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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, July 06, 2011 - 02:27 pm:   

Several good finds of late, including three quite rare adult novels by John Christopher:

'The Caves Of Night' (1958) - with a touch of Jules Verne this adventure novel shows the flip-side of human nature from 'The Death Of Grass' with an exploration of mankind at their best, forced by natural disaster to cooperate and improvise in order to survive. Five untrained individuals find themselves trapped deep underground, with food, light and time running out, after the flooding of a cave system they were casually exploring. A classic psychological suspense novel by all accounts. If he puts the same intensity of characterisation into this situation as he did TDOG I have no doubt the book will be riveting.

'The Long Voyage' (1960) - this time with a touch of Poe this is another exploration of humanity pushed to the limits. An unflinching high seas adventure, telling of the marooning of a cargo ship in the Arctic Ocean after a vicious ice storm, and the crew's desperate attempts to survive and make it back to civilization through the most hazardous terrain on Earth, while beset by internicine feuds and the running out of supplies. I do love a good survival-in-the-wilderness yarn, and can think of no one better to spin it!

'A Wrinkle In The Skin' (1965) - the third, and apparently most brutal(!), of his post-apocalypse sci-fi novels, following TDOG & 'The World In Winter', this one has civilization felled by worldwide seismic upheavals in the Earth's crust that leave the survivors to do what they must in a shattered surreal wasteland devoid of infrastructure and beset by disease and starvation. Sounds wonderful! It was after pushing himself to the limits of human horror with this book that he gave up adult fiction and turned to children's literature with the immortal 'Tripods Trilogy'.

Also picked up:

'The Power Of Darkness : Tales Of Terror By E. Nesbit' (2006) - all her uncharacteristically shocking horror and ghost stories gathered together in one memorable package.

'American Supernatural Tales' (2007) edited by S.T. Joshi - which, after looking through the contents, may just be the greatest horror anthology in my collection! And at last I have a copy of 'The Events At Poroth Farm' (1972)... Yeehaa!!
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.160.72.141
Posted on Wednesday, July 06, 2011 - 04:01 pm:   

Some good stuff there, Stevie. I haven't read any of the John Christopher novels, but the Nesbit collection is well worth reading. I'm not sure whether I have American Supernatural Tales - there have been a few with a similar title in recent years, those edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Peter Straub, for example (the latter rather puzzlingly including works by non-American authors such as Lafcadio Hearn and John Collier ). Any anthology that includes the Klein tale can't be bad. I bet he chose 'The Call of Cthulhu' for Lovecraft!
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.10.123
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 12:13 am:   

"'American Supernatural Tales' (2007) edited by S.T. Joshi - which, after looking through the contents, may just be the greatest horror anthology in my collection! And at last I have a copy of 'The Events At Poroth Farm' (1972)... Yeehaa!!"

It's very fine, Stevie, and more wide-ranging than one might have expected. As I commented when it was published, this is a book you need two copies of: one to take to bed with you, and one to read.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.10.123
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 12:15 am:   

P.S. Huw: you were right.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.143.178
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 12:26 am:   

"As I commented when it was published, this is a book you need two copies of: one to take to bed with you, and one to read."

But according to you, my local by-laws won't allow that...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.10.123
Posted on Thursday, July 07, 2011 - 12:42 am:   

Note to self: don't recycle jokes.

Nothing I add to my TBR pile is likely to be read in this decade, I'm sad to say. If you don't hear from me for a few years, I'll be reading.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, July 08, 2011 - 06:29 am:   

Found an old Tor paperback reprint of an even older Robert Bloch novel, THE KIDNAPPER (1954), his third behind his first, the amazing THE SCARF - I'm hoping this one compares well with that one, when I get to it....
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.29.166
Posted on Friday, July 08, 2011 - 09:13 am:   

It's very slight I'm afraid. Look out for THE COUCH and FIREBUG among others.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Friday, July 08, 2011 - 12:14 pm:   

Had a very nice shopping spree yesterday:

'Lost Horizon' (1933) by James Hilton - the classic utopian (or is it?) fantasy that created the myth of Shangri-La and led to one of Frank Capra's greatest movies. Incalculably influential and oddly prescient, predicting many of the coming horrors of World War II, the book is also noteable for being the first published paperback and as one of the earliest examples of my fav narrative device, the innocent strangers who stumble into a remote enclosed community of seemingly harmless eccentrics who hide a carefully guarded secret...

'The Night Of The Hunter' (1953) by Davis Grubb - really looking forward to this one on the strength of the rather amazing film and Weber's glowing recommendation, plus a few great horror stories.

'R Is For Rocket' (1962) by Ray Bradbury - which means 'S Is For Space' (ta, Weber) doesn't look quite so lonely on the old bookshelf.

'Chapter House Dune' (1985) by Frank Herbert - it's quite fitting that I finally came across a mint copy of the original edition, after years of keeping my eyes open, to match my other five volumes in the series, after just restarting 'The Pandora Sequence'. A long-awaited complete 'Dune Chronicles' re-read now beckons...

...and quite a few Horror DVDs to go with them.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 03:34 pm:   

Very exciting find yesterday:

'The Best Stories Of Walter de la Mare' (1983) selected by Graham Greene!!

16 tales, including: 'The Almond Tree', 'Miss Duveen', 'An Ideal Craftsman', 'Seaton's Aunt', 'Crewe', 'Missing', 'Miss Miller', 'The Orgy', 'The Nap', 'Physic', 'The Picnic', 'All Hallows', 'The Trumpet', 'The House', 'What Dreams May Come' & 'The Vats'.

As Greene states; "Here is one man's choice of what he could not, under any circumstances, spare. In all these stories, it seems to this admirer that we have a prose unequalled in its richness since the death of James, or, dare one say at this date, Robert Louis Stevenson."

And everything the man wrote is touched by that indefinable Aickmanesque quality of something strange and disquieting lying just below the surface of everyday reality. I've been blown away by every story of his I've read to date, so consider this volume a treasure chest of poetic riches.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Saturday, July 09, 2011 - 11:23 pm:   

Three quality finds today:

'The Italian' (1796) by Ann Radcliffe - beautiful annotated edition of the queen of gothic horror's crowning masterpiece, and final work, featuring one of the most memorable villain's in our genre's history, the satanic monk, Schedoni - forerunner of every literary demon from Melmoth to Svengali to Dracula, etc...

'The Ghost Book' (1926) edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith - one of the defining horror anthologies of the 20th Century, featuring the tales; 'The Villa Desiree' by May Sinclair, 'Chemical' by Algernon Blackwood [new to the collection], 'The Duenna' by Mrs Belloc Lowndes [new], 'A Visitor From Down Under' by L.P. Hartley [new], 'The Lost Tragedy' by Denis Mackail [new], 'Spinsters' Rest' by Clemence Dane [new], 'Mrs Lunt' by Hugh Walpole, 'Munitions Of War' by Arthur Machen [new], 'The Rocking Horse Winner' by D.H. Lawrence, 'A Recluse' by Walter de la Mare [new], 'The Corner Shop' by C.L. Ray [new], 'The Ether Hogs' & 'The Mortal' by Oliver Onions, 'Twelve O'Clock' by Charles Whibley [new], 'The Amorous Ghost' by Enid Bagnold [new], 'Mr Tallent's Ghost' by Mary Webb [new] & 'Pargiton And Harby' by Desmond MacCarthy.

'Kingdom Come' (2006) by J.G. Ballard - another peerless dystopian sci-fi nightmare and, tragically, his last completed novel. This only leaves 'Running Wild' to get until I have every word of fiction the great man wrote! I still miss him...
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 05:54 pm:   

>'Kingdom Come' (2006) by J.G. Ballard - another peerless dystopian sci-fi nightmare and, tragically, his last completed novel. This only leaves 'Running Wild' to get until I have every word of fiction the great man wrote! I still miss him...<

You're saving one of the best til last, in my opinion, Stevie. Running Wild is a slim volume, but perfectly focused.

A lot of comics on my current reading pile at the moment. Working my way through Garth Ennis's run on Hellblazer, and I just picked up the first volume of a new comic called Shame, thanks to the gorgeous John Bolton artwork.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Sunday, July 10, 2011 - 09:14 pm:   

Thanks, John. I've been working my way through Ballard's novels, one a year, in chrono order and, funnily enough, just started the latest one today; 'Hello America' (1981).

Couple of chapters in and nice to see him returning firmly to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre that made his name. Set in the 2080's this is about an expedition from Europe to the deserted wasteland of the USA, following some terrible disaster. Enthralling stuff already, that reads, so far, like a kind of sequel to 'The Drought'.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.2.67.60
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 10:14 am:   

John, Ennis's Hellblazer run was great. What's Shame about?

I'm currently reading Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels. Read I, the Jury and have nearly finished My Gun is Quick. I'm enjoying them but at the same time they're not as good as I'd hoped. The dialogue's lacking in wisecracks, the characterisation's pretty thin and the prose varies between fairly bland and actually quite good. Also, given Spillane's and Mike Hammer's reputations the books are surprisingly tame, almost quaint. In a lot of ways Hammer's a big softy, forever championing the underdog and falling in love at the drop of a hat. Of course he's not entirely loveable, he's quite happy to cheat on his current girlfriend and will make the occasional racist or homophobic remark, but he doesn't come across as the right-wing nutjob that he's usually painted as. I don't know if he gets tougher in the later books or if I'm just desensitised through reading James Ellroy and the like.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 05:54 pm:   

I've been inspired to check how many Walter de la Mare stories I have in the collection, including three of his collections and various horror anthology appearances. It stands at 32 so far:

'All Hallows' x1
'The Almond Tree' x3
'At First Sight' x1
'Bad Company' x1
'Crewe' x1
'The Green Room' x1
'The House' x1
'An Ideal Craftsman' x1
'In The Forest' x1
'Lichen' x1
'The Looking Glass' x1
'Miss Duveen' x2
'Miss Miller' x1
'Missing' x3
'Mr Kempe' x1
'The Nap' x2
'A Nest Of Singing Birds' x1
'The Orgy' x2
'Physic' x2
'The Picnic' x1
'The Picture' x1
'The Princess' x1
'A Recluse' x1
'A Revenant' x1
'The Riddle' x1
'Sambo And The Snow Mountains' x1
'Seaton's Aunt' x4
'The Three Friends' x1
'The Trumpet' x2
'The Vats' x1
'The Wharf' x1
'What Dreams May Come' x1

Add to that 32 poems: 'The Children Of Stare', 'Winter', 'Tom's Angel', 'The Sleeper', 'Age', 'Envoy', 'Arabia', 'Nod', 'The Listeners', 'Maerchen', 'Flotsam', 'All That's Past', 'Nicholas Nye', 'Master Rabbit', 'A Robin', 'The Holly', 'The Moth', 'The Scribe', 'The Ghost', 'Autumn', 'The House', 'The Ghost', 'The Thorn', 'The Familiar', 'Farewell', 'The Exile', 'The Bottle', 'Vain Questioning', 'The Imagination's Pride', 'I Sit Alone', 'Music' & 'Shadow'.

I thought this one was quite witty:

THE HOUSE

"Mother, it's such a lonely house,"
The child cried; and the wind sighed.
"A narrow but a lovely house,"
The mother replied.

"Child, it is such a narrow house,"
The ghost cried; and the wind sighed.
"A narrow and a lonely house,"
The withering grass replied.

...now I must do the same with Robert Aickman. For some strange reason these two authors are becoming ever more entwined in my literary affections.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 08:10 pm:   

Karl Edward Wagner always insisted that Aickman was no more than a clever but shallow imitator of de la Mare. I don't agree, but I do think de la Mare had the same kind of deep influence on Aickman that Dashiell Hammett had on Raymond Chandler and Woody Guthrie on Bob Dylan.

I've always loved de la Mare's poem 'The Listeners'. It's often described as a ghost story as if that phrase was somehow a full explanation, with no need to ask who or where or why. I read it as a reaction to the Great War, similar in intention to Machen's 'The Terror'. The one who promised to come back (it could be a past hero, an ancestor, a mythical figure, even Christ) returns and everyone is dead, humanity is finished, there are only ghosts in a ruined house. Not many poets could offer a picture as allegorical as that, but de la Mare certainly could.

I said this here years ago but it bears repeating: when Kaye Webb, the founder of Puffin Books, was a young editor she had a romantic fling with de la Mare, who was of course much older. That thought fills me with happiness.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.155.181
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 08:24 pm:   

Stevie, did you go through all your collections to work out that list, making sure all the "x4", "x2" etc were correct?
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.83
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 08:36 pm:   

In which collection is "A Recluse"? I have it in Cynthia Asquith's The Ghost Book and have never seen it anywhere else. "All hallows" is probably my all-time favourite short story. I still reread it from time to time.
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 - 08:46 pm:   

>John, Ennis's Hellblazer run was great. What's Shame about?<

Stu: Shame (so far) appears to be a dark fairy tale about a selfless old matron who makes a single 'selfish' wish which is granted by a demon and results in a cruel, Helen Vaughan-esque woman being born on earth. To be honest, I'm not terribly gripped by the story so far. I'm in this one for the artwork.

Enjoying Ennis's Hellblazer. One of the volumes I have here, though, is Rare Cuts which includes a two issue collaboration between Grant Morrison and David Lloyd which makes me wish that, as a team, they'd had a far longer run on the comic.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 05:10 am:   

Hubert, I just picked up Cynthia Asquith's 'Ghost Book' the other day, along with 'The Best Stories Of Walter de la Mare', which is what inspired me to do the survey. There is a definite similarity of style between de la Mare & Aickman that I haven't found in any other writers of weird fiction. They write beautifully enigmatic literary riddles that refuse to leave the reader alone once read.

Beautiful poem, Joel. It's included in a segment of his poetry titled "Dream And Vision" in the little collection I have. The telling lines, for me, are:

"Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:",

implying that the Traveller, Christ or Merlin, has returned to find mankind asleep to his message, or in a state of spiritual lassitude. They listen and they hear him but what he says does not interest them so they make no reply and he goes on his way, having kept his promise.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.2.67.60
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 09:57 am:   

>>a two issue collaboration between Grant Morrison and David Lloyd which makes me wish that, as a team, they'd had a far longer run on the comic.

I used to have bits of that story in a UK comic that reprinted in 5(?) page instalments. Didn't keep buying the comic long enough to get the entire Hellblazer story. Is there a bit involving babies and scissors or am I getting it confused with something else?
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.167
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 10:28 am:   

De la Mare can also invoke an immense sadness, like in "Miss Duveen". The same elements are present in the not dissimilarly-titled "Miss Miller", but in the latter story the sadness is almost swept away by the humour. If I were to pick a second favourite de la Mare story it would be "A Recluse". The man's command of English is simply wonderful. I'd say he's up there with Henry James. I see little similarity with Aickman, but then I've only read "Cold Hand in Mine" and a couple stray stories.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 11:02 am:   

I like the story The Vats...it's beautifully odd.

Hubert, that sadness in De la Mare's tales is what appeals to me. It's a strange melancholy.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.167
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 01:38 pm:   

Yes, "The Vats" is just about the oddest story I have ever encountered. The mystery is complete. There is a sense that the veil would be lifted if the reader could see what the narrator is describing.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 02:41 pm:   

Hubert, read further up the thread and you'll see you're in agreement with Graham Greene re Walter de la Mare's literary gifts.

I've only read a collection of Henry James' ghost stories and the similarity is relevant, though I see James as a more pointedly psychological writer, while de la Mare & Aickman seem to exist in a world of pure poetic symbolism, that I find as beguiling as it is unsettling.

Interesting that they both more or less contained themselves to the short story format, apart from a few uncharacteristic, and impossible to find, forays into novel writing. Poe, de Maupassant & Bradbury also spring to mind, though, again, their writings lack that mysterious nebulism I find in de la Mare & Aickman.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.167
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 02:54 pm:   

What a coincidence! But I don't see any connection with Stevenson, although, again, I haven't read all that much Stevenson apart from the inevitable Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.18.226
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 03:32 pm:   

"Interesting that they both more or less contained themselves to the short story format, apart from a few uncharacteristic, and impossible to find, forays into novel writing."

Mind you, Stevie, de la Mare's The Return is easily found and inexpensive.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 03:33 pm:   

It wasn't specifically what Greene was getting at but, imho, Robert Louis Stevenson is undervalued for his contribution to weird literature, Hubert.

Apart from writing one of the ten best and most influential, in terms of theme and structure, horror novels of all time, 'The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde', his numerous short stories also have that indefinably haunting quality of hinting at far more than they state. He was at least as influential as Le Fanu in this regard and a much more subtle and psychologically adroit writer, imo.

Genre tales like; 'The Suicide Club', 'Olalla', 'Markheim', 'The Body Snatcher', 'The Bottle Imp', 'The Merry Men', 'The Isle Of Voices', 'The Ebb Tide', 'The Beach Of Falesá', etc. deserve to be far better known.

He was a master fantasist. Even his most famous works, such as 'Treasure Island' or 'The Master Of Ballantrae', all have that touch of the supernatural and the gothic about them. I've long hoped to find a definitive collection of his weird tales.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 03:43 pm:   

Wow, Ramsey, you're kidding!! I know of 'The Return' by reputation, as his only full length supernatural novel, but had the impression it was long out of print. This is fantastic news. I'm off to order a copy right now!
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.155.181
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 04:34 pm:   

"Nurse, a sedative! No, it's not a list this time - it's an altogether new symptom of the underlying condition!"
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.47.63
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 04:51 pm:   

I'm pretty sure Dover had an inexpensive edition of The Return, Stevie. If you want to read more de la Mare, there is an excellent 2-volume set of his complete stories (Giles de la Mare Publishers, 1996), with a third volume collecting his stories for children. There's also the gorgeous Tartarus Press edition, Strangers and Pilgrims, which collects his supernatural and psychological stories in one chunky hardback.

Have you read L.P. Hartley? Some of his stories share the strangeness found in de la mare and Aickman - well worth hunting down!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 06:13 pm:   

Thanks, Huw. A talent as rare as Walter de la Mare's is worth getting excited over. I'm only now starting to appreciate the rich depth of his work and never thought I'd discover another writer of weird fiction comparable to Robert Aickman.

I have read and enjoyed quite a few L.P. Hartley stories but find them much more plot and entertainment driven straight horror yarns, of the W.W. Jacobs or A.M. Burrage variety (no bad thing), than the poetic subtleties I get from WdlM & RA. Just my opinion of course...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.167
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 08:07 pm:   

@ Stevie: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3075
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.47.63
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 09:57 pm:   

Stevie, I agree - Hartley's stories do, on the whole, tend to be more conventional than de la Mare's. He did write some that have a more enigmatic feel to them, though - 'Podolo' is one that comes to mind. John Metcalfe also wrote some strange stories ('The Double Admiral', for example). I would also mention Shirley Jackson as a writer of 'strange' fiction ('The Bus', 'The Tooth', 'The Lovely House', etc.).
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - 11:37 pm:   

>Is there a bit involving babies and scissors or am I getting it confused with something else?<

Yep, Stu, there's a couple of scenes along those lines. One short sequence, where children have their faces cut off so adults can wear them as childhood masks, has stuck with me in the day or two since I read it.
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 82.14.58.165
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 09:01 am:   

>>children have their faces cut off so adults can wear them as childhood masks

That's my Halloween costume for this year all sorted.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.53.20
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 10:43 am:   

Hartley's "A Visitor from Down Under" is a great story. It's in the aforementioned Asquith anthology. Wakefield can be powerful, if a trifle uneven at times. The best of his stories have an M.R. James-like nightmarishness about them.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 01:20 pm:   

Wakefield's a one-trick writer: he can do obliquely revealed supernatural terror very well indeed. But he can't write intelligently or readably about anything else. You have to wade through pages of tedious snobbery, misogyny and general reactionary whining and dullness until you get to the supernatural payoff and you think "At last!"

It's like making love to a very tiresome and smug bore who somehow knows how to push your buttons, you keep going back but every time you think "Oh, shut up and get on with it... I said shut up... do that thing where... oh yes, just like that... wow... cheers, I'll see myself out..."
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 01:29 pm:   

I'll read some more Wakefield and get back to you on that, Joel.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.53.20
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 02:59 pm:   

Can you give examples, Joel?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.77.197
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - 03:47 pm:   

>>>It's like making love to a very tiresome and smug bore who somehow knows how to push your buttons, you keep going back but every time you think "Oh, shut up and get on with it... I said shut up... do that thing where... oh yes, just like that... wow... cheers, I'll see myself out..."

Or watching Matt Le Tissier play football.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.27.136
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 12:36 am:   

Hubert – well, there was a guy I knew in my student days who was a Thatcherite bastard but had strong hands and a massive... hang on, do you mean examples from Wakefield?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.7.104
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 01:23 am:   

"Nurse, a sedative! No, it's not a list this time - it's an altogether new symptom of the underlying condition!"

1. Yeah,
2. what's
3. with
4. all
5. the

and finally...

6. lists?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.141.142
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 01:56 am:   

1. O
2. C
and finally
3. D
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 04:00 am:   

That's my Halloween costume for this year all sorted.

I think I'll buy an 8 1/2" x 11" pane of one-way mirror, tie a strap to it, and wear it over my face. Then this Halloween I'll be going as - everyone I happen to meet.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.53.20
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 08:45 am:   

Joel - a tall order, I know
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 01:22 pm:   

Still not clear what you are asking! In relation to Wakefield, it's a matter of degree as some of his stories read well enough – 'The Frontier Guards' is a little classic – but the best you can ever say for his setting and characterisation is that they are not noticeable. Reading the last two collections feels rather like sitting in a gentlemen's club, choking on second-hand cigar smoke, while some vile old retired colonel gives you the benefiit of his experience of 'women'. 'The First Sheaf' in particular deserves a punch. Critics have justly praised Wakefield's skill with the oblique weird twist and the grimly fatalistic ending. But you will never see a critic say "That Wakefield story has really interesting characters, convincing dialogue and a memorable setting." Unless they are taking the piss.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.72.8
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 03:22 pm:   

Well, I think the settings of, say, "The Sepulchre of Jasper Sarasen", "The Red Lodge", "The Third Hole" and "Ingredient X" are convincing enough. As for characterisation, surely the 'vilain' in "He Cometh and He Passeth By" is as memorable as they come. If I recall correctly Wakefield had mostly unpleasant relationships with women, but I don't see any outright negative portrayals of the fair sex. either. Wakefield's world is, of course, as upper-class as M.R. James's, but I have no qualms about that.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.28.72
Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 - 11:55 pm:   

Well, the narrator of 'The First Sheaf' describes a woman in anger as "a raging virago" and remarks that intuition can be defined as "a mode of apprehension unknown to women". In 'The Triumph of Death', a story about an evil and sadistic woman, a minor character is described as raising her voice "like most women in the grip of logic". And so on.

As for his villains, male or female, I think there's a major difference between the 'banality of evil' and a banal portrayal of evil. Wakefield is at his best when the supernatural element of the story is unknowable and utterly strange, as in 'Look Up There' and (as I said above) 'The Frontier Guards'. He is very good at 'weird effects' in the supernatural horror genre. But the minor Wakefield re-read I've embarked upon this evening to answer your question just confirms to me that he is a pretty bad writer at all other levels: stilted, pompous, bigoted and wooden. His prose reeks of cigar smoke.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.91
Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 10:20 am:   

I remember the very Freudian "Monstrous Regiment", wherein the sexual depravity of a governess causes a little boy to have seizures of some kind. One male character says to another: "Women like that should be painfully exterminated". An odd tale. I'm willing to concede Wakefield may have had major problems in that area. On the other hand, I don't recall any difficulties between the narrator of "The Red Lodge" and his wife.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 01:13 pm:   

Wakefield's mentality appears to have soured really badly in later years – though his ability to deliver grim and fatalistic supernatural twists got better if anything. 'The Red Lodge', an early story, is inoffensive but it isn't really that good, it's just a moody retread of generic material.

'Monstrous Regiment', of course, takes its title from a common misquote: the term, from a 16th-century nonconformist pamphlet, is 'the monstrous regimen of women' – meaning that they rule (and not in the benign sense used by Wayne and Garth). There is a strong sense that the evil women in Wakefield's stories are evil because they are women.

And yes, I know you'll find similar sentiments in Led Zeppelin – albeit wearing inverted commas that are heavier than the guitar riffs.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.118.75.91
Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 - 03:53 pm:   

Literature and music abound with "Evil Women" and some ladies I have known were indeed blatant harpies - the type exists, you know. I suppose for some men it takes only a couple misadventures on the sentimental front to stigmatize all women as 'belles dames sans merci'.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 - 04:26 pm:   

Two fascinating additions to the library by a Norwegian author I have thus far only experienced one short ghost story by. Namely, Knut Hamsun:

'Hunger' (1890) - Read the back cover, sounded intriguing, and on the strength of that story, "An Apparition", paid the £2 asking price. Got back and read the first page, as I generally do on picking up a book I know nothing about, and continued reading through to the end of Part One (about a quarter of the book) - an exceptional rarity for me, no matter how great the prose or gripping the set-up. This book is just so odd and reads like nothing I have encountered before. It has a hallucinogenic, dream-like quality, while being rooted firmly in the realist tradition, and takes one so far inside the psyche of the narrator protagonist, a starving student drop-out wandering through a haze of impulsive actions and odd encounters, that I would be reminded greatly of 'The Catcher In The Rye' were it not for the lead character's complete lack of self pity and frankly bizarre outlook on the vicissitudes of life. This is one I feel compelled to finish now...

Which makes me glad I also picked up its follow-up, 'Mysteries' (1892)! An existential nightmare, by all accounts.

This feels like a special find and my instincts are rarely wrong.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Monday, July 18, 2011 - 06:02 pm:   

Knut Hamsen was a major influence on my favourite writer, Charles Bukowski. I read "Hunger" years ago and loved it.

Also try John Fante - his Bandini books in particular.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.158.57.48
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 02:30 am:   

Recent purchases

Killing the Beasts Chris Simms
Savage Moon - Chris Simms

Two police thrillers set in Manchester. Met Chris Simms while he was doing what appeared to be an impromptu signing in Waterstone. he's a thoroughly nice chap and Shifting Skin (that i bought at the time and he signed for me) was a rather good book. These two are others in the same series.

Wise Blood - Flannery O'connor - I know the film is fantastic. I'm hoping the book is too.

Alfred Hitchcock's Once Upon a dreadful Time - a collection of shorts I picked up for 50p with a cracking line up of authors. It has stories from Robert Arthur (who wrote the good 3 investigator books IIRC) Frederick Brown, Phillip Ketchum, Donald Westlake among others

Colorado Kid - Stephen King - a first edition of this from the states. Not the PS version but a Hard case Crime edition which states FIRST PUBLICATION ANYWHERE on the front cover... which I paid a grand total of £1.75 for. It could be a good investment.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:11 pm:   

Talk about a bumper harvest on the way home yesterday:

'Exile And The Kingdom' (1957) by Albert Camus - been keeping an eye open for years for this book in order to complete my collection of the greatest French writer of the 20th Century's fiction. Six, rare as hen's teeth, "long" short stories - "The Adulterous Woman", "The Renegade", "The Silent Men", "The Guest", "The Artist At Work" & "The Growing Stone" - to stand alongside; 'The Outsider', 'The Plague', 'The Fall' (after which the 2nd greatest band ever in existence named themselves - always have to get that in!) & 'The First Man'.

'The Halloween Tree' (1972) by Ray Bradbury - beamed to me direct by God, his lone foray into children's literature (to my knowledge) beautifully, and rather creepily, illustrated by Joe Mugnaini, and that, I sense, from the vibe it gives off, may have been a rather big influence on a certain prodigiously talented Mr Barker's rather wonderful books for children!

'Slapstick' (1976) by Kurt Vonnegut - his ode to Laurel & Hardy, adoringly dedictated to Arthur Stanley Jefferson & Norvell Hardy, accurately described as "two angels of my time", that has to be one of the most riotously funny and outrageously silly comic sci-fi novels ever written. Shot through with the man's ability to tug at the heartstrings, just when you least expected it! Ripe for a re-read after too many years.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:17 pm:   

Bradbury wrote one called Switch on the Night - specifically aimed at the pre-school children
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:18 pm:   

Ahmed and the Oblivion machine is another Junior/YA book of his - as are R is for Rocket and S is for Space
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:30 pm:   

Stevie, if you haven't already, you can now see the train-wreck SO-bad-it's-almost-good 1980's flick SLAPSTICK (OF ANOTHER KIND), starring Jerry Lewis and Madeline Khan, on youtube, someone's put the whole thing up there....

Me, onto the TBR pile: RED HARVEST, by Dashiell Hammett, and an old collection of Henry James with a few I've not read. I'm looking for but still can't find James' novel THE OTHER HOUSE, which is supposed to be, I think I read, part suspense, murder, mystery, and ghost story, and as well highly under-appreciated. Though reading James, always a daunting task... he makes Aickman seem like... well, like reading Vonnegut!...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:53 pm:   

I'd recommend 'The Aspern Papers', if you haven't already read it, as the only other work of James I've read that matches the psychological complexity and haunting quality of 'The Turn Of The Screw'. I have to admit I haven't read anything larger than novella length of his though...
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 04:54 pm:   

Is The Aspern Papers the tale in which James lists the opening section "1" and yet there is only one section?
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.155.181
Posted on Thursday, July 21, 2011 - 07:52 pm:   

Ah, right. Thanks.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Friday, July 22, 2011 - 12:50 am:   

Just in and wondering what you're thanking me for, Gary?

But thanks anyway (what a nice man).

Stevie... at 11.49 on a Thursday night, extremely drunk.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 166.216.226.162
Posted on Friday, July 22, 2011 - 01:36 am:   

If he's thanking me, he's semi-quite welcome.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.147.143.79
Posted on Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 11:52 am:   

I just ordered From Blue to Black off the interwebz. I really enjoyed the Blue mask earlier this year so no real choice on this.

Also ordered the Scent of Apples by Mark Behr (his novel Embrace was one of the most brilliant and ultimately disturbing things I read last year) and a DVD box set of Bob balaban's parents and something called Fear - which was a third of the price of just ordering Parents...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.38.114
Posted on Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 03:10 pm:   

Yeah, but if you order Parents you get Fear as part of the deal...
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.158.78.71
Posted on Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 06:00 pm:   

Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg - cracking 1971 SF about the entire human race living as brains in tanks in the 25th century. I was so excited about finding it I've started it immediately and will finish it almost as quickly
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Sunday, July 24, 2011 - 01:45 am:   

Finally came across a copy of 'Flatland' (1884) by Edwin A. Abbott.

A philosophical/satirical, sci-fi/fantasy classic I know well by its reputation and far reaching influence, and have wanted to read for well over 30 years now.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 09:24 pm:   

Just picked up a copy of Neil Gaiman's collection "Smoke and Mirrors" in a charity shop today. I'm not very familiar with Gaiman's writing, but as I'm more of a short story reader than a novel reader I thought this was an excellent place for me to start.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.145.134.147
Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 11:05 pm:   

It is indeed.

There's some excellent stuff in there
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 49.227.137.242
Posted on Tuesday, August 02, 2011 - 08:35 am:   

As good a place as any to post this. My books finally arrived in NZ today...First six out of the first box. Old friends. Christopher Fowler Spanky, Peter Hoeg The History of Danish Dreams, Misogynies Joan Smith, Clive Barker Cabal, Odd Fish and Englishmen Sarah Francis, Tim Winton The Riders.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Sunday, August 07, 2011 - 04:43 pm:   

Picked these up yesterday:

'Revolt In 2100' (1953) by Robert A. Heinlein - the third of his 'Future History' collections, following 'The Man Who Sold The Moon' & 'The Green Hills Of Earth'. Includes the short novel 'If This Goes On...' (1940) and the short stories 'Coventry' (1940) & 'Misfit' (1939).

'Frights' (1976) edited by Kirby McCauley - been looking this classic antho for years. Includes an intro by Fritz Leiber and the stories; 'There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding' by Russell Kirk, 'The Whisperer' by Brian Lumley, 'Armaja Das' by Joe Haldeman, 'The Kitten' by Poul & Karen Anderson, 'Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight' by R.A. Lafferty, 'Dead Call' by William F. Nolan, 'The Idiots' by Davis Grubb, 'The Companion' by Ramsey Campbell, 'Firefight' by David Drake, 'It Only Comes Out At Night' by Dennis Etchison, 'Compulsory Games' by Robert Aickman(!), 'Sums' by John Jakes & Richard E. Peck, 'The Warm Farewell' by Robert Bloch & 'End Game' by Gahan Wilson.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, August 08, 2011 - 07:49 am:   

I loved "It Only Comes Out At Night," and of course, "The Companion." I found "There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding" too sentimental, like it's title. Have I even read the others?...
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 203.171.196.182
Posted on Tuesday, August 09, 2011 - 01:40 am:   

Added 'The Ritual', by Adam Nevill, to the pile.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 09, 2011 - 04:57 pm:   

Ordered the other day and arrived already:

'Night Chills' (1975) edited by Kirby McCauley - featuring the stories; 'At Midnight In The Month Of June' by Ray Bradbury, 'A: B: O' by Walter de la Mare(!), 'Minnesota Gothic' by Thomas M. Disch, 'The Jugular Man' by Joseph Payne Brennan, 'Alice And The Allergy' by Fritz Leiber, 'The Island' by L.P. Hartley, 'Yesterday's Witch' by Gahan Wilson, 'Wet Season' by Dennis Etchison, 'Innsmouth Clay' by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth, 'The People Of The Black Coast' by Robert E. Howard, 'Call First' by Ramsey Campbell, 'From Beyond The Stars' by Richard L. Tierney, 'The Funny Farm' by Robert Bloch, 'The Face In The Wind' by Carl Jacobi, 'Goodman's Place' by Manly Wade Wellman, 'Kellerman's Eyepiece' by Mary Elizabeth Counselman, 'Sticks' by Karl Edward Wagner & 'The Sign Painter And The Crystal Fishes' by Marjorie Bowen.

Rather a fine collection - to say the least...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 01:04 pm:   

The above makes 33 Walter de la Mare stories. Which inspired me to do a survey of my Robert Aickman anthology tales:

The Cicerones
Compulsory Games
The Hospice
The Inner Room
Mark Ingestre : The Customer's Tale
Meeting Mr Millar
No Stronger Than A Flower
Ringing the Changes
The Stains
The Swords
The Trains
The Visiting Star

Only twelve! Yet enough to know I consider him the greatest exponent of the short supernatural tale since WdlM & M.R. James and, perhaps, the ultimate proof that quality outweighs quantity every time.

With what I reckon at 48 short stories and 2 novels to his name I must make boosting that number a top priority...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, August 12, 2011 - 12:02 pm:   

Just ordered 'White Corridor' (2007) by Christopher Fowler, as I'm flying through 'The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes' at a rate of knots. Only started it last night and already read the first five of twelve stories. Crazily addictive!

'The Yellow Face' is an astonishing story to have been written in Victorian times and must have raised many a disgruntled eyebrow and muttered harrumph in gentlemen's clubs throughout the land. Arthur Conan Doyle is going up in my estimation, as a humanitarian, by leaps and bounds.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, August 16, 2011 - 05:41 pm:   

Found over the weekend...

'A Happy Death' (1938) by Albert Camus - his first novel, finished but discarded in favour of 'The Outsider', and only published posthumously in 1971, this is a fascinating portrait of the first artistic stirrings of a perfectionist genius that puts the entire life's works of lesser authors to shame. A tale of murder and redemption that exists in a kind of halfway house between 'Crime And Punishment and 'The Outsider'.

'Jailbird' (1979) by Kurt Vonnegut - one of the few books left of his that I have yet to read. A savage political satire that was his mordantly amused response to the Watergate Scandal.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 04:23 pm:   

'Selected Tales And Sketches' (1987) by Nathaniel Hawthorne - if Poe was the forerunner of Hodgson, Machen & Lovecraft's brand of intense cosmic horror then Hawthorne, for me, was the root from which Henry James, Walter de la Mare & Robert Aickman's oddly ambiguous take on the weird tale sprang. This authoritative cross section contains: 'The Hollow of the Three Hills' (1830), 'Sir William Phips' (1830), 'Mrs. Hutchinson' (1830), 'The Wives of the Dead' (1832), 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux' (1832), 'Roger Malvin's Burial' (1832), 'Passages from a Relinquished Work' (1834), 'Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe' (1834), 'The Haunted Mind' (1835), 'Alice Doane's Appeal' (1835), 'The Gray Champion' (1835), 'Young Goodman Brown' (1835), 'Wakefield' (1835), 'The Notch of the White Mountains' (1835), 'The Ambitious Guest' (1835), 'The May-Pole of Merry Mount' (1836), 'The Minister's Black Veil' (1836), 'Sunday at Home' (1837), 'The Man of Adamant' (1837), 'Endicott and the Red Cross' (1838), 'Night Sketches' (1838), 'Legends of the Province House' (1840), 'The Hall of Fantasy' (1843), 'The Birth-mark' (1843), 'Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent' (1843), 'The Christmas Banquet' (1844), 'The Celestial Rail-road' (1843), 'Earth's Holocaust' (1844), 'The Artist of the Beautiful' (1844), 'Rappaccini's Daughter' (1844) & 'Ethan Brand (1850). Now if only I could track down a copy of 'Twice-Told Tales'...

'The Marble Faun' (1860) by Nathaniel Hawthorne - his fourth and final novel that sounds like a posh American version of 'Crime And Punishment' with fantasy elements. That only leaves 'The Blithedale Romance' to get.
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 202.124.88.59
Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011 - 05:39 am:   

Added 'Picking the Bones', by Brian Hodge. Haven't read anything by Hodge, but I've heard good things.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011 - 04:05 pm:   

Found on the way home last night in mint condition for £3 the pair:

'Starman Jones' (1953) by Robert A. Heinlein - a science fiction fairy-tale that has its young protagonist run away from home, to escape a cruel stepfather, and become an intergalactic explorer, like the dead father he hero worships. One of Bob's best loved juveniles, by all accounts.

'A Confederacy Of Dunces' (1969) by John Kennedy Toole - a one-off comic masterwork I haven't read since my teens that is criminally overdue an adult re-read. Like Tom Sharpe's comic novels I fell in love with the outrageous slapstick the first time but it is the deeper satirical comment and strength of characterisation (rather than merely caricature) that I always knew would draw me back.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 09, 2011 - 01:02 pm:   

Found a new second hand bookshop last night, hidden away at the back of a retro clothes shop, and picked up a bundle of goodies. £5 the lot:

'When Evil Wakes : An Anthology Of The Macabre' (1963) edited by August Derleth - sixteen obscure classics never before anthologised, at that time, including: '"The Eye And The Finger" by Donald Wandrei, "The Feasting Dead" by John Metcalfe, "Death Waters" by Frank Belknap Long, "An Invitation To The Hunt" by George Hitchcock, "The Tsanta In The Parlour" by Stephen Grendon, "Moonlight-Starlight" by Virginia Layefsky, "The Kite" by Carl Jacobi, "Sweets To The Sweet" by Robert Bloch, "A Thin Gentleman With Gloves" by Simon West, "The Horror At Red Hook" by H. P. Lovecraft, "The Triumph Of Death" by H.R. Wakefield, "The Lips" by Henry S. Whitehead, "A Piece Of Linoleum" by David H. Keller, "The Seed From The Sepulchre" by Clark Ashton Smith, "Canavan's Back Yard" by Joseph Payne Brennan & "The Shuttered Room" by H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth. At a stroke this has become one of the most wondrous anthos in my collection!

'The Earthsea Trilogy' (1979) by Ursula K. Le Guin - mint single volume copy of arguably the greatest fantasy work of the 70s (pipping Stephen Donaldson, for me) and one of a select few that ranks alongside the achievements of Tolkien, Lewis & Pullman. Contains; 'A Wizard Of Earthsea' (1968), 'The Tombs Of Atuan' (1971) & 'The Farthest Shore' (1972). These spellbinding books are part of what made me fall in love with genre fiction in the first place.

'Cosmic Trigger : The Final Secret Of The Illuminati' (1977) by Robert Anton Wilson - started to read the prologue and had to force myself to stop. Wilson has one of the most addictive voices in literature, imo, coming across like Kurt Vonnegut's wicked younger brother. I'd put this book at the very end of the series - as kind of tying everything up in a fictional autobiography - after 'The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles', 'Masks Of The Illuminati' & 'The Illuminatus Trilogy'.

'Death Is A Lonely Business' (1985) by Ray Bradbury - an intriguing one, for me, as it was the man's first novel for adults in over 20 years and his first foray into pulp crime fiction, that launched a trilogy including 'A Graveyard For Lunatics' (got it) & 'Let's Kill Constance' (must get). Dedicated to Chandler, Hammett, Cain & Ross Macdonald (must check him out).

Also ordered the sixth Bryant & May mystery, 'The Victoria Vanishes' (2008) by Christopher Fowler, as I'll be finished THOTB today.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:00 pm:   

Picked up for £1.50 at lunchtime a Patricia Highsmith short story collection I didn't even know existed: 'Mermaids On The Golf Course' (1985).

Contains the stories: "Mermaids on the Golf Course", "The Button", "Where the Action Is", "Chris's Last Party", "A Clock Ticks at Christmas", "A Shot from Nowhere", "The Stuff of Madness", "Not in This Life, Maybe the Next", "I Am Not As Efficient As Other People", "The Cruellest Month" & "The Romantic".

Described as a collection of macabre tales each exploring the dark underbelly of American middle class society.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:06 pm:   

She has at least 3 more short story collections - Chillers, Eleven and The Animal Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (which wins the prize for my favourite book title of all time).

There may be more but off the top of my head I can't think of any.

Is Slowly Slowly in the Wind a novel or a collection?...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.48.96
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:10 pm:   

The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby

The spy who came in from the cold, Le Carré

Because I'm intrigued by comments on these books or the authors behind them, plus at € 0.50 each they were very affordable indeed!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:15 pm:   

Regicide by Nicholas Royle.
The Essential Rilke
Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:16 pm:   

Don't you think "I am not as efficient as other people" is a wonderfully strange and intriguing title for a short story?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:17 pm:   

Who wrote the Essential rilke?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.159.146.177
Posted on Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 06:18 pm:   

Doesn't anyone have 'Nemonymous Night' on their TBR list?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.81.238
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 01:44 am:   

Everyone's slurring. Too much boozing. I could fight a book. I could.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 10:52 am:   

Weber, Patricia has eight short story collections, all of which belong in the horror genre, and in which the supernatural features frequently:

Eleven (1970)
Little Tales Of Misogyny (1974)
The Animal Lover's Book Of Beastly Murder (1975)
Slowly, Slowly In The Wind (1979)
The Black House (1981)
Mermaids On The Golf Course (1985)
Tales Of Natural And Unnatural Catastrophe (1987)
Nothing That Meets The Eye : The Uncollected Stories (2002)

I'm going to make a stab in the dark and say that title refers to someone plagued by time consuming perfectionism and neatness, who wishes he was a bit more "normal" or "efficient" like other people. The tagline for 'Mermaids...' is "Beware the average man."
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 11:24 am:   

I actually own all of those except for the last one...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 11:28 am:   

I'm still missing SSITW, TBH & the last one.

'Eleven' is the one with the oft-quoted glowing introduction by Graham Greene. I think he was in love with her as well...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:06 pm:   

I gotta say, I've read extremely little Patricia Highsmith. But I have read that actual short story, "Slowly Slowly In The Wind." The writing itself? Superb. Beyond doubt. But unless I'm just dense and didn't get it, I found it also beyond hack and pedestrian and insignificant, in all other respects....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:09 pm:   

Read The Talented mr Ripley.

Nuff said.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:18 pm:   

Craig, it's what she doesn't say but only hints at that makes her novels and stories so unforgettably bone-chilling, imho.

A queen of literature. I'm just glad she chose to write genre material!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:23 pm:   

I'll read more, I've been meaning to. And I loved TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, the Matt Damon film.

Funny that as she got older, she looked (to me) more and more like actress Anne Ramsey....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:27 pm:   

She wasn't half cute when she was young, though, which is how I like to think of her... sigh.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:33 pm:   

Did Patricia Highsmith ever write a scene like this?

http://youtu.be/lSW2pPlZF-M
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 05:44 pm:   

You've just brought back long buried nightmares of one of the worst horror films of the 80s. Thanks, Craig!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 07:19 pm:   

She didn't write that one, but it's a little known fact that she did write this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so10X_hEUdE&NR=1
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 16, 2011 - 07:40 pm:   

Hmm. She's clearly too subtle and quiet a horror writer for me....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 02:21 am:   

I want to know why the guy in that clip hold his hands out for the killer teddy bear to bite his fingers off...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 02:27 am:   

Ooooh! I've got nearly enough waterstone points to get a free book. I may pop in on sunday and grab a copy of Pretty Little Dead things...

Is it good?
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 03:11 am:   

No. It's shit.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 01:48 pm:   

good deal all round on that one. I get a free book and you get your royalties anyway.

Spend it wisely Mr MacMahon
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 01:55 pm:   

I thought you already had a copy, Weber- didn't I sign it in Manchester a few weeks ago?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2011 - 01:58 pm:   

That was Hungry Hearts

I may have been at least partially responsible for putting copies of PLDT in the cosy crime section, but I didn't buy a copy
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.232
Posted on Sunday, September 18, 2011 - 12:02 pm:   

For the grand total of £1 I have added The Blind assassin by Margaret Atwood and Dead of Light by Chaz Brenchley.

I've never read any Chaz Brenchley before but there was a nice quote by the Landlord on the back cover.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 11:39 am:   

Another mouth-watering haul on the way home last night. A quid each for this lot:

'Tales Of Supernatural Terror' (1972) by Guy de Maupassant - my first collection concentrating on just his horror material. Sixteen of the greatest works of supernatural fiction ever written; "The Hand", "Fear", "He?", "On The River", "An Apparition", "The Spastic Mannerism", "Terror", "The Inn", "The Smile Of Schopenhauer", "Was He Mad?", "The Wolf", "The Horla", "The Drowned Man", "The Dead Girl", "A Night In Paris" & "Who Knows?".

'The Wanderer' (1906-09) by Knut Hamsun - contains the novels; 'Under The Autumn Star', and its sequel, 'A Wanderer Plays On Muted Strings', comprising the semi-autobiographical life story of an itinerant labourer, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun's real name), first as a young man blessed with the faith that something will turn up, and then older and wiser. A picaresque masterpiece of European literature, by all accounts, that I can well believe on the evidence of 'Hunger'. That unrelenting nightmare of a book sent me to the edge of madness this summer, when read alongside 'Silent Children' & 'I Was Dora Suarez', and I'm still recovering... As great a writer as Dostoevsky, imho, and my most startling discovery of recent years. I will be approaching his works with caution in future.

'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers' (1954) by Jack Finney - found a copy, at long last, after decades of keeping my eyes open. Perhaps the most seminal sci-fi/horror novel of them all, and, for me, without doubt the most terrifying. I've been longing to read this ever since first being traumatised by Don Siegel's flawless adaptation and it's just shot straight to the top of my TBR pile.

'From The Land Of Fear' (1967) by Harlan Ellison - after a lifetime of haunting second hand bookshops this is the first time I've come across anything by this author, whose reputation goes before him. Contains the stories; "The/One/Word/People", "The Moth On The Moon", "Snake In The Mind", "The Sky Is Burning", "My Brother Paulie", "The Time Of The Eye", "Life Hutch", "Battle Without Banners", "Back To The Drawing Boards", "A Friend To Man", "We Mourn For Anyone", "The Voice In The Garden" & his famous tale, "Soldier", in original story and 'Outer Limits' screenplay form. I look forward to being introduced, at last, to the man's writing!
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 02:08 pm:   

Not a classic Ellison collection, Stevie, though there are a few good stories in it. Books to look out for include Shatterday, Deathbird Stories, Strange Wine, Angry Candy and Alone Against Tomorrow.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 03:54 pm:   

Thanks, Joel.

His books - like Cornell Woolrich & Donald E. Westlake - seem to be as rare as hen's teeth in the bookshops round Belfast.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 03:59 pm:   

Stevie - do you only ever buy books from second-hand bookshops?

You can get a lot of these Ellison collections on the Amazon used books stores, for a penny plus postage, and also via used online book dealers. The great thing the internet did for me was to make available authors like Ellison.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 04:26 pm:   

I see there is a companion volume, in Pan, to Guy de Maupassant's TOST, called 'The Diary Of A Madman' (1976) - must order.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 04:33 pm:   

No, Zed, I order things online that I absolutely have to read then and there, as with the Bryant & May books, at the minute, and things like Ramsey's 'The Pact Of The Fathers' (next up), but much prefer the thrill of the hunt, as it were, and never knowing what you may pick up in second hand bookshops. Their slow demise will be one of the tragedies of my latter years, I have no doubt.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 05:22 pm:   

Happy Arthur's Day, everyone!!

I'm off to get blootered on unlimited free Guinness until the wee small hours! Only in Ireland...
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.55.170
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 05:24 pm:   

after a lifetime of haunting second hand bookshops this is the first time I've come across anything by this author

I had the same feeling when I picked up Space on My Hands by Fredric Brown second-hand quite a few years ago. Haven't seen anything by him since. I'm still looking for stuff by Eric Frank Russell.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 05:30 pm:   

Paramount books in Manchester had books by Brown and russel last time I was in there. I think they have some Ellison too...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 166.216.162.71
Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 05:39 pm:   

Happy wtf Day?!?

Or did you mean it's Thursday again, Stevie?
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.143.98.239
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 11:51 am:   

THE ISLANDERS by Christopher Priest.
Because he is one of the truly great writers.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 12:07 pm:   

Craig, did you not know it's illegal to charge money in Ireland for Guinness on Arthur Guinness's birthday?

Oww my head...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 01:07 pm:   

I really enjoyed reading Harlan Ellison's little intros to all the stories in FTLOF. He has a very distinctive, conversational voice that I found myself warming to immensely. Good to see him praising Heinlein, Asimov & Vonnegut as the prime "ideas men" in genre fiction of his era! The man has taste.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 01:57 pm:   

Indeed. Though his relations with the SF community have been complex and sometimes troubled. For a self-portrait as damning as any SF fan's critique of Ellison, read 'All the Lies That are my Life' in Shatterday. Indeed, his stories have shown a consistent readiness to examine personal failings (his own and those of people who can be taken to represent him, as well as people who clearly cannot). Sustained reading and re-reading of Ellison (I have nearly all his books, often in beat-up second-hand editions) has brought me to the conclusion that he doesn't need to adorn his work with so much commentary: the truth and the message is all there in the stories. But for the Ellison beginner they are open windows into his thought processes. The stories are stained-glass windows – they let in less light straight away, but ultimately the light they let in is worth more.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 02:28 pm:   

Shatterday is a brilliant collection - teh title story alone is a classic. That was the first thing I ever read by Ellison, actually.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 02:59 pm:   

Stevie - you know you sent me a text last night that said "Jism on my 5th pint"

Not quite sure what you intended by that...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 03:36 pm:   

Huh?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 03:45 pm:   

with a wink smiley as well.

Does it improve the flavour?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 03:57 pm:   

My hangover's bad enough without turning my stomach as well, Weber!! Uuurrgghh...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 23, 2011 - 04:51 pm:   

You're kidding. They actually have a day where they can't charge for Guinness?... in Ireland?!?

Jesus, no wonder the Euro is tanking!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Saturday, September 24, 2011 - 02:41 am:   

Yes, Craig, the truth is out!

Forget the Bilderberg Society and the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion. It is the Irish, and our worldwide network of strategically placed pubs, who have been pulling the strings all along. Ha ha ha...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, September 26, 2011 - 05:01 pm:   

Had some shopping trip on Saturday:

'The Fifth Head Of Cerberus' (1972) by Gene Wolfe - the first of his books that I took the plunge with and bought, this collection of three linked sci-fi novellas contains; 'The Fifth Head Of Cerberus', '"A Story" by John V. Marsch' & 'V.R.T.'

'The Island Of Doctor Death And Other Stories And Other Stories' (1980) by Gene Wolfe - then, by happy synchronicity, I found this short story collection, containing; "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" (1970), "Alien Stones" (1972), "La Befana" (1973), "The Hero as Werwolf" (1975), "Three Fingers" (1976), "The Death of Dr. Island" (1973), "Feather Tigers" (1973), "Hour Of Trust" (1973), "Tracking Song" (1975), "The Toy Theatre" (1971), "The Doctor of Death Island" (1978), "Cues" (1974), "The Eyeflash Miracles" (1976) & "Seven American Nights" (1978).

So would these cut it as a good introduction, Craig? The universe chose them for me...

Also:

'Friday' (1982) by Robert A. Heinlein - an all-action sci-fi/espionage thriller, with a satirical feminist slant, featuring the various adventures of genetically engineered, stunningly attractive and hyper efficient combat courier, Friday Jones, in a near future world where sexual equality has been won but prejudice lives on against "artificial persons" like her. She is literally the perfect woman... too perfect for her own good. Reputedly a much loved throwback to the action based pulp adventures of his early days, having gained a new lease of creative life in his twilight years, this sounds like a blast.

'To Sail Beyond The Sunset' (1987) by Robert A. Heinlein - it was with a twinge of poignancy that I finally got my hands on a copy of this book. It was the last work Heinlein completed before his death in 1988, in which he wraps up his epic life's work, the 'Future History' series, that began way back with the short story "Lifeline" in 1939. It is no secret that the old scoundrel even had the temerity to make his last written words; "And we all lived happily ever after." Nothing could be more fitting for the greatest, and most misunderstood, storyteller in genre fiction of the 20th Century, imho. Stephen who?...

And:

'999 : New Stories Of Horror And Suspense' (1999) edited by Al Sarrantonio - oddly titled attempt to emulate Kirby McCauley's 'Dark Forces'. 29 new stories by; Kim Newman, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas M. Disch, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, T.E.D. Klein(!), F. Paul Wilson, Chet Williamson, Eric Van Lustbader(?), Tim Powers, Nancy A. Collins, Ramsey Campbell, Edward Lee, P.D. Cacek, Thomas Ligotti, Rick Hautala, David Morrell, Peter Schneider, Ed Gorman, Al Sarrantonio, Gene Wolfe (again), Edward Bryant, Steven Spruill, Michael Marshall Smith, Joe R. Lansdale, Bentley Little, Thomas F. Monteleone, Dennis L. McKiernan & the full length haunted house novel 'Elsewhere' by William Peter Blatty(!)
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - 03:33 pm:   

Stevie - I wouldn't start with Wolfe's THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, personally; the other collection is much better.

Or, even better, yes, start with his story in 999, "The Tree Is My Hat," a horror story so good it made it into Datlow's collection of the best horror stories of the last 25 years. Imho, the other very best stories there are the ones by Chet Williamson, Ramsey, and Joyce Carol Oates, though they're all quite good... except for Blatty's, which I remember being highly disappointing.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - 05:50 pm:   

I think I'll break my rule, this once, and read that story for starters, Craig. Thanks!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - 08:36 pm:   

Worth breaking over, Stevie!

If you can find an old anthology, I remember the title, TROPICAL THRILLS, there's another superb Wolfe horror/dark-fantasy tale in that one, probably collected elsewhere. I'm blanking on the title now.... I remember there being another fan-fucking-tastic horror story in that antho too, by... Ian Watson? Something with "socks" in the title? Dammit, and my damn memory. I've since lost that book, and must find it again....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Friday, September 30, 2011 - 04:05 am:   

Just picked up 'The Claw Of The Conciliator' in the same beautiful Arrow edition as the two books above.

So that's 'The Book Of The New Sun' confirmed as my next long term fantasy project. Thanks, Craig.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 166.216.226.189
Posted on Friday, September 30, 2011 - 03:55 pm:   

Enjoy, Stevie! Rule of thumb: if they make an RPG supplement for it, it's gotta be a good series.... :-)
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, September 30, 2011 - 10:49 pm:   

Seven hours since the last person posted here - me?!?

I was thinking the zombie apocalypse started in Britain already, but it's probably that whole Fantasy Con thing I'm missing, right?
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Jamie Rosen (Jamie)
Username: Jamie

Registered: 11-2008
Posted From: 99.241.102.179
Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 12:54 am:   

I haven't added anything to my TBR pile in the last 7 hours. Well, that's not true, but I'm too lazy to get the books out of my backpack and note what they are.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 03:26 am:   

I'm an RPG purist, Craig! Or at least I was!

D&D and Traveller were the only games worth playing. When they started getting all commercial, by tying in with specific authors' works, that's when I started to lose interest - many, many moons ago lol.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.150.143.0
Posted on Saturday, October 01, 2011 - 03:57 am:   

Bought Pretty Little Dead Things by some twat fom up north and Timbuktoo by Paul Auster.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Sunday, October 02, 2011 - 12:28 pm:   

I read "The Tree Is My Hat" and need to discuss it! I was reminded of the oddly haunting literary tricksiness of Jonathan Carroll and found the symbolism of the story extremely compelling - with more than a hint of Robert Louis Stevenson's late period weird tales of the South Sea islands ('The Bottle Imp', 'The Beach Of Falesá', 'The Isle Of Voices', etc).

The scary little man, Hanga, was clearly a shape-shifting Polynesian shark demon and I think I'm right in reading Langi as one of their curiously tangible ghosts. But were they operating in tandem - to get rid of and replace Mary - or was Langi attempting to protect Baden? It seems her spirit was unleashed from the protective charm after Hanga untied it, which would imply complicity, but the King appeared genuinely concerned in his giving of the charm and surely would not have put his guest at even greater risk without some word of warning. And what was the meaning of the title? Why was the tree his hat?

All in all this was a great throwback to those old "white transgressor" horror stories that juxtapose western rationality with primitive supernaturalism and had that same bizarre ambiguous quality I find so captivating in the stories of Walter de la Mare or Robert Aickman. One to re-read and mull over methinks...

Thoughts please, Craig!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, October 02, 2011 - 05:46 pm:   

Well, you're making me read that again, Stevie (not making really, it's a great reason to revisit!), because I don't want to spout off from hazy memories. The mundane explanation of the "tree is my hat" is that the tree that he was trapped beneath (he was trapped there, if I remember correctly) was his only source of shade - the tree, was his hat. But any other meaning?... Let me read it, and get back to you. (Hanga returns in Wolfe's AN EVIL GUEST, btw.)

Watch this space....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 03, 2011 - 12:02 pm:   

What book is "An Evil Guest" in, Craig? And does it follow the story of Baden, Langi & Hanga in their new lives... together?

Or would to answer be too much of a giveaway!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, October 03, 2011 - 03:19 pm:   

AN EVIL GUEST is a book: Wolfe's odd mix of horror, sci-fi, the Cthulhu mythos, stage drama, etc. And you know, maybe re-reading that story will open up some answers to questions raised there, now that I think about it....

Tell you what: drop me your address in an email, Stevie - I'll mail it to you. freevolve-at-gmail.com
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, October 03, 2011 - 05:36 pm:   

Emailed ya... the Cthulhu Mythos you say!!
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 120.144.160.24
Posted on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 - 11:08 am:   

'The Light is the Darkness', by Laird Barron and 'Cast a Cold Eye', by Alan Ryan.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 - 05:03 pm:   

Just ordered a nice little bundle of goodies:

'The Shadow Of The Torturer' (1980) by Gene Wolfe - first volume of 'The Book Of The New Sun'. The plan is to start into this series as soon as I've finished...

'The Ascension Factor' (1988) by Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom - volume four of the Pandora Sequence, finished posthumously by Bill Ransom, that concludes FH's greatest achievement after the 'Dune Saga', imho. This millennia spanning über-epic of humanity's slow colonisation and taming of an utterly alien planet has been a joy to re-read. Pandora may be the main character of the series but Time is the star.

'The Pact Of The Fathers' (2001) by Ramsey Campbell - from what I can gather this sounds like a non-supernatural paranoid conspiracy thriller. One of my favourite themes - that I've no doubt Ramsey will make all his own.

'Bryant & May On The Loose' (2009) by Christopher Fowler - the title refers to the shocking change of circumstances inflicted on our heroes at the end of 'The Victoria Vanishes'. This time headless corpses are turning up in and around King's Cross, that coincide with sightings of a huge beast, half-man, half-stag, with knives for antlers... <gulp>
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, October 06, 2011 - 11:50 am:   

Found a rarity on the way home last night:

'Desire And Other Stories' (1980) by James Stephens - gathering the short stories from his two, long out of print, collections; 'Here Are Ladies' (1913) & 'Etched In Moonlight' (1928), this includes the classic Irish fantasies, both dark and light: "Three Heavy Husbands", "A Glass Of Beer", "Three Women Who Wept", "The Triangle", "Three Young Wives", "The Horses", "Three Lovers Who Lost" & "The Blind Man" + "Desire", "Hunger", "Schoolfellows", "Etched In Moonlight", "Darling", "The Wolf" & "A Rhinoceros, Some Ladies And A Horse".

The standout in the volume has to be the supernatural horror novella, 'Etched In Moonlight' (1928), that uses, according to Augustine Martin's introduction, "dream symbolism to explore the psychology of sexual jealousy and its corrosive effects on the psyche. The power of the prose in this remarkable fable, its nuances of colour and atmosphere, its ability to create a world of archetypal obsession, is comparable with that of James in 'The Turn Of The Screw' or Poe in 'The Pit And The Pendulum'." Praise indeed... and, judging by the unique use of surreal imagery in his fantasy novel, 'The Crock Of Gold' (1912), I've no doubt of its accuracy.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Friday, October 07, 2011 - 03:12 am:   

I went to the toilet for two minutes and some bastard stole the book I was reading!

'The Return Of Sherlock Holmes' - right while I was immersed in the 'The Solitary Cyclist'!!

Is nothing ffs sacred!!!!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, October 07, 2011 - 05:04 pm:   

such a good story you told it twice
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Sunday, October 09, 2011 - 05:10 pm:   

Two finds from the classic era of genre fiction:

'The Dance Of Death And Other Stories' (1927) by Algernon Blackwood - 1973 Pan reissue of an original anthology containing 5 short stories; "The Dance Of Death", "The Old Man Of Visions", "The South Wind", "The Touch Of Pan" & "The Valley Of The Beasts", and the enticingly lengthy novella, "A Psychical Invasion".

'Ten Little Niggers' (1939) by Agatha Christie - I've been surreptitiously keeping an eye out for the un-PC 70s Fontana edition - from the iconic series with the beautifully macabre covers that I read as a kid - for quite a few years and finally found a copy in mint condition. It's the one with the blood-spattered golliwog hanging by the neck! In my opinion this book is her one genuinely imperishable masterpiece and one of the great horror classics of the 20th Century. It is to Christie what 'The Shining' is to Stephen King... a book that anyone doubting the author's abilities should be pointed to and made to read. The plot is the quintessential example of the group of strangers thrown together in an isolated location they cannot leave who find themselves being stalked and killed, one-by-one, in a series of increasingly imaginative and gruesome ways by an unseen enemy - that they at first assume to be one of their own but which circumstances indicate to be an invisible and unstoppable supernatural force of nature, paying each of them back for a guilty secret from their past. The atmosphere of escalating dread, leading to scalp-prickling terror in the final chapters, that this book engenders in the reader, as every rational explanation is torn asunder, and every attempt of the group to protect themselves proves fruitless, is one of the most potent experiences in horror literature, imho. The word "ingenious" is bandied around a lot but the ending of this book is truly ingenious, and Christie would never again come close to topping it.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 05:37 pm:   

Found another two Knut Hamsun novels. Apparently they're his two greatest works, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920, as if that matters:

'The Growth Of The Soil' (1917) - huge, and hugely influential, epic of the growth of a town in the inhospitable wilds of the Norwegian highlands. It begins with one man escaping the herd to set up a stubborn homestead in splendid isolation and tells the story of civilization that inevitably followed in his wake.

'The Women At The Pump' (1920) - a bitter critique of small town life telling of a proud fisherman's painful struggle to come to terms with a horrific injury - the full extent of which is the cause of much whispered gossip and speculation - while striving to maintain his family's privacy and independence, and the love of his wife, in the "viper's nest" of an insular fishing community. Another of the author's dark descents into madness, this time brought about by crippling self-pity and the spectre of sexual jealousy.

And that's the last I'll be adding to the pile for a while as I'm moving house to a bigger and better place next week and just spent days boxing up all my books and DVDs. Fleet of lorries have been booked and I'm rather stressed out but it'll be worth it...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 05:45 pm:   

How many boxes did your TBR pile fill?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - 06:15 pm:   

22 cardboard boxes. I've made a little maze out of them.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 04:10 pm:   

your TBR pile? 22 boxes? feck me, I thought mine was out of control...
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.131.175.228
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 04:12 pm:   

How many 22 boxes?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 04:26 pm:   

It's now over 40 boxes with all my DVDs and CDs packed! I'm living in a world of cardboard.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 04:48 pm:   

specifically your TBR pile... how many boves?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 04:49 pm:   

boxes
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 166.216.226.23
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - 05:36 pm:   

I'm not impressed yet. How big are these boxes? And how small the books?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Thursday, October 20, 2011 - 02:02 am:   

They vary from the size of a microwave oven to that of a small aircraft hangar.

I'm pricing helicopter lifting gear as we speak.
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 124.177.55.122
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 12:00 pm:   

Added: 'It Knows Where You Live', by Zed, and 'Terror Tales of the Lake District', both from Gray Friar Press.

'Ramsey Campbell, A Readers Guide', by Gary Crawford.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 01:25 pm:   

One new book added to the library since my move:

'Soldier Of The Mist' (1986) by Gene Wolfe - first part of a historical fantasy trilogy set in Ancient Greece that sounds right up my street. Must unearth 'The Shadow Of The Torturer' for when I finish 'The Ascension Factor'... currently a quarter through.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 01:43 pm:   

11/22/63 by Stephen King
The Weird edited by the Vandermeers
The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 01:45 pm:   

Collected Short Stories by Graham Greene
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 04:14 pm:   

Wait till you read 'A Little Place Off The Edgware Road', Zed (if you haven't already). Greene unconsciously set the template, in 1939, for Campbellian horror with this nightmarishly tangible urban ghost story.

But expect far, far more from him than even that...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 05:26 pm:   

Stevie - I first read that story when I was 14 years old. It's long been one of my favourites (I even namechecked it in my first published book, back in 2004).

I'm actually re-reading most of these after a lengthy gap.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.161.160
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 05:34 pm:   

I read that story before Greene had even written it!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 08:13 pm:   

I read it when Greene was blue.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 81.131.175.228
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 08:28 pm:   

I first read that story long after it was forgotten by everyone and completely out of print.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 08:32 pm:   

I read it when Graham was green.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.161.160
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 09:41 pm:   

I wrote it. Greene stole it from me.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 92.4.163.62
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 09:56 pm:   

On the very cusp of starting "Four Past Midnight" by Stephen King. Long time since I read anything by the Master.

Just finished that little "Gingerbread" chapbook Pendragon brought out or the 2008 FantasyCon. Novella by Peter and Brian Finch, and a beautifully gentle ghost story by Gary McMahon. All rounded off by a piece of breathless wierdness from that affable chap and FCon buddy of mine, Stuart Young.

Cheers
Terry
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 92.4.163.62
Posted on Wednesday, November 09, 2011 - 09:57 pm:   

I enjoyed "Gingerbread" by the way. Forgot to meniton it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2011 - 03:00 am:   

Me, I just can't get off the Barker, the early Barker - re-read CABAL the short novel, and am now reading THE INHUMAN CONDITION.

You know, Barker is fine, as we all know... but I'm now, after near overdosing on him, seeing a definite pattern in the structure of his stories... dare I say, they verge on the repetitive, the formulaic even... but he's still quite the amazing artist....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2011 - 11:55 am:   

I've been getting back into 'Imajica' the last few days, after the dust of moving house had settled, and it is easily his masterpiece, Craig.

Imagine the template you speak of, that he honed in 'Weaveworld' & 'The Great And Secret Show', expanded to Dostoevskyan dimensions - in terms of ambition, theme, plot and cast of instantly memorable characters. Actually he plays with his own themes with a host of minor sub-plots within plots that are simply mind-boggling but always unified by the original love triangle - the oldest story ever told. This book moves from doomed romance to pulp crime thriller to supernatural horror to paranoid conspiracy thriller to epic fantasy quest and back again, over and over again. Almost a third through now and his achievement becomes all the more staggering with each new development. I've loved the books he wrote since, particularly 'Everville', but Clive does seem to have peaked with this one. Don't be put off by the size... just read it!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2011 - 06:15 pm:   

I suppose I should, Stevie - I've never gotten beyond CABAL, in my life, as far as the chronological order of his books. Except for the introduction to his tome THE ESSENTIAL CLIVE BARKER, in which he made that statement about writing horror, that he had gotten "the trick down" of writing them, why he got bored with horror and moved on. No, now that I've re-read him, I see it's a bit off to say that; rather, he got his own formula down, and kept repeating it, in story after story. Effective formula, sure, but kinda the same thing going on.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, November 11, 2011 - 11:31 am:   

My favourite character in 'Imajica' has already changed three times and my sympathies are now fully behind the guy who started off as the chief villain. It's that kind of reading experience.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 212.219.63.204
Posted on Friday, November 11, 2011 - 02:05 pm:   

I loved Imajica, it sucked me in and there was something wondrous and terrible round every corner.

I also loved Weaveworld.

Cheers
Terry
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 12:42 pm:   

Thanks, Craig! You're a real gentleman.

'An Evil Guest' (2008) by Gene Wolfe arrived in the post this morning. A Lovecraftian supernatural horror/sci-fi novel set 100 years in the future. Is this part of the Cthulhu Mythos, Craig? I'm tempted to read it first now, as it's a stand alone novel, and having already met the demonic Hanga in "The Tree Is My Hat". Thanks again, mate!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 03:43 pm:   

It's not a Lovecraftian/Cthulhu mythos novel perse, Stevie... in fact, I'm not really sure what kind of novel it is. It defies classification for the most part. I enjoyed it, but I dunno... you might be better off reading SOLDIER IN THE MIST first. EVIL GUEST is not like Wolfe's other novels, though it does contain some of what I've discovered to be common themes: e.g. and most notably, an innocent main protag questing after a romantic ideal of one sort or another. Wolfe in that respect is very much a fantasist....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 04:39 pm:   

As it seems to be a relatively short read I think I'll tackle it anyway, Craig - starting tonight. The blurb describes it as Lovecraft meets Blade Runner!

Then it'll be onto the next Bryant & May as soon as I've acquired a copy.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 02:43 am:   

Really pleased to have discovered that my second favourite second-hand bookshop in Belfast has just bought over the shop next door and doubled in size! And I found this to make the pleasure complete:

'The Black House' (1981) by Patricia Highsmith - an eleven story collection of (then) all new and explicitly HORROR short stories! When the blurb contains a quote from long time fan, Graham Greene, like this - "Nothing is certain when we have crossed this frontier. It is not this world as we once believed we knew it, but it is frighteningly more real to us than the house next door" - then you know this is something very special indeed.

The stories are; "Something The Cat Dragged In", "Not One Of Us", "The Terrors Of Basket Weaving", "Under A Dark Angel's Eye", "I Despise Your Life", "The Dream Of The Emma C", "Old Folks At Home", "When In Rome", "Blow It", "The Kite" & "The Black House". Brilliant... disturbing... palpitating... menacing spine-chillers all (that's the blurb again, not me).

What a woman!

Also just ordered (as it's pay day) 'Bryant & May Off The Rails' and I can safely say that no continuing series of books has ever had me so in raptures. I can't wait to find out what happens after that last incredible cliffhanger.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.145.222
Posted on Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 12:04 pm:   

Something the Cat Dragged In isn't a very good story I'm afraid. IMHO at least. Starts with a nice premise, the something that the cat drags in is rather shocking, but after that it just didn't work as a story for me. Character motivations and actions were skew-wiff even by PH's standards. One eof her few misses unfortunately.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 02, 2011 - 04:45 pm:   

Just ordered 'The Wizard Knight' (2004) by Gene Wolfe - both books in a single volume for a measly £4 brand new. I hesitate to start into another epic fantasy before I've finished either 'Imajica' or 'The Ascension Factor', though, so it'll be straight into 'His Final Bow' by ACD on finishing 'B & M Off The Rails' - which could well be tonight at the rate I'm getting through it!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 10:43 am:   

On returning to the house on Moonstone Street yesterday I had received one of those "undeliverable package" cards from the Post Office and had to go to Tomb Street to collect my mail, wondering what on earth it could be, as I was only expecting a Zappa CD or a Gene Wolfe paperback. Lo and behold it was that very book, 'The Wizard Knight', and I had some job getting it home as the blessed tome is bigger than our old family Bible for feck sake!!

Let me get 'Imajica' or 'The Ascension Factor' finished first, Craig, and then I'll tell you when I'm ready to start it. Read the first few pages and I can already feel the captivating pull of the narrative while Wolfe's prose is exquisite! The language already reminds me of the elegant and subtly poetic simplicity of Alan Garner's fantasies for children - the way the story unfolds so matter-of-factly until we are into a world of high weirdness almost without realising it. Had to stop myself from reading anymore.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 03:11 pm:   

There's something vaguely "fantastical" in the very way you describe of having to go about getting the book, Stevie: could be something out of Harry Potter, as you describe it....

Sure, whenever you reach it, then I'll begin reading myself. I've always got way too many books to read in the meantime. I just finished my Noir anthology last night (was chipping away at it all 2011!) with the unsettling "Spurs" (1922) by Tod Robbins, which was the basis for Todd Browning's Freaks. The story is comically bouncy, "jestery" you might say, but relentlessly black: a viciously devilish fairy-tale, and though the very first story in this massive tome, the best way to have ended it....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 03:20 pm:   

It is unfeasibly gigantic, Craig! I'll need a wheelbarrow to get it to the pub with me ffs. Lord knows what the hardback edition must be like!!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 03:41 pm:   

You shoulda bought the individual paperbacks, like I did - quite normal and unassuming they are....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 03:58 pm:   

But it's a beautifully produced volume. Lovely cover and illustrations throughout and brand spanky new for only £4. Well pleased with it!

I've always loved fantasy novels that involve the protagonist(s) coming from contemporary Earth and being transported into a weird alternate world of mythological beings. C.S. Lewis's 'The Chronicles Of Narnia' is the greatest example in literature, imo, with the 'Alice In Wonderland' books, Garner's 'Elidor', Bob Heinlein's 'Glory Road', Donaldson's 'Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant', Barker's various dark fantasies & the final two volumes of Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' providing the competition.

The eerily haunting opening to 'The Wizard Knight' reminds me most forcibly of 'Alice' & 'Elidor'... and yet there is something else about it I can't quite put my finger on.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 05:01 pm:   

"I've always loved fantasy novels that involve the protagonist(s) coming from contemporary Earth and being transported into a weird alternate world of mythological beings. C.S. Lewis's 'The Chronicles Of Narnia' is the greatest example in literature, imo, with the 'Alice In Wonderland' books, Garner's 'Elidor', Bob Heinlein's 'Glory Road', Donaldson's 'Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant', Barker's various dark fantasies & the final two volumes of Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' providing the competition."

Yo've clearly never read guy kay's fionavar tapestry. You would certainly revise that statement.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, December 09, 2011 - 11:19 pm:   

Btw: Who's Yves Meynard, to whom Wolfe dedicates one part of the two-parter, and from whose writings a (penetrating) quote graces the other? The Book of Knights is mentioned, and I assumed this was some ancient fable, but no... apparently he's a contemporary fantasy writer.... Anyone ever sampled him?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.12.237.252
Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2011 - 02:10 pm:   

Not familiar with him at all, Craig. One to look into methinks.

I am intrigued by Kay's links to Tolkien, Weber. Maybe someday I'll get round to checking him out.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, December 22, 2011 - 12:16 pm:   

Three exciting finds yesterday:

'The Return' (1910) by Walter de la Mare - YES!! I found it for £1.50 in Oxfam and had to do a double-take! The one and only full length supernatural horror novel by arguably the greatest writer of weird fiction there ever was. The synopsis immediately put me in mind of David Lynch's underrated masterpiece, 'Lost Highway' (1997), as well as Kafka's famous allegory, 'Metamorphosis', and, obliquely, Lovecraft's, 'The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward', with its tale of a man awakening one day to find he has physically transformed into the likeness of a dead man - whose soul he must then do battle with for complete possession of his identity. I'll be reading this right after 'The Wizard Knight'!

'Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square' (1966) by Arthur La Bern - snapped this up when I saw it, again for £1.50, despite knowing nothing about the author. This was the infamous, in its day, horror/crime novel that went on to be filmed, in a storming return to form, by Alfred Hitchcock as 'Frenzy' (1972). Now got the original source material of all three of the man's forays into pure horror.

'Darkest Day' (1993) by Christopher Fowler - now this really is an interesting one, found for £1.75. A Bryant & May novel like none other. This was Fowler's fourth novel and the first in which his brilliant detective duo appeared - in a rudimentary form before he crystallised the idea for the offical series with 'Full Dark House' a decade later. This was the supernatural horror novel he controversially rewrote as the is-it-or-isn't-it whodunnit 'Seventy-Seven Clocks' (2005) and as such will provide the perfect stopgap fix until the appearance of 'The Memory Of Blood' in March. I love it when a plan comes together!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 06:09 pm:   

Just bought two books yesterday for the grand total of 60p!

First was A Trilogy of Death by PD James - three non-Dalgleish novels - An Unsuitable job for a lady, Innocent Blood and the Skull beneath the Skin. Hopefully a good buy for 30p (10 per novel!!!)

The second was A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to attempt Ulysses but this seems like a good introduction to Joyce's work.

I'm always confused when I hear people talk of Ulysses as a great work of fiction. So many people who start it are completely unable to finish it. Surely that's not the sign of a good book???
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - 06:29 pm:   

You and me both, Weber. I've squared up to Joyce's magnum opus a few times in the past but always chickened out in the end. His 'Dubliners' (1914) short story collection is a delightful introduction - and all I've read. Some day before I die...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 06:05 pm:   

And today I paid full price for Little Star by Lindqvist, put down a pre-rder for Jon McGregor's new book - the name of which I have completely forgotten - and picked up a Jim Thompson omnibus - 4 books, the Getaway, The Killer inside me, Pop1280 and The Grifters - for £4.
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 195.59.153.201
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 06:18 pm:   

Funny you should mention that; this very morning I got a copy of the new Jon McGregory from Bloomsbury. I'm very excited to read it!
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Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker)
Username: Patrick_walker

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 195.59.153.201
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 06:19 pm:   

McGregor
Excuse the typo there.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.155.217.108
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 07:29 pm:   

His last 3 are amazing. Even The Dogs was my best book of 2010 by a country mile or two.

I love how his books are so dramitacally different from each other but still somehow recognisably him.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 - 10:52 pm:   

Have you read any Jim Thompson before, Weber? A fantastic writer. 'The Killer Inside Me' & 'The Getaway' are two of the most viscerally brutal crime novels I have read, from any era (including Highsmith - Thompson is more of the gutter). 'Heed The Thunder' is the only other I've read to date - an emotionally powerful and wonderfully detailed family saga, of dark secrets and darker deeds, made all the more poignant by its loveably naturalistic humour. A bit of a choker that one.

I have that anthology and the second one, with 'Nothing More Than Murder', 'Savage Night', 'A Swell Looking Babe', 'A Hell Of A Woman' & 'After Dark, My Sweet' in it.

I've been planning to read them all this year in my on-going education in the founding classics of quality crime fiction.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.145.84.72
Posted on Saturday, January 21, 2012 - 04:35 pm:   

Just bought The Concrete Grove from my local waterstone - even got a discount on it because the back cover is slightly dented.

Also - because the author was sat there looking lonely in front of a pile of his books, I picked up Keeping Britain Tidy by Steve Hollyman.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keeping-Britain-Tidy-Steve-Hollyman/dp/095665830X/ref=sr _1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327159874&sr=1-1

It does look rather good. It has a very nice quote from Nicholas Royle on the back cover - "LIke Anthony Burgess and Chuck Palahniuk went on a pub crawl in 21st century Britain, got out of their heads and decided to write a book together."

The opening few pages are very intriguing.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012 - 04:44 pm:   

Now this is what I call a bargain!!

Just added 'Night Terrors : The Ghost Stories Of E.F. Benson' to my collection for a paltry £2.99 for the Wordsworth edition off Amazon.

This is one of those collections I've long dreamed of owning as the man was second only to M.R. James in his mastery of the quintessentially English and horribly tangible ghost story. Blackwood was more varied in his tales, and rose to greater heights, but Benson was more consistently the perfectionist, imo. And loads of these yarns I've never read before.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012 - 04:51 pm:   

Feck! It's not out till June but at least that's it pre-ordered.

One to save for those cold winter nights over next Christmas... if there is one!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 11:53 am:   

Thanks to the man, Weber, my Gene Wolfe collection has just increased by 3 novels:

'Operation Ares' (1970) - his debut, which sounds highly Heinleinesque from the synopsis. A post-apocalyptic future Earth is invaded by long separated Martian colonists... from Earth.

'Peace' (1975) - Gene Wolfe's own favourite of all his novels and the one that seems to get most critical acclaim, after 'The Book Of The New Sun', this purports to be a dying man's scattershot reminiscences over a long and somewhat eventful life, marked by strange miracles.

'Free Live Free' (1984) - another one-off oddity that sees four down on their luck drifters - detective, occultist, salesman, prostitute - taking up a newspaper ad for Free accommodation in the rambling old house of aging eccentric, Benjamin Free, if they will help him find something he has misplaced there. I really like the sound of this one.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 04:42 pm:   

Haven't read any of those three yet, Stevie. Hell, trying to get through his massive amount of short-stories/novellas takes up enough time as it is! (He's had, what... 6 or 7 non-repeating-material collections so far?!)
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 04:58 pm:   

Picked up a mint copy of Christopher Fowler's horror debut, 'City Jitters' (1986), for £1.50 yesterday.

A ten story collection of urban horror tales with the neat gimmick of each one being related during a concerned council meeting. The subjects under discussion being: CAR PARKS - 'Left Hand Drive', NIGHT CLUBS - 'Perry In Seraglio', TAXI CABS - 'Any Minute Now', VIDEO ARCADES - 'Change For The Sky Master', BURGLARIES - 'Tigertooth', STRIP CLUBS - 'Vanishing Acts', SLUMS - 'Her Finest Hour', HOTELS - 'The Cleansing', SUBURBS - 'What Is Wrong With This Picture?' & TOTAL CITY BREAKDOWN - 'Loaded Blanks'.

Nice to see him emulating those old portmanteau horror movies and Le Fanu's 'In A Glass Darkly' (1872) with a prologue, linking passages and epilogue telling the story around the stories.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 07:07 pm:   

Chris's early short fiction had a massive impact on me when they were first published. He's a master of the short form.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.29.252.215
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 - 08:51 pm:   

He's not bad at the old novels either, Zed. I read eight of them last year, effortlessly!

One of the best in the business, for my money.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.148.240.90
Posted on Saturday, February 04, 2012 - 06:37 pm:   

Well I went into Manchester today to pick up my copy of Jon McGregor's new book - This isn't the sort of thing that happens to people like you - which I'd put a £3 downpayment on a couple of weeks ago.

They handed it over to me with a recept showing a £14.99 prepayment for soem reason so I just got the book, brand new first ed hardback - for £3.

With the money I saved on that I decided to splash out on another couple of books so I went to the other manchester waterstone where I picked up One of our Thursdays is missing - book 5 in the Thursday next series (for £5 in the sale) and Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies.

Oh and last week I found the new King 11:22:63 for £8 in Tesco so I had to pick that up.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 03:50 pm:   

'Flowers For Algernon' (1966) by Daniel Keyes - I've always loved the film version, 'Charly' (1968) with Cliff Robertson, and long wanted to read this famous multi-award winning sci-fi novel. I had no idea the author successfully moved into genre fiction after a career as a staff writer for those old EC Horror Comics in the 50s. Nice one!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.21.155
Posted on Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 09:49 pm:   

Interesting that 'Flowers For Algernon' and the novel I'm reading at the minute, 'More Than Human', both started life as award-winning short stories that were then expanded successfully to award-winning novel length. Are there any more examples of this? T.E.D. Klein's 'The Ceremonies' immediately springs to mind for me.
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Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey)
Username: Darren_o_godfrey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 64.12.117.80
Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 07:29 pm:   

"Interesting that 'Flowers For Algernon' and the novel I'm reading at the minute, 'More Than Human', both started life as award-winning short stories that were then expanded successfully to award-winning novel length. Are there any more examples of this? T.E.D. Klein's 'The Ceremonies' immediately springs to mind for me."

Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 07:39 pm:   

Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 08:03 pm:   

"The Dragonriders of Pern," by Anne McCaffery.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012 - 04:25 pm:   

YOU'VE NOT READ FAHRENHEIT 451!!!???!!!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012 - 04:37 pm:   

I read it back in my teens, Weber, along with a lot of other Bradbury. The question here was to think of famous novels that originated as famous short stories that the author then decided to expand. Actually 'Fahrenheit 451' started life as the short story, "Bright Phoenix" (1947), was expanded into the novella, 'The Fireman' (1951), and then the famous novel in 1953.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012 - 04:42 pm:   

Wasn't there one of King's short-stories that became SALEM'S LOT?

Also: "The Storms of Windhaven," by George R.R. Martin & Lisa Tuttle.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012 - 05:45 pm:   

I mmissed the question - I thought you'd only just bought the book.

Something Wicked started off as The Black Ferris.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Monday, February 20, 2012 - 08:02 pm:   

Ah yes, "Jerusalem's Lot" in 'Night Shift' - his best collection. It also contained the story "Night Surf" that he rather monstrously expanded into my favourite of his novels, 'The Stand'.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.59.249
Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - 02:40 pm:   

'Flowers For Algernon' (1966) by Daniel Keyes

Stevie, Tony Banks' first solo album "A Curious Feeling" was based on this story. The music is dark, but if you're not into 70ies-era Genesis you probably won't like it.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - 02:45 pm:   

Not a Genesis fan, Hubert. They came across as a bit too precious for my liking. More of a Pink Floyd fan when it comes to 70s prog rock.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Saturday, February 25, 2012 - 01:21 pm:   

Just ordered 'Outside The Dog Museum' (1991) by Jonathan Carroll for 1p + £2.80 postage off Amazon. How do they do it?

Been four or five years since I last ventured into the man's imagination and about time I braved those waters again... this is part 4 of a loosely linked (all stand alone) sextet.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.9.232.89
Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2012 - 11:17 am:   

Dog Museum was my least favourite Carroll.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.59.249
Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2012 - 11:27 am:   

@ Stevie: I think you'd like it, though. Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye3dnUHAXrk. A remarkable track when you consider it's all done with keyboards.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.158.60.86
Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2012 - 12:40 pm:   

Dog Museum is probably the most positive of the sextet. I thought his last novel - The Ghost in Love - started brilliantly but I really didn't like the ending. It just kind of tapered out. I thought Glass Soup did as well though.

But up until the two most recent, I'd never been disappointed with any of his books.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.180.123.7
Posted on Sunday, February 26, 2012 - 01:47 pm:   

Dog Museum was my least favourite Carroll.

It was the first of his I read; a friend had been sent two copies of the hardback to review, and gave me a copy, so I have soft spot for that book, although I prefer the others of his I've read.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, February 27, 2012 - 12:09 pm:   

I'm doing the old chrono order thing with Carroll and OTDM was next. Also; Ramsey (TDPOTW), Ballard (EOTS) & Dickens (DAS).
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 04:14 pm:   

Was decidedly chuffed to pick up a battered but still readable old copy of Robert Marasco's all-time classic horror novel, 'Burnt Offerings' (1973), that looked like it had been dropped in a bath before being chewed by a rottweiler, for 50p in a charity shop yesterday. It's the very same edition I remember reading from the library way, way back in the day and rescuing it felt like coming to the aid of a dear friend I hadn't seen in years but who had been instrumental in my literary education. Fuck e-books! This novel is up there with 'The Haunting Of Hill House' or 'The Shining' as one of the best written and most terrifying "haunted house" stories ever written. And the film version is criminally underrated as well, imnsho.

Also picked up a mint copy of the annotated Penguin edition of Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' (1869) for a mere £2.50. Of his works that I have yet to read this is the one I've been most looking forward to. Apparently the plot came to him in a blinding flash of insight when confronted with Hans Holbein's "Christ Taken From The Cross".
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, March 01, 2012 - 12:32 pm:   

Thanks to that man, Weber, I've just received a rather interesting rarity by Robert A. Heinlein that I'd never heard of before; 'Assignment In Eternity' (1953), which contains the linked short novel, 'Gulf' (1949), and short story, "Elsewhen" (1941).

Yet when I checked online the book should also have contained the novel, 'Lost Legacy' (1941), and short story, "Jerry Was A Man" (1947). A bit of further checking reveals that 'Assignment In Eternity' was originally published as two separate volumes - the one I have being volume 1. So the hunt is on... This would appear to be one of his fast paced pulp adventures telling a tale of secret agents and political intrigue in outer space. Apparently he returned to the world of these stories, to wrap things up, in 1982 with the retro-novel 'Friday'.

I can't think of any other author, not even Stephen King or Ramsey Campbell, who was so bewilderingly prolific and consistently brilliant a writer over such a long period of time.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.17.230
Posted on Thursday, March 01, 2012 - 12:48 pm:   

Quick, Stevie!

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=heinlein&sts=t&tn=lost+legacy&x =88&y=19
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, March 01, 2012 - 01:10 pm:   

Thanks, Ramsey!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Sunday, March 04, 2012 - 02:00 pm:   

Just took a mad splurge and ordered all three volumes of 'The Book Of The New Sun' by Gene Wolfe that I didn't have, in the original editions to have a nice matching set, as I'm a fussy sod that way:

'The Sword Of The Lictor' (1981)
'The Citadel Of The Autarch' (1983) &
'The Urth Of The New Sun' (1987)

Fighting the temptation to get stuck into this behemoth as soon as they arrive but I'm going to give the mega-epics a rest for a few months. Need time for the transcendent brilliance of 'Imajica' & 'The Wizard Knight' to filter through my subconscious...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - 05:10 pm:   

Just came across one of those books that seemed to be calling from the shelf to me and that I never even knew existed until it did:

'The Doubleman' (1985) by C.J. Koch - recent reads have had me thinking a lot of the doppelgänger; "William Wilson", 'Imajica', 'Double Star' and 'Outside The Dog Museum', and no doubt it was this fact that made me home in on the title. The cover displays 'The Devil' card from the Tarot deck, with Old Nick holding a guitar, and, from the synopsis, this is an Australian fantasy novel set in the world of indie folk-rock bands that plays with the clash of the European occult with apocalyptic aboriginal mysticism - a theme I've always found particularly creepy. Add to that a ringing critical endorsement from Graham Greene(!) and the fact that it won the 1986 Miles Franklin Award for Australian Literature and I felt justified in giving the first few pages a try. Book One is entitled, "The False Knight Upon The Road" - spooky - and then I read this opening poem:

"O see not ye yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.

And see not ye that braid braid road
That lies across yon lillie leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.

And see not ye that bonny road,
Which winds about the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night maun gae."

By this stage the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck and I'm swallowing compulsively - wondering if Gene Wolfe & Jonathan Carroll are ganging up on me - but I read on.

The first pages tell a haunting little story, in beautiful prose, of the narrator's first encounter with a grim faced man in black (reminding me of King's brilliant tale, "The Man In The Black Suit") coming the other way while he is taking an ill-advised shortcut to school as a boy one morning. The boy has a crippled leg and walks with a crutch. The man stops him and asks a number of questions that the boy reacts defensively to before hurrying past. When he takes a last glance round the man has impossibly vanished but the boy remembers he walked with a limp.

I bought the book.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2012 - 10:05 pm:   

Thanks to the Schwartzter I have just received a copy of David Lindsay's 'A Voyage To Arcturus' which I feel I should now make a priority read.

Thanks, mate!!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Friday, March 16, 2012 - 06:29 pm:   

Two additions to the library yesterday:

A lovely illustrated and extensively annotated edition of 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (1678) by John Bunyan with nice clear readable text.

&

Something of a rarity: a mint condition hardback first edition (it looks like) of Walter de la Mare's 'Memoirs Of A Midget' (1921) beautifully illustrated by Mabel Lapthorn. Apparently it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and is considered his finest novel.

A couple of quid for the pair.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2012 - 05:37 pm:   

Two exciting finds yesterday:

'The Stepford Wives' (1972) by Ira Levin - his other "horror masterpiece" and I've never read it before. I've found this book extraordinarily hard to come by over the years so was overjoyed to finally pick up a good condition original edition Pan paperback for a quid.

'The Journey Of Niels Klim To The World Underground' (1741) by Ludvig Holberg [the father of Scandinavian literature] - this is one of those rare books I've long heard fabled rumours of so had to do a double take when I actually came across a mint condition and fully annotated scholarly 2004 reprint from the University of Nebraska Press. It is beautifully produced and the first revival of the text since 1960. The book is considered, along with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels', to be one of the earliest and best examples of the prototypical fantasy novel. It is mentioned by Poe in 'The Fall Of The House Of Usher' and had a profound influence on Jules Verne, et al.

Here's a flavour:
"Fantastic adventures at the centre of the earth await a penniless Norwegian student after he plunges into a bottomless hole in a cave. Niels Klim discovers worlds within our own - exotic civilizations and fabulous creatures scattered across the underside of the earth's crust and, at the earth's centre, a small, inhabited planet orbiting around a miniature sun. In an epic journey, Klim visits countries led by sentient and contemplative trees, a kingdom of intelligent apes preoccupied with fashion and change, a land whose inhabitants don't speak out of their mouths but a posteriori, neighbouring countries of birds locked in an eternal war, a land where string basses talk musically to one another, and many more. Brave, inquisitive, and greedy, Klim faces many challenges, the greatest of which are his own temptations."

Picked up for £3.50!! They obviously didn't know what they had...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.151.146.118
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2012 - 07:42 pm:   

A rather more expensive trip to waterstone than was intended today.

I went to pick up a copy of Fever by Wayne Simmons but in the sale section I found Mammoth book of new horror 20 for 99p, Breathers (a zombie lament) - which appears to be an interesting sounding zom-com - also for 99p, Zombies, the recent dead, a zombie anthology including stories by a couple of chaps from this place, also for 99p and the new Dexter novel - Double Dexter - not for 99p but full hardback price.

Nevertheless it's Dexter so I bought it.

Best thing about this is that I now have 666 points on my waterstone card.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - 04:50 pm:   

Pay day tomorrow and I'm already planning what to order online.

'After Silence' (1992) by Jonathan Carroll,
'The Overnight' (2004) by Ramsey Campbell &
'The Memory Of Blood' (2011) by Christopher Fowler - are absolute musts.

After that I'm torn between:

'The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus' (1976) - comprising the three novels; 'The Deadly Percheron' (1946), 'The Last Of Philip Banter' (1947) & 'Devil Take The Blue-Tail Fly' (1948).

'The Stone Book Quartet' (1979) by Alan Garner - comprising the novels; 'The Stone Book' (1976), 'Granny Reardun' (1977), 'Tom Fobble's Day' (1977) & 'The Aimer Gate' (1978).

'Soldier Of Arete' (1989) & 'Soldier Of Sidon' (2006) by Gene Wolfe.

Decisions, decisions...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, April 02, 2012 - 05:17 pm:   

A major addition to my library was picked up in Oxfam at the weekend for £2:

'The Speciality Of The House : The Complete Mystery Tales 1948-1978' (1979) by Stanley Ellin - perhaps the finest single author collection of short horror/crime stories of the 20th Century. Thirty-five tales, including: 'The Speciality Of The House', 'The Cat's Paw', 'Death On Christmas Eve', 'The Orderly World Of Mr Appleby', 'Fool's Mate', 'The Best Of Everything', 'The Betrayers', 'The House Party', 'The Moment Of Decision', 'Broker's Special', 'The Blessington Method', 'The Faith Of Aaron Menefee', 'You Can't Be A Little Girl All Your Life', 'Robert', 'Unreasonable Doubt', 'The Day Of The Bullet', 'Beidenbauer's Flea', 'The Seven Deadly Virtues', 'The Nine-To-Five Man', 'The Question', 'The Crime Of Ezechiele Coen', 'The Great Persuader', 'The Day The Thaw Came To 127', 'Death Of An Old-Fashioned Girl', 'The Twelfth Statue', 'The Last Bottle In The World', 'Coin Of The Realm', 'Kindly Dig Your Grave', 'The Payoff', 'The Other Side Of The Wall', 'The Corruption Of Officer Avakadian', 'A Corner Of Paradise', 'Generation Gap', 'The Family Circle' & 'Reasons Unknown'.

An embarrassment of riches or what...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, April 02, 2012 - 05:20 pm:   

While 'After Silence', 'The Overnight', 'The Memory Of Blood' & 'The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus' are winging their way to me.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2012 - 04:03 pm:   

It was my favorite book of the year I bought it (2010), Stevie, that Ellin omnibus! I loved them all, but my favorites include the eponymous one, "The Moment of Decision," "The Blessington Method," "Robert," "The Nine-To-Five Man," "The Last Bottle In The World," "Coin Of The Realm," "A Corner Of Paradise".... Apparently Ellin was a meticulous author who painstakingly went over and over every page of his short-stories, fine-tuning them until he was ready to move on to the next. It shows!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2012 - 04:36 pm:   

It was one of those involuntary cry of "Yes!!" moments when I saw it on the shelf, Craig.

I think I'll make a point of reading it as a replacement for the Sherlock Holmes tales once I've finished 'Casebook'.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 10:36 am:   

Picked up in great condition for a quid each, in a stock clearance sale yesterday, four books that have something startling in common - they are all works I was not previously aware of by favourite authors of mine:

'Edith's Diary' (1977) by Patricia Highsmith - described as a chilling psychological horror novel detailing a disturbed woman's descent into hallucinatory madness through the pages of her secret diary. Surprised I haven't heard more about this one given the critical praise that's been heaped upon it in the past. Over to you, Weber...

'The Orchard' (1986) by Charles L. Grant - the first of his books I've come across in the second hand shops for maybe 20 years! I know nothing at all about this one other than its being from the period when he was at his peak and I gobbled up his horror novels as fast as I could find them. One of the few horror authors from the golden era I grew up in who passes the literature test, imo. I ranked him above King & Straub back in the day and will be fascinating to re-visit his imagination after all these years.

'Endangered Species' (1989) by Gene Wolfe - Fantastic! This rounds up all his short stories from the 80s in the same way 'Dr Death' did for the 70s. A staggering thirty-four horror, fantasy & sci-fi tales, including; 'A Cabin On The Coast', 'The Map', 'Kevin Malone', 'The Dark Of The June', 'The Death Of Hyle', 'From The Notebook Of Dr Stein', 'Thag', 'The Nebraskan And The Nereid', 'In The House Of Gingerbread', 'The Headless Man', 'The Last Thrilling Wonder Story', 'House Of Ancestors', '"Our Neighbour" By David Copperfield', 'When I Was Ming The Merciless', 'The God And His Man', 'The Cat', 'War Beneath The Tree', 'Eyebem', 'The HORARS Of War', 'The Detective Of Dreams', 'Peritonitis', 'The Woman Who Loved The Centaur Pholus', 'The Woman The Unicorn Loved', 'The Peace Spy', 'All The Hues Of Hell', 'Procreation', 'Lukora', 'Suzanne Delage', 'Sweet Forest Maid', 'My Book', 'The Other Dead Man', 'The Most Beautiful Woman On The World', 'The Tale Of The Rose And The Nightingale And What Came Of It' & 'Silhouette'. Apparently two of the stories are set in 'The Book Of The New Sun' universe! Over to you, Craig...

'From The Dust Returned' (2001) by Ray Bradbury - described as a "fix-up novel of previously published, loosely connected horror stories" in the vein of 'The October Country' and featuring his monstrous creations, the Elliott Family, who were inspired by Charles Addams' "Addams Family" characters. Sounds like a risky strategy to me but this is Ray Bradbury! I don't think I'm familiar with any of the Elliott stories and wonder are they straight horror or comic horror? Over to you, Joel...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.129.61.55
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 11:46 am:   

Edith's Diary - good but I didn't think it was her best.

The Orchard - one of the books that first got me into C L Grant. Fantatstic four novellas.

From the Dust returned - the first time I was ever truly disappointed with a Bradbury "Novel".

Basicaly his "Family" stories all collated into a novel in the same way that Dandelion Wine was compiled from his Green Town stories. The problem here is that, while some of the stories are out and out classics - The Homecoming, The April Witch, Uncle Einar - they don't hold together as a novel. Details about the characters change in a contradictory manner rather than a progressive manner between the stories. For example - one early story we're told of Cecy inhabiting a young lovers as they... well you know... but in another story later on we're told that she's never been inside a person whilst performing that self same act.

Treat it as a short story collection and not a novel and you might be more satisfied with it.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.129.61.55
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 11:46 am:   

Oh - my copy of Under the Dome arrived yesterday.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 01:29 pm:   

Thanks. Are the Elliott stories horror comedy in tone, Weber?
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.145.208.98
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 03:36 pm:   

They vary. Another weakness when putting them together. The book feels uneven.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, April 08, 2012 - 06:30 pm:   

A great collection, Stevie—I can't remember in detail all the stories, but I do remember liking this collection the best. There's fantasy, scifi, horror, and all points in-between. I'll have revisit these stories someday....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2012 - 01:48 am:   

Three recent finds:

'Player Piano' (1952) by Kurt Vonnegut - found a copy at last and I've yet to read it! Vonnegut's debut, this was his crack at a classically structured dystopian sci-fi novel in the wake of 'We', 'Brave New World' & 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', and was informed by his own post-war experiences working for General Electric.

'Eye' (1985) by Frank Herbert - thirteen previously uncollected short stories that span his entire career, including; "Rat Race" (1955), "The Dragon In The Sea" (1956) [subsequently expanded into novel form - his first, I have it], "Ceasefire" (1958), "A Matter Of Traces" (1958), "Try To Remember" (1961), "The Tactful Saboteur" (1964), "The Road To Dune" (1985), "By The Book" (1966), "Seed Stock" (1970), "Murder Will In" (1970), "Passage For Piano" (1973), "Death Of A City" (1973) & "Frogs And Scientists" (1985). I'm most pleased about having the early story, AMOT, and novella, TTS, that introduced the character of Jorj X. McKie, as it means I can now read his 'ConSentient Universe Sequence' in proper order, already having the later novels, 'Whipping Star' (1970) & 'The Dosadi Experiment' (1977). This book also includes a fascinating introduction in which Herbert candidly discusses his frustrating experiences working with David Lynch and Dino De Laurentiis on the film of 'Dune' (1984). He claims that the original film ran to over five hours and would have been much closer to the novel but that it was ruined in the cutting room with only two fifths of the filmed footage making it into the released movie - and making large parts of the story incomprehensible as a result!! He goes on to describe what was lost and has me salivating at the thought of seeing the whole thing - if only a complete director's cut version could be restored for us. Astonishing news!! Herbert talks of his hopes for a possible mini-series being made to show the full version but sadly he was to die suddenly and unexpectedly from a massive pulmonary embolism the following year...

'Tehanu' (1990) by Ursula K. Le Guin - I love the 'Earthsea Trilogy', ranking it as one of the defining fantasy works of my childhood, and she returned to that world with this stand alone Earthsea novel 17 years later to win the Nebula and Locus awards for best novel. My plan is to collect the other stand alone novel, 'The Other Wind' (2001), and the 8 short stories set in that universe and then read the whole Earthsea saga for the first time in chrono order.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2012 - 02:28 pm:   

Just ordered, 'The Possessors' (1964) by John Christopher - thanks, Mick.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.185.225.55
Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2012 - 02:57 pm:   

Good man!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.128.209.113
Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2012 - 11:59 pm:   

Just got a first edition of the Wolves of the Calla complete with Bernie Wrightson illustrations for 1p plus postage off Amazon. Did they do illustrated version of the last 2 books? I'd like to collect the whole set illustrated if possible.
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 58.168.211.135
Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 - 12:54 pm:   

"Death Rattles" and "Terror Tales of the Cotswolds", both from Gray Friar Press. I'm sure it's a pain having to work out shipping etc. for international orders, so many thanks to Gary for the quick and friendly service.
You know, a certain UK publisher told me to 'buy from Amazon' when I requested a price for a number of their books, including postage to Australia. Needless to say, I don't buy their books anymore.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.26.84.199
Posted on Sunday, May 13, 2012 - 02:28 pm:   

You're welcome, Lincoln. I try my best.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, May 27, 2012 - 08:04 pm:   

"I get the willies when I see closed doors." The opening line to Joseph Heller's Something Happened (found me a nice hefty used hardback for a buck), which I've wanted to read for a long time—especially since reading (somewhere) the praises heaped upon it by Vonnegut. I've had friends who've read it, who also praise it; so that answers the "And Why?" part. Alas, it's so long (562 pages), and my patience is so tenuous of late, I probably won't get to it any time soon.... Anyone else here read it? Or anything else by Heller?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, May 28, 2012 - 12:53 pm:   

Haven't read that one, Craig, although I'm aware of its reputation and have also long wanted to read it.

'Catch 22' and 'Closing Time' are two of my favourite novels. I think you'll get a lot out of Joseph Heller. He has a voice as distinctive and wise and oddly addictive as Vonnegut but with a much blacker tone. His books have a wonderfully meandering picaresque quality, packed with unforgettable characters and incidents, that I've always loved in literature, from Dickens on.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.159.21.6
Posted on Tuesday, June 05, 2012 - 08:10 pm:   

Just picked up Last Days by Adam Nevill.

Ritual (his last book) is by far one of the most frightening novels I've read so this should hopefully be just as good.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 03:34 pm:   

Found this yesterday:

'Red Planet' (1949) by Robert A. Heinlein - early novel realistically detailing the colonisation of Mars, by way of an exciting adventure yarn, that was written simultaneously with Bradbury's 'Martian Chronicles' and should make for interesting comparison. Both books have never been out of print.

Les and less books of any interest to me are turning up in the second hand shops this last six months. I always take that as a sign that my 20 year rule needs updating so will be a bit more adventurous with authors of the late 80s/early 90s, who have stood the test of time, from here on in.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Friday, June 15, 2012 - 03:09 pm:   

Fascinating and rather fortuitous find yesterday:

'The Sphinx Of The Ice Fields' (1897) by Jules Verne - his fabled and, I thought, impossible to find sequel to Poe's 'The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym' (1838) that couldn't have come at a better time to provide the impetus for me to finish Poe's novel, at last. Almost two thirds through and putting all else aside until I've read both works!
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.150.135.253
Posted on Tuesday, July 03, 2012 - 01:38 am:   

A new China Mieville book - Railsea - which seems to be a fantastical take on Moby Dick. It has the best opening chapter I've seen in any of his books.

I picked it up in Waterstone using the balance on my waterstone card so I got the brand new hardback for a mere £5.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, July 05, 2012 - 05:00 pm:   

Curious: Has anyone read any of these "Jack Reacher" suspense novels, by Lee Child? Who seems to churn out one or more of them a year. Big movie coming out with Tom Cruise soon, playing lead Jack. Seems to have a lot of fans, including (apparently) Stephen King. Worth perusing...? (Btw: "Jack" as the name of a lead protagonist? anywhere?... let's all pass a law, forbidding this forevermore.)
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.152.62.175
Posted on Friday, July 06, 2012 - 10:34 am:   

I've not read them but have heard they are 'fun'.
There's a lot of fuss over Reacher - in the books - being very big and tall, and Cruise being tiny.
>shrugs<
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Friday, July 06, 2012 - 05:13 pm:   

Sometimes, Tony, nothing beats a quick easy thrilling bam-bam-bam suspenser. Maybe I'll give one a go at some point... maybe....
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.196
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 05:04 pm:   

I love my postman! A couple of days ago, he brought me two lovely parcels. One contained the "Hauntings" collection from NewCon Press (signed at Forbidden Planet!) and the other ... wow, at last I've got my hands on a copy of Reggie Oliver's "The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini" (also signed), thanks to Tartarus having published it in paperback now. Beautiful!

Then, today, my postman turns up with "The First Book of Classical Horror Stories" (also signed - thanks, Des!). Looking forward to reading this!

I think all of these will leapfrog many of the other books in my TBR pile.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2012 - 06:52 pm:   

I picked up the new Graham Joyce last week and it looks rather spiffing.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.144.33.95
Posted on Saturday, September 29, 2012 - 01:28 am:   

Today in Manchester I picked up Blaze by mister King - one of the few I've been missing - for a measly 35p from the blood donation centre.

I went from there to my favourite second hand place where I picked up a Dilbert book - Bring me the Head of Willy The Mailboy. I then spotted a copy of Time out of Mind by John R Maxim - which was one of the very first books I ever borrowed from the adult section of the library back when I was a teenager living with the aged p's (as Dickens calls them).

I absolutely loved the book then and - with only one exception - I've loved everything else I've read of his since then. I couldn't remember if I actually owned a copy or not and mentioned this to the shop owner when he asked me if I wanted it. At this point he said I could have it, and if it turned out I already had it, i could take it back. Otherwise, just drop the money in to him next time I'm in Manchester.

As it turns out I don't (didn't) have a copy of my own so I now owe him the grand total of £3 next time I'm in the town centre.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, October 02, 2012 - 12:47 am:   

Three very unlike each other finds for me, in nice paperback vintage editions (the third a Penguin): Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse (1929); John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy (1966); and Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (1899).

Though to be honest, it being October now, I'm in the mood for some real fine horror... in my reading, too....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 03:19 pm:   

Just picked up 'The Santaroga Barrier' (1968) which appears to have been a rare foray into horror for Frank Herbert. The synopsis makes it sound like one of those classic "small town with a dark secret into which an unwitting stranger stumbles and finds himself unable to leave" yarns. The town, naturally enough, is called Santaroga. I think I'll read this next.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 03:24 pm:   

Incidentally, the defining and greatest story in that sub-genre is still H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' - the greatest thing he ever wrote, imho.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.60.39
Posted on Thursday, November 29, 2012 - 04:40 pm:   

The one that most impressed me when I first read it was Matheson's "The Children of Noah".
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.239.242.194
Posted on Sunday, December 02, 2012 - 02:13 pm:   

Just bought Room by Emma Donaghue. It were only 50p and looks fairly good in a borderline horror sort of way.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 01:01 pm:   

I have a theory about why post-apocalypse novels of the 50s & 60s are still so damn effective and resonant - for all the accusations of cosiness.

They were written, and struck the public consciousness, as a form of catharsis in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust and tend to be told from the heart and concentrate on the human emotional cost of the catastrophe on a limited number of individuals rather than the physically sensationalist horror that has tended to dominate the form since. This "less is more" approach to unimaginable global events, mass death and dehumanisation - forced by the publication standards of the day despite what those reading at the time had just been through - only makes the horror all the more affecting when it comes.

The greatest, most plausible and least sensationalist (yet most profound and emotionally involving to read) example of the form has to be 'Earth Abides' (1949) by George R. Stewart - still my read of the year.

But the great unsung hero of the form has to be John Christopher - over and above even John Wyndham. His end of the world stories are written with such directness and commitment and beautifully understated rage and sadness - coupled with pitch perfect characterisation and utterly convincing detailing of the day-to-day minutiae of survival - that to read them is to experience true horror on a gut level that I have never found more affecting.
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Mbfg (Mbfg)
Username: Mbfg

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 62.255.207.128
Posted on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 09:43 pm:   

Craig...I loved Tolstoy's "Resurrection". It's too long ago for me to remember much detail but it was, for me, his best novel and extremely visceral and visual.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - 02:41 am:   

I fully want to, Terry... it was too recommended highly by a friend. I've only read many of his short-stories, no novels... oh, wait, sure: I read Anna Karenina in high school, but I don't think I ever finished it, let alone appreciated it. What I have read of Tolstoy's is beyond marvelous, all of it. I wish I had more time, more time, more time... and patience... and time....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.145.132.209
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - 02:33 am:   

I hate it when writers re-release books with different titles. I was really happy to find an SP Somtow book I'd never heard of on Amazon - Forest of the Night. I ordered it and was quite miffed when I got it to find that it's Armorica - second book in the Riverun series - with a different title.

If anyone out there wants the second part of the riverrun trilogy, I have a spare copy. However, unless you've read Riverrun this book will make no sense whatsoever to you.
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Lincoln (Lincoln_brown)
Username: Lincoln_brown

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 121.219.108.247
Posted on Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - 11:36 am:   

Received a parcel from GFP yesterday, to add to the tbr pile:

'From Hell to Eternity'
by Thana Niveau

'Enemies at the Door'
by Paul Finch

'Terror Tales of East Anglia'
edited by Paul Finch

'Peel Back the Sky'
by Stephen Bacon

And a couple from Cold Tonnage:

'Wyrm' and 'Ghost Train', by Stephen Laws.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, December 13, 2012 - 12:53 pm:   

Finally got my hands on a copy of 'The Shrinking Man' (1956) by Richard Matheson! Jack Arnold's film version is one of my Top 10 genre pictures of all time - so I'm a bit excited.

I'll be reading this straight after 'The Santaroga Barrier'.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2012 - 07:36 am:   

Pretty good finds, I'd say, for 50¢ each!

Joseph Hansen, Fadeout (1970), the very first of his Dave Brandstetter mysteries. I read one short-story of his, in this same series, and was impressed.

Stanley Ellin, House of Cards (1967); know him only from his short stories and the novel The Eighth Circle (1958), so....

Patricia Highsmith, Chillers (1990), a collection of stories from other collections of hers, except these were all produced for the eponymous TV series. Now I read one here previously, "Slowly Slowly In The Wind" (1976)—the story I didn't love, but the writing, the telling, phenomenal; I felt the same way about the story I sampled after finding this, "Blow It" (date—?). They are both stories which are shockingly "predictable," if that's the right word... they calmly lead you in one direction; and you're thinking, surely, surely this story will take a hard left or veer off into a twist of some sort—nope, not at all. But they're so finely crafted... and anyway maybe our expectation to be constantly surprised is really quite decadent, indecent, as it is.. But that's two out of twelve tales, so we'll see how the rest fare: I'm sure, well.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.24.62.55
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2013 - 10:55 pm:   

Recently picked up second hand:

'The Machineries Of Joy' (1966) by Ray Bradbury - another of his short story collections I didn't even know existed!

'The Complete Robot' (1982) by Isaac Asimov - all the great man's famous robot stories collected in one mammoth volume. I've been looking this for a while as it is required reading as part of the 'Foundation' series i.e. I have to read these before I start into the two prequels. Yep, the whole millennia spanning epic is all linked and started with these tales.

'Nine Stories' (1953) by J.D. Salinger - his only published collection of short stories, including; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (1948), "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (1948), "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (1948), "The Laughing Man" (1949), "Down at the Dinghy" (1949), "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor" (1950), "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" (1951), "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" (1952) & "Teddy" (1953).

'A Game For The Living' (1959) by Patricia Highsmith - I know nothing at all about it.

'Those Who Walk Away' (1967) by Patricia Highsmith - ditto!

'Master Of Middle Earth : The Achievement Of J.R.R. Tolkien In Fiction' (1972) by Paul Kocher -I've heard this book talked of as the definitive biography and analysis of the life's work of Tolkien, before the waters got muddied with over-popularity and the flood of posthumous works. One to read before re-reading the lot!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2013 - 04:34 am:   

Found at my library for $1 a fine hardcover edition of Gallery of Horror, edited by Charles Grant (1983). Most of the stories are original to it, and I've read a few—the names here are all biggies. So I reread one of the shortest ones, by Ramsey, and it leads me to some questions, which I think I shall place in the reading section....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Sunday, March 10, 2013 - 03:34 am:   

Another great score, for a mere $1: A Treasury of Modern Fantasy, ed. by Terry Carr & Martin Harry Greenberg (1981). An oversized anthology of what promises to be some of the finest fantasy—light, dark, epic, in-between—I've been wanting to catch up on.

Like Stevie, I'm very picky about these anthologies: I judge these things in advance by the editors, and Terry Carr's a good one. And, of course, the stories contained I've already read: by the quality of those, I make my determination. Well, here, the ones I've encountered previously are not just plain old good tales, imho, they're phenomenal—like "My Dear Emily," by Joanna Russ; "Within the Walls of Tyre," by Michael Bishop; "The Black Ferris" and "The Hell-Bound Train" and "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Loom of Darkness" (best known as, "Liane the Wayfarer") and so on.... Luckily there's more I've not read, than have.

Took a sample, and wasn't disappointed: "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts," by Shirley Jackson (1955). Ha! It but touches the edge of "fantasy"; but what a deliciously wicked little piece it is, pure Jackson. Loved every sentence of it. Yes, I think I may have to bury my nose in this anthology exclusively....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 212.183.128.15
Posted on Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 03:44 pm:   

Fuck yes!!

Just picked up Heinlein's great horror masterpiece, 'The Puppet Masters' (1951), for a quid. Been looking it for ages! Yeahaa!! I'll be getting stuck into it right after 'Secret Story'.

And I was already beside myself with excitement as I have my ticket for 'Star Trek XII : Into Darkness' bought and heading in shortly. With what looks like a cracking Neil Gaiman penned cyberman episode of 'Doctor Who' to follow!

Can this day possibly get any better?!
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 04:45 pm:   

Found a copy at last:

'Nothing That Meets The Eye' (2002) by Patricia Highsmith - posthumous collection of all her previously uncollected short stories, spanning her career. There are 28 short stories written between 1938 and 1982. The book was hailed as an impossible goldmine of lost riches and that only leaves 'Slowly, Slowly In The Wind' (1979) until I have all her collections and can start that chrono read.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.212.231.159
Posted on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 06:13 pm:   

You now have one of her books that I don't. I keep meaning to pick that one up in Waterstone.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 81.149.182.62
Posted on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 07:37 pm:   

Once I pick up that final collection my plan is to read all her short stories in chrono order, Marc. I'll be slotting in the stories from NTMTE where they belong. Hard to believe she'd been writing them since 1938 yet her first collection, 'Eleven', wasn't published until 1970.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.212.231.27
Posted on Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 05:26 pm:   

My copy of NOS 4A2 arrived on Saturday - American first edition hardback - and just in time for the signing later this week. It sounds like an excellent read as well.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.134.105.2
Posted on Saturday, July 06, 2013 - 08:29 pm:   

My TBR pile is spiralling out of control. I currently have at least 8 new books which would normally all be at the top of the pile but they all seem to have been released at once.

Neil gaiman - Ocean at the end of the Lane
Graham Joyce - year of the ladybird
Carl Hiaasen - Bad Monkey
The aforementioned Joe Hill NOS 4A2
a selection of SP Somtow/Somtow Sucharitkul novels - including the entire Inquestor series (which I think would make Stevie do a sex wee if he read them) Dawning Shadow - The light on the Sound, The Throne of madness, The Darkling Wind, and Utopia Hunters. If they're all as good as the first one is turning out to be I'm in for a rare treat.

Also today I just picked up The haunted book by jeremy dyson (the most talented of the League of gents writers IMHO. His previous novel was really very good indeed and this one seems rather strange and wonderful sounding) and Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan - a debut novel that could also be called Dairy of the Dead as it is (finally) a novel about killer zombie cows!!! I read the first couple of chapters on the bus home and it's really very funny indeed.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.30.205.174
Posted on Saturday, July 06, 2013 - 10:49 pm:   

I don't like to diss books but The Darkling Wind is very early S.S. and I found it prolix and dull. He's come on a lot since then.

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