| Author | Message | ||
     Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.251.101.246 |
I write articles about the old time horror writers (pre-1970's). I just posted one about A.M. Burrage at Vintage Horror. I was wondering what some of your favorites were. Mine include, M.R. James, William Hope Hodgson, Joesph Payne Brennan, J. Sheridan LeFanu and E.F. Benson. I plan to sneak a Ramsey Campbell article in there some time, even though he doesn't fall into the category for the dates. I just want to write one and I don't think the guy that runs the site will mind. So who are some of your favorites?  | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.189.175 |
Favourite horror writers pre-'70s: E.T.A. Hoffmann Ludwig Tieck Pu Song-ling Erckmann-Chatrian J.S. Le Fanu R.L. Stevenson Poe Lafcadio Hearn Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Machen Algernon Blackwood M.R. James William Hope Hodgson Fritz Leiber H.P. Lovecraft Ambrose Bierce Walter de la Mare L.P. Hartley E.F. Benson Ray Bradbury Oliver Onions Jean Ray Shirley Jackson Davis Grubb Robert Aickman L.T.C Rolt Joseph Payne Brennan Theodore Sturgeeon Charles Beaumont And many more! | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.189.175 |
Also H.G. Wells, Lord Dunsany, A.M. Burrage, Clark Ashton Smith, John Metcalfe and Manly Wade Wellman - don't know how I forgot to mention them! Isak Dinesen , though not exactly a horror writer, is one of my favourite authors. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.243.21.37 |
Lesser known but very special: Stefan Grabiniski (check the collections from Daedalus and Ash-Tree) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.36.215 |
Tom, I have The Motion Demon. Great book! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
Elizabeth Bowen, The Demon Lover' etc. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Shaun Hutson. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.18.171.201 |
Shaun Hutson is good for getting kids interested in reading. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Oh, then let's add him to the National Curriculum. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.36.215 |
I would've thought he'd put them off reading for life. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.18.171.201 |
Many working class kids get into reading through horror. He's one of the conduits. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
OK, fair enough, but I'm not sure what the point is here. Are we trying to legitimise Hutson's success on account of this one fact? In any case, other far more worthy authors serve the same function: Roald Dahl, J K Rowling, Stephen King, et al. I'd be very interested in seeing some stats regarding Hutson's impact on the longevity of his young fans' reading habits compared to, say, Rowling's. My guess is that it would be comparatively minor. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Even factoring in socio-economic status. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.18.171.201 |
Why the hate for Hutson? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.216.159 |
Because Hutson is shit and has remained so consistently. I reviewed his eleventh novel and couldn't believe how shit it was. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.216.159 |
Pre-1970s is just too vast a category – by 'old time' I thought you meant pre-1900 (which would give us Poe, Hoffman, Mary Shelley, Bierce, Hawthorne, le Fanu and quite a few others). Great pre-1970 authors would be a list of maybe two hundred, and 'favourites' as long a list as was allowed – Huw's list is a pretty good start. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I don't "hate" him. Never met him. We've had all this debate before - God, have we. But I stand behind my original position: Hutson, by his own admission, doesn't care for his craft, so it's pitiable that he has such a large readership. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Well, there's Joel's way of putting it, too. :<) | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.42.111 |
Ah the Hutson debate.... Many ,many times..... But....I used to read to read Hutson's alongside my Herbert's & Kings & Stephen Laws.... As I got older and my tastes & requirements grew more refined Hutson got discarded, but yes I did enjoy some of his early books for their sheer gruesomeness and lets be honest, he wrote a few horny sex scenes which when you are 13 are most welcome. Gary's right: He is utter crap & cynical with it, but I didn't know that at 13. Equally Griff is right, because if he started me off into horror, and then onto better things then i expect he may well have started off a few others. gcw | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Yeah, all true. But how often do you think this happens? Are you typically of his young readers? I'd be very interested in finding out this and am willing to be persuaded that he does have such a redeeming virtue. But, alas, I doubt it very much. And even if it did prove to be true, it's not much of a justification for publication, is it? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
I was brought into reading by Enid Blyton in the early Fifties. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.108 |
Me, by Dr Seuss and Tove Janssen in the late sixties. I had the remarkable good luck to get into horror through Poe and Bradbury, then Peter Haining anthologies, then Machen and Bierce, in the local library. Will you find anything like that in a lending library now? Will you fuck. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.108 |
Read a lot of Blyton in my childhood as well, but it made little impression: it was white bread. Eventually realised she was imitating and dumbing far much better stuff by E. Nesbit and Arthur Ransome. You remember each book by the latter two authors as a distinctive reading experience. All Blyton is generic. She wrote at a breakneck rate, didn't bother to research or revise. The only Blyton novel I have a distinct memory of is THE SIX BAD BOYS, which is her token 'social problems' book, and that's because, even at the age of eight, the idea that picking up a banknote in the street and not handing it over to the police was a deeply serious crime struck me as unconvincing. Oh, and I read J.M. Barrie's PETER PAN about twelve times in 1970. I decided it was the only book that mattered. Then I bit through my lower lip trying to fly. I haven't re-read the book since. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.108 |
P.S. I was actually quite small in 1970. It wasn't like post-university for me. In case you wondered. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Well, the justification for publishing Shaun's books is surely that people want to read them. Me, I was brought into reading by the likes of Hans Andersen and George Macdonald - fairy tales that I found deeply disturbing. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I genuinely liked Hutson. I cannot lie and say reading his stuff 16-17 years ago didn't work. It did. I read some of his new stuff recently and it was pants-aplenty. But still better than Aaron Rayburn. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
If reading Hutson worked for me as a sixteen year old, imagine how well Ramsey worked. Thank you for stitching that new glowing section into my brain, Ramseystein. Cobweb sandwich anyone? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.36.215 |
Don't forget Rupert and his Christmas tree, Ramsey! My introduction to horror came from fairy tales and children's books with 'dark' elements in them. The first specific authors I can remember reading were John Gordon, whose The Giant Under the Snow I found quite thrilling and creepy, in equal measure, and Tolkien (The Hobbit). My introduction to Poe came when my English teacher played us an audio reading of The Tell-Tale Heart one day; it gave me nightmares for weeks, if not months. I went through the usual Dennis Wheatley/James Herbert stage as a teenager, then I discovered Stephen King's early novels. I didn't encounter most of whom I consider to be the 'great' writers in the field until I was in my late teens, through anthologies. At about the same time (it would have been 1980-81) I first came across Ramsey's work in Dark Forces, which also served as my introduction to many of the modern greats, including Aickman, Klein, Wagner, Tuttle, and others. I think people like us have a natural propensity for liking this stuff; we're drawn to it through an innate love of mystery and that delicious feeling of being afraid. I've never looked back since first hearing the fairy tales my parents read to me as a toddler, and reading The Giant Under the Snow. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>Well, the justification for publishing Shaun's books is surely that people want to read them. In my mind, that's more of a 'reason' than a 'justification'. Doesn't 'justify' have a kind of moral dimension to it: 1. To demonstrate or prove to be just, right, or valid Hutsons books sell, that's a fact - and that's the reason they're published. The fact that they aren't even edited properly (as has been demonstrated in innumerable reviews) shows what little regard his publishers have for his readers. So...their reason is not their justification; I think we're still waiting for the latter. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.18.67 |
Tove Janssen and Tolkein really brought me to reading. Right now my nine year old is curled up on the couch with the complete scripts of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Haven't heard a word out of her for hours except an occasional giggle. She has just discovered the parrot sketch :>) | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.42.111 |
Albie hits the nail on the head as ever! Aaron Rayburn has encouraged me to take up writing again! - bugger music. Then again.. gcw | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.42.111 |
Crap sells....I haven't read a Hutson for years but I believe he tends to write sort of Ultimate Force type stuff now as opposed to the gruesome horror stuff which tickled my fancy as a teenager. Talking of which...Has anyone seen Ultimate Force on telly? - It is utter,utter,utter shiiiiiit! I watched one with tears of joy running down my face. As a comedy it is pure gold. It is a comedy...Isn't it....? Oh. gcw | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>Crap sells No, the Internet is clogged up with crap that doesn't sell. Crap sells when it's backed up with an advertising campaign issued by people who should know better. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.156.42.111 |
"Me, I was brought into reading by the likes of Hans Andersen and George Macdonald - fairy tales that I found deeply disturbing." In case I appear to be a complete retard...One of the first stories which reduced me to tears and taught me a lot about the real world and its horrors & cruelties was The Ugly Duckling. Lovely story. gcw | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I remember being scared by a Three Investigators Book when I was about six or seven: THE MYSTERY OF THE WHISPERING MUMMY. And I read all the Famous Five mysteries, whilst rightly showing contempt for the Secret Seven. But the books that had the biggest impact on me were STIG OF THE DUMP, which didn't encourage me to fly, merely hunt out cave men in the local quary; and a SF collectiong called SPACE ONE, of which I later realised when I discovered a copy in my 20s I had understood barely a word of and had instead followed the words with my eyes and somehow summoned my own versions of stories from the titles. What a strange child I was. Bit like tripping on SF. Was it Lewis or Clarke who said the only real mind-expanding drug is SF? Was for me. Along with Space Special fizzy sugar drinks, I suspect. Dear ole Shaun. I wonder if he's losing younger readers to Darren Shan? I picked up a Shan book and glanced through, and was surprised at its cut and thrust and buckets of blood: very Shaunish. Anyone as annoyed as I was to hear of the plan to put reading age certificates on the back of children's books, by the way? Sounds like a dumb idea to me, but publishers seem to think it'll get more adults who are unsure about what's right for their kids buying. I don't think it's a good idea. I had enough trouble getting adult books out of the library past Rosemary the librarian as it was, without the added trouble of not being able to take out the kids' books for older kids. Also, as a matter of princicple, I wouldn't have wanted to read a book with Age 7 on it when I was 8. Dumb, dumb, dumb. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
>>I bit through my lower lip trying to fly. You do realise you needed to think happy thoughts, Joel. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I like the Oxford comma, so nurr, nurr, and nurr. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
I began reading Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton when I was seven or eight, and devoured everything I could find by them (which was a lot of Blyton, in those days in Canada: the Secret Seven, Famous Five, 'Adventure' series, a lot of the standalone adventures like Six Bad Boys, her two boarding school series. . . . Then I discovered the Three Investigators series - which Tim loves; they haven't really dated at all - and was also on the lookout for scary stuff after my mom read me 'A Cask of Amontillado'. When I was just shy of nine I was reading the Whitman antho More Tales to Tremble By, which contained such gems as 'The Red Lodge', 'The Voice in the Night', 'Sredni Vashtar', 'Thurnley Abey', and 'Casting the Runes'. From there I went on to some of the Hitchcock anthos for young adults (Ghosts and More Ghosts, Haunted Houseful, Thrillers and More Thrillers, and when I was about twelve was reading Sean Manley and Gogo Lewis's Baleful Beasts. I also discovered Sherlock Holmes at that time, and from there went on to read a lot of Conan Doyle's short fiction, which Pan was publishing in those days, and which included most of his horror/supernatural/SF tales. And the rest, as they say, is history. I've never read any Shaun Hutson, but I can't help thinking that my own introduction to the genre was not only more fun, it introduced me at an early age to much better writing than you're apt to encounter in one of Hutson's novels. I really don't think kids are so very different now to what they were: if something is interesting and well written they'll read it, if someone has gone to the bother of teaching them properly. Tim's had Wakefield, James, ACD, Burrage, Hodgson, and other great writers of the supernatural read to him from an early age, and enjoyed (and 'got') them all. Same with movies, or music: Tim's been watching black-and-white movies with me for years, and loves old films; he even stayed awake long past his bedtime to watch Citizen Kane through to the end ('I have to see what Rosebud is'). And he listens to the 1930s and '40s music I listen to, and enjoys it ('Cause you can understand what they're singing.'). If you expose kids to it in a sympathetic manner, and are prepared to explain a few things, they'll enjoy it, whether it be books, music, films, or anything. By the way, an odd thing about that Haunted Houseful book: it contained stories by Wakefield, Sheila Hodgson, and Alex Hamilton. Little did I suspect, when I was twelve or so and reading it for the first time, that one day I'd be publishing collections by all three authors. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
>>>if someone has gone to the bother of teaching them properly. The reality is that for most children this doesn't happen. They have to find their own way. I know I did. Social context is probably important. If I'd gone to school with a copy of any book, I'd have got my head kicked in. Maybe the likes of Hutson and Herbert are more permissable in that sense, which links to Griff's point above about working class kids. I got into reading via three things: computer game review mags, TV novelisations, and newspaper TV reviews. The only book in our house was the one with all the telephone numbers in it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I tell a lie: my Grandma used to buy me the Guinness Book of Records every Xmas, and one year bought me a collection of comedy stories with an introduciton by Ronnie Barker. She did this because she thought "reading was good for children". I do recall reading Joyce Grenfell and Miles Kington in that when I was too young to understand it. But it obviously had some impact. Bless her. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Now I recall: the only kid in my year at school who read anything was a heavy-metal fan who brought in a copy of The Exorcist every day. The other kids were wary of him, cos of the horror thing. He got suspended for refusing to cut his shoulder-length hair, though he never got bullied. Interesting, that - how the reading thing can be turned to one's advantage. I think horror had a lot to do with that. There was a rumour that he did spells and stuff. Can't imagine he'd command the same immunity if he'd been a Jane Austen fan. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
You're probably right (sadly), Gary; a lot of kids today never get exposed to anything written or made before they were born, and thus treat it with suspicion at best, contempt at worst. But kids aren't born inherently disliking these things, and if someone is willing to take the time and effort with them, they'll learn to appreciate and enjoy them. I haven't done anything more extraordinary or time-consuming than share with Tim things I myself enjoy; hence a ten-year-old who knows the lyrics to 'Anything Goes', can watch a Doctor Who episode and, on hearing a reference to 'Mrs Hudson', say 'She was Sherlock Holmes's landlady', can see a film clip of Bogart and Bergman and identify it as being from Casablanca (which he's seen), and can watch Treasure of the Sierra Madre and tell me the music sounds like the music from the original King Kong (hardly surprising, as Max Steiner wrote both scores). All of this doesn't make him better or worse than the other ten-year-olds in his class; but I like to think it makes him fairly well-rounded as a person, and able to appreciate a lot more things because he's willing to give them a try, rather than dismiss them out of hand as 'boring' or 'stupid'. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"The only book in our house was the one with all the telephone numbers in it." You sound like the Dean Koontz. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
You're lucky if you can escape a working-class upbringing in the UK. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.251.101.246 |
It's very cool to see some similar books to what got me into reading as a young child. I loved The Three Investigator books and read just about all of them. I also loved Haunted Housefuls and Ghostly Gallery of the Alfred Hitchcock books. The reason I picked pre-70's is that was the brake off dates that the guy at Vintage Horror placed for it to fall into the 'vintage' category. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I agree, Barbara. And I'm sure you'll agree that it does invariably take someone to provide such guidance towards those absorbing pleasures that are essentially deferred. Alas, the alternative is a 'fast-food' culture with its buzzy TV and endorphin-generating music and 'involving' XBox games, all of which offers a powerful illusion of satisfaction...until the novelty born its shallowness wears off, and you have to go down the shop for more. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I read an article recently that claimed there was "a tidal wave of emotionally disturbed children" coming through the school system. Where's it leading to? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
It was from a recommeded textbook on teaching and summarised research from educational psychologists. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
I wonder all the time about the reading habits of this generation of 13-20 year olds. My mum got me started by reading to me and my sister, also fairy tales- Wind in the willows, and from there to Famous Five, The three investigators, then onto Bradbury, Clarke, Tolkien and King. Not being a parent myself I wonder however, how much adults are reading to their kids, instead of leaving the TV or Xbox on for example. Also this notion of YA books, I think more adults are reading them than kids actually, with lots of exceptions of course. Cory Doctorow just released a tech savy Ya novel (little Brother) which tries to reach this generation of internet kids... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
I read aloud the following books to both my children in 70s and 80s: 'Hello Summer, Goodbye' by Michale Coney, 'The King of Elfland's Daughter' by Lord Dunsany, 'The Fruit Stoners' by Algernon Blackwood, ... and a number of others. When I was courting in the Sixties I read to my future wife (still my wife today): 'Cold Comfort farm' by Stella Gibbons, 'Women In Love' by DH Lawrence and a number of others. I'm reading aloud to my wife tonight (Diary of a Provincial Lay by EM Delafield). A date. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
That sounds really nice Des. :-) Most of my friends will maybe have a go at a book once a month, if at all, so I'm wondering if they're going to pick up books for their kids... Paul Auster signed in Copenhagen today, and I was having this conversation with someone in line, about reading habits. Most of the people who showed up were in their mid forties, not too many younger readers there- I actually thought Auster was quite popular amongst college kids etc, but that was maybe just here in Denmark. However Auster has a special relationship with the Danes I suppose, some of his books I believe come out in Danish translation before they come out in English. But I didn't see alot of younger readers. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.161.241.208 |
PAUL AUSTER IS ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE AUTHORS! I'm sick with envy! | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.92.216.182 |
And now my New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, Travels in the Scriptorium, and Oracle Night are signed and personalized. ;-) I enjoy his work very much also. I did snap some pictures as well. maybe I'll post them somewhere... He was really nice. :-) | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
New York Trilogy (the only Auster I've read) was excellent. Gary: I agree with you that kids need someone to guide them, or at least show them there's something out there beyond Spongebob Squarepants and the latest must-have video game. (Tim doesn't have any video games, and has never asked for an Xbox, or Playstation, or Gameboy, or Wii.) Des: I've been reading aloud to Tim ever since I can remember, all sorts of stuff, from Three Investigators and the Great Brain stories through Pantom Tollbooth and all sorts of ghost stories, to the Holmes tales and Treasure Island. He still enjoys being read to, and it gives us a chance to talk about the book or story, which is a lot of fun. Griff: As for the 'tidal wave of emotionally disturbed children': I don't know about that, but it does seem that we're raising a generation of children who have little exposure to anything that came before they were born, and who are either emotionally, if not physically, ignored by their parents, or who (on the other extreme) are so cosseted and protected that they have no opportunities to explore for themselves, make mistakes, and learn such things as self-reliance or how to amuse themselves, because they're never let out of their parents' sight and their lives are micro-managed (if it's Tuesday it must be gymnastic lessons). | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I've a love/hate thing going on with Auster (I'm sure he'd be thrilled to learn, fearing some stalkerish thing going on), in that I'd love to like him more than I do, but hate the fact he's to heavily into "tell" and not "show." But I'm envious of you getting your books signed, Karim. My favourite Auster is MR VERTIGO probably. I didn't get my head kicked in at school for reading. It was one of the few things I was known for. "Oh yeah, the kid who reads." But I was more circumspect about carrying books about in my pocket at middle and high school. There, another kid, more effeminate than I, and who wore glasses and played piano, had the unfortunate luck to get an erection in the boys' shower, did get a bit of stick . . . Plus, I was reading Stephen King and Arthur C Clarke, both pretty hip at the time, and he was reading historical things. I always thought he'd go on to be a writer, but I've never seen his name anywhere and he's Google-invisible. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.151.123.101 |
"i'm reading aloud to my wife tonight (Diary of a Provincial Lay by EM Delafield). A date.." Des that is great, you must be very much in love. I just washed my missus back while she was in the bath...made it sound like a chore, but you know,I like those silly things. I detect a slight 'I got into horror via more sophisticated means than thou' vibe from a few posts above. I'm with Albie, yeah I read my Hutson's but hey, here I am y'know? Or is it me? gcw  | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.189.45 |
Didn't mean to come across as 'better' than anyone else; I might be a bit older than others here (b. 1963), and when I was starting to branch out into something a bit more grownup than Enid Blyton - in around 1972-ish - there wasn't much out there in the horror field apart from the Alfred Hitchcock anthos and things like More Tales to Tremble By. Since that's what I started reading in the genre, I went on to look for more of the same, and by and large missed the Shaun Hutsons of this world, for better or worse. I did read Herbert's 'Rats' trilogy, though; do I get points for that? | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.151.123.101 |
"..do I get points for that?" You sure do Nebuly! gcw  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.162.254 |
Likewise, GCW, my point was about how much more good stuff was available in libraries in the 1970s than more recently. I didn't display good taste by picking up what was on the shelves, it just happened to be there. Even in the 1980s, I got four Aickman collections out of the local library. Impossible to imagine now. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
Well, my kids have this year read a book by John Rowe Thownsend (my youngest of nine). Some might say he dresses like a chav, which I suppose he does, which sort of looks at odds with how he is intellectually. But he loves books, Bill listening to Frankenstein at school and now demanding I read it to him. Recently he read a bit himself and declared it to be 'beautifully written' and 'very sad'. Libraries suck now. It's all endless volumes of crime stuff by the same authors. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.131.242 |
Erm, sorry for that odd sentence there in the middle. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.79.168.5 |
What about L.P. Hartley? Anybody a fan of his? I just read a good one that he wrote but haven't read very much by hime yet. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.194.134 |
Hartley wrote some great stories (he's on my list). Which one did you read, Matt? 'Podolo' is a really good one, as is the classic 'A Visitor From Down Under'. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.79.168.5 |
It was called 'The Cotillon'. Very good creepy tale. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
THE TRAVELLING GRAVE is definitely a good read. I'd loan you my copy, if it weren't an Arkham House  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.51.96 |
Didn't he write The Go Between? I read that last year; it had its eerie moments, too. It really reminded me of that Seaton's Aunt story. That Dark design book has gone off the boil, btw. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
I love the Hartley. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
Fly Fishing was good. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Oh, you mean the one where he's fishing with his dad, and hooks something large and when he pulls it up it is in fact his dad and he has vanished from the riverbank? Or did you mean the one about toileteering? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
No, I meant Fly Fishing by J R Ewing. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
Oh, that's the one where the man wakes up and hears a weird noise and goes out to see long blue breasts droopling from sparkly orange clouds, and all the people in his street are suckling, ten foot of the ground...and the sound is sighs of contentment. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
No, that was Cliff Barnes' novel. Ghost-written by Jock Ewing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.24.122.40 |
I thought you said your mum was BBC1 and your dad ITV. You know nothing, man. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
Maurice Level - the father of the conte cruele. His stories, full of 'mindless brutality and gratuitous acts' were written in the early 1900s and they're an good example of what I consider 'proper' horror' - nasty and with really bleak endings. Someone should reprint him. | ||
| Matt_cowan (Matt_cowan) Username: Matt_cowan Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 68.249.110.11 |
"Oh, you mean the one where he's fishing with his dad, and hooks something large and when he pulls it up it is in fact his dad and he has vanished from the riverbank?" Man, I'd like to read that one. I don't seem to have it in any of my anthologies here. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.95.223 |
"I thought you said your mum was BBC1 and your dad ITV." you know - that has really stuck in my memory too :>) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.188.221 |
Lord P, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that someone was planning a Maurice Level collection (can't remember if it was top be a reprint or a new "collected" type thing). I first read his brief, nasty tales in Marvin Kaye's various anthologies. I would say that Villiers de L'Isle-Adam may be more deserving of the title "father of the conte cruel" though. ;-) | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam has written some decidedly odd tales. His short novel TRIBULAT BONHOMET (Marabout - Série Fantastique) comprises a killer of swans, someone who likes to peer through keyholes to watch infinity, and so forth. It's the only thing of his I've ever read, apart from the aforementioned story. Ah, my friends, some day I'll scan the covers of those legendary Marabout Série Fantastique books! They deserve to be known by more connoisseurs. | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
How many of these has Ramsey met? | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I'm talking about those at the tail end of the pulp fiction era. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.51.96 |
Hubert - does this save you any time? http://bibliooggy.canalblog.com/albums/ma_collection_bibliotheque_marabout/index .html I wish I could read french. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.98 |
Thanks, Tony. I own most of the items on display here and quite a few which aren't. All in all 70 books or thereabouts, and my collection is far from complete! They are seldom seen in second hand condition, which means people are hanging on to them. Yes, it helps if you understand French | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.147.51.96 |
I wish you could get posters of this sort of artwork, or prints. I love it and actually feel enriched by looking at them in a way I don't from wandering the chilly catacombs of the Tate modern. Someone really ought to open a gallery of it. Then go and have Lord P set a book in it. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>> thought you said your mum was BBC1 and your dad ITV. You know nothing, man. What, and you think I listen to my parents? I just laugh at their foolish prat falls. That's a slightly horrible idea. Parents who are constantly falling over in comedic ways. To the point where you get the feeling they couldn't be real or survive the things done to them. Is that how Eval Keneval's son felt? | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>>>"Oh, you mean the one where he's fishing with his dad, and hooks something large and when he pulls it up it is in fact his dad and he has vanished from the riverbank?" >>Man, I'd like to read that one. I don't seem to have it in any of my anthologies here. Blup! Double bluff! Triple bluff! Cowan's bluff! |