I can't believe it either coz I've been raving about him for years on this board.

The Landlord's spoken highly about him on a few occasions as well.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 11, 2010 - 12:19 pm:   

'The Deep Ones' by James Wade has to be the most subversive and shocking of the modern Mythos tales in Derleth's anthology. Only Colin Wilson's novella 'The Return Of The Lloigor' left to go and then it's on to Fontana's 'London Tales Of Terror' (1972).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Monday, October 11, 2010 - 12:31 pm:   

Weber - your recommenadtions, along with a few others, made me check out Thomson's stuff. I'm hard work, but I usually get there in the end...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Monday, October 11, 2010 - 11:43 pm:   

I just finished The Burrowers Beneath and found myself underwhelmed, although the "Cement Surroundings" passage was probably a high point. I think I felt it just too lacking in tension overall.

Aside from that and the various texts I'm reading (or supposedly reading) for my return to university, I'm quite enjoying Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction. This is the second Very Short Introduction I've read, and they've both been very interesting.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - 12:45 pm:   

Colin Wilson's novella is great fun, especially for a Fortean like me, but comes across more like a history lesson than a flowing narrative. Reminds me more of his entertaining intros to those cod publications of 'The Necronomicon' & 'The R'Lyeh Text' back in the 80s. To be honest, I'd have rather seen the space filled by a few more serious, literary Mythos stories.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - 01:27 pm:   

Sadly finished the 'Lankhmar' collection last night!
Comprising the first four volumes of short stories; 'Swords And Deviltry', 'Swords Against Death', 'Swords In The Mist' & 'Swords Against Wizardry', this is how I'd rank them:

‘Adept's Gambit’ (1947) novella
‘Ill Met in Lankhmar’ (1970) novella
‘The Lords of Quarmall’ (1964) novella, with Harry Otto Fischer
‘The Sunken Land’ (1942)
‘The Bleak Shore’ (1940)
‘The Seven Black Priests’ (1953) novelette
‘The Howling Tower’ (1941)
‘Thieves' House’ (1943) novelette
‘Stardock’ (1965) novelette
‘The Cloud of Hate’ (1963)
‘The Jewels in the Forest’ (1939) novelette
‘Claws from the Night’ (1951) novelette
‘Lean Times in Lankhmar’ (1959) novelette
‘When the Sea-King's Away’ (1960) novelette
‘The Unholy Grail’ (1962) novelette
‘Bazaar of the Bizarre’ (1963) novelette
‘The Snow Women’ (1970) novella
‘The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar’ (1968)
‘The Circle Curse’ (1970)
‘The Wrong Branch’ (1968)
‘The Price of Pain-Ease’ (1970)
‘In the Witch's Tent’ (1968)
‘Their Mistress, the Sea’ (1968)
‘Induction’ (1957) vignette

Next up the full length novel, 'The Swords Of Lankhmar' (1968), before having to track down the final two collections of 70s & 80s stories, 'Swords And Ice Magic' & 'The Knight And Knave Of Swords'. For descriptive skill, originality of vision, sheer fun, energy, adventure, thrills, mystery, romance, scares, laughs and a genuine sense of comradeship, these stories would take some beating in any genre of literature. While I can't imagine anyone else approaching what Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard & Karl Edward Wagner achieved within the limitations of Sword & Sorcery. I don't think it's even worth trying to emulate them...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 02:30 pm:   

Started Dexter By design last night and it's great fun. Already a third of the way though it. After the slight disappointment of dexter in the Dark this is right back up to standard with a new serial killer stalking Miami, turning his victims into decorative fruitbowls, plant-holders and beer fridges...

I wish they'd use this new character on the TV show.

Another plot thread I'd love to see them try would be the Cody and Astor storyline - where dexter is acting as Harry and training the two children in the arts of his dark passenger... but I think the network would probably pull the show if they tried anything that subversive.

Shame
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 05:44 pm:   

To replace 'Lankhmar' in my long-term reading schedule I've decided on a final cover-to-cover plunge into 'The Complete Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe'... long overdue, as there are still loads of his stories I haven't read!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 - 05:53 pm:   

Loads that aren't worth the effort sadly...

***Weber ducks for cover***
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 02:45 am:   

I'll get back to you on that, young man...

I have read and loved 'Arthur Gordon Pym' and all the most popularly collected and anthologised stories, so now I want to re-read those and clean up the rest. Thoughts to follow.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, October 15, 2010 - 11:22 am:   

Interesting reading Asimov's 80s Foundation novels and how they playfully comment upon the likes of 'Star Trek' & 'Star Wars' - so massively inspired by his 50s Foundation books - while moving the vision of galactic colonisation and the evolution of humankind forward. Hugely entertaining reads!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

James Armstrong (James_armstrong)
Username: James_armstrong

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 86.176.210.78
Posted on Saturday, October 16, 2010 - 02:13 pm:   

I finally got round to reading my first Aickman story the other day, ‘Ringing the Changes’. I couldn’t help feeling like it was all going over my head whilst actually reading it but now find that I can’t get it off my mind. It’s one of those pieces that seem to writhe, mutate and carry on living in one’s memory.

I’m looking to purchase one of his collections, any recommendations?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.179.36.225
Posted on Saturday, October 16, 2010 - 02:44 pm:   

Personally I would say go for the Tarturus pair of books if you can find copies:-

http://freepages.pavilion.net/tartarus/aickman.htm

Ringing the Changes was my introduction to Aickman, via a late night showing of a TV adaptation (retitled "The Bells of Hell") more years ago than I care to remember, although probably at least 40!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, October 16, 2010 - 02:51 pm:   

Of those I've read, and there are loads I haven't, 'Ringing The Changes' is still my favourite, closely followed by 'The Inner Room'. The man's style is unique in horror, and uniquely haunting. One day, I do believe, he will be as venerated as Poe, James or Lovecraft.

My introduction were his stories in the 'Fontana Ghost Books', that he also brilliantly edited and introduced, and his one contribution to the Pan Horrors, the aforementioned 'Ringing The Changes'. His stories can't be praised enough imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, October 16, 2010 - 04:43 pm:   

Finished re-reading 'Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos', for the first time since my teens. There isn't a weak, or less than entertaining, story in the collection, but this is how I'd rank them:

1. 'The Haunter Of The Dark' (1935) by H.P. Lovecraft - this is my second favourite of all Lovecraft's tales, after only 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth'. Every time I read it, within the first few paragraphs, I feel my sense of self slipping away, like my mind is not my own, and all I can hear is Lovecraft's voice, beckoning me on into a shadowy, disorienting world of cold sweats and shudders. I am walking those streets, seeking that sinister steeple, standing outside, the black church filling the sky, entering(!) the cavernous interior, climbing those stairs, making weird discoveries, hearing strange sounds, ascending, like a man in a dream, screaming inside to turn and run, but trapped in the nightmare, unable to turn back, my soul lost, my identity discovered, the darkness come rushing to collect me... I'm terrified now just thinking about this story again. How in the name of God, and all that's Holy, did he do it!?!?
2. 'The Call Of Cthulhu' (1926) by H.P. Lovecraft - the grandaddy of all Cthulhu Mythos stories and a humbling lesson from the master in the art of less is more. This spellbinding horror/fantasy masterpiece has more detail and incident and atmosphere and freewheeling imagination than any number of novels, twenty times its length. In it Lovecraft created a world, a mythology, a style of storytelling, a soul-searing vision of cosmic terror the likes of which the literary world had never seen before, and is still reeling from... nuff said.
3. 'Notebook Found In A Deserted House' (1951) by Robert Bloch - imagine, if you will, discovering the notebook diary of an innocent 12 year old boy, staying with his relatives in the countryside, and struggling to understand, and put into words, the greatest Lovecraftian nightmare imaginable, unfolding gradually all around him. Bloch gets the language and sense of uncomprehending terror of a child under threat so pitch perfect right, that I can never read this story without every hair on my head standing on end, my heart racing, hands shaking, from first page to last. Perhaps the man's greatest short story and certainly one of my all-time favourites. A bloody masterpiece!!
4. 'The Salem Horror' (1937) by Henry Kuttner - of all the tales in this wonderful book, this is the one I consider most indistinguishable from Lovecraft himself, an unrelentingly terrifying supernatural nightmare, crammed with detail, and displaying a brilliantly structured narrative flow that is a joy to experience, right up to the mind-shattering conclusion. I'm going to get sick of saying the word masterpiece, but this is one of the greatest in horror fiction imo!
5. 'The Dweller In Darkness' (1944) by August Derleth - for me this is Derleth's masterpiece, and one of the greatest, most perfectly structured, Lovecraftian nightmare adventures ever written. It has haunted me ever since first reading it and bears comparison to Algernon Blackwood's 'The Wendigo' imo.
6. 'The Black Stone' (1931) by Robert E. Howard - all the energy and imagination and powerful conviction in the writing that makes his fantasy fiction so viscerally powerful, is turned full beam on the Lovecraftian horror genre here, to create one of the great masterpieces of supernatural fiction imo.
7. 'The Space Eaters' (1928) by Frank Belknap Long - the most genuinely nightmarish story here, that begins strangely and just gets worse and worse and worse, like some dark fever dream. A terrifying masterpiece!
8. 'The Hounds Of Tindalos' (1929) by Frank Belknap Long - one of the most terrifying explorations into the dark regions of the unconscious, by a fool scientist meddling with forces beyond his ken, ever written. Another masterpiece!
9. 'The Shadow From The Steeple' (1950) by Robert Bloch - an intensely poignant, as well as damn frightening response to Lovecraft's masterpiece, 'The Haunter Of The Dark', from a young fan turned into one of the greatest horror authors of his time. A brilliant and fitting end to a monumental trilogy of stories, one of the greatest achievements of his career, and another masterpiece lol.
10. 'The Return Of The Sorcerer' (1931) by Clark Ashton Smith - the most outrageously gruesome story here, pure grand guignol shock value at its very best, shudderingly good.
11. 'Beyond The Threshold' (1941) by August Derleth - another memorably structured tale of pure cosmic horror, that utilises the old theme of a haunted painting brilliantly.
12. 'Ubbo-Sathla' (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith - perhaps the weirdest, most hallucinogenic, story here, and hits a perfectly judged balance between horror and high fantasy, the work of a true poet.
13. 'The Shambler From The Stars' (1934) by Robert Bloch - read out loud this tale is an irresistibly OTT love letter to Lovecraft by a young starry-eyed fan, with talent to burn. The first part of a linked trilogy of stories, and the inspiration for 'The Haunter Of The Dark', to which Bloch responded brilliantly with 'The Shadow From The Steeple' - a joy to read.
14. 'The Haunter Of The Graveyard' (1969) by J. Vernon Shea - a wonderfully atmospheric piece of macabre black humour, with one of the most memorable protagonists in the book, I wonder who he had in mind?
15. 'Cold Print' (1969) by Ramsey Campbell - easily the best of the young pretenders, what always struck me about this tale was the convincing kitchen sink ordinariness of the descriptive detail and characterisation, and how Ramsey successfully jerks the reader into terrifying cosmic horror without a word of warning, the effect is memorably startling.
16. 'Cement Surroundings' (1969) by Brian Lumley - classically structured frightener that reminded me, in some ways, of Basil Copper's 'The Great White Space'.
17. 'The Deep Ones' (1969) by James Wade - shocking and subversive enough to have made it into a Pan Horror, while staying true to the feel of the best Mythos stories.
18. 'The Sister City' (1969) by Brian Lumley - fascinating in its attention to detail but lacks the crucial element of horror.
19. 'The Return Of The Lloigor' (1969) by Colin Wilson - a novella that is immense fun to read, in its encyclopedic density, but betrays a lack of narrative control and any sense of style in the writing.

Arguments welcome...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Sunday, October 17, 2010 - 03:07 pm:   

I don't feel very well... they must grow those apples next to a nuclear power plant.

Never again.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Sunday, October 17, 2010 - 03:50 pm:   

Punting my way through The Best of the Best of the Best of the Best New Horror. Just finished Peter Straub's 'Mr Clubb & Mr Cuff' which is unique and horrific, and Tim Lebbon's 'White', which is a tad more conventional, but very entertaining. Also reading 'Dreamside' by Graham Joyce to kick off my plan to work through his novels one by one, as he's currently a bit of a blank spot in my reading (Tooth Fairy aside).
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.245.212
Posted on Sunday, October 17, 2010 - 05:22 pm:   

Finished the Hammett collection (superb!), and thought - what the hell, I might as well read Chandler's The Big Sleep now, for the first time - since I do want to see the film again, with a wholly different context in mind....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Sunday, October 17, 2010 - 07:47 pm:   

Currently alternating between More Annotated HP Lovecraft, The Ghost-Feeler by Edith Wharton, and the Collected Stories of Ambrose Bierce -- as well as the Very Short Introduction to the Apocryphal Gospels on the non-fiction side of things.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 18, 2010 - 12:01 pm:   

Just started 'London Tales Of Terror' (1972) edited by Jacquelyn Visick, and the first four stories have all been crackers, with the emphasis very much on macabre black humour. Looking at the list of authors ahead this has to be one of the strongest collections in the series.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 01:46 am:   

Okay, just finished the amazingly quick-read THE BIG SLEEP, by Raymond Chandler of course. Now I can make an equally quick thumbnail assessment, putting this up against the full collection, CRIME STORIES & OTHER WRITINGS, of Hammett vs. Chandler:

Both are heavyweights, and comparing them is like comparing chess champions, and the mistakes of a wholly higher level of being. But, that being said... Hammett I so far prefer, much to my surprise. Chandler's novel was - looking past its flashes of homophobia, racism, and anti-semitism - simply plot-heavy, and Marlowe a poor second to the Continental Op. Both are equally reticent and reserved and unenthusiastically moral... but the Op just comes through so much more viscerally alive, than does Marlowe. The Op stories, at their best ("Dead Yellow Women," "The Scorched Face," "Women, Politics, and Murder," and so on and on), are so much more alive: the evil is more believable, the good more pathetic.

It will take a whole lotta more reading to make an accurate comparison... but so far, for me, it's: Hammett 1, Chandler 0.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 05:03 pm:   

Chandler was only getting into his stride with 'The Big Sleep', Craig, yet he still delivered a masterpiece.

The same can be said of Hammett's 'Red Harvest'. You think you know the Continental Op, but in that novel he doesn't even know himself anymore... read it next.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 05:11 pm:   

I might also add that Marlowe, over the course of the books, becomes by far the richer, subtler and more fascinating character. The greatest and most wholly believable detective in fiction, for my money.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 04:13 pm:   

Just read 'The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall' by Mr Poe for the first time and was quite astonished at how ahead of its time the story was. Absurdly, though charmingly, dated in its details but fascinating in its ambition, this is a classic science fiction story that attempts a scientifically feasible, nuts-and-bolts, depiction of man's first voyage to the moon - and predates Verne & Wells by many decades. Setting the template, not only for gothic horror, but for detective fiction, and pioneering science fiction as well, is no mean feat in anyone's book. I'd look on this funny little story as the literary equivalent of Méliès 'Le Voyage Dans la Lune'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 04:25 pm:   

Stevie, I should indeed be more forgiving, since THE BIG SLEEP is, indeed, Chandler's first novel... don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it greatly, my equal-only-to-horror favorite genre!... Yes, I can't imagine, after reading so many shorter works, an Op novel, but will look next for RED HARVEST.

[SPOILERS] I also resaw - with all the extra analysis, done a few years back - The Big Sleep (shot 1944; released 1946), with Bogart and Bacall. Notoriously confusing, after finally reading the novel, it's clear why it is so, to some degree: some elements explicitly detailed in the novel, couldn't be in the movie, and so are maddeningly incomplete (the underground porn, the naked [not, in the film!] photo shoot, the gay lover's revenge, his memorial to his lover, etc.). The film also kept in a "flaw" in the novel complete, only adding to the confusion: the chauffeur, never seen once - neither alive nor killing nor dead - who starts off the whole crazy train of murders!.... And then, the film leaves out Carmen's madness... and keeps talking about the missing (changed to) Sean Regan - we learn he's "dead," murdered - but never how or where the body ended up!... Yet I agree with all the critics through the years: it doesn't matter; in the final analysis, the film remains powerful and seductive and timeless....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.169.216
Posted on Friday, October 22, 2010 - 02:39 am:   

Just finished "Inspector Imanishi Investigates" by Seiko Matsumoto (hope I got that right). Now reading "The Spaces In Between" by John Law, short stories about bridge climbing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 79.79.184.174
Posted on Friday, October 22, 2010 - 03:02 pm:   

I just devoured The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity by Cain, both of which I absolutely loved; I know he's been discussed here before so I shan't go in to it now. I've immediately moved on to Factotum by Charles Bukowski. Having read only Post Office and selected poetry by him till now, I've been holding off on this and, by Crom, it's been worth the wait.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 01:55 am:   

Currently I'm reading Quicker Than the Eye by Ray Bradbury while procrastinating in my studies. I'd read some of these stories before, but they seem much more vibrant now.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 09:49 pm:   

Just finished "The Bravest Rat in Venice" by Patricia Highsmith, in the 18th Pan Book of Horror stories. What a step up from the first story! Definitely a fine piece of work; the shifting perspective is absolutely masterful.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.178.82.216
Posted on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 10:05 pm:   

Half way through Black Wings from PS - not got to the landlord's tale yet but he's in good company - the collection is very good.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 79.79.184.34
Posted on Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 07:49 am:   

Just picked up a second hand copy of 999: New Tales of Horror and Suspense for £1.50 in a charity shop. He's in very impressive company in there too! Looking forward to starting it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 12:38 pm:   

Jamie, it is a great story. Must start me another Highsmith soon, but so many to choose from...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, November 01, 2010 - 03:36 pm:   

From first, to last: I am now reading Chandler's last novel published while he was alive, The Long Goodbye. About time, since Altman's movie of same, is my favorite Altman movie (that's a hard list to choose from!), and I'd like to know, finally, where novel and film deviate. (Chapter 5 seems to include a blatant parody of Hemingway, btw, a dryly funny bit where Marlowe is making coffee....)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - 02:51 pm:   

Stevie - Try The Blunderer - one of my favourite Highsmiths...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 02, 2010 - 04:38 pm:   

Just started 'The 22nd Pan Book Of Horror Stories' after finishing the excellent 'London Tales Of Terror'.

Best stories:
1. 'A Little Place Off The Edgware Road' by Graham Greene - so like a Ramsey Campbell ghost story it took my breath away!
2. 'Mrs Manifold' by August Derleth.
3. 'Harry' by Rosemary Timperley.

I'd rank this collection second only to 'European Tales Of Terror' in the series so far.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 01:00 pm:   

I finished Ray Bradbury's 1996 collection Quicker Than the Eye a few days ago, and it is at once frustratingly uneven and frustratingly uniform.

In terms of quality, it is remarkably hit or miss. There are some quite good stories in here, such as "The Electrocution" and "Hopscotch", which deal with a sideshow performer's dissatisfaction with her life and a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, respectively. But then there are some real clunkers; the one that stands out the most is probably "Last Rites", in which a man invents a time machine and goes back in time to tell dying authors that they're appreciated in the future. There is no tension, no drama, nothing except a wistful wish fulfillment spun out to a couple of thousand words of unmistakable Bradburian prose.

And it's in this prose that the collection is frustratingly uniform. With only minor variations, every story is written in the same style, filled with run-on sentences, italics, and exclamation marks. This style fits some stories perfectly, but in others it only serves to render the whole thing twee and precious.

I'll be reading The Illustrated Man soon, and am interested to see how Bradbury's writing has changed over the years. I expect I'll find that the change, overall, has not been for the better.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 01:23 pm:   

Recent reads for me are A Child Across The Sky by Jonathan Carroll (brilliant and beautiful), One by Conrad Williams (brutal and moving) and The Last Reef by Gareth Powell (good solid SF).

Am now reading Gardens of The Moon by Steven Erikson. Oh yes, I am getting into epic fantasy again. At least I know that Erikson is properly finishing this series.

Yes, I'm looking at you George R R Martin!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 03:34 pm:   

Finished Chandler's The Long Goodbye. Yes, quite different indeed from Altman's filmed version! More so than The Big Sleep was different from its filmed version, by far. And easily as impressive - probably one of the best such genre novels I've read to date. Both film and book are equally impressive: impossible to rank one above the other.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 03:39 pm:   

He's the guvnor, Craig.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 04:04 pm:   

Yes, I'm seeing that now, Stevie.

Maybe next it will be Lady in the Lake, which was also filmed back in the day (starring Robert Montgomery as Marlowe), and is unique in Hollywood filmmaking for being (? - to the best of my knowledge) the only 1st person POV film ever made... so avante-garde, and this from 1946!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 05, 2010 - 05:11 pm:   

I saw that film many years ago and it always stuck with me, a fascinating experiment and very weird to sit through.
I'm not sure if it was entirely successful but would need to watch again.

You should try comparing a Hammett novel to Chandler next - he invented the style, with a raw brute honesty that hasn't aged a day, while Chandler perfected it imo.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Soulshine (Soulshine)
Username: Soulshine

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 69.136.4.50
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 10:32 pm:   

For my money, Chandler's crowning moment came with The Long Goodbye, an mediation on friendship and loss that is practically Jamesian at certain points. Nothing that he wrote had a fraction of its scope or such a strong cast of three dimensional characters. Until Ross Macdonald hit his stride, it was the high water mark in the genre.

What I've been reading lately. I usually have a few books going at once and currently it is:

Swag, Elmore Leonard
Our Lady of Darkness, Fritz Leiber
Underworld, Don Delilo (almost finished)

Remarkably, I'm only a recent convert to Leonard and love his style. I think it aims for a stylized, but essentially naturalistic representation of "real life". Elaborate prose poems held an allure for me as a young man, but I am no longer intoxicated with those same delirious flights of language that kick storytelling and razor-sharp characterizations aside.

Leiber's novel is unjustly and inexplicably forgotten except by the faithful. It is a slim volume, but it has an unique voice that fills the work with meaningful details a lesser novelist would have needed 300-400 pages to pull off.

Delilo's novel is one of the most nakedly ambitious, rhapsodic attempts to sum up the American experience that I have read. Impossible to summarize, it is one of the rare "literary events" that lives up to its hype.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 10:53 pm:   

Finished The Insult by Rupert Thomson (which was cery good indeed) and started re-reading Barker's The Damnation Game for the first time in 25 years - just read the first section, and it's one of the most chilling openings to a horror novel I can remember.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Steve Bacon (Stevebacon)
Username: Stevebacon

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 90.204.111.238
Posted on Monday, November 08, 2010 - 11:05 pm:   

Almost finished The End of the Line. Superb.

Next up is Pharos by Alice Thompson.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 01:45 am:   

Zed, I too re-read 'The Damnation Game' a couple of years ago and consider it a modern horror masterpiece. Perhaps Barker's single greatest achievement in the genre.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 01:49 am:   

It's always been a special book to me, Stevie, and this re-read is showing me just how good it really is. Fucking ace, to be honest.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 144.131.7.52
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 06:42 am:   

"Fucking ace, to be honest" - I agree. One of my three favourite horror novels - along with 'Ghost Story' and 'The Parasite'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 144.131.7.52
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 06:51 am:   

Currently reading 'Why Not You and I' (Wagner), and 'Northwest Passages' (Roden).
Was also reading about the true events that inspired the story 'Sticks', by Wagner, in 'The Best of Whispers' - fascinating stuff.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 - 10:57 am:   

Lincoln, always good to hear from another fan of 'The Parasite/To Wake The Dead' - probably Ramsey's most underrated novel imo, and certainly the most nightmarishly intense of his early period.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Friday, November 12, 2010 - 01:23 am:   

Currently reading The Scarlet Letter for my American Literature course and being surprised by how much I'm enjoying it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, November 12, 2010 - 05:15 am:   

Hi, Soulshine. THE LONG GOODBYE really resonated to me, long after I put it down... I agree with your assessment, and now I think its grandeur is what enabled Altman to shine so greatly with his version - an example of a master melding with, and re-envisioning, a masterpiece. What do you think is Ross McDonald's greatest novel? He's one of my top three favorite writers.

Read OUR LADY OF DARKNESS a long time ago, as well as THE PARASITE (which I keep meaning to reread!) - both superb works that deserve much more attention.

Right now, I'm reading a short history of Russia, and finishing a selected collection of stories that won the (at one time? still going on?) annual Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's Short Story Contest, from the 50's-80's.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Soulshine (Soulshine)
Username: Soulshine

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 69.136.4.50
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 06:08 pm:   

Craig,

There are a number of impressive Macdonald novels, but The Way Some People Die, The Chill, The Underground Man and Sleeping Beauty stand apart from the rest.

Gould captured the laconic qualities and cynicism of Marlowe better than any actor. He is a relic from an earlier era moving through a then-modern iconography that leaves him bemused. He is no Galahad of the gutter striding through Southern California righting wrongs and tying up loose ends. Instead, he is an observer of sorts without heroic qualities. Though I am an enormous fan of Robert Mitchum and his first Marlowe film, Farewell, My Lovely, the movie was little more than an exceptional pastiche. I much prefer Altman's deconstructionist slant.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.178.248
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 06:15 pm:   

Altman's LONG GOODBYE has possibly the most shocking depiction of sudden violence I've ever seen on screen, after which the perpetrator says "And I LOVE her. You, I don't even like."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

James Armstrong (James_armstrong)
Username: James_armstrong

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 81.151.187.189
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 06:43 pm:   

I've just started reading Banquet for the Damned. I've heard plenty of good things about Nevill and so far he's living up to all of them. Completely gripped already and I'm only about fity pages in.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

James Armstrong (James_armstrong)
Username: James_armstrong

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 81.151.187.189
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 06:45 pm:   

*fifty (where's the edit button?)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 09:12 pm:   

>>(where's the edit button?)<<

Gary likes to hide it from us.

I'm currently reading Reggie Oliver's "Masques of Satan". I'm lovin' it, as they say at MacDonalds.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 124.180.44.182
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 10:07 pm:   

'Zombie Jam', by David Schow. A collection of shorts set in Romero's 'Living Dead' world. I'm not a huge zombie fan, but so far these stories have been excellent. The stand out so far - 'Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy'.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.237.21
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 10:10 pm:   

Myrtis et autres contes de nuit et de peur, by Daniel Mallinus. At least one story, "Photos graphein" is in Campbell territory - very reminiscent of "Cold Print", but even darker.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - 02:10 am:   

Altman's LONG GOODBYE has possibly the most shocking depiction of sudden violence I've ever seen on screen, after which the perpetrator says "And I LOVE her. You, I don't even like."

Yes, it's still a most shocking scene to this day, Proto. And it's not in the novel at all! Not any of that plotline is - does anyone know? Was that all wholly invented by Altman and/or the screenwriter, or does it borrow from some other Chandler novel, short story, etc.?...

Soulshine, I've read all those, some longer ago than others - but THE UNDERGROUND MAN has always particularly stuck in my mind, possibly my favorite of McDonald's. It's good to forget his stuff, actually... means I can go back and read them all over again.... (So what did you think of Dick Powell's version of Farewell, My Lovely, in MURDER, MY SWEET[1944]?...)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 - 04:36 pm:   

Recently finished Isaac Asimov's fifth volume in the Foundation Saga, 'Foundation And Earth' (1986). After a slow start this turned into another rattling fine yarn as the "ultimate galactic quest" approached its denouement. The thrill of exploration was palpable as the crew of the Far Star visited a succession of bizarre alien planets, each with its own unique threat, picking up clues to their goal... that I really can't even hint at, to avoid spoiling the entire series for those who haven't read it. The joy of this Saga is experiencing Asimov's ideas shift and expand beyond all imagining and hopelessly trying to second guess where he will take us next - it really is a thrilling, head-expanding and quite ingenious ride (including a possible cure for cancer, right, Weber ). This was as far as he took the Saga and I now know the ultimate secet and what the future holds for all humankind - but it leaves enough gaps in the detail to be filled in that his next course could only have been back into the past. Next up: 'Prelude To Foundation' (1988).

Just started into and motoring through: 'The Devil's Home On Leave' (1985) by Derek Raymond & 'Stranger In A Strange Land' (1961) by Heinlein.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 217.39.91.208
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 12:13 am:   

Just started 'The House Next Door' by Anne Rivers Siddons. A psychological ghost story ?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 01:42 pm:   

I'm currently re-reading Barker's The Damnation Game. Wonderful stuff. However, when my copy of Graham Joyce's The Silent Land arrives I'll be jumping straight in to that.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 01:54 pm:   

Still on Erikson's Gardens of The Moon, which I'm really enjoying. Erikson doesn't blast you with back story, but lets you carry some of the weight of the tale. An approach to epic fantasy I like.
Next up is The Man on The Ceiling by the Tems and then Rob Shearman's short story collection.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.31.118.252
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 01:57 pm:   

Am reading 'The Eyeball Collector' and 'The Lunatic's Curse' by F E Higgins.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 02:07 pm:   

Jon - The Man on The Ceiling is absolutely amazing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.149.161.187
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 04:02 pm:   

Sean! That is one of my all-time favourite horror books!
God, it's good. Up there with Hill House.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 04:06 pm:   

>>Rob Shearman's short story collection.<<

If that's "Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical" I can heartily recommend it. In fact, that reminds me, I must try to get hold of a copy of "Tiny Deaths" too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 04:42 pm:   

Derek Raymond has captured the cold terror of psychopathic loyalist violence uncannily well in 'The Devil's Home On Leave'. The things that were done to that corpse left in the shopping bags has horrible resonances, for me, with the Shankill Butcher atrocities of the 70s. This is one cold-blooded maniac posing as an "honourable villain" I really want to see brought down... a truly gut-wrenching crime thriller. The contrast between the "underachieving" Detective Sergeant's pathological caring for the forgotten and the ex-Ulster killer's fastidious butchery of his fellow man is what drives this one. As before the intense characterisation and pitch perfect dialogue of the streets is easily the equal of Hammett or Chandler, but with the almost spiritual resonance of Greene. An awesome writer!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Soulshine (Soulshine)
Username: Soulshine

Registered: 10-2010
Posted From: 69.136.4.50
Posted on Friday, November 19, 2010 - 06:01 am:   

Craig,

Powell had a reputation for playing "light" roles prior to his turn as Marlowe, but I think he conveys Marlowe's intelligence well. However, I do think that there's no darkness in Powell's Marlowe and a cinematic depiction of Marlowe needs to capture his self-imposed isolation, among other qualities. Powell's Marlowe is perfectly competent and agreeable, but not that special. It's better than James Garner's outright light-hearted approach.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, November 19, 2010 - 04:09 pm:   

It's better than James Garner's outright light-hearted approach.

That whole movie's tone, you mean, is rather "light-hearted," by comparison. I remember liking it a lot when I first saw it; I bet I'd be disappointed seeing it again.... And now, Soulshine, we have but your assessment left of Robert Montgomery - speaking of "self-imposed isolation"!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.171.245
Posted on Friday, November 19, 2010 - 10:18 pm:   

I thought Powell made an excellent Marlowe; I like how he portrayed him as a scrappy street fighter.

But I'm not reading Chandler, but "Royal Flash" the 2nd in George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman" series.

AND, I forced myself to start over with "Invitation to a Beheading" by Nabokov. A tough one to get into.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.48.210
Posted on Saturday, November 20, 2010 - 04:02 am:   

Currently reading His Father's Son by Bentley Little. At about 70 pages in I'm quite enjoying it, which surprises me because I couldn't even finish the only other Little book I've tried.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Saturday, November 20, 2010 - 03:07 pm:   

I had forgotten what a blistering paranoid political thriller 'Stranger In A Strange Land' is. The innocent alien intruder as threat to the powers that be plot has never been more provocatively entertaining - stretching all the way back to the Gospels...

How anyone could doubt this wasn't the real inspiration behind 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' (novel & film) is beyond me! Heinlein's mastery of gripping narrative and beguiling characterisation is at its very peak here while the cynical eye he casts over innate human corruption in the corridors of power, when the protection of vested interests is at stake, shows a righteous revolutionary anger that is all the more shocking coming on the back of such a conservative novel as 'Starship Troopers'... but then again ST is probably the most misunderstood novel in sci-fi history.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, November 21, 2010 - 09:19 pm:   

So in this "best mysteries" collection, I came across a story that I thought was just plain old great: compelling, entertaining, easy to read, a page-turner, thematically consistent and satisfying, etc. Nothing Earth-shatteringly new (yes, keeping in mind that other thread, on zombies); regardless, it was just hitting on all cylinders - one of those, alas, all-too-rare stories you read that actually make you want to go out and find more by the same author. And the author's someone I've never heard of before: Doug Allyn, the story in question being, "Candles in the Rain" (and I feel this way with that terrible title too! [imho, as titles go]). Anyone ever heard of this fellow, or can recommend more...?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, November 22, 2010 - 01:57 pm:   

Started Handling the Undead by J a Lindqvist yesterday.

I'm already 100 pages in and loving it. I've never been made to feel so much sadness for the characters in a zombie novel before.

This book does for the zombie what Let the right one in did for vampires. I'll admit, I've seen a variation on this particular type of zombie before - but only in the Ray Bradbury story The Wish (which is one of my all time favourites). I have absolutely no idea where this book is taking me, I'm along for the ride with all the emotional highs and lows and i recommend you guys do the same.

I'm loving it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 03:58 am:   

Well, two time's the charm: found me another novelette by this Doug Allyn, called "The Ghost Show," and it was superb in every way. A mystery, like the other, but written (as the other) unconventionally. You don't realize you've even been reading a (basically) traditional mystery, until it's practically all over. Clean writing, excellent character development, thematically and story-wise satisfying.... *Sigh* I want to write like this: simply, directly, memorably. I'll be looking for more.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 12:58 pm:   

I've never heard of him, Craig, but you've piqued my interest as we seem to have similar tastes in these things...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Skip (Wolfnoma)
Username: Wolfnoma

Registered: 07-2010
Posted From: 216.54.20.98
Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 01:51 pm:   

Classic Toy Trains magazine.

But only for the articles.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 - 05:33 pm:   

It's rare that a book makes me feel the presence of evil while I am reading it... it happened with 'The Exorcist'/'Legion' and it just happened again last night as I rushed to the finish of 'The Devil's Home On Leave'. The sequence in which Billy McGruder calmly tells our hero in minute detail of the last moments of ******'s life had cold chills emanating up through my hands and arms and I could actually feel the physical sensation of my face blanching and scalp prickling (it does happen). To call this powerful literature is to damn with faint praise. I am in awe of Derek Raymond's abilities.

The ending left me shell shocked with impotent rage and this nameless Detective Sergeant is quickly turning into one of my all-time favourite protagonists... his unbending decency, battered but still clinging on, in the face of overwhelming personal tragedy, his day-to-day dealings with unutterable evil, and the shrugging indifference that allows it to flourish, is truly inspirational. I fear deeply for his future over the next three books like no other character I have encountered. The Continental Op, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, etc had reserves of mental strength that stopped them from caring too much but this man is a classic doomed romantic with a caring soul that won't give him a moment's peace. Crime fiction doesn't get any better than this... nor does fiction.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 01:06 pm:   

About a fifth through 'Stranger In A Strange Land' now (for it is a right brick of a book) and I'm finding Valentine Michael Smith, the Man from Mars, much more of a sinister figure than I remembered. This is no Messiah, spreading love and good will to all, but a completely innocent soul, an infant in a man's body, with no understanding of, or ability to judge, the difference between right and wrong. That wouldn't ordinarily matter, as physically he is merely a human being, but his Martian raised ability to tap into the full 100% potential of the human mind, and the devastating psychic powers that go with it, make him a lethal weapon of quite terrifying implications.

I love how Heinlein refuses to paint any of the sides of the argument as black or white, but all pragmatic shades of grey - those who demand the hunting down and destruction of this threat, those who would hold him and study him as a superhuman lab rat, and those who pity and even come to love him, and would protect him from himself and all others.

What elevates the book even more is the fully rounded and wonderfully empathic characterisation of VMS himself. This is no mere cipher in a simplistic allegory of the Gospels but a real man of a different order of intelligence and value judgements from any of his fellows. Neither monster, nor saint - but a baffled stranger forcibly removed from the only environment he has ever known, raised by bizarre alien entities on Mars, and fearfully, wonderingly trying to make sense of this new world, Earth, where he knows he properly always belonged and never can. It works as a powerfully moving voyage of exploration full of painful revelations of "otherness", a riveting paranoid chase thriller shown from every angle and a frequently hilarious (as always with Bob) satire on everything that makes us human and makes VMS not...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.182.160.141
Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 01:57 pm:   

I'm a third of the way through Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. I've not read this for nigh on forty years, but I'm pleased to say it's just as wonderful as I remember it being.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.31.118.252
Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 02:09 pm:   

Am reading Bill Pronzini's 'Games' and Gary McMahon's 'Pretty Little Dead Things'.

Next up is 'Magnum P.I' by Roger Bowdler and 'Johnny go Home' by Michael Deakin and John Willis
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - 02:22 pm:   

I'm also dipping in and out of the House of Horror Best of 2010. Although not all the stories are to my taste, some of them are very good indeed. the best is obviously a story called Bad Teeth by some geezer called Marc Lyth.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:15 am:   

Read a philosophical tour-de-force in 'Stranger In A Strange Land' last night, that went completely over my head on first reading and now makes perfect sense. Heinlein, in his own effortlessly entertaining and very funny way, comes to the same conclusions as Poe, Jung & Blatty, etc about the nature of reality and the implications of an infinite conscious universe.

I'm sorely tempted to quote it at length but the prolonged conversation between Valentine and hard-headed old-time lawyer Jubal Harshaw, as he tries to explain the concept of faith and religion, and finds his agnostic professionalism forcing him to defend it, is one of the most memorable passages of literature I have read in years. While extolling Valentine's Martian understanding of reality and ripping the piss out of Earthbound man-made religion (in all its ridiculous arrogance) it cleverly advances the story and tells us every subtle detail we need to know about the character of these two men. Wonderful, just wonderful writing - wise and very, very funny!!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:28 am:   

THE SILENT LAND by Graham Joyce.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:39 am:   

Is it as good as his usual stuff? I know the metro ripped it to shreds in their book review the other day - but I've never trusted their reviews anyway. They seemed to be saying that it wasn't the sort of thing that Stevie King would write so therefore it wasn't any good.

Obviously all horror writers have to follow King's style and themes to the letter... tossers
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:39 am:   

I forgot to mention that the whole "debate" is laced with delicious suspense, because Jubal knows what monstrous harm Valentine is capable of, in his innocence, and knows he can't afford to put a foot wrong - yet he is arguing a proposition he also knows he can't win, and doesn't believe in anyway... good thing he's a lawyer. Valentine believes everything he reads, hears and sees is the literal truth and when something is wrong or 'out of the natural order' it is his Martian raised duty to put it right - and Jubal's terror in dealing with him is palpable. This is blinding stuff!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.31.118.252
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:45 am:   

First two books done with - started Magnum P.I. last night - and went in the bin after the first chapter. This is why...

Magnum tells a prostitute that being raped comes with the territory of the job she does - and then when they have the accused, he says he can't be charged with full rape as he only as a four inch dick... The prostitute gets given some money, the accused gets off scot free.

Now, if I was a teenager at that time and I was a massive fan of magnum the T.V show, what kind of messages is this book giving? Fucking ludicrous.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.166.117.210
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 11:48 am:   

Weber - three chapters in and it's wonderful. Understated, clear, simple prose, and characters you care about immediately. Graham's one of my favourite writers.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 12:06 pm:   

Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners. Very good so far.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 04:29 pm:   

Oh, I can't resist quoting a throwaway flavour of Heinlein's matchless prose:

"The third planet out from Sol was in its normal condition. It had on it 230,000 more human souls today than yesterday, but, among the five billion terrestrials such a minute increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate member, had again been cited for persecution of its white minority. The lords of women's fashions, gathered in solemn conclave in Rio, had decreed that hem lines would go down and that navels would again be covered. The three Federation defence stations swung silently in the sky, promising death to any who disturbed the planet's peace. Commercial space stations swung not so silently, disturbing the planet's peace with endless clamour of the virtues of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes had set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than had migrated by the same date last year, the Chinese rice belt had been declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly, and Cynthia Duchess, known as the Richest Girl in the World, had dismissed and paid off her sixth husband. All was normal."

How much has changed since this forecast of the 21st Century in 1961, eh...?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Friday, November 26, 2010 - 04:33 pm:   

Finished Erikson's Gardens of The Moon, which makes me want to read more of the Malazan series. Great epic fantasy.

Now on The Tem's, The Man on The Ceiling. Wow! Just, wow!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 121.219.98.135
Posted on Sunday, November 28, 2010 - 01:28 am:   

Halfway through 'Northwest Passages', by Barbara Roden - excellent. Was happy to see my home town of Hobart get a mention in 'Endless Night'! I'm sure it also gets one in 'At the Mountains of Madness' as well. A beautiful place that I still visit frequently (my mum still lives there), but when the wind comes from the south it can be bitterly cold.
Going to get a start on 'Tragic Life Stories', by Steve Duffy, tonight.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.17.252.126
Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 - 11:16 pm:   

Just about to start 'The House On Nazareth Hill'.

That's Ramsey Campbell, Heinlein, Poe & Dostoevsky all on the go at the same time. Maybe that Tory twit, Lord Young, was onto something after all!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.143.135.212
Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - 10:25 am:   

Johnny - is the Magnum book linked to the series?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - 12:32 pm:   

only by the picture of Tom Sellick on the cover.

I remember I started reading it when I was about 15 but the stuff Johnny described actually put me off so I didn't get past the first few chapters.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.31.118.252
Posted on Wednesday, December 01, 2010 - 02:16 pm:   

It appears to be tied in to the pilot episode Tony
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains)
Username: Johnny_mains

Registered: 04-2010
Posted From: 86.31.118.252
Posted on Wednesday, December 01, 2010 - 02:20 pm:   

Have started reading THE TERRIBLE CHANGES by Joel Lane. Haven't really read any of his work apart from one or two stories, so am going into this eyes open and hoping that I'll enjoy it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, December 07, 2010 - 04:55 pm:   

I've been going back and re-reading (only!) old Barker, for the first time since his publication out here in the States. I've been re-amazed by his sheer ability to create thoroughly readable, Hollywood-big stories. It's his mechanics, I'd argue, even more than his content (maybe by a hair), that makes him such a, dammit yes, a compelling read. To me.

Though, I find his arrogance and egomania, I dunno, a bit too much to bear, when he talks about horror itself in his introduction to THE ESSENTIAL CLIVE BARKER... maybe it's just me, but calling horror a "trick" he had mastered and needed to move on from, and disparaging the horror novel ("I just can't imagine devoting an entire novel to the business of scaring the reader"), feels like biting the hand that he fed upon....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 69.236.183.54
Posted on Wednesday, December 08, 2010 - 12:00 am:   

Still on Nabokov's "Invitation to a Beheading." Also read ing the Oxford Book of American verse" and "He Who Whispers" by John Dickson Carr, which has taken a sudden turn in VampireLand. Don't know if it works or not, but I'll let you know
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.155.202.203
Posted on Wednesday, December 08, 2010 - 12:49 am:   

Ooh! John Dickinson Carr! I love that kind of thing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 10, 2010 - 12:44 pm:   

Took me a few chapters to get into 'The House On Nazareth Hill', with its initially bewildering host of characters, but Ramsey has done it again... Chapter 6 scared the living daylights out of me! I'm now hopelessly hooked.

It's great to see him return to pure old-school supernatural horror after the experimentation of the last few novels. Everyone loves a good haunted house chiller and this has "classic of its kind" written all over it. I am already reminded of the effect 'To Wake The Dead'/'The Parasite' had on me... the writing emanates an aura of intense malevolence and unrelenting terror designed to reduce the reader to a nervous wreck, twitching at every scuttling movement caught out of the corner of the eye... <gulp>
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2010 - 04:39 am:   

Just had to give a shout out to this story I read in THE DARK DESCENT, called "My Dear Emily," by Joanna Russ, a writer I've known about but never before read. The story is almost 50 years old (published in 1962); what's so intriguing about it, is that I found it to be absolutely unoriginal - I mean, everything here, broken down, would only qualify as a cliche of the vampire genre; nay, a woeful cliche. It goes in no new directions, reveals no new twists or takes on that genre, none that I detected. And yet... the style is everything here: it was so absolutely lush and beautifully written - almost like a long prose poem - that I think it might be one of the best short stories I've read in, hell, quite some time.... Or maybe it just caught me in a good moment.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.153.238.54
Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2010 - 09:40 am:   

The Defeat of Grief by John Howard
Northwest Passages by Barbara Roden
The Ghosts of Summer by Frances Oliver

My reviews linked from here;
http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/rtrs.htm
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, December 13, 2010 - 12:15 pm:   

'Nazareth Hill' really is a seriously good haunted house novel. Far and away my scariest read of the year so far. Ramsey firing on all cylinders imo.

Over half-way through 'Stranger In A Strange Land' and we're deep into savagely satirical political thriller territory. If anything the book is even more relevant today with its commentary on the inevitable clash between Christianity & Islam as political entities over and above their religious status. The pathetic battle to win over Valentine as their "water brother" without "grokking" his "ALL is ONE" Martian philosophy is as disturbing as it is hilarious!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey)
Username: Darren_o_godfrey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 207.200.116.133
Posted on Monday, December 13, 2010 - 12:38 pm:   

Currently rereading various tales of the landlord's from Demons by Daylight, Dark Companions, Cold Print & Waking Nightmares.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.176.105.55
Posted on Monday, December 13, 2010 - 03:43 pm:   

This thread's at nearly 400 posts. Should we start another one?

If so, lets end this one where it sort of started with Skin by Mo Hayder. Just started it and really enjoying it.

Handling the undead (which I just finished) has to be one of my books of the year. I never thought a zombie novel could make me wipe a tear from the corner of my eye but this one did.

It's not quite as good as LTROI but it's certainly up there.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.249.184.196
Posted on Monday, October 26, 2020 - 01:08 am:   

FOUR HUNDRED POSTS.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.249.184.196
Posted on Monday, October 26, 2020 - 01:10 am:   

But really, I'll repeat, where do we go?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.29.156.95
Posted on Monday, November 30, 2020 - 11:48 pm:   

HP Lovecraft. Awe. Racism. The racism is so refreshingly unalloyed it feels honest, putting itself out there to be criticised or relished. To read it feels like breathing.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 06:12 am:   

People only ever bring up the most (in-?)famous novel of Agatha Christie's in relation to racism: TEN LITTLE N****S, the original title; and of course, it's many times being used inside the novel, that term. But they fail to mention the casual uses of the N word throughout Christie's work. Now, my question is... why is there not a hue and cry to ban Dame Agatha? Because she is a national treasure (read: cash cow) to this day, and so they simply ignore it - AS THEY SHOULD, understanding time and place. So why don't they give Lovecraft the same respect? Instead of making up fantasies that all his Cthulhu Mythos is all about his hatred of blacks, etc.? Because the whole issue is a farce, a political tool by some to be used against others when they see fit. Agatha Christie wasn't a racist, we all know this - but we should all know, that if Lovecraft IS a racist? Which he is not, of course - but if he IS?

Well, then. In that case Agatha Christie isn't just a racist - she's a flaming racist.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.29.156.95
Posted on Wednesday, December 02, 2020 - 04:07 pm:   

Everyone from those days seemed to be. I think if we got rid of them we'd be getting rid of a lot of culture.
Fact about Christie; no one but white people kill.
Lovecraft...reading him, I think he had mental problems, maybe autism, and for a while lived in an area in poverty where most people were black. I have a feeling he was exposed to crime and perhaps ridicule ( he was supposedly eye-catchingly odd) and a lot of hate from him came from his tension being in that situation. I'm not making excuses or claiming to have any concrete knowledge of his circumstances but I do think we could cut him a little slack.
As an aside, I'm finding his writing ao beautiful and moving. He is clearly wishing himself out of this world at times, even most often, and I'm finding him incredibly relevant - not the monsters but the sense of awe at decay, finding a beauty in it I think many artists and writers are in this world of abandoned malls and town centres, the dark hollow at the centre of civilisation.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.28.136
Posted on Thursday, December 03, 2020 - 10:58 am:   

Well my God, I just learned that Lovecraft became liberal in later life and changed his views the more he saw of the world. Why don't we hear about that? It feels like a huge injustice.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.29.152.21
Posted on Wednesday, December 09, 2020 - 05:41 pm:   

*
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.28.149.108
Posted on Friday, December 18, 2020 - 09:23 am:   

*
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.28.149.108
Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2020 - 01:18 pm:   

Still on Lovecraft, now the Colour Out of Space. Easily his most accessible writing. Feels "modern" for him. He describes an ancient wood about to be flooded for a reservoir and somehow it seems to conjure up the modern world. And a line stops the breath in your throat; "It all happened in the eighties"...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 - 08:45 pm:   

The new King, Later. A bare bones book. Very good but we miss the bloat we used to wish was gone.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Friday, March 19, 2021 - 10:47 am:   

Actually this book is really growing on me. It's beautiful.
I wonder that I should let this place go. I was looking at my dog Lucy, her face wise I thought, but also blank. "I wonder what she's thinking," I said. "Nothing," said my wife.
A few hours later I heard a podcast on science and spirituality, and in it this guest says he felt like the prime state of the brain, the one we should aspire to, was to not think. I am wondering that thinking and ruminating over our lives is a kind of hoarding. I don't know.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.53
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2021 - 02:26 am:   

There was a throwaway line on a 1970s Irish TV drama. Gabriel Byrne is working on a farm and he's holding a lamb. Woman: "What's wrong with that lamb?" GB: "Absolutely nothing. It's dead."
His cosmology in one line. But then she probes further and says he's acting tough in front of her. The line is flippant and cynical. Clever, but not wise. Look at the Universe and life is rare. Most of it by volume seems to be empty and cold, so it doesn't impress me when humans become the same. ("Hey Jude" has a lyric about this). Existence itself is a miracle. I don't think there's much wisdom in non-existence or emptiness. I would guess that not thinking is only a good thing if it's replaced by something else, perhaps mindfulness or doing or conscious being, but not nothing. I'm wary of infinities. They usually signify logical mistakes. Black holes in our cosmology. Life is subtle and shaded and beautiful and something that we keep adjusting to, joyfully tacking our sails as the wind changes for as long as we're allowed such a wonderful experience.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2021 - 10:14 am:   

No, you're right. I think what the dog was doing was being totally here and now, savouring every second that came her way, not stuck trying to recapture previous times. Maybe the not thinking means not getting stuck?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.53
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2021 - 01:02 pm:   

I think (!) that not thinking too much is important. Keep mind, body, spirit in balance.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Sunday, March 21, 2021 - 12:35 pm:   

Saw a great STTNG the other day in which Data said " The question'I don't know' is the first step towards wisdom." Maybe it's also the last?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.72.179
Posted on Sunday, March 21, 2021 - 10:23 pm:   

That quote has stayed with me for years. The very beginning of knowledge is an admission of ignorance.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 12:11 am:   

A weird thing; in Toy Story 4 there's a toy man/Spork brought reluctantly to life by a little girl. At the end of the film he gets asked by another home made toy why or how they came into existence, "What ARE we?". The last words in the film are his; "I don't know."
I've only just realised the Data connection.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 12:14 am:   

Not that "I don't know " was a question by the way...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 12:25 am:   

My son just said a couple of things -
"Feelings are the most real thing you'll ever know."
See Dr Seuss has a proverb: "today, you are you. That is truer than true. There is nobody alive who is you-er than you." (Obvious, "truer than true" implies the consensus reality is open to debate, but ones own existence is, to them, an undeniable fact.)
Ah, my son. Already smarter and wiser than me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 12:38 am:   

Rereading this whole thread. I really didn't fit here, did I?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.49
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 11:18 pm:   

"Feelings are the most real thing you'll ever know."

Well, yes and no. The feelings are always real in that you're undeniably having them, but problems arise when we confuse feelings with fact or extrapolate them into our interpretation of the world. We know that our senses and feelings are actually some of the least reliable ways of understanding reality. But perhaps that's not what you mean.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.79.49
Posted on Monday, March 22, 2021 - 11:22 pm:   

"Rereading this whole thread. I really didn't fit here, did I?"

I don't know, who did fit in, really?
I didn't anyway. So much reading. I couldn't fit in with that.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2021 - 08:22 pm:   

Maybe feelings are the only things that "feel" real, especially now, when both idiot and professor alike can write with eloquence and have their own podcast. It's like mud out there.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2021 - 08:54 pm:   

But the fitting in... I did used to see on here that i was being stepped politely around sometimes, but also that I used to be quite provocative a lot of the time, too, and by that I mean I could be deliberately contrary, even rude. I think mostly for attention, because it *is* something I crave, which is ironic given I generally don't click with people.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 08:46 am:   

Shit, among these posts are three saying glowing things about my stories. Even comparing me to Patricia Highsmith! Christ.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.67.222
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 09:26 am:   

There you go, that's the nice takeaway for you then.
I was probably an occasionally, momentarily distracting ghost at most.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 12:54 pm:   

No, I always liked your posts. You always had interesting things to say.
When I opened the window on here there were the bice comments about one of my stories just looking back at me. Then today the fishman who brings fish to our house and who I usually hide from (I often don't answer the door to anybody) said he loved the gigantic head I have made in the window, and shockingly that he always wanted to be an artist. He got an A level in 1970 and "fucked around" and became a Fish Man. He has been coming to our house for years and I never knew.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.74.12
Posted on Thursday, March 25, 2021 - 10:07 pm:   

Thanks. The Fish Man, good God, what an image!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.214
Posted on Friday, March 26, 2021 - 01:47 am:   

Yes, the moral being "go to college or..."
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.75.131
Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2021 - 10:46 am:   

Strangely overlooked, the idea that resources and materials are less important than coherence and focus.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.3.73
Posted on Thursday, April 01, 2021 - 10:22 pm:   

Valis by Philip K Dick, almost the patron Saint of "Now". I have to say I was loathe to read this (it's about depression) but have had it lying around so long and didn't really fancy reading anything to be honest, but wow, what a read - it could have been written last week. Other sci fi when it was written was not like this, mirroring and feeling like life all these years later, discussing issues like mental health that were just not so often discussed back then. But I've only read two chapters and can't say much more. All I can say is "Read it".
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 212.129.74.131
Posted on Friday, April 02, 2021 - 04:36 pm:   

I've only read a couple of his books, but they're some of the few I re-read. Electric Sheep and A Scanner Darkly, both books quite haunting. I don't know about him personally but from his voice in those books he comes across as a gentle man, bewildered by the world.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.30.220
Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2021 - 02:34 am:   

I think he was... he seems to have problems but chose to ride with them and study them rather than resist them. I do recommend it very much.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.30.220
Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2021 - 02:40 am:   

I think he was... he seems to have problems but chose to ride with them and study them rather than resist them. I do recommend it very much.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.109
Posted on Monday, April 05, 2021 - 10:29 pm:   

Valis has become like a case history, a diary of a time in a mental institution, and kind of dry. Such a shame after such a great start.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.151
Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2021 - 10:32 am:   

Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. Am only a few chapters in but very good so far. Filmic, and by that I mean you can "see" what you are reading, and feel the images. It feels as alive as now.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.151
Posted on Saturday, April 17, 2021 - 10:34 am:   

I stopped reading Valis. It felt like an autistic lecture. I heard a documentary on him about a guy who let him live with him for a while, and, oh, I can't be assed. Nobody's here.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 172.112.29.83
Posted on Monday, April 19, 2021 - 07:03 pm:   

I've popped my head out of the grandfather clock ala "Laugh In" to ask -

You stopped reading VALIS? So P.K. Dick wears too wearily in novel form, is that it? My general leeriness of Dick over the years - dipping my toes into stories I liked, but never getting that surge to REALLY try him out for a spin, a solid deep-dive, from some inner sense I can't quite locate that tells me it's not worth it in the end....

- and the door flaps back - CLUNK!
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.4.227
Posted on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - 10:50 am:   

Oh, he's interesting, just in this book a little wearing, like someone who talks and doesn't let you chip in. I don't know how a book can do that but it does.
Man Who Fell to Earth is just wonderful. I can't stop reading it or thinking about it. I even read it outside, in the sun, which somehow brought it even more alive.
Just read a small chapter this morning, intending to read more, but the last line was one of the best I have ever read and I need to let it hang in the air.
One of the books of my life. He just wove poetry into hard sf to the point you can't see the join.
I mean, who the fuck WAS Walter Tevis?? Such variety in his work.
(Just looked him up. He was a drunk, who couldn't write when he was drunk. He was drunk a lot.)
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.179
Posted on Friday, April 23, 2021 - 06:58 pm:   

Des is reviewing a book I loved,
https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/04/15/celestial-navigation-anne-tyler/ , for anyone who gives a shit.
Says he identifies with the main character. Maybe he is autistic, too.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.29.173
Posted on Friday, May 14, 2021 - 08:21 am:   

Man Who Fell to Earth became depressing.
Reading Ramsey's The Searching Dead. It's very good, less 'stylish' than his others, yet feels like one of his earlier stories.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 108.221.136.29
Posted on Monday, May 17, 2021 - 06:40 pm:   

So MWFTE ended up being not the best novel, or did it just go places that weren't as good as the start? A novel is such a difficult beast: parts, sections, can be great, but to weave the whole into a satisfying completion... the genres usually have an easier time accomplishing this, especially in mysteries: where the conventions are so established, so tight.

Gosh, Tony, can you name the last... I'll call it, "sprawling novel" that you read? I mean something with real meat, weighty (as in: long), that spent time going over and over its characters, took plenty of time just wallowing in their minds (even if the novel takes place over a short period of time)... something in excess of 300, 400 pages or so? I'm trying to think myself of the last one... they're an entire form of art all to its own, and I don't know how much of a thing it is now, in the world of novels....
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.2.197
Posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 - 10:50 am:   

In truth, there was build up, then it kind of faded. Like someone swept the floor but left the little dusty pile in the corner. Like I usually do.
Also, it was a really downbeat book.
I love big thick immersive books but bone are calling to me. Also I don't trust them to be good. I am reading the first in that Ramsey trilogy, The Searching Dead, and have realised Ramsey writes in quite a childlike way, largely sensory rather than emotional or "big picture" way. But it is making me keep reading.
I got to speak to him about it. I feared I'd been rude by suggesting it was a reaction to Harry Potter because of the three heroes (two boys/one girl) fighting basically a bad wizard (TM), but he said it's all just memories. Who knows, maybe kids lives and books based on them always feel interconnected.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.24.99
Posted on Monday, May 24, 2021 - 10:45 am:   

Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation. The film was quite good but the book is better (so far). Mysterious, awe inspiring, eerie... it feels like books you used to read where it felt like a voice from a real other world reaching through to you.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.244
Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - 11:52 am:   

And....no, it's awful. I want to strangle everyone in it. They're barely people.
Reading Ray Bradbury instead, Tales from the End of My Dick.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.180.70.140
Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - 04:15 pm:   

You're saving me a lot of time & $$$ by taking these books on first, Tony!

This was how I felt reading Rebecca last year. Started out beautiful, lush, intriguing, suspenseful, mysterious... and then you hit that famous moment where Mrs. Danvers has Mrs. de Winter nearly throwing herself out the window... and, not kidding: it's like Ms. DuMaurier handed the manuscript over to some hack Hollywood producer and said, Finish this, darling! It dives off a cliff into crap-dom. It made me distrustful and depressed about every DuMaurier novella I'd ever read before that I liked; and made me determined never to read a word by her again.

Afterwards, I re-watched Hitchcock's version of it. If it's even possible, it's worse than the novel. Okay, a few beauty shots... but complete dreck crap ass fuckery. And to think they keep remaking it!

I think I've ranted about this previously here, so apologies. But it's such a sour memory from the year 2020!!! Which reminds me... wasn't there a pandemic or something going on that year?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.27.244
Posted on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - 09:04 pm:   

The film of Rebecca (not read the book) starts as a kind of beautiful ghost story then becomes a tv movie thriller, all mechanical parts. It should have been a supernatural story. Mind, the same thing has happened to the world.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.2.215
Posted on Friday, June 11, 2021 - 12:35 am:   

Proust.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.2.215
Posted on Friday, June 11, 2021 - 12:37 am:   

When one word is pretentious.

Lovely book so far though.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.180.70.140
Posted on Thursday, June 17, 2021 - 07:29 pm:   

Yes, for me the "one word for naming the author one's reading = maximum pretentiousness" one was:

Nietzsche.

Nietzsche. Proust. Both, definitely. Is there a third, even?...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.11.28.131
Posted on Saturday, June 19, 2021 - 10:22 am:   

I love the Proust but it feels like a box of watercolours, not a painting. It's psychic cctv. Every time I read it I enjoy it but there's no magnet of story drawing me back.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.6.129
Posted on Friday, July 16, 2021 - 04:04 pm:   

My Best Friend's Exorcism, Grady Hendrix. Just started, several heartening chapters in and no sign of horror (I prefer it this way), and I am hooked.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.239
Posted on Saturday, July 17, 2021 - 06:22 pm:   

Me too! And having the precise same feelings about it.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.180.70.140
Posted on Monday, July 19, 2021 - 07:26 pm:   

So? Current thoughts on that novel, Tony?
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.205.241.132
Posted on Thursday, July 22, 2021 - 11:02 am:   

It's become pretty good, not great. This always happens to me. Maybe writers just get bored pretty quick while writing? All the excitement is there early in the book? Maybe reading is a kid's game.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.102.4.196
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 - 01:26 pm:   

Ugh. The Hendrix got dull. Like a movie tie in. That said, I've been reading an actual tie in- Halloween 3 - and loving it.
Also Lord Dunsany - beautiful, heady, transports you in a way that makes you feel he is showing you something real.
And... Lovecraft again. I don't know why but these days his unemotive tone sits easy with me.
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message

Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.180.70.140
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 - 05:13 pm:   

Have you read Dunsany before?

Add Your Message Here
Post:
Bold text Italics Underline Create a hyperlink Insert a clipart image

Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action:

Topics | Last Day | Last Week | Tree View | Search | Help/Instructions | Program Credits Administration