| Author | Message | ||
     Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Halfway through three different novels at the minute. Every one a defining work of its genre: 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles' (1902) by Arthur Conan Doyle - second time of reading and it's unquestionably Sherlock Holmes' finest hour. Interesting that the two stories I rank highest of the series (this & 'A Study In Scarlet' so far) both involve Holmes going missing from the action for a good half of their length, while his brooding presence dominates every page (rather like an inverse Dracula). Another of the great pleasures of this fabulous book is to see Dr Watson finally step out of the shadow of his comrade. Atmospheric is an understatement. 'The Glass Key' (1931) by Dashiell Hammett - I think I'm in agreement with Joel that, plotwise, this has to be his most dazzling novel. In the cynical figure of Ned Beaumont, gambler and fixer-upper for bent politicians, Hammett created his most dislikeable, yet undeniably charismatic, anti-hero. This guy makes Sam Spade look like a parragon of virtue. The murder plot is of the did-he-or-didn't-he variety which makes the characters and their motivations, as they circle around the chief suspect, and Ned's best friend and mentor, a psychological examination of loyalty and how far people will stick their necks out before their survival instincts kick in. A fascinating and totally unpredictable mystery that hasn't dated a day. I wasn't aware until quite recently that this book formed the basis of the Coen Brothers early masterpiece 'Miller's Crossing'. They didn't half change the plot a bit so it can't really be called a faithful adaptation, brilliant as it is. 'The Swords Of Lankhmar' (1968) by Fritz Leiber - absolutely wonderful entertainment! The Lankhmar series surely peaked with this dense and magical full length novel. The duo are at their most irresistibly charming, the remarkable cast of villains match them for sheer charisma, the action is hair-raisingly exciting, the humour a madcap joy, the flights of imagination as vivid and startling as anything in fiction, and the plot grows more insidiously disturbing the deeper in we get. After reading this book you will never look at a rat quite the same way again... forget James Herbert, this truly is the stuff of fevered dreams. Also bogged down halfway through 'The Complete Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allan Poe'. Must make a concerted effort to break through the rather painfully dated satirical humour section to get into the rest of the Great Stuff! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.127.208 |
Stehen King's "Full Dark, No Stars" which has an extra story in the paperback version that wasn't in the original hardback. Just finished the first tale in the book - "1922" - absolutely wonderful story. If the others in the book are even half this good I'll be more than happy. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.78.83 |
Just started King's The Tommyknockers. So far so good. It feels like returning to an old friend after 25 years. The man sure knows how to get a grip on his reader - in an almost personal way. Someone asked about Etchison's Darkside which I've just finished, and I'm afraid I can't recommend the novel. A smashing opening chapter, full of references to the author's short stories: characters and situations from "The Late Shift" return and there's a glancing reference to Etchison's insidious forbidden book The Way of the Wach which we first encounter in "Not From Around Here". The rest of roughly the first half of Darkside builds on this suspense nicely. We really care for the three young girls, less so for the main protagonist (their stepfather) and, curiously, not at all for the mother. After the tragedy which then occurs (I won't spoil the story for any prospective readers) story-wise the novel becomes slightly tedious, even if there are some nice bits. Towards the end it all becomes slightly confusing, and the Big Revelation is nothing less than a let-down. Gawd, he could have done so much with that forbidden book! I still think Etchison's two story collections, Red Dreams and The Dark Country, are his best books. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Drive by Kames Sallis (on Kindle). The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough. In Extremis by John Shirley. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
James Sallis, even... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.14.18 |
"I still think Etchison's two story collections, Red Dreams and The Dark Country, are his best books." Do you mean 'first two' or are you using inappropriate commas? There have been at least three more Etchison collections, though the first (The Dark Country) remains the best – mind you, he could marshall the Heller Defence in the face of any critical disparagement: Critic: You've never surpassed Catch-22. Heller: That's OK. Neither has anyone else. | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.80.128 |
"The Hellbound Heart" by Clive Barker "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion next up "It Knows Where You Live" by Mr McMahon | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Hubert, I couldn't disagree with you more regarding Etchison's Darkside - I think it's masterful. Even better is Shadowman, a novel I re-read regularly just to remind myself how brilliant it is. | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.143.80.128 |
It's been a long time since I read "The Darkside" but I remember enjoying it. More recently (ie, within the last few years), I read "California Gothic" and that had a very slow pace but was very good. I also have Etchison's pseudonymously-written Videodrome novelisation yet to read, but I think he works much better with short stories. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Isn't Darkside a novel, Zed? Wasn't there, early on, a novel that Etchison had been working on forever and ever, and then finally released?... I thought it was that Darkside but maybe I was thinking of something else. I finished Wolfe's The Knight: loved it, and it's superb, but the fans that say he's the best writer in English currently living - and they're not just anybodies saying that - mmm, I can't really agree there. But don't take that to mean I'm saying he's lousy, or even average: the guy's head-and-shoulders above whole cities of published writers.... I'm eagerly anticipating part II to this two-parter, The Wizard. Tore through in one day P.D. James' musings on the detective novel, Talking About Detective Fiction. This was published as the author turned... 90 years old?!? Holy crap! I can only hope I'm as lucid and illuminative and entertaining when I'm that old.... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
California Gothic is great, too, IMHO. It isn't slow - it's simply atmospheric rather than being action-led. I've read Darkside several times, and it always impresses me. I think Etchison's novels are very underrated by genre fans. Well, by everyone, actually. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Isn't Darkside a novel, Zed? Yes. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
Currently reading The Black Carousel by Charles Grant. My first exposure to him, and quite good stuff; I've got two more of his Oxrun books on order from Better World Books as we speak. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.30.112 |
One of Grant's best novels – essentially four linked novellas, each bleaker than the last. I think of it as the book Something Wicked This Way Comes should have been. In the late 1980s, it became fashionable in horror fandom to deride Grant's 'quiet horror' for its lack of gore – but his writing, unlike most of what was being manufactured in those days, remains disturbing and resonant. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
Finished the brilliant Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes and now on A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving. Next up The Ritual by Adam Nevill, followed by a bit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
From Grant's outstanding body of work, I'm probably most fond of Nightmare Seasons. Joel, is that true - about fandom turning aganist his brand of quiet horror in the 80s? I wsn't involved in fandom back then, but I remember him being highly respected elsewhere, in magazines and by other writers (which is how I disovered him). | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.47.226 |
Wasn't there some friction between so-called 'quiet horror' and so-called 'splatterpunk' back then? I seem to recall an unfriendly comment directed at Grant by Clive Barker, deriding his writing style. I can't remember the specifics, but it must be in a book (or possibly a journal or magazine) somewhere. Joel might remember it... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.127.208 |
I recall the phrase "dark fantasy" being used a lot to describe Grant's work, and that of similar authors. Can't recall any arguments but it's more than possible that that was the case. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
I think Grant coined the phrase "dark fantasy" and was lampooned in some quarters on account of this. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
There's an interview with some luminary of the day in an old book I have, in which someone viciously lampoons folk who distance themselves from horror. "Ooh, I think I'll go get myself some dark fantasy..." is a sarcastic line I remember. Can't remember who wrote it, tho. Not the most mature debate, I Grant you. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Well, Grant himself mocked the term 'dark fantasy' as a euphemism for horror, and I think that's the quote you're recalling: "I'll just take myself down to the neighbourhood reading boutique to buy some dark fantasy to read while availing myself of the household sanitation facility." Or something like that. Grant had a very dry sense of humour. He is greatly missed. Sorry Zed, I didn't mean to overstate the disparagement of Grant in fandom – it was a faction thing that related to the attempt to big up Barker, Skipp & Spector etc as the future of horror. Ray Garton derided Grant as an 'academician', but then he'd probably say that of anyone half-literate. I'm not aware of Barker having mocked Grant's work though. Fear magazine – which might have delivered some value for money if it had been printed on more absorbent paper – ran any number of letters from infantile 'splatterpunk' fans who poured hostile scorn on Grant's work, as if they had read any of it. Grant had committed the sin of being critical of writing that relied on excessive gore and sadism to achieve its effects. He had tried to make the case for subtlety and literacy. So, among a certain fandom demographic, his head on a plate was demanded. There is supernatural fiction out there that is deliberately tame, aimed at a readership with mild and cosy tastes. But Grant didn't write any of it. His work leaves you sick with unease and pervasive despair. His story about a weird babysitter, published in a Fantasycon programme booklet, scared me so much I've never been able to reread it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Joel - what's the title of that story? I used to buy Fear, but I always make a point of not reading the letters pages in any magazine. Anybody sad enough to write a letter to such a publication either has too much time on their hands or some kind of axe to grind. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
I was misremembering. It was indeed Grant who mocked the term. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
My favourite Grant story is "Out There"...a stunning examination of urban paranoia and the fear of engaging with the world. It genuinely scares me every time I read it (the story was published in the excellent anthology Cutting Edge, edited by Dennis Etchison) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
He was a class act. But for me, his stories don't burn in the brain like Ramsey's. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I can't think of any modern writer who's stepped in to fill Grant's shoes. His contribution to the genre was vital, nay, essential. He was a different kind of writer to Ramsey, but just as good, just as important and resonant. At his best, he had no equal. When the long-promised PS collected stories is published, I'll be first in line to buy a copy. That's one limited edition I won't mind forking out for. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
The rythmn of his prose, his use of language, the way he conveyed the important stuff not by what he said but how he said it...I loved that. I sense a re-read of some of Grant's work coming on.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Zed, I don't recall the title. But the last couple of sentences are etched in black within my cerebral cortex. I'm very tempted to quote them here, but won't. One of the child characters was called Joey, and that probably helped to trigger the panic reaction for me, as the babysitter's final words are addressed to him. (Guess what my nickname was as a child? Guess what happens to anyone who calls me that now? Clue: Google the phrase "identified by dental records".) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
The story might have been 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
Been reading Grant recently. He was true master. Brilliant brilliant writer. Achieved in less than 200 pages that which would take lesser writers at least 600 to get to. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Thanks, Joel...this is ringing vague bells (I wish I had a better memory). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Just found in a Grant bibliography: "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" (1984) Fantasycon IX Programme That is definitely it. Think the story was reprinted in The Year's Best Horror Stories. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
Does Grant have a definitive collection of tales? | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Zed, I sometimes wish I had a better memory and sometimes wish I had a worse one. I dare say it's the same for everyone. I'm working on a story on that theme – how forgetting is precious but there is always collateral damage. If you want to forget that hideous day in 1979 then you have to sacrifice that magic night in 1997, just to even the balance. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Tales from the Nightside is, I think, widely considered his most prominent short fiction collection. It's a wonderful book; meant a lot to me when I first read it. Hit those sweet spots in the psyche, you know. Steve Jones is meant to be editing a definitive collection of Grant's work (in 2 volumes) for PS. I first heard about this 2 or 3 years ago, so haven't a clue when it'll appear. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
So far the only definitive Grant collection is an early one, Tales from the Nightside (Arkham House and paperback editions). That is superb but the only other collection I'm aware of is uneven (possibly earlier), and his later work is so far uncollected. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
Would be nice to have them all. How many tales did he write? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_L._Grant#Short_fiction | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Tales From The Nightside is indeed a superb collection. I've read two of his early novels, Hour of the Oxrun Dead and The Sound of Midnight; they're not perfect or breaking of new ground, but they're certainly enjoyable reads (especially the former). A horror writer I'm meaning to get back to.... | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
In looking for more Oxrun Station books, I've found a fair number of them are, like Black Carousel, collections of novellas. Hardly definitive, given their slender nature, but not to be overlooked. I've been using this list, although I wish they had separated the books and their contents: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?802 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
So why don't one of you enterprising horror writers here get permission and write a new novel of horror set in Oxrun Station? Or why don't one of you get permission to anthologize a whole new collection of stories set in the Oxrun Station universe? I'm sure it's not impossible, and you'd get instant caché on such a project. Just throwing it out there.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
There's his Black Wine collection as well, 50/50 his stories with the Landlords - I have a lovely signed copy on my bookshelves at home (sadly only signed by RC, and apparently I've missed the chance to get it signed by both writers. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.78.83 |
Hubert, I couldn't disagree with you more regarding Etchison's Darkside I couldn't help thinking what our Landlord might have made of such a story. It didn't work for me at all and I definitely had the feeling Etchison lost the plot in the last chapters. I'm not entirely clear what happens in them - the jump cuts from dream/hallucination to reality are confusing, but not in a positive way. It's as if Etchison tried to do a Campbell and failed. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Craig, of course it's impossible. Writers' created worlds are not franchises uless they choose to market them as such. It's neither appropriate nor desirable for a writer's legacy to be diluted in that way. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
Er, may I mention the Cthulhu Mythos? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
I don't know, Joel. I think it could be genuinely respectful for a bunch of writers to pay homage to a master like Grant by writing tales set in his world. I know he's not around to approve such a move, but I'm sure most contributors would do it out of love. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
There's a Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser tribute antho published recently. I quite fancy buying that. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I've read it Gary. Not bad, but skip over Mick Garris's embarassing effort. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Wasn't there a Charles Grant tribute antho a few years ago? Edited by Kealan Patrick Burke? Goes for a small fortune now, because it sold out instantly. I like Craig's idea. Done respectfully with the right authors, and out of a love of Grant's contribution to the field, something like that could really work. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.205 |
Quietly Now. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
I'd say doing it without the blessing of his estate would be tacky. But there's nothing wrong with getting the blessing, if the work's done well. I'd suggest first contacting Kathryn Ptacek, if people were actually going to do it. That being said, I think a better tribute is just writing the best story you can. Grant wrote more than just Oxrun Station, after all -- I believe he had well over 100 books published. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thanks, Zed. It would be a cool antho! Jamie, I don't think you even can do it at all, legally, without the estate of Mr. Grant approving it; any such use of Oxrun Station. And actually, me, I'd really like to read a Joel Lane story set there. Wouldn't anyone else? (I'm not being flip here, I'm serious!) | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Steve - that's the one I was thinking of. I wish it was available on Kindle.  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.18.92 |
I don't think 'tribute' stories should be pastiches or appropriate an author's settings – though I haven't always taken that view. As for the Cthulhu Mythos, it's clear that Lovecraft's legacy has been both diluted and damaged by unnecessary 'I can't believe it's not HPL' imitations – but at the same time it has been enriched by stories that used the influence of Lovecraft creatively in different styles and settings. As a rule of thumb, no 'Lovecraftian' story should be set in Arkham, Dunwich or Innsmouth. A Grant tribute anthology could be a fine and worthwhile project. But it absolutely should not contain any stories set in Oxrun Station. Folk music critic Niall MacKinnon distinguishes between revival and re-enactment: the former enters into a tradition to relight its creative flame, the latter tries to summon up the lost voice of the tradition by fabricating its musical environment. I used to think literary re-enactment was all right, but now I think it's wrong and tedious. Literary revival can be very worthwhile, however, finding new relevance and dynamism in great work of the past. Where the original work is almost current, the need for dynamic interpretation rather than static imitation is all the more vital. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I loathe pastiche with a passion...the worst one, for me, is when writers deliberately pastiche Bradbury. That makes my blood boil. But, yes, the best way to pay tribute to a writer is to consider their aims, their themes, and then take them in your own direction. Use their signposts, and then take a turn of your own somewhere down the road. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Joel, how would you though characterize what Lovecraft did in real time with other writers - taking their characters and inventions, etc., and throwing them into his own stories? (and vice-versa). I do agree with what you say, but I would argue one thing, at least, Joel. Now, I've not by any means read all the Oxrun Station stories; but what I've read, there's virtually no connections between them, aside from the mere mention of the town's name. I would argue that "Oxrun Station" is a sort of code-word, then, for a kind (not pastiche, Zed, luckily) of story that Grant excelled writing: everyone knows his work as being quiet, but it was not subtle, and I'm not being pejorative by that. His stories were easy to follow and understand, beginning to end; but his horrors were even less psychological (as Ramsey's made an art of), than emotional, and specifically as it related to relationships: connections, relations, severings, losses, longings, were the foundations upon which he structured simple tales of classic and familiar horrors. Ideally, an homage anthology of same I think should, in each story, at least mention, even in passing, "Oxrun Station": that wouldn't be a terrible violation/dilution of Grant's oeuvre. But, every story should be so concerned with the types, not writing-style, of Grant's wonderful (ultimately one-of-a-kind) universe of horror lit. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
>>>As a rule of thumb, no 'Lovecraftian' story should be set in Arkham, Dunwich or Innsmouth. Whose rule? >>>But it absolutely should not contain any stories set in Oxrun Station. Perhaps it could be properly debated first? | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.27.19.76 |
>>Perhaps it could be properly debated first? A proper debate? On the internet? Shouldn't be a problem... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
but his horrors were even less psychological (as Ramsey's made an art of), than emotional, and specifically as it related to relationships: connections, relations, severings, losses, longings, were the foundations upon which he structured simple tales of classic and familiar horrors. Beautifully put, Craig - and you've managed to put into words exactly why a lot of Grant's work hits my literary G-Spot. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.201.151 |
Yep. 'If Damon Comes' is a good example of this (it's in the Dark Descent anthology, if I remember correctly). | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.19.77 |
Gary, what makes you think I'm trying to prevent debate? I'm just stating a view. Craig, Lovecraft established intertextual relationships between his work and that of his peers or influences (whether they were friends of his or not). That's nothing to object to in principle, though – purely in literary terms – I think the effect in practice was, more often than not, to break the suspension of disbelief. You are caught up in the story and suddenly you realise it's not Wilmarth being taken to the edge of madness, it's just HPL having a laugh with his mates. In short, it doesn't help. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.19.77 |
P.S. I come from a family who mostly express themselves in uncompromising terms. Doesn't mean I think I represent the last word, let alone have the slightest influence on what happens. I will continue to express views without doing the classic English thing of saying "Of course, that's just my opinion." It saves time. If there is debate there is debate, but it's not my responsibility to anticipate that by representing every side. I want the following engraved on my tombstone: 'If I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor.' | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.227.238.107 |
'But, yes, the best way to pay tribute to a writer is to consider their aims, their themes, and then take them in your own direction. Use their signposts, and then take a turn of your own somewhere down the road.' Yes. Just doing that for the Joe Pulver homage to R.W. Chambers anthology....A season in Carcosa. Loving every minute of writing it. http://thisyellowmadness.blogspot.com/2011/02/season-in-carcosa-and-grimscribes. html | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.216.33 |
>>>I will continue to express views without doing the classic English thing of saying "Of course, that's just my opinion." It saves time. But does it? We're now debating strategies of expression when we could be debating the issue at hand. Anyway, about the issue: I think it would be absolutely respectful and potentially entertaining for a bunch of writers, who love Grant's work, to write tales set in Grant's world. Or a bunch of Kingian tales set in Castle Rock. Etc. I agree that 'franchise fiction' (eg, Virginia Andrews, Robert Ludlum) is tasteless (because it's largely driven by nasty old profit), but this isn't what I mean. I'm talking about folk who really dig these bodies of work and wish to pay creative homage to them. Anyone else disagree? Any thoughts? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.202.171 |
"Anyway, about the issue: I think it would be absolutely respectful and potentially entertaining for a bunch of writers, who love Grant's work, to write tales set in Grant's world. Or a bunch of Kingian tales set in Castle Rock. Etc." I think so too, Gary. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.151.147.15 |
Didn't King kind of deliberately destroy Castle Rock in Needful Things? Grant did give writers the town of Greystone Bay to write about for several anthologies - seems to be a kind of Oxrun Station by the sea | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 89.242.101.198 |
As I've said before on here I read three of Charles L. Grant's horror novels back in the day ('The Nestling' (1982), 'Night Songs' (1984) & 'The Pet'(1986)) and found them exceptional works of subtle literate horror. Unlike many of his, once loved, contemporaries I would be tempted to reread any of them and feel pretty sure they would still stand up. 'The Nestling', in particular, remains one of the greatest horror novels I have ever read. Well up in the Top 20. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thanks, Zed. Joel: I see what you mean, re: Lovecraft. P.S.: I come from the same kind of family dynamic. My "debating partner" growing up was my dad, and I was forced to think and rethink and defend my opinions or face withering arguments. Stevie: I'm just looking for these old novels of Grant's, and then I can... well, add them to that depressingly tall TBR pile.  I think it is high time (sorry, Joel) an entire series of "homage" horror anthologies be released - and (sorry, Des) I think it would be just wonderful for the e-reader age! Yes, Oxrun Station and Castle Rock. And then Ramsey's Brichester. And Bloch's Bates Motel. And so on, and so on. A whole new "trend" can revive, perhaps, and help rediscover.... | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.144.160.24 |
Centipede Press are publishing 'the collected fiction of Charles L. Grant', due in 2012. According to the (printed) catalogue, it 'promises to be the best and most comprehensive Grant collection ever published'. This will be part or their Masters of the Weird Tale series. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
...and it'll cost £16,000,000 and be bound in the skin of a snow leapard. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 202.124.88.51 |
The next in the series, Best of Karl Wagner, is being released in a limited edition and an affordable trade edition. I'll shoot them an email and check if the Grant will be the same. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Really, Lincoln? I hope that's true...I'd buy that in a shot. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
It doesn't say that on the website, though...just the $175 edition.  | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.144.160.24 |
Have sent Jerad an email, will let you know when I hear back. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.39 |
First 100 pages of The Tommyknockers: a woman has her period (Carrie), her dog turns on her (Cujo) and her boyfriend is an alcoholic (The Shining). King obviously knows his craft, though, and I dearly love him after a fashion. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Why 'after a fashion', Hubert? King's brilliant. I know it's been the in thing among genre "aficionados" to knock him for a few years now, but I don't quite understand that reaction. Even his lesser work (like The Tommyknockers) is well worth reading. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The next in the series, Best of Karl Wagner, is being released in a limited edition and an affordable trade edition. I've always loved KEW's Kane stories and there are still so many of them I haven't read. Once I've completed the Lankhmar series that'll be my next "Fantasy project"... to track down every one and read them in order. He's second only to Robert E. Howard in the sword & sorcery genre, imo. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.205.216 |
Stevie - have you got around to Night's Black Agents yet? Centipede Press have a Fritz Leiber collection in the works too, I hear. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Once I've completed the Lankhmar series that'll be my next "Fantasy project"... to track down every one and read them in order. Stevie, the hardcover Kane collection of shorter works, put out by Night Shade Books called Midnight Sun, contains all the stories and places them in chronological order of creation - so all you have to do is buy that one, and read it from cover to cover! They have a second hardcover collection of his novels. I have yet to get that one.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Huw, 'Night's Black Agents' is still in my TBR pile along with 'Shadows With Eyes' & the last two volumes of the Lankhmar series. Just finished 'The Swords Of Lankhmar' and loved every crazy word of it. It has to be their finest hour. Leiber's fantasy stories exist in a weird literary universe of their own somewhere between the guts and grime of Howard/Wagner and the surreal flights of madcap, and somewhat nightmarish, nonsense of Lewis Carroll or James Stephens. This book was indescribably thrilling and very, very funny. Also finished 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles' and approaching the big pay-off of 'The Glass Key'. A pair of crime novels that have only their flawless entertainment value and mastery of atmosphere in common. From splendidly reassuring to witheringly contemptuous... it was some journey. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks, Craig! On your recommendation I've been looking into Gene Wolfe's fantasy material recently and very much like the sound of 'The Book Of The New Sun' series. Where would you rank those books in the fantasy genre? I've only read a few of his short stories to date. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 204.15.2.82 |
Just started "Creatures of the Pool" (cue hyper-dramatic music sting); also into "Last Call" an epic history of Prohibition; and "How to write a Sentence" by Stanley Fish. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Stevie, I can wholeheartedly recommend the "Book of the New Sun" series - they are a brilliant (pun?) fantasy series, so strange and exotic, it will engross you and leave you a permanent Wolfe fan. AND, if that wasn't enough, you can then go on and read (because otherwise it just won't have the same effect without having read the series) Wolfe's URTH OF THE NEW SUN, which is essentially part 5 of that anyway. I make a prediction, Stevie, that whenever you finish that one, you will come on here and express just how much URTH blew your mind, and how it will have to go either to the top or near it of your list of best-ever time-travel sci-fi stories (it's more than just that, but time-travel is its major theme). Though I'm not sure if maybe you should instead first sample his three books in his basically-unconnected "Soldier in the Mist" series? Wow, those books will blow your mind too! It's hard to say which set of fantasy novels are better, really..... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'The Glass Key' last night and it ends with a double whammy twist, of plot and hidden character motivation, that must be a model of its kind. One is left reeling at the emotional devastation wrought in the last chapters and at how Hammett has manipulated our sympathies, by using descriptions of facial and bodily tics rather than spelled out inner thoughts, to give his character's actions an extra dimension of ambiguity that will no doubt repay repeated re-readings. Basically don't believe a word anyone says in this book and think twice, long and hard, about all of their actions. A humbling masterclass in crime writing, a superb psychological mystery thriller and the finest piece of work by this justifiably legendary author I have read to date. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.144.160.24 |
Hey Zed - haven't heard back from Centipede yet, so I dug up my printed catalogue. Re. the Wagner book, it states: 'This is going to be a handsome two volume set, with the set being available in both trade and limited editions, with new and reprinted artwork by J.K. Potter. To be published Winter 2011 - 2012' | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Cheers, Lincoln - I hope they've stuck to that plan. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Will be starting 'The Victoria Vanishes' as soon as it arrives and just started another two hefty tomes of epic fantasy: Volume 3 of the Pandora Sequence, 'The Lazarus Effect' (1983) by Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom, and one I've been meaning to get stuck into for too many years, 'Imajica' (1991) by Clive Barker. I was recently struck by the previously unnoticed similarities between Herbert & Barker's style of physically explicit epic multi-strand philosophical fantasy. Of how their larger books eschew a central hero but concentrate on a huge cast of human and non-human individuals, scattered through numerous distinctively crafted worlds populated by an intergalactic zoo of imaginary beings, whose journeys cross and re-cross, their characters evolving and changing through a host of gleefully graphic violent or sexual rites of passage - toward redemption or damnation. Reading the two together, at their most ambitious, should make for an interesting experience. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Craig, I'm notoriously fussy when it comes to "epic works of fantasy". They have to be the absolute dog's bollocks to justify the time needed to invest in them. I'm starting to pick up all the right vibes about Gene Wolfe and may risk putting a toe in the waters of his imagination before too much longer... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Trust me, Stevie - I'm the same way. I simply won't waste my time on shite, so I must be as assured as I can be, that something is of the highest caliber, for me to bother. So here's other fantasy series and "series" that I rank high - perhaps these will persuade you my tastes are to be somewhat trusted? (Warning, they're all old-school.) Vance's Dying Earth Wagner's Kane Moorcock's Elric Avram Davidson's Virgil deCamp/Pratt's Incomplete Enchanter Leiber's Lankhmar, of course Those are the big ones. I avoid current fantasy like the plague, I'm just not sure any of it's worth my time (barring favorite writers writing something current, which means, just about nothing at all [Wolfe, again, is the rare living exception]). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.18.247 |
I'm nearly finished my reread of the whole of the Fionavar tapestry trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a fantastic piece of work in every sense of the phrase. It's brilliantly written, you feel for the characters as their lives become more and more screwed by the oncoming war. You feel every sacrifice that's given deep in your own heart and there are bits to come that I know will make me cry - just like they did 20 years ago. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
*** SPOILERS *** 'The Lazarus Effect' (1983) - the story has moved forward several millennia, with the characters of the first two volumes having attained mythical status, and Ship become but a folk memory, spoken of as the creator God by believers and a ridiculous superstition by atheists. Human beings are now the dominant life form on Pandora, having cleared the planet-wide ocean of the sentient kelp that previously reigned, and largely tamed the fearsome fauna. This has been at a price, though, as the upsetting of the planetary ecosystem led to a rising of sea levels and the submergence of all landmasses, but for one towering spike of dry land known as Rock – to which each Pandoran feels obligated to pay homage at least once in their lifetimes. The descendants of the first colonists have split into two sub-species. Preeminent are the normals (or mermen) who pride themselves on their blood purity and good looks (judging by ancient records of those who came from the sky) and who live in vast technologically advanced undersea cities. Above them in surface bound isolation are the mutants, no two the same. They exist in a bewildering variety of ever-changing forms, inherited from their clone forefathers, the results of barbaric experiments at adapting the human form to Pandora's harshness, and they inhabit technologically primitive floating islands grown and patched together from vast assemblages of organic material, the manipulation of which they excel at. A shaky alliance between mermen and mutants has existed for centuries but this is put under strain by a new political movement of undersea hard-liners, who begrudge the resources "wasted" on their mutant neighbours. As plots thicken and tensions mount rumours begin to circulate, fomented by the religious leaders of both worlds, that the predicted return of Ship is imminent. While in the dark ocean deeps something, from the primeval heart of Pandora, stirs... Fucking awesome storytelling and great literature by anyone’s definition! Herbert’s works are the ultimate crossover between high fantasy and nuts-and-bolts science fiction. With every character trait, specific incident and intricate detail of mythology mapped out toward an overarching goal of genuine philosophical profundity. Given his remarkably consistent proflicism I have to rank the man as the greatest fantasist of the 20th Century. Bill Ransom was a friend and metaphysical poet who acknowledged his own input into this great series as providing artistic and philosophical colouring. Prose and story are Herbert’s own. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.81.238 |
The Lazarus Effect' (1983) Spoilers on THAT? Even the bloke who wrote it didn't read it. He did it with his eyes closed. I hope you've someone to drive you home, Steve? I'll do it. I'll crack the window open. It'll be fine. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Imajica' (1991) - he's hooked me again within a few short pages, and this is one doorstop of a book. What starts as a deceptively Highsmithian tale of emotional obsession, infidelity and revenge, involving a small group of trendy Londoners (good to see him back in blighty), is already opening out, as each layer is peeled away, to reveal arcane secrets of worlds within worlds and bizarre dimension-hopping beings, who walk among us in human form wielding strange powers and carrying stranger knowledge. Mesmerising stuff all told with the gritty earthiness and unflinching attention to physical detail that marks out vintage Barker. The prose is an effortless joy to read and the action and introduction of memorable new characters, on almost every page, as wildly unpredictable and compulsive as ever. If I didn't know better I'd swear he was making it up as he went along, it has that kind of instinctive ebb and flow to it... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.103.61 |
There is nothing like the feeling of cool pavement on your back as you are gingerly stepped over. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
Reading a load of Robert B Parker books at the moment, catching up on what I've missed. The guy's great fun. And I'm going through Tony Parsons's non-fiction collection, On Life, Death and Breakfast. Fancy reading some SF next. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'The Victoria Vanishes' (2008) - Bryant & May must embark on the London pub crawl to end all in order to catch a killer. If ever a genre book was created to appeal directly to me it must be this one. Fowler even includes an appendix of all the actual pubs included in the story, for readers to follow our heroes as these get merrily pole-axed on their latest investigation. One has visions of Bryant lying face down in the gutter while May vomits into the Thames and another hapless victim is eviscerated near-by. I love this guy! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.42 |
In view of my negative comment on Darkside I've temporarily shelved The Tommyknockers and am presently re-reading Etchison's Red Dreams. I love it! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'The Tommyknockers' is one of those overly ambitious King novels that is easy to read and full of memorable moments but in which he tries too hard to be all things to all men and the book is not wholly successful as either horror or sci-fi as a result. Looking back I believe the rot - of SK believing he could walk on water - set in with 'It'. He just about got away with it that time but from then on the hype-machine went into overdrive and he rather lost the plot, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Half the time I think she did it just to wind me up, Frank. But I always got her flummoxed when I brought up Margaret Atwood, literature and feminism. Happy days... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.42 |
Looking back I believe the rot - of SK believing he could walk on water - set in with 'It'. imho it set in much earlier than that. I dropped him after the first 120 or so pages of Firestarter, when I realized it was just a re-write of Carrie. Cujo and Christine were no great shakes either. How does a writer top magnificent early books like The Shining, The Dead Zone and Night Shift? Phenomenally difficult. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
My comments on Cujo are already documented here. Doesn't the Dead zone post date Christine by 2 or 3 books? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.42 |
No, Zone was published in 1979, Cujo in 1981, and Christine in 1983. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Reading The End of the Affair by Greene now. Before I get to the second book of Gene Wolfe's "Wizard/Knight" two-parter. "Tommyknockers" always sounded to me like a Brit-ism for... you know, like a wanker, or a pet name for your johnson, or something... it is, isn't it?... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'll agree that Christine wasn't a great book, but Cujo is my favourite King - even ahead of Pet Sematary. I liked the TommyKnockers myself. I loved Pennywise's little cameo. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
There are still scenes from the Tommyknockers that spring easily to mind when I think about it. The most disasterously effective magic trick at a children's birthday party... the death of a certain character. His poems weren't up to much though... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Wikipedia says THE TOMMYKNOCKERS "draws fairly obvious parallels" to Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Clifford Simak's The Big Front Yard; also, that "King had more or less rewritten Quatermass and the Pit"... is that accurate?... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
No he used similar devices in the plot but wrote his own distinct story. A joiner and a sculptor will both use the same tools but produce entirely different product from the same materials. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
source materials I should say | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
He was trying to do a supernatural horror story with aliens and UFOs when he should have stuck with one or the other, imo. It's still a highly entertaining read but afteward you're left thinking "what was the point of that?" His early straight horror novels (including 'The Stand', 'The Dead Zone' & 'Firestarter', imo) were all the more powerful for knowing where to draw the line. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I loved 'Christine', 'Pet Sematary', 'Thinner' & 'It' but after that he started to try my patience by becoming ever more absurdly ambitious and predictable, while still knowing how to weave a captivating yarn and create instantly believable characters. Maybe he was too talented, in one respect, for his own good, and not enough in the one that matters? I still love the guy, mind. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That's just it, Stevie. I feel like it's too risky picking up later novels by King, because the quality - compared with the earliest ones - is uncertain. And they're time-consuming! King novels (only) post PET SEMATARY, I worry, are like, oh... like say McCartney in the 70's, the Stones in the 80's, The Cure in the 90's.... But hey, how would I know, if I've not ventured there? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
It's a straight Sci-fi horror novel and a really good one IMO. Like I say, more than 20 years later there are still scenes that have stuck with me. Every one of his books is worth reading, they're never less than very good. When he's on his top form he''s pretty much unbeatable. Recently he's put out some real corkers. Cell and Duma Key are excellent. I'll admit that Rose Madder and bag of Bones both fell fairly flat for me. Both of them seemed to lose impetus as soon as the supernatural elements appeared. Having said that I was talking to a King fan the other night who thinks Rose Madder is his best book, and who am I to argue? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I have Craig. Each time I've been captivated while reading it but come away with that same 'Tommyknockers' feeling after. As proof - I didn't get round to reading 'Salem's Lot' until the late 90s (was one of those books that just kept escaping me) and was blown away by how well written, scary and intensely gripping it was compared to any of his more recent stuff. It was a revelation to discover that young powerful voice of his again! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.75.42 |
His stuff tends to be a bit . . . prolix. Early in The Tommyknockers there's an extended scene with one of the main characters, an alcoholic poet, attending a party, and it just goes on and on, page after page after page. Not badly written, mind, and there's quite a bit of humor as well, but it doesn't advance the story. The whole episode could easily have been summed up in a single paragraph. But who am I to judge? I like the conciseness of his early short stories. Tucked away in "Gray Matter" there is a casual little yarn about a giant spider lurking in a sewer system which takes up no more than one or two paragraphs, but is all the more effective for its brevity. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Early in The Tommyknockers there's an extended scene with one of the main characters, an alcoholic poet, attending a party, etc. Ah. I hearken back to comments I made concerning one of my major problems with the film THE MIST... but I shall not drudge that up here... well, I just did, but I won't beat the dead horse deader.... Salem's Lot - yes, wonderful. King remains one of the few writers who actually scared - scared - me in his writings, specifically sections of Carrie, The Shining, and The Stand. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.127.208 |
Finished "Full Dark, No Stars" - loved it, although for me that first story - 1922 - is the best in the book. Now reading Greg Bear's The Forge of God. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.205 |
"I like the conciseness of his early short stories. Tucked away in "Gray Matter" there is a casual little yarn about a giant spider lurking in a sewer system which takes up no more than one or two paragraphs, but is all the more effective for its brevity." Hubert, that part has stayed with me for decades. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.205 |
Weber, I loved Bag of Bones. But I thought Cell was only so-so. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.144.33.232 |
I loved the start of Bag of Bones. it's one of the best explorations of grief I've read. the supernatural in that book spoilt the story for me. It didn't sit right with the start of the book somehow. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
The only explanation I can think of for the difference in urgency and power between King's early and later material is that he got too comfortable with the knowledge that whatever he wrote would be published and avidly gobbled up his fans. In the early days he had to work his socks off for that success, spurred on by the fear of failure. I've said it many times before but Stephen King, the brilliant writer, as opposed to the merely entertaining writer, was a victim of his own monumental success... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I disagree completely, Stevie - King's recent work equals the best of his early career, IMHO. Lisey's Story is a staggeringly good novel. A lot of genre fans (I don't mean you) seem to have turned against him slightly because he no longer writes what they perceive as "straight horror". I'd argue he never did. These days he's a much more mature writer, and his work fits neatly into the mainstream in a way that novels like Salem's Lot, etc, never really did (despite their massive success). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
The first time I really, truly realised that King was so much more than a genre writer was when I read Different Seasons. Since then, I've always said that King's best work is the stuf that either doesn't involve supernatural horror or uses it as set dressing. Sections of Bag of Bones are breathtaking - and I have the opposite view to Weber, in that I think King uses the horror elements wonderfully. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Yes, it's true that Weber and Stevie talk bollocks. That's indisputable. It's in set textbooks that A levels kids read. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Early in The Tommyknockers there's an extended scene with one of the main characters, an alcoholic poet, attending a party, and it just goes on and on, page after page after page. Not badly written, mind, and there's quite a bit of humor as well, but it doesn't advance the story. The whole episode could easily have been summed up in a single paragraph. But who am I to judge? Hubert, I thought that was the best part of the book - it's stayed with me all those years. No, it didn't advance the story, but it made the character more solid, more real. Certainly for me, anyway. What other people describe as King's "bloat" in his novels are usually the parts I admire most - that's where he gets you, where he makes you invest in the characters. | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.165.152.107 |
10929/,http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-dont-even-remember-writing-the-tommykn ockers,10929/ | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.165.152.107 |
That didn't work, try this http://alturl.com/9dgiw | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Oh, but The Tommyknockers needed editing . . . I gave up when I tried rereading it recently. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
It certainly did, Gary, yes - but it's a glorious mess of a novel, IMHO. Colin - yeah, I've heard King say that before. He's doing so playfully here, but the quotes I'm thinking of were about drink and drugs. There are large parts of some of his other books he doesn't remember writing, too. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Is that unusual, tho? I have trouble recalling writing my stuff. And I've never been a garbage head. Mind you, I might have vascular dementia after all the curry I've shipped. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.52.77 |
Hubert, I thought that was the best part of the book Have mercy! I still have to read the remaining 700 or 800 pages! Which I'll do as soon as I've finished Red Dreams. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
Zed, That wasn't really King who wrote that article, it's just one of The Onion's usual spoofs. I loved Bag of Bones, myself, but I've actually read little of King's work over the years. Now that Krista and I have merged our collections, though, we've got pretty much all of his stuff bar Ur and Blockade Billy, so I'm sure I'll rectify that in time. Right now I'm reading the introduction to the 20th Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. It takes me days just to get through the introduction to these things -- no wonder I never finish the books! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 49.226.89.45 |
Missed the chance to get Bukowski's novel, Post Ofice, in Wellington on Saturday. Will try and get it next week. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
*** SPOILERS *** I'm finding 'The Victoria Vanishes', as ever, tempers its belly laughs with real emotion. Both detectives are faced with their own mortality in the early chapters - having to tackle invisible enemies of a much more insidious nature than the Leicester Square Vampire or the Deptford Demon. May is faced with the terror of a cancer scare, while feeling fit as a fiddle, and Bryant finds himself having to hide the unimstakeable symptoms of encroaching Alzheimers. This complicates matters when poor befuddled Arthur, out roaming the London backstreets one night, is the only witness to a murder in a "period pub" he insists is called The Victoria Cross - when no such establishment can be traced. From there our intrepid duo must embark on a "do or die" pub crawl through the darkest dingiest most off the beaten track [actual] pubs in the whole wide metropolis... bickering, hugging, fighting and singing as they go, perhaps, to meet their maker. The next time I'm in London I'm going to embark on the self same pub crawl in their honour - if it kills me too! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
That wasn't really King who wrote that article, it's just one of The Onion's usual spoofs. Doh! That'll teach me to skin rather than read...I didn't even realise the page was The Onion; I thought it was King having a bit of a joke around. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I do remember King stating in the past that The Tommyknockers was written in the midst of his problems with drugs and alcohol, so there's some truth to that spoof. On first read I thought it was a bit of a mess. Re-reading it with a greater knowledge of the b-movies which influenced it, The Tommyknockers made a lot more sense. It's a mess, yeah, but entertaining with it. Bit like The Dark Tower really. I loved Bag of Bones but, strangely, can't remember the supernatural elements of the story at all... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Finished THE END OF THE AFFAIR. On one level, of course, a religious novel. On another, another (along with THE HEART OF THE MATTER) novel of psychological disintegration. You could also read it, really reading it askew, as a horror novel in the (Henry) James-ian school of super-subtle psychological horror, as an otherworldly entity (here, God) seeks entry into the lives of human beings, disturbing their minds and make moves you can only see out of the corner of your eye. To me, it read like an unconscious attempt by Greene, to hoe the same ground WUTHERING HEIGHTS did; and so, trying to re-till soil one of the greatest novels of all time scratched thoroughly, is only going to be a losing affair. The moving, unsettling, mysterious, and awesome power of Brontë's novel, is here, desperately "explained" away. And rather than gain by its peering into the vast cosmos of mysteries, it feels in the end like a rather anti-climactic revelation: "The butler did it," but then, we kind of knew he did it all along anyway. LOVE, here, in the end (because it is a novel of LOVE; and I'm also assessing it as a novel, not a spiritual tract), is perhaps writ larger than main character Maurice imagined it to be; but though it's not to him (the grossly-telegraphed unreliable narrator), it is to the reader, ultimately explicable and quantifiable. Not so in the novel Greene's wants to be, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, where LOVE to the very end remains a force of nature that is closer to something of terror and majesty, but mostly of the unfathomable. Which is surely what God's LOVE would be, right? Or maybe Azathoth's, if Azathoth could love.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Craig, 'The End Of The Affair' is the most sublime novel to deal with those two most mysterious and overpowering and terrifying subjects, that are LOVE and SEX, of the 20th Century. But to discuss it in depth with any degree of seriousness will take more than this thread [how appropriately named] could possibly manage. Text me. Ask my good friend, Weber, for my number. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Don't get me wrong, Stevie - this is a great novel, and I enjoyed thoroughly reading it, and I'm critiquing it (and it's all imho only) like you might critique how Spassky lost to Fischer: the missteps of a wholly higher order indeed. And btw: the third element, way down on the list yes but it's still there, is you get some of (what I take to be) Greene's take on writing, the writing life, etc. I'm quite glad I read this, and want to read more of him! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It may help in understanding the novel if one knows that TEOTA was a semi-autobiographical reaction to the depression and crisis of faith that Greene himself was plunged into, shortly before writing it, by his own highly charged and short lived affair with a married woman. The mysterious dedicatee of the book, "C", was she... For Graham Greene his writing was a form of penance and self-psychoanalysis. When one learns that he was also prone to suicide attempts by Russian roulette it's some kind of a miracle we have any of his books to enjoy! I haven't seen it but I believe Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, 'The Sacrifice', deals with the same order of faith imposed moral dilemma. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
You're right, by the way, both books are devastating portraits of psychological disintegration... written by the man who was disintegrating, and clinging onto his faith as his only salvation. Faith in God, in humanity and in the redemptive power of his Art (hence the reason he made Maurice a writer). It is their intensely personal quality that makes books like 'The Heart Of The Matter' & 'The End Of The Affair' such staggeringly great works of literature. I get the same thing from Dostoevsky & Derek Raymond. One can feel the authors battling with their own inner demons on every page. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.11.101.24 |
>>Reading a load of Robert B Parker books at the moment, catching up on what I've missed. The guy's great fun. Parker's great. Brilliant dialogue. I didn't realise the Karl Edward Wagner book was going to have a trade edition. *starts counting pennies* | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Imajica' is just amazing! The way Barker takes us from the intimacy of a domestic love triangle through Highsmithian crime thriller - of obsession, love turning to hatred and guilt - to visceral horror, every bit as powerful as anything in 'The Books Of Blood', and ever expanding high concept fantasy that dwarfs even 'Weaveworld' & 'The Books Of The Art' (no mean feat) is astonishingly assured. The man was free sailing at the absolute top of his game here - his imagination on fire. Can't believe it's taken me this long to discover what may well be his masterpiece. A fifth through it already, and that's the length of most full novels! The use of dark humour is particularly well done here and has had me laughing out loud, when I'm not sat speechless at the action. The amount of incidental detail he packs in is astonishing - of Dickensian levels, imho. The blurb calls it "a remarkable feat of the imagination" and for once that is 100% accurate!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
As a taster of the quality therein, this has to be one of the most memorable opening paragraphs in fantasy or horror literature: "It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers, Death. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course—thousands in fact—but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact; or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted. Needless to say, this dogma did not go unchallenged. The writers of fables and comedies were particularly vociferous in their scorn, reminding the worthy Quexos that they invariably ended their own tales with a marriage and a feast. He was unrepentant. He dubbed them cheats and told them they were swindling their audiences out of what he called the last great procession, when, after the wedding songs had been sung and the dances danced, the characters took their melancholy way off into darkness, following each other into oblivion. It was a hard philosophy, but he claimed it was both immutable and universal, as true in the Fifth Dominion, called Earth, as it was in the Second. And more significantly, as certain in life as it was in art." It sets up, and sums up, everything that follows to perfection. Respect, Clive. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
These are certainly highly-personal books for Greene. I'm thinking one misinterprets them if one reads them purely as religious novels, more than psychological novels - more than, novels. We are locked in Maurice's mind in TEOTA and in Scobie's mind in THOTM. There seems to be something "out there" that is working on their psyches, but there's no confirmation; both are highly flawed and unreliable, and they circle the drain of sanity. In this respect, both books do resemble in their way, horror novels. Again, they are not horror novels by any means, but there's that distant flavor and feeling of same (the final chapter in THOTM reads like the summation of a ghostly haunting; in TEOFA, like a feeling of doom, that the "curse" will relentlessly hound Maurice to his death). Of course, this is not all they are, just one aspect. Good stuff, will look for more.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'd recommend 'Brighton Rock' next, Craig. I know you love a good noir crime thriller and, for me, it is the greatest of the 20th Century - Greene had a habit of doing that for genres. BR is considered the first of his Catholic quartet, along with 'The Power And The Glory' (the one that introduced me to his genius and that is arguably his finest novel), THOTM & TEOTA. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Thanks, Stevie. I'll be going to get those. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Scratch that! Before you read 'Brighton Rock' read 'A Gun For Sale' first. It is a straight, and rivetingly exciting, pulp crime thriller about the man-hunt for a cold-hearted emotionless hitman, called Raven, across the English midlands, and his merciless tracking down of his double-crossing former paymasters. I said when I first read it that it works as a kind of proto-slasher horror narrative and Raven bears many similarities to Javier Bardem's character in 'No Country For Old Men'. It features some of the same characters who appear in BR and the events of the story are indirectly responsible for Pinkie's rise to power. There is a sequence between two people hiding in a coal-shed that is one of the most profoundly moving and tense passages I have read by Greene and that points directly forward to the utter brilliance of 'Brighton Rock' - my favourite Greene novel. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Over halfway through 'The Lazarus Effect', almost a quarter through 'Imajica', a third through 'The Victoria Vanishes', and started back into the 'Complete Poe'... the incredibly vivid and haunting short piece, 'Silence : A Fable', is the first tale in a while to really blow me away in this tome. The imagery and language is astonishing! Hopefully that's me through the "heavy going" section of the book and back into the "good stuff". | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I'm reading The End of the Affair and Annie Proulx's Close Range (Wyoming Stories). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Is that for research so that you and Fry can do a re-enaction of the last story? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
As I've said elsewhere, innumerable times, 'The End Of The Affair' is the greatest love story I have read after 'Wuthering Heights'. It is also the most intensely personal. Enjoy! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
As Ally will attest, I hate Wuthering Heights...a horrible, pseudo-goth schoolgirl fantasy. The bit with the ghost in the cupboard's good, though. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Good God, man!! I've read it three times and get new things out of it after every reading. I'm really stating the obvious to a quite criminal degree here - but it is one of the most immersive masterpieces in all of English literature! Perhaps the gothic masterwork of the 19th Century!!  I admire your temerity, though, Zed... if nothing else. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Wuthering Heights' is also the book I've owned most different editions of down the years... including two in the present collection. One fully annotated and the other alongside all her starkly beautiful poetry. Emily Brontë succeeded as a stylist beyond all the odds, creating a literary world that is wholly unique and all the more fascinating for its darkly fantastical romantic naïveté. She had no right, given her circumstances, to be so naturally gifted. The greatest one-off in literature, imho. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I've read it twice - just to be sure - and both times I thought it was morose, turgid, awkward, and basically absurd. Everybody seems suprised when I say this - it's like some literary holy cow. The only novel I dislike more is Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. I tried three times to read that plodding book, and never finished it once. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
sfinished solar by Ian McEwan, I'd recommend it. A sometimes laugh out loud funny satire on the renewable energy industry. Nearly done with my reread of Gy Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. I would class this as the best high fantasy trilogy ever written. much better IMO than the turgid mess that is LOTR (which I've tried to read and never got more than 40 pages in). I was nearly crying reading this at lunchtime. It was only being out in public that meant I had to hld it all in. twenty years after I last read it I'm picking up more of the subtleties of the writing and feeling much harder for some of the characters. Absolute genius that everyone should read. (To risk doing a Stevie) It's a masterpiece in every way. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Zed, read Jane Austen. She's smart and sharp to Bronte's tiresome melancholy and adolescent passion. Surprised you didn't get on with Hardy, tho. If it has to be grim, make it Flaubert. Stunning. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Bronte's tiresome melancholy and adolescent passion That's exactly it, mate - what I dislike. Wuthering Heights reads like a love story written by some wittering Goth who's never had a shag. Totally unrealistic; more yearning fantasy than Lord of the Rings. I probably will get on with Hardy - just not that book. I keep meaning to read Jude the Obscure. Flaubert's on the list, too...at some point. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Wuthering Heights is, to me, the literary-classic equivalent of bad teenage poetry. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I have Madame Bovary on my Kindle. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Bovary is superb. True where the likes of Bronte are fanciful. The Mayor of Casterbridge is good Hardy: it starts with a guy selling his wife and child at a market! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
But what does it smell like when you sniff it? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Kindle plastic. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Wuthering Heights', 'Melmoth The Wanderer' & 'Moby Dick' for me... that's in English. Stupendously rich and symbolic gothic fantasies that one doesn't so much read as become possessed by, imo. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
I prefer a firmer edge: Vanity Fair, Pride and Prejudice, Sentimental Education. As ever, it's a question of disposition. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
True. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Yeah, you're a big girl's blouse. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Is that postmodernism? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
No, it's just the way my trousers hang. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I believe Emily either did or was going to reveal in WUTHERING HEIGHTS that Heathcliff and Catherine were half-siblings - their father, after all, he comes back from another trip to London with a cock-and-bull story about finding this kid on the streets and he needed a home and such nonsense - clearly, Heathcliff is his illegitimate offsprings by some mistress or whore or other. Anyway, that's the reason their doomed love could never be consummated. But then I think sister Charlotte convinced Emily to excise all specifics about that, or did it herself after Emily died, for whatever reason (and a good one!)... and so, with all that rather clear "duh!" explanation gone, the whole becomes so much more strange and surreal and fathomless, and better.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That would have been the ultimate Victorian era horror reveal, Craig! But you're right, spelling that out would have weakened the book, turning it into a gimmicky shock story, rather than the hauntingly ambiguous mystery that it is... a bit like Emily herself. What a strange little girl she was. And how apt, given her morbid fascinations, that her death was ushered in by drinking runoff water poisoned by graveyard corpses. The fates didn't half conspire to create a thing of rare and terrible beauty in that household. Weird fiction or what... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
You cam buy Bronte Water in Yorkshire. No kidding. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Stevie, is that really how she died?!? The moment when Heathcliff has Catherine's grave opened so he can see how she's progressed, then goes into the grave and spends some time with the rotted corpse... discussing how he wants one side of her coffin removed, so when he's buried next to her, their decomposing bodies can spill and mingle with each other... one of the great gruesome images in horror literature.... How come no one's done a mash-up or zombie-ized or whatever version of this novel yet? They shouldn't, but I'm just surprised that in the recent flurry of such novels (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES; ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER; etc.) no one picked this obvious one.... | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
Well, when Twilight first started taking off, they released Wuthering Heights as "Bella and Edward's Favourite Novel" with a Twilight-style black cover and all... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Best mash-up title I've seen so far is Android Karenena. The book's probably shit but great title... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Fuck me, it's Bella and Edward's favourite[sic.] novel?!? Thanks for RUINING my love of that book for me, Jamie! There was a hot spec that was going around Hollywood called I WANT TO F*CK JANE AUSTEN, about these guys in present day who think Austen ruined women's expectations and such for men, so they decide to go back in time and seduce her to change her mind later when she's writing her novels. Believe it or not - and they were totally unconnected I hear - it wasn't the only one going around with that premise! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.182 |
Most men in Austen's novels are cunts, tho. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.209.217 |
You might want to ask Jon Oliver about the author who pitched a version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE WITH ZOMBIES to him... | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
The worst title so far, I'd wager, is the Meowmorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up as a man-sized kitten. I must cop to owning Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. It was one of the first ones, before they glutted the market, and what I read of it I rather liked. It's still sitting in the TBR pile, though. You'd think Wuthering Depths would do for a Deep One Gothic Romance. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Or Wuthering Frights. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Wuthering Shites. The story of a coprophiliac Goth who can't get any action. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Muttering Spites, Zed? Or are these just Bluthering Gripes? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Stuttering Tripe. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Three quarters through 'The Victoria Vanishes' and it has been the most openly comedic of the series to date. Letting loose the entire PCU team (those that survive) on a "fact-finding" pub crawl round London was an inspired idea leading to some of Fowler's most hilarious set pieces - involving speed dating misunderstandings, pub quiz arguments and Bryant becoming embroiled in a conspiracy theorists convention. Wonderful stuff! And, as ever, this priceless character comedy is interwoven with a seriously mystifying murder case. Someone is targeting single women drinkers with a lethal cocktail of drugs that makes it appear they have succumbed to senseless inebriation, until someone checks their pulse. And how does this all fit in with Arthur's insistence that he visited a pub that hasn't existed since Victorian times - the scene of the first murder and the only one in which the victim was found on the street? The two mysteries seem irreconcilable, unless our hero really is going senile or someone wants it to appear that way. Hmmmm... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Stevie, is that really how she died?!? It's how they all sickened and died, Craig... from complications of typhoid fever due to their drinking water being contaminated by the cemetery at Haworth. Horrible, I know. | ||
| Jamie Rosen (Jamie) Username: Jamie Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 99.241.102.179 |
Currently alternating between The Shudder Pulps, which is a rather sloppily-written but entertaining non-fiction work, and Highsmith's Little Book of Misogyny (I think that's the title?), which is a collection of perfectly-formed miniatures. Mustn't rush through them, tempting as it is. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.151.148.89 |
I am so glad I just read that chapter of The Darkest Road at home and not at work. getting close to the end of the trilogy now and one of the brightest characters in the story has just died a horrific (and noble) death. It actually made me cry and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Remembering that this is a second read of the trilogy so I knew it was coming... I have to say as well, that chapter 9 of the Darkest Road is the single greatest description of a swordfight/one-on-one-mortal-combat in literary history. I'm not a fan of big epic fantasy normally and it could be because I compare them all unfavorably to this trilogy... The Summer Tree The Wandering Fire The Darkest Road The three titles of the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay and all fans of good writing should read it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
We all have our favourite fantasies, Weber. Kay's links to Tolkien make him sound interesting, so you never know. I'm weeping my lamps out at the minute about the death of an AIDS victim, wonderfully understated, in 'Imajica' and the fate of poor Twisp & Bushka, cast adrift on an ocean of fear, in 'The Lazarus Effect', at the minute. If you haven't read them, I really think you'd enjoy Stephen Donaldson's 'Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
And I'm so impressed by Frank Herbert's literary strengths that I'm going to quote a random sampling of his prose, just read, that captures his positively Highsmithian way with psychological character development, by concentration on physical details: "Bushka lowered his chin to his knees. He felt that he might vomit. With a terrible sense of wonder, he heard coming from his own mouth a groan that pulsed in a rising pitch: nnnnnh nnnnnnh nnnnnnh. There's nowhere I can run, Bushka thought. Nowhere, nowhere. Twisp was still speaking to him but Bushka, lost in his own misery, no longer understood the words. Words could not reach into this place where his consciousness lay. Words were ghosts, things that would haunt him. He no longer felt that he could tolerate such haunting. The thrum of the coracle's little motor being switched on brought Bushka's attention back from its hiding place. He did not dare to look up to see where Twisp might be taking them. All of the wheres were bad. It was just a matter of time until someone somewhere killed him. His mind floated on a sea while his muscles pulled him into a tighter and tighter ball so that he might fit into that sea without touching anything there. Voices cried to him, high pitched screeches. His mind exposed glimpses of a universe fouled by carnage - the shredded Island and its broken shards of flesh. Dry heaves shook his body. He sensed movement in the coracle, but only vaguely. Something inside of him had to come out. Hands touched his shoulders and lifted him, laying him over the thwart. A voice said: "Puke over the side. You'll choke to death in the bilge." The hands went away, but the voice left one last comment: "Dumb fuck!" The acid in Bushka's mouth waqs bitterly demanding, stringy. He tried to speak but every sound felt like sandpaper bobbing in his larynx. He vomited over the side, the smell strong in his nostrils. Presently, he dropped a hand into the passing sea and splashed cold salt water over his face. Only then could he sit up and look at Twisp. Bushka felt emptied of everything, all emotion drained." A description of a man puking out of sheer terror that tells everything a reader needs to know about him and his companion and the interplay between them. If this is writing on auto-pilot then I'm switching off the manual controls post haste! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Finished 'The Victoria Vanishes' and it was wonderful as ever. How Christopher Fowler keeps turning out books of this high a quality, year after year, with seeming effortlessness, is beyond me... but long may it continue. Bryant & May are immortal fictional creations and next time they're "on the loose". I know what that seemingly irreverent title refers to now, after the shocking conclusion of TVV. He doesn't half know how to give the reader what they want while confounding all their expectations at the same time. A literary magician! And now starting 'The Return Of Sherlock Holmes' while getting quietly excited about the imminent new series of 'Sherlock'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'm sure I can't be the only one who found Holmes' ressurection in 'The Empty House' to be rather clunky and contrived. ACD didn't half write himself into a corner with 'The Final Problem' and the reversal of that decision couldn't ever have been fully satisfying. But without it the literary world would be all the poorer. The two stories that followed, 'The Norwood Builder' & 'The Dancing Men', have been two of the finest of the series so far, imo. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Just finished “The Underground Man” by Mick Jackson. If I read a more pointless book this decade I’ll be very surprised. There’s virtually no story – which isn’t always a bad thing. But to pull off an almost plotless book, you really need to have a fantastic writing style. Sadly Mick Jackson, while never less than readable, is never more than readable. It takes right up until the last 30 pages before anything happens that’s more interesting than the odd way the dust jacket on my copy is origamied together. (The dust jacket is actually twice as tall as the book when unfolded completely, almost as a map unfolds – linking to the central character’s love of cartography). These events should be extremely shocking but the writing is so bland that we don’t care about the character and - SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER - even when he uses a trepanner on himself and cuts a hole in his own skull, I just found myself thinking ‘oh’ and trying to figure out if he really could do that to himself without actually killing himself and then be able to write his journal immediately afterward to describe the experience. I’ve read several books that are almost plotless where a very briefly described incident of violence was an extreme shock because of the style of writing eg So Many Ways to Begin by Jon Magregor. This just wasn’t in the same ballpark. Apart from the lead character’s journal, there are several short chapters where other characters from the town and his staff make comments about the duke. This would be a much better device if the other voices didn’t all read exactly the same as the Duke’s. I do not recommend this book at all. Just started Pretty Little Dead Things, which will be followed by From Blue to Black. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.186 |
Weber, you shoulda read the other THE UNDERGROUND MAN, the one by Ross McDonald - not just superb, but perhaps my favorite of his novels! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Sherlock Holmes sure is popular! I was halfway through the rather gripping mystery of 'The Solitary Cyclist' while down my local last night. Went to take a leak and in the couple of minutes I was away someone swiped the book off my table!! The bar was fairly empty and a foreign couple, who sounded Russian (well Eastern European anyway), who had been sat at the next table had also disappeared during my ablutions. Applying Occam's Razor the likeliest solution is that one of them lifted the book as they were leaving - no doubt drawn by the universally recognised title. The bar staff (dear friends that they are) were outraged at this intrusion into the sanctity of a man's literary pursuits and have assured me that CCTV footage will be available to watch after work this evening. I look forward to solving the mystery, while counting myself fortunate that my leather jacket and grip (full of books) were left untouched. When is the new series of 'Sherlock' starting anyway? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Series 2 (2012)Filming is currently in progress for a second series of three 90-minute episodes, initially due to air late 2011.[42] However, due to a lengthy filming schedule, the broadcast date was pushed to a tentative early 2012, with a PBS broadcast confirmed for May.[43] At the Kapow! 11 convention, Mark Gatiss confirmed that the three episodes would be based on the stories A Scandal in Bohemia, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Final Problem, and that the writers for the episodes would be Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson, respectively.[44] Gatiss explained, "We knew after having a successful first run that the natural order would be to do three of the most famous [stories]".[44] "There's the question of how to go out on a cliffhanger and then the thematic things of the three stories, where we were trying to get to and what Sherlock and John's relationship is a little further on. You can't just go back to: 'You have no emotions.' 'I don't care.' You've got to move on somewhere and make sure the other characters have something of a journey too."[44] Paul McGuigan has confirmed that he will be returning to direct two episodes of series two,[45][46] and Doctor Who director Toby Haynes has also announced he will be working on the series.[47] Filming began on 16 May 2011 and it ended on August 24th, with the BBC Press Office confirming details of the upcoming series, including the return of the main cast and production team. Sue Vertue will produce the first two episodes of the series and Elaine Cameron will produce the third. Vertue will receive an executive producer credit for this episode.[48] It has been announced that actor Russell Tovey will appear in "The Hounds of Baskerville"[49] and that Lara Pulver will portray Irene Adler.[50] From wikipedia | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Feck! Months to wait yet. But that'll give me time to read all the remaining books I suppose. I was right, btw, it was the Russian sounding couple - or rather the attractive blonde who shoved my book into her handbag walking past. Perhaps she wanted to improve her English. Grrrr... Anyway I've reordered the same edition of the book brand new from Amazon for a measly £2.79 inc postage, so all's well that ends well. | ||
| Skip (Wolfnoma) Username: Wolfnoma Registered: 07-2010 Posted From: 216.54.20.98 |
I had to watch Sherlock on Netflix since they decided to only air in the states at times which are not compatible with my viewing habits. Can't wait for the new season. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.144.160.24 |
Various shorts by Brian Hodge and Kealan Burke. Both writers are new to me, and based on what I have read so far I'll be sticking with. A novella called 'Focus', which I didn't like. Hated it, actually. The brilliant 'The Ritual', by Adam Nevill. 'Height of the Scream', by Ramsey. Four stories in, and only one that didn't really do it for me - 'The Whining'. The other three have been superb - 'The Scar' (I have read this one before), 'The Dark Show' and 'Missing'. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.19.4 |
For the next 3 months or so I will be continually reading Caught On The Hop by Derek Benfield. I'll be reading it so much that hopefully at the end of january I'll be able to quote the whole thing from memory (or at least my part in it) when I perform in it for Phoenix Theatre Company in Bolton 25-28 January. http://www.phoenixtheatrebolton.co.uk/index.html | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Just started 'The Pact Of The Fathers' at lunchtime today and - after four chapters - have found it one of the quickest and most effortlessly gripping of Ramsey's books to get into. There is a cinematic sureness of touch in the narrative style and a mastery of the subtle tricks of suspense that gives one the feeling the author is enjoying his writing - and being entertaining - after the wilful grimness of the last few books. I don't think his prose has ever been more effortlessly readable and foresee one hell of a thriller ahead. Hitchcock and Polanski spring to mind. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
On my 15th reread of Caught on the Hop and it's still a brilliantly funny piece of theatre and my part (one of the two leads) is going to be so much fun. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'The Return Of Sherlock Holmes' arrived so I'm finally going to discover the secret of 'The Solitary Cyclist'. Meanwhile I've just finished 'The Lazarus Effect' and was great to feel the glow of that final twist again, with the long awaited opening of the hybe tanks. Even though I knew what they would contain the characters' reactions - both inside and outside - were still a joy to experience. Only one book left, and another leap forward in time, before Pandora reveals her final secret. A fabulous series, brimming over with philosophical profundity behind the action/adventure/intrigue, that I've found every bit as immersive in my 40s as I did in my 20s. 'The Ascension Factor' should be along any day now... A third of the way through 'Imajica' and what I've loved about this epic is how long Clive waited before taking us into full-blown fantasy land - taking his time with all the intricate details of character development, world creation and the rules of what is and isn't possible. The first quarter (the length of most novels) is entirely Earthbound horror with gradually broadening hints of vast possibilities and hidden realities behind isolated paranormal events and the actions/behaviour of certain odd individuals. This time around all the non-human beings are required to take human form so they can survive in the Fifth Dominion (Earth) - unlike 'Weaveworld', 'Cabal' & 'The Books Of The Art' - making for a much subtler and more insidiously creepy reading experience. One is constantly wondering who is what they appear to be in this book - including among the original three main protagonists - one of whom has just gained access to the Fourth Dominion beyond our physical world. From here all bets are off. I really think CB may have peaked with this book. His industry, imagination and self control all perfectly balanced and working at some kind of fever pitch to create what could well be the ultimate horror/fantasy ever written - books like 'The Talisman' wither before it, imo. It really is astoundingly good and impossible to put down! Really enjoying 'The Complete Poe' again, having ploughed through some mind-numbingly boring non-tales, such as 'The Philosophy Of Furniture'(!!), to get back to macabre gems like 'The Man Of The Crowd' & 'Never Bet The Devil Your Head'. Well over half way through now. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.1.6 |
Just started Denis Lehane's Moonlight Mile. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Flying through 'The Pact Of The Fathers' and I'm torn between finding it one of Ramsey's most fast paced and entertaining reads and finding it all a bit lightweight and obvious. So far he's thrown every paranoid conspiracy cliché in the book at us, and I'm already nearly half way through, while doing nothing particularly new with them. I'm reserving judgement on this one for now but it isn't half a fun read... kind of 'Rosemary's Baby' lite, if you will. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 120.144.160.24 |
More Ramsey shorts - 'Dead Letters', 'Broadcast' and, my favourite of the three, 'The Previous Tenant'. All new to me. Tonight, another unread one - 'The Invocation'. And, another new to me - 'Pick Me Up', by David Schow. Loved this one, as well. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.129.134.198 |
Just finished 'The Reapers Are The Angels' by Alden Bell. Basically, wow. It's as if Cormac McCarthy sat down and wrote a zombie apocalypse novel, basically. Temple, a teenage protagonist who's unalterably convinced she's monstrously evil, wanders through a devastated America, pursued by Moses Todd. Moses has vowed to kill her because she killed his brother; he doesn't particularly want to, but he must. It's part of the code he lives by, that enables him to make sense of the world. None of which captures the haunting beauty or the heartbreak of this book. It's a beaut, seriously. Now starting in on END TIMES by Rio Youers, part of my FCon haul... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Finished 'The Pact Of The Fathers' yesterday in just about the fastest time I've ever got through a Ramsey Campbell novel. Bizarrely it is also his weakest novel that I have read to date! An uncharacteristically lightweight and derivative potboiler of a suspense thriller that manages to hold the attention by throwing in all the tried and true conspiracy plot clichés but that doesn't have the courage to run with them or attempt to confound the reader's expectations. The central idea, of a cult of ruthless businessmen who believe they have decoded a pagan formula for guaranteed success from Biblical Scriptures, that demands the human sacrifice of the firstborn, is certainly intriguing but the development of such an extreme belief system is only sketchily reasoned out, leaving a fudgy black hole at the centre of the book and too many niggly unanswered questions for my liking. The damsel in distress routine is entertainingly done, and Daniella makes for a likeable heroine, but everything that happens to her is just too pat and predictable - not least the cornball ending - more worthy of a Dean Koontz novel than anything I've experienced from the great man before. TPOTF reads like something written to order in which Ramsey wasn't half trying. The prose lacked density, like it was written quickly and without much thought, and there was none of the author's trademark intensity or psychological depth - just a string of perils for our heroine to overcome. My theory is that perhaps Ramsey was simply burnt out after the overwhelming intensity of 'Silent Children' - and getting so far inside the mind of a child killer. This forgettable piece of escapist fluff was perhaps the antidote? A good book to give to nervous non-Campbell fans as a harmless introduction but no more than that, imho. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Stevie, Ramsey has written about how he came to write TPOTF. Silent Children was written two books before, but was held back by his agent saying she didn't want to send out such a long MS and he should write something better suited to 'the market'. So he wrote The Last Voice They Hear and The Pacts of the Fathers, quite quickly. Following which the acceptance and publication of Silent Children restored his confidence in 'the market' being able to cope with more ambitious novels. Next step was The Darkest Part of the Woods, a triumphant return to supernatural horror. Ramsey, apologies if I've got any of that wrong. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.16.75 |
Don't worry, Joel! No, Pact was simply my stab at a commercial novel after the previous two (Last Voice and Silent Children) found no British publisher. I needn't have bothered. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Then the fault lies with the short sightedness of the British publishers, Ramsey, for TLVTH & SC are two of your finest novels, imo. I don't think you've ever created stronger characters. Which is why the relative breeziness of TPOTF came as such a surprise. At least it proves you could turn out perfectly readable mass market thrillers if you were so inclined. I'm just glad your ambitions lie elsewhere. 'The Darkest Part Of The Woods' awaits me... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.114.190 |
It's too late, Stevie. He's already summoned his familiar to deal with you . . . | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I think I've got to say that my favourites by the landlord are Nazareth Hill and the One Safe Place (the only flaw in TOSP is that the geography of Manchester centre wasn't quite right. I can't remember there ever being a roundabout next to what used to be the corn exchange...). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.158.114.190 |
There is when you're on acid. Everywhere's a roundabout. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.71 |
Gosh - I'm so far behind - I've never even heard of THE ONE SAFE PLACE! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Haven't had a chance to finish your script yet, Craig. Busy, busy, busy packing. Next up I'll be starting Frank Herbert's last finished work and the final volume of the Pandora Sequence, 'The Ascension Factor' (1988). Gene Wolfe's disappeared into a box somewhere so it may be a few weeks till I get into 'The Book Of The New Sun'. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
He's not dead yet, he shouldn't be in a box. If he is, I hope you've left him airholes and something to eat... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Don't bother, Stevie - discard and/or destroy and/or salt the earth behind it - I'm nearly done, so will send you a completed version. Hope the move's going well. How about send me your new address when you're settled. A shout out to a short-story I just read by one Jeffrey Deaver, with whom I'm not familiar. Called "The Weekender" (1996), it's collected in THE BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY, and also A CENTURY OF GREAT SUSPENSE STORIES. Deserves to be in both, but also an anthology of best horror stories... it's a wicked little thing, it is.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Craig, look at how your post follows on from mine... What has poor Gene Wolfe done to deserve being put in a box and left? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 166.216.226.44 |
Why must he deserve it? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Because of the humour value inherent in a poetically justified cruel death. Otherwise it's just cruelty which isn't as funny. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
You guys are insane! Will do, Craig. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Abject cruelty can actually be quite funny. Item: http://youtu.be/u4ZgVRJ-H8U | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Finished 'The Return Of Sherlock Holmes' and I'd rank it as the most consistently strong of the story collections so far. Despite purportedly wanting to be rid of his characters there is the sense that Conan Doyle was having a ball writing these tales and came up with several of his cleverest and most influential plot tricks while there is a new unforced dynamism about the character interplay and all their little idiosyncrasies, that shows an author in love with his creation, and is nothing but a pure pleasure to read. Here's how I'd rank the tales so far: 1. The Hound Of The Baskervilles - 3rd NOVEL 2. A Study In Scarlet - 1st NOVEL 3. The Copper Beeches - ADVENTURES 4. The Musgrave Ritual - MEMOIRS 5. The Speckled Band - ADVENTURES 6. The Six Napoleons - RETURN 7. Charles Augustus Milverton - RETURN 8. The Greek Interpreter - MEMOIRS 9. The Sign Of Four - 2nd NOVEL 10. The Abbey Grange - RETURN 11. The Dancing Men - RETURN 12. Silver Blaze - MEMOIRS 13. Black Peter - RETURN 14. The Gloria Scott - MEMOIRS 15. The Second Stain - RETURN 16. The Naval Treaty - MEMOIRS 17. The Final Problem - MEMOIRS 18. The Yellow Face - MEMOIRS 19. The Boscombe Valley Mystery - ADVENTURES 20. A Scandal In Bohemia - ADVENTURES 21. The Missing Three-Quarter - RETURN 22. The Resident Patient - MEMOIRS 23. The Golden Pince-Nez - RETURN 24. The Priory School - RETURN 25. The Norwood Builder - RETURN 26. The Three Students - RETURN 27. The Beryl Coronet - ADVENTURES 28. The Reigate Squires - MEMOIRS 29. The Five Orange Pips - ADVENTURES 30. The Engineer's Thumb - ADVENTURES 31. The Stockbroker’s Clerk - MEMOIRS 32. The Blue Carbuncle - ADVENTURES 33. The Solitary Cyclist - RETURN 34. The Crooked Man - MEMOIRS 35. The Red Headed League - ADVENTURES 36. The Empty House - RETURN 37. The Man With The Twisted Lip - ADVENTURES 38. A Case Of Identity - ADVENTURES 39. The Noble Bachelor - ADVENTURES And now it's time for Volume 7 of the Bryant & May Mysteries: 'Bryant & May On The Loose' (2009)... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.1.6 |
Just finished Adam Nevill's The Ritual, which I thought was superb - highly recommended. Now starting Michelle Paver's Dark Matter. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.25.141.120 |
"famous Ghost Stories"; ed. by Bennett Cerf ("The Willows" is a good but loonnngg story.); "First Campaign" by Luke Short; "Material Dreams: Southern California in the 1920s" by Kevin Starr (skimming really, for research); "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by V. Nabokov; "Nabobov: The Russian Years" by Brian Boyd | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Not getting much chance to read with moving and all but 'Bryant & May On The Loose' refuses to let me go. Half way through and, after the pub crawl comedy of 'The Victoria Vanishes' and its shocking denouement, the tone has turned much bleaker and creepier with this one. Earthworks around King's Cross, in preparation for the London Olympics, appear to have upset an ancient force of nature leading to a spate of attacks and murders of immigrant building site workers, by a frighteningly modern incarnation of "The Horned One", and their superstitious response threatens to bring down the entire project and perhaps even the Government! But following their disgraceful drunken antics the PCU find themselves unable to rise to this readymade challenge to their particular skills. Can't say much more than that but the book is as brilliantly written and effortlessly gripping as ever while shot through with a broadening streak of sadness at the encroaching end of an era... Marvellous stuff!! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.131.175.228 |
The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes I’ve just read this remarkable novel in one sitting – a retrocausal self-history in the real-time of regathering (mis)memory while living one’s accumulating future. A scene towards its ending sadly gave me the sense – quite unaccountably - of a painting by Picasso. This novel is a masterpiece of vexatious horror, of unforgiving remorse, of a protagonist who ends up at roughly the age I am now - but with real-time’s face turned inward so as to feast its blushes upon the strength of my pulse. An equation I’m still trying to balance. Yet a perfect puzzle from still accumulating hindsight. All pulses end some time. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Have been unable to read anything mentally demanding of late, because I've been writing. But I did swallow up pretty easily, two Margaret Millar novels: A STRANGER IN MY GRAVE (1960) seemed to meander sillily, but then had a stunning climax. THE LISTENING WALLS (1959) had a superb tension-filled build and ride through, but a disappointingly anticlimactic (perhaps dated nowadays?) finish. 50/50 on these two, so I'm still on the fence overall about Milllar (who was my fave hardboiled author Ross McDonald's wife ["Kenneth Millar" was Ross's real name]), but as to the writing itself? Won over. And I'll be giving her more chances, too.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Yeehaa!! I'm up and running again in my new gaff! Move went like a dream and I bloody love this place! Now to start unpacking all those boxes. See yas all in a couple of weeks. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
Good to hear, Stevie! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 124.176.156.91 |
'Dark Gods', by T.E.D. Klein. Have only read 'Petey' so far, but wow, what a story! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.214.170 |
I envy you a first reading of that, Lincoln. Children of the Kingdom is amazing. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
My hand was hovering over Dark Gods, and starting with "Petey" too, coincidentally enough! But it drifted to pick up and practically swallow whole book 3 of Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Again, it's clear why Barker shot to the top so quickly, he wrote mini-movies. They're not always the greatest of art, but they're compelling. Barker's of the "active" school of horror (just to pick this genre) writing; you can make a list of other such writers here, and of those in the other camp, the "passive" school of horror writing (just to pick two terms for lack of better ones). Neither is better, these are just classes. But Barker's style is about propelling plot and action, the concrete; whereas the other school, is more concerned with atmosphere, description, the abstract. It's not a mystery why those who weigh their work to the former, generally get films made from their product.... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.131.175.228 |
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami Amazing so far! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.131.175.228 |
Sorry, that should be 1Q84 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Des, that book was the feature book in the current Entertainment Weekly! And they gave it a very high rating, too.... | ||
| Rosswarren (Rosswarren) Username: Rosswarren Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 86.143.50.19 |
Got a couple of stories left to read in 'It Knows Where You Live' by Gary McMahon, which is a superbly crafted selection of stories, just don't leave him alone with your cat. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.58.178 |
I envy you a first reading of that, Lincoln. Children of the Kingdom is amazing. "Children of the Kingdom" is arguably the best thing Klein ever wrote. Very Lovecraftian, but not a hint of Yog-Sothothery in sight. The other three stories are equally commendable. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've been wittering on about the joys of Bryant & May for so long that I thought it was about time to quote a memorable passage of dialogue between just those two that captures what is so wonderful about the series - and the dynamic between these two charcaters in particular. I just read this at lunchtime and it's towards the end of 'Bryant & May On The Loose' but contains no spoilers: "Arthur Bryant's chair creaked as he studied the damp patches on the ceiling. The rain ticked against the windows. The dusty bare bulb above them fizzled. 'What do you know about chaos theory? he asked. 'A small change in initial conditions can drastically alter the long-term behaviour of a system,' said May without looking up. 'Invented in 1961.' 'You're probably wondering why I want to know.' 'Nothing you ever say or do surprises me any more, Arthur.' 'I'm thinking about the sheer number of people who pass through this area. Instead of asking ourselves why there's so much crime, why aren't we asking why there's so little? Every type of person, every walk of life, all brushing up against each other, everyone in a different mental state. Why aren't they all randomly slaughtering one another over trespassed territory and differences of creed?' 'They've been sedated by a steady diet of celebrity gossip, alcohol and junk food.' May looked up at his partner. Bryant was thinking. Always a worrying sign. 'Clearly social conventions prevail, but I think that each of their little butterfly movements, every flapping wing, disturbs the filthy air of King's Cross a little. Their lives touch each other faintly, but they carry the effect away with them to other places. Imagine - an embittered, lonely man passing through the station sees a beautiful young woman and feels a pang of sadness for the life he never had with her. That feeling contributes, in a tiny way, to his future actions. You see what I'm getting at?' 'No. Your every utterance is a mystery to me, Arthur. Am I supposed to find relevance in this to our investigation, to see that in some indirect way it will help us locate a murderer?' 'You must agree that we resolve situations by understanding motivation.' 'And you think reading a book on chaos theory will help you do that?' 'Well, all crimes ultimately reduce down to cause and effect, and I've a feeling this will more than most.' 'You've a feeling? Is that it? A trembling in the air that will shape itself into a dirty great big arrow that points at a murderer? Can you find me something concrete? Preferably by lunchtime?' Bryant looked at him very gravely. 'I'll do my best, of course,' he said, gathering his hat. 'But I may have to take some very unusual steps to do so.'" Sublime, imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Just finished 'Bryant & May On The Loose' and it was an absolute cracker. I thought I'd sussed who the killer was but Fowler didn't half pull the rug from under me with this one! A brilliant mystery that is destined to attain classic status, imho. How I'd rank them so far: 1. 'Full Dark House' (2003) 2. 'The Ten Second Staircase' (2006) 3. 'Bryant & May On The Loose' (2009) 4. 'The Water Room' (2004) 5. 'The Victoria Vanishes' (2008) 6. 'White Corridor' (2007) 7. 'Seventy-Seven Clocks' (2005) Time now for the Sherlock Holmes novel I know least (in fact nothing) about; 'The Valley Of Fear' (1915). If I can only find which box it's in! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Currently rereading Trick or Treat by lesley Glaister - a stunningly well written tale of a decades old feud between two close neighbours somewhere in the west-country. The tension is palpable, the characters utterly believable, (the relationship between Arthur and Olive in particular pulls at the heartstrings) and the plot is among the most tightly written I can ever remember. There is not a wasted word in this short novel. It's a sort of urban horror with an air of sadness running through it as the characters slowly disintegrate. Olive's descent into dementia is pitilessly shown while Nell's psychoses are simultaneously scary and worthy of as much pity as we have for poor Olive. Wolfe, the new boy in the neighbourhood, is caught in the middle of it all and provides the catalyst for the final tragic events of their their 50 year feud. A must read for everyone. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.56.49 |
Just finished Martin Edwards' The Coffin Trail - an ok whodunnit, but nothing earth-shattering. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.168.84.169 |
Finished the rather excellent Trick or Treat yesterday and have already nearly finished Timbuktu by Paul Auster. a cracking litle book but I still think my favourite Auster so far is Mr Vertigo, | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.4.162.173 |
"Tiger Tiger" by Alfred Bester. Re-reading it for the first time since I was about 14 (1971). And what a cracking imaginative, endlessly inventive, passionate, angry, savage and funny romp it is too. It's called "The Stars my Destination" in the US by the way, in case you don't know what I'm talking about. And just finished Koontz's "Velocity" - a very different Koontz hero, more anti-hero in fact. Interesting novel that one. Regards tery | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.250.213 |
Terry - snap! Yesterday I started re-reading the tale of Gully Foyle for the first time since I was in my early teens too - strangely, though, even though this copy is a UK one, it's called "The Stars My Destination"... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.4.162.173 |
I'll be looking for "The Demolished Man" and Bester's wonderful collection "The Dark Side of the Earth". There's another novel as well "Extro" or some such title, which I have never read. Regards Terry | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.24.25.80 |
The Demolished Man and Tiger, Tiger (aka The Stars My Destination) are brilliant. Apparently Bester's other novels aren't much cop but I've never read them so I can't say for certain. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Apparently "Extro" is a return to form. I enjoy his short stoires as well. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Read it for the first time last year and it's a cracking mix of high concept Dickian intellectualism and un-PC Heinleinesque thrills. Can't wait to read 'The Demolished Man' and I agree 'The Dark Side Of The Earth' is a stunning collection - I particularly liked the final story, of insectoid alien invasion, 'They Don't Make Life Like They Used To', in which the aliens are never seen and are all the more frightening as a result. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.11.92.224 |
Trying to remember which Bester stories I've got. I've got the Virtual Unrealities collection and the Redemolished collection of fiction and essays but can't remember which stories they contain offhand. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Stevie My favourites were the jealous husband time travel tale and the guy who tries to make a pact with the devil - by telephone. It was read as an afternoon short story on Radio 4 about 10 years ago. Stu I think the VU collection is the complete short stories. Regards Terry | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
And now I've finished Timbuktu. paul Auster may have granted that dog far too much intelligence but he also gave us a lovely heartwarming and moving tale. Next book is either From Blue to Black (by Joel) or Wise Blood by Flannery O'connor... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Or Slights by Kaaron Warren... help me people, what do you recommend? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.250.213 |
All good choices. My vote would be to read them in the order you've listed them, Weber. Slights was a surprise, as it was a freebee at a convention a few years back, and I thought I'd give it a go before it went on its way to the charity bookshop not thinking it'd be that good, but it was very good. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Slights is brilliant - one of the best horror novels of the past 4 or 5 years, IMHO. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Started Wise blood last night, purely because it was next to my bed and the other 2 books were downstairs and I would have had to move. Very good it is too so far. It's one of my favourite films- probably Brad dourif's finest hour as an actor IMHO. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.250.213 |
Yep, love the film... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'd agree with you there, Weber. One of John Huston's last truly great films. I've finished 'The Valley Of Fear' and have to say I can't understand for the life of me why it isn't more highly venerated. IMO this is the finest of ACD's four Sherlock Holmes novels. It reverts to the split plot flashback device of 'A Study In Scarlet' and both halves work as individual and equally gripping narratives, of captivating gothic mystery and a riveting American set gangster thriller, that culminate in a fantastic twist ending, that completely wrong footed me and ties everything up magnificently. Doyle was flying high as a popular storyteller in this book and it's the best of the series so far. All that and Professor Moriarty at his most devilish. Yes, this one even shades 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles', imho. Now I need to order 'Bryant & May Off The Rails' (2010). The last book finished on a ball-clenching cliffhanger, and finally brought into the light a terrifying nemesis of Moriarty proportions, that, coupled with our heroes' failing health and the deaths of principal support characters, has cranked the series up to a whole new level of excitement and emotional involvement. These books are going to live forever... mark my words! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.10.229 |
I read 'The Valley of Fear' a long time ago and wasn't so keen: it appeared to be a half-hearted Holmesisation of an OK non-Holmes novella. I've read too many novels that are lash-ups to rebrand a shorter magazine story, and the story within a story is rather a clumsy delivery system for that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.161.160 |
Holmes is silly. Ducks for cover. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Joel, I kind of see what you mean but for me the second half of the story (or first half chronologically) perfectly complemented what was a classic Holmes novella and worked itself as a seriously gripping examination of the early days of corporate gangsterism in America. The detail of how this localised Irish Mafia was formed, operated and grew by a reign of terror and forced camaraderie - through the mutual destruction of conscience that criminal fraternities instill by their silly initiation rites and "tests of manhood" - was brilliantly observed and still relevant today. Having grown up in an Irish community ruled by fear I can testify to Doyle's accuracy. The suspense was in wondering how Holmes would deal with the narrator as he clearly revealed himself to be a criminal of the blackest hue who nevertheless attained our sympathies by his early flashes of conscience and the fact that he had gone on to redeem himself in his new life in England. The big twist pay-off - that tied both stories together - was brilliantly realised and the coda magnificently sinister... with its intimations of greater evils to come. I believe the book is seriously underrated and found myself thinking the whole way through it... "I can't believe this is better than 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles', surely he's going to fluff the ending." But he pulled off a masterstroke, imho. Interesting parallels now spring to mind with Dashiell Hammett's 'The Dain Curse' which to me read like three long short stories brilliantly integrated into one novel. It takes a master of plot mechanics who understands exactly what his public wants to pull off such a feat. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 82.2.67.121 |
It's years since I read Valley of Fear but I remember being hugely disappointed with it. The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four were my favourite Holmes novels. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I'd rank them: 'The Valley Of Fear' - his grittiest and most unexpectedly hard hitting novel with a killer pay-off. Two novellas - English detective and American gangster - of exceptional quality are tied together ingeniously by a master storyteller at the very top of his game. It represents a new level of maturity for Holmes. 'The Hound Of The Baskervilles' - his most spine-shiveringly atmospheric yarn in which the supernatural and the rational clash quite magnificently. The greatest moment is that flicker of doubt Holmes experiences on the moor when finally confronted with the physical presence of the Beast! 'A Study In Scarlet' - the one in which we are introdued to and learn most about Holmes, indelibly stamping him on the consciousness as one of the most fascinating and original characters in popular literature, and with a sublimely gripping western plot thrown in for good measure. 'The Sign Of Four' - which was wonderfully entertaining and atmospheric, naturally, but really a bit too far fetched for its own good, imho. Of all the novels it would be the easiest to pastiche but it remains sublime because of the interaction of the characters and the revelations it casts on the great man. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.161.160 |
All pants. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Am enjoying now reading The Influence, by you-know-whom.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.161.160 |
Who? I mean, whom? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Our landlord, Ramsey, of course. I assumed it might be a slower read that what I've been consuming of late, but no, I'm whipping through the pages - a novel that's so far difficult to put down, and extremely entertaining. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
On page 81 of this paperback Tor edition, Ramsey, you wrote: "... yachts swayed on the marina by the docks and the radar station." Is that an oblique Captain Beefheart reference, or is it late now and I'm getting even more tired than I thought I was?... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.161.160 |
Doh. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Great album, Craig. As were all the Captain's - even the less heralded ones such as 'Unconditionally Guaranteed'. You know I've yet to acquire a copy of, or even hear, one of his early masterpieces; 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby'! Any sign of a CD release yet? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
LICK MY DECALS OFF, BABY is a great album, Stevie - me, I only have it on cassette tape! But I see at Amazon you can buy it in various forms, and even download the whole thing, maybe it's about time I do that myself.... It's the follow-up to TROUT MASK if I'm not mistaken, and has that TMR sound to it. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.25.141.120 |
"The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick DeWitt, and so far very interesting entertaining Old West tale that was nominated for the Man Booker Prize this year. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
I love Old west tales. The first novels I ever read were Westerns (in the tradional sense), great characters, great plots, and utter nonsense or course. More recently I've come to love Thomas Eidson, a reviver of the Western. Halfway through Stephen King's "The Langoliers" from "Four Past Midnight" and loving it. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Nearing the halfway mark of 'Imajica'. This book grows progressively more astounding with each revelation and eclipses any of his other novels I have read. What the hell was the man on when he wrote this!? Also nearly halfway through 'The Ascension Factor' and we've jumped forward in time again with the Pandoran land masses having rerisen, with the resurgence of the planet's dominant lifeform, as happens cyclically, and the two races of human/clone descendants of the original colonists (Islanders & Mermen) now shakily co-exist with the reawakened old humans, who view them as abominations, while technology has come full circle with the first tentative attempts at space exploration and the long planned completing of the circle is set to spread the human virus ever onward. But what of Ship... Re-reading this thrilling epic - the ultimate exploration of the generation starship idea (began by Heinlein with 'Orphans Of The Sky') - has fully whetted my appetite for a second, adult, read of Herbert's legendary masterwork... after a bit of Gene Wolfe. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.26.72.74 |
Terry, I've not read a lot of Westerns -- a couple of novels by Robert B Parker and Joe R Lansdale and a couple of short stories by Loren D Estleman (is there some law that Western writers have to have a middle initial?) -- but a quick Google of Eidson's work sounds interesting. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.224 |
'On page 81 of this paperback Tor edition, Ramsey, you wrote: "... yachts swayed on the marina by the docks and the radar station." Is that an oblique Captain Beefheart reference, or is it late now and I'm getting even more tired than I thought I was?...' It might be an inadvertent one, Craig - I'm certainly a fan of his. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
As fond as I am of 'Trout Mask Replica' I think my favourite disc of his is 'The Spotlight Kid'/'Clear Spot' 2-in-1 CD. Talk about redefining the Blues! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Does anyone know where the name Captain Beefheart came from? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
There is a track on Frank Zappa's 'Mystery Disc' entitled "The Birth Of Captain Beefheart", that they recorded in his garage while mucking about as kids, in which the persona was created. Don's voice was unmistakeable even at that young age. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
What makes 'Imajica' such a compelling fantasy is the equal parts revulsion and wonderment it arouses in the reader. One is never sure what the next page is going to reveal and whether one is going to like it or not but the compunction to read on and follow these characters to their ultimate fate - through all manner of physical, psychological and spiritual awakenings - is the very definition of spellbinding. Halfway through and this is already marked out in my consciousness as one of the towering achievements of fantasy fiction from the last century. Stunning in every detail! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Actually, I just finished THE INFLUENCE this morning - that's quite a novel! It would still make a great movie. Beefheart is also a pun, from what I've read - on "bee fart." Sounds like something kids would come up with in a garage.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The character was originally a kind of radioactive superhero figure saving the world from alien invasion in Zappa's teenage monster movie 'Captain Beefheart vs The Grunt People', with Don Van Vliet playing the lead. The name stuck and the rest is history. Like I've said before what were the odds of two such maverick musical geniuses just happening to be in the same class in school! I don't know about God but something sure moves in mysterious ways... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.59.115.60 |
Finished "Tiger, Tiger" and loved it all over again. Now starting "Arslan". No comments please, Joel, about bottoms and lions... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.1 |
Peter Schneider's Der Mauerspringer. Actually an assignment, part of our German course this year. School-wise I have so much to do that my reading for pleasure these days is limited to re-reading comics. I can't get enough of Edgar P. Jacobs' The Yellow Sign, an incredible piece of work. Does anyone know the Blake and Mortimer series? I don't know if his books were ever translated in English. Jacobs was a close friend of Hergé's and co-founder of Tintin (Kuifje in Flemish). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I had never heard of Edgar P. Jacobs, Hubert. Just looked him up on Wiki and now I want to know where I can get copies of these works. They look and sound incredible - and right up my street! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.27.143.83 |
"School-wise I have so much to do that my reading for pleasure these days is limited to re-reading comics." And it's still tougher when you get to university, Hubert. Though the sex life is better. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.240.206 |
and more consensual... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.240.206 |
whoops. I think I may have just crossed one of those lines again... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
When you cross the line, Weber, everyone sighs a big sigh of relief. (i.e., because you're over there on that side, and we're over here on this side? does that make any sense?... I know, I know, if you have to explain it....) | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 81.100.121.78 |
Just read Jim Thompson's POP. 1280. I read a couple of Thompson novels a few years back but I don't remember them being this funny. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Flying through 'An Evil Guest' and it isn't at all what I had expected from what I'd read and heard of Gene Wolfe. This is my first experience of one of his novels and I'd prepared myself for dense impenetrable prose and layers within layers within layers. What I hadn't expected was such a thoroughly entertaining and effortlessly readable pulp adventure yarn very much in the early Heinlein mould. The feisty resourceful heroine, Cassie Casey, could have stepped right out of the pages of any of Bob's novels - devastatingly beautiful, talented, tough and fearless but tender and warm hearted with a pleasing streak of vulnerability as she struggles with the twin desires of towering ambition and the need for the love of a good man. This is old fashioned and gloriously un-PC genre entertainment of the very highest calibre. Throw in elements of James Bondian globetrotting espionage in a recognisable near future Earth, noir crime thriller atmospherics, pleasing touches of subtly surreal weirdness (ala Jonathan Carroll) and already troubling intimations of some vast supernatural evil above and beyond everything that happens (I don't trust that Gideon Chase at all - a Lovecraftian black magician if ever there was one) and what you have is one bloody thrilling high octane romp through all that makes popular genre fiction great. I'm seriously impressed, Craig, and not at all in the way I expected to be! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Loved the little inscription on Gideon's watch, Craig! "RC from his friend HPL" That has to refer to... two people who need no introduction. Also the blatant allusion to Billy the Mountain and his wife, Ethel, growing off of his shoulder, in Chapter 3. I was waiting for rocks and boulders to hack up at any minute and still expect the imminent arrival of Studebacher Hoch. You never told me GW was a fan! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Actually, Stevie, I did not catch those references at all! But yes, surely what you mention - are you saying it refers to INCARNATE?... By "Ramsey Campbell"?... or am I still missing it?... It is a great read, breezily enjoyable - I'm still a bit mystified by the whole, but I think it's because Wolfe SO eschews traditional templates in this novel, that my mind just went into pretzels trying to force it into one, or another. It's gloriously carefree, really, in that regard. Maybe try THE KNIGHT next - another breezy read, that one pure fantasy; am still looking forward to part two, THE WIZARD - if I'm not distracted by something shiny first, as I usually am.... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.1 |
Stevie, apparently most of Jacobs' stuff was indeed translated in English. I heartily recommend The Time Trap and, of course, the incredibly dark The Yellow M. I wouldn't know whether these can still be obtained in England, however. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.4.188.26 |
Two stories into Stephen King's "Four Past Midnight". I liked "The Langoliers" very much and realised how much I'd missed King. "Secret Window, Secret Garden" was, for the most part, very compelling , but, oh dear, the revelation and ending was so clumsy. There was much potential for ambiguity here, for a "was he-wasn't he?" type conclusion. I remember seeing the film years ago, though most of it had slipped my mind. I think I felt the same way about that version as well. Regards Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
I get that a lot with King. His novels and stories are never less than compelling while reading them but he does have an unfortunate tendency to blow his endings. It's his biggest flaw as a writer, imo. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.1 |
I definitely had that feeling after reading The Stand and "The Mist". | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Hubert, I see some of Jacobs' books are available to order on Amazon - in English. The covers alone, with their echoes of Tintin, have my mouth watering. Strangely I rather liked the open-ended conclusions to 'The Stand' & "The Mist", that left the vista of a whole new world yawning in front of the reader, and would like to see more of these from King. Some of his endings that came off too pat or unconvincing for me were in; 'It', 'The Talisman', 'The Tommyknockers' & 'From A Buick 8', etc - while I've heard that the big climax of 'The Dark Tower' series leaves one thinking, "is that it?" Haven't read it, though, so I can't confirm this, but in discussions with mates we all seem to have this same periodic problem with King. He's a brilliant instinctive weaver of tales who suffers from a frequent inability to bring things to a satisfying conclusion. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Does anyone on here know how to work a bloody washing machine properly? It was all so much easier when I had a launderette across the street! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.60.1 |
Hubert, I see some of Jacobs' books are available to order on Amazon - in English. The covers alone, with their echoes of Tintin, have my mouth watering. Hergé and Jacobs belong to the same school, that of the 'ligne claire', but Jacobs' drawings are much more realistic and his use of colour and shadow is more accomplished. At times he's close to Alex Raymond. For The Yellow M he did an enormous amount of research on London and most of the settings will be clearly recognizable to the Londoner, even if the book ('comic' somehow doesn't do the work fully justice) was conceived in the early fifties. In The Time Trap there is the gag (if it can be called that) of documents explaining Mortimer's anomalous appearance both in medieval France and the Big Revolt of the 51st century, but otherwise the series is mostly devoid of humour. Try to get hold of these two books, you won't be disappointed. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I read Harlan Ellison's novella "Mefisto in Onyx," originally published in Omni in 1993, so it qualifies as scifi, though I have it here collected in The Best American Noir of the Century (2010). I've never been a voracious fan of Ellison's; I've never sought him out, but read the more famous stories here and there, mostly the ones that he's known for in the horror field ("Croatoan," "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs") which are indeed pretty good. But this? In a word: awful. Over-written with a too-cool-for-school style that was frankly embarrassing; the only thing more embarrassing than the !!!LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!!! writing style, was the plot, the characters, and what passed for any kind of universe-of-the-story-informing depth. Your typical comic book superhero movie's broken-down world-view/philosophy, is a Plato of sublimity, in comparison. Imho. Towards the end of the piece, the main character quotes a (supposed) Japanese saying: "Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years' experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience - twenty times." Good gosh, after this dread thing (and another stinker I just recently read by Mr. Ellison, "Killing Bernstein"[1976]), I'm beginning to wonder now.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.144.35.73 |
I'm about to start a reread of the Adrian Mole books as I just managed to pick up 5 of them (2 that I've never read) for a grand total of £2. I've not read secret diary since I was 13 and 3/4 myself. I'm also reading (and thankfully memorising) Caught on the Hop by Derek benfield - a fabulously witty farce which Im in at the end of January oop in Boolton. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
What I was watching: Gotta mention "The Simpsons" tonight, the new episode titled "The Book Job": a hilarious parody of the teen lit industry, of the Harry Potter and Twilight series, of the Oceans Eleven movies... but more than all that, of writers and writing. Featured Neil Gaiman as a guest star. Really, a must DVR! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Two thirds through an 'An Evil Guest' and I am more convinced than ever that Wolfe intended it as an mash-up parody/tribute to the greats of pulp genre fiction. Lovecraft, Heinlein, Hammett & Fleming are the authors who jump immediately to my mind but there is so much more in here as well. Love the man's wit and attention to detail but it is his sheer unpredictability as a storyteller that shines most brightly for me. A joy to read! I'm baffled as to why you had problems with its structure, Craig? The book is just a freewheeling and gloriously entertaining romp from start to finish. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I think that's what it was, Stevie - the "sheer unpredictability" that threw me off of being able to quantify the whole - for example, you neglect to mention here how much of a sort of "rags to riches" Joan Crawford-ish soap it is as well, and all of these forms intermingling just kept my head spinning. But it was sheer entertainment all the way along, I do agree! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The old "Faustian pact with the devil" device is the main linking theme throughout the story - as far as I can tell - which ties in with the sure fire entertainment of the "rags to riches" drama. So should we throw Marlowe & Goethe into the stew as well? I've always loved this style of meandering picaresque fiction and when the references are so beautifully integrated and appealing to my sensibilities that makes for one hell of a great read! I also love Gideon's deadpan Holmesian extrapolations with Cassie acting as his baffled Watson - "doh, of course!" Sublime fun. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.212.230.80 |
Well, i was going to start a reread of adrian mole but i picked up Harbour by john lindqvist to read the first few pages an hour ago and i'm now 80 pages in and rather hooked. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.212.230.109 |
170 pages in now and it's excellent with a capital excellent. I've no idea where the story is going and he's showing the same skills for building an isolated community as king at his best. Highly highly recommended | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I'm about 250 pages into Stephen King's latest novel. It's absolutely brilliant. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
I'm looking forward to that one Zed (especially as I remember the event itself, I was five or six and a newsflash came on the television in the middle of "Emergency Ward Ten"). As I said earlier, I'm tow thirds of the way through "Four Past Midnight" ("The Library Policeman" - a wonderful tale of childhood's fears coming back to us when we are adults)and falling in love with King's writing all over again. It's the first of his books I've read for a long long time. The first time I encountered him was back in 1982 when I picked up a copy of "The Stand" from a local newsagent (they sold books in those days, my local one had a wide range of Ramsey Campbell titles stuffed into its rotating rack)purely on the strength of its cover and size. I had never heard of the man before and had no idea of what sort of story he wrote or even that the book was a horror novel! I was dizzy with amazement and the summer of '82, as I prepared to get married for the first time, was the summer of "The Stand". My conclusion was that if John Steinbeck had written horror, it would have been like Stephen King. Cheers Terry | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Yeah, terry, King's responsible for getting me into horror literature at an early age. Salem's Lot on TV when I was about 14 led me to the novel, and then to his other work. Danse Macabre introduced me to Ramsey's work. King's the man. I never understood the recent King backlash that went on for a few years - this latest book, however, seems to have curbed all that nonsense. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I understood it perfectly as a necessary critical response to the man's all conquering status as a writer of genre fiction. King is the greatest natural storyteller the horror genre has ever spawned but he does have his flaws and he needs constantly reminded of them to make him an even better writer. For me 'The Stand' remains his masterpiece - as I've said uncountable times on here before. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
King's masterpiece for me is "The Shining", one of my all time favourite novels (the others beign Rebecca, The Grapes of Wrath, Vanity Fair and Birdsong) and one I read in about four sittings one thundery, wet summer weekend in 1987. Cheers Terry | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
...and Stormbringer. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
...but he does have his flaws and he needs constantly reminded of them to make him an even better writer. Wow, what an arrogant statement. I'd suggest that only King can make King an "even better writer", and like most great writers he seems very aware of his flaws. For me, he's a better writer now than he's ever been. Anyway, the backlash I'n referring to is the one where a lot of genre fans turned against him because he no longer writes the kind of horror that made him famous. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Terry, my personal favourite is Pet Sematary, but I'd probably rate The Shining as his horror masterpiece. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Or IT...actually, I'll go with IT as his horror masterpiece. The sheer ambition of the novel outweighs its flaws. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Shakespeare was pretty good but some of his verses didn't rhyme. Pity. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Me, I thought Pet Sematary okay, but flawed, and depressingly dark (though, he did buck convention by giving that horror novel a bleak black ending, the type of ending usually reserved for horror short-stories); and It I stopped reading soon after starting, finding it contained that particular King condescension and sentimentality that I just couldn't stomach anymore. That being said, King is a "king" and The Shining alone would preserve his place in literary history.... Side-note: I kept flashing to King all through reading Ellison's "Mefisto in Onyx" (see my post above); it's of a species of writing style that I think I'm just waaaaaaay over and done with, have absolutely no patience for anymore. I get the sense Ellison and King (and others) sometimes listen to themselves and think, "WOW, I'm fucking AWESOME!" And they forget story takes precedence over personality. Barker never does, he never falters in this regard, even though his "cool" personality (to call it something) permeates all his work - he found a balance that King and Ellison often falter from. Though it's true I've been consuming only fresh early Barker, when he'd not gotten jaded and faded, like late Ellison (at least in that particular story I read: Ellison's arrogant flamboyance in writing is famous [like his public writing stunts]), and post-more-famous-than-Jesus-so-where-do-I-go-now? King.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
For me, he's a better writer now than he's ever been. I disagree, Zed. Stephen King started off a naturally great writer and his greatest works remain his earliest. Then he kind of lost his way due to over-exposure while still retaining enough of the gift that had made him great to still sell books and woo new readers. In recent years (perhaps on the back of his humbling brush with mortality) he has slowly but surely been clawing his way back to something of the energy and distinctiveness of his early writing and I would not be surprised at all if his defining masterpiece - to rival even; 'The Stand', 'The Shining' & 'Pet Sematary' - is still in front of him. I, for one, sincerely hope so! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
>>>That being said, King is a "king" and The Shining alone would preserve his place in literary history.... That Beethoven never wrote a better tune than 'Ode to Joy' but that's a damned good one, so we'll let him off. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
My goodness, what a lot of unqualified assertions. It's like Parliament round here. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Craig, I'm sorry but that's nonsense. If you actually read King's novels, story takes presidence over everything (this is something he's ofted quoted as saying, too). His style is background; his prose is simple and matter-of-fact. I believe the phrase is "deceptively simple". King's early works were pretty derivative (he admits this), and he was hugely influenced by Matheson, Farris, Finney, et al (again, this is taken from interviews with the man). His prose has grown steadily more confident over the decades, to the point that in his latest novel (and his latest novella collection) you barely even notice it's there: just the stories. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
You might be right Zed - I stopped reading chronologically, right about in the middle of his career - so maybe he arced back up? It was a style I couldn't help but notice, so maybe it was all subjective.... Gary, your point escapes me. I'll not be rushing after it, however. Perhaps it's gone under a bush somewhere to die. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
If 'The Shining' was derivative then give me derivative anyday!! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Be good company for you, then. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
The Shining was a haunted house novel. Salem's Lot was Dracula meets Peyton place. (These are King's admissions, not my opinion). Where King's originality always stemmed from was the execution of these ideas; the way he infused them with pop culture, made them about working class people, and made them current. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Of course The Shining was derivative, as is a lot of King. He describes himself as "less than great at plot but one hell of an improviser." Don Herron makes the same point. King is a great appropriator, absorbing diverse elements of American - to wit, Western world - culture and distilling it in insightful and entertaining fiction. His work is slightly romantic, full of nice guys and evil shits. He pushes big buttons inside us, the ones marked "archetype" and "cathartic" and "frightened" and "hope", etc. We kind of need him. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Zed and me just said the thing in different ways. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
But you put it oh, so much better, GF... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.204 |
Turning a sharp corner and being the embarrassing old uncle in the corner of the room at the family gathering who says something completely out of synch with the conversation... I read "Pet Semetary" around the time my sister lost her six-week old baby son and that book will never leave me because it was so close to the mark and emotionally brutal. I probably should have stopped reading when I realised exactly what it was about and what was going to happen but I couldn't. It contains one of the best descriptions of real, bitter grief that I have ever read. Regards Terry | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
Terry - I'm with you. I read it just after my grandfather died and while my grandmother was in hopsital. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Definitely don't agree with the idea that King's writing has gotten worse over the years. His most recent work (particularly FULL DARK, NO STARS and 11/22/63) strike me as some of the sharpest, economic and emotionally direct stories of his career. Yes, he can run on a bit. And, sure, some of his endings can be a let down (although of all his works, only the endings of THE STAND and THE DARK TOWER fell flat for me. Sometimes I suspect that the derision around the ending of IT comes more from the TV version than the novel because, I'll tell you what, in my mind that was one fuck of a scary spider). But I'm generally more willing to give a 700+ page King novel more of a chance than other novels of similar length, because I know I'm going to enjoy spending time with his characters, regardless. Glad to say that all his strengths are on show in the latest novel, which I finished over the weekend. Despite its length, it's tightly plotted, the characters beautifully drawn, and thrilling from start to finish. There's an absolutely lovely scene which harks back to one of his earlier novels as well. Oh, and he doesn't flub the ending. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.116 |
Just started reading King's 11/22/63 on 22/11/11. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It wasn't the giant spider that jarred with me, John, but the overly twee and sentimental climactic bicycle ride down the hill. I found that too pat a defeat of evil, through the power of childhood innocence, that was worthy of Spielberg at his worst. Having said that, 'It' was the last Stephen King novel that really, truly gripped and excited me in the way only his early works have - the set pieces in that book are amongst the most thrilling I have ever read. He's written great stuff since but it just lacks the primal power and excitement from the days when he abounded with youthful energy, exuberance and lovingly reverential imagination, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The introduction of one-legged Gil Corby into 'An Evil Guest' has, I believe, confirmed my reading of the novel. Anyone familiar with James Hoggs' gothic horror masterpiece, 'The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner', will no doubt spot the allusion to that infamous rendering of Satan in corporeal form, Gil Martin, and catch the inference with regard to the true nature of Gideon Chase & William Reiss and their interaction with each other. All that and shape-shifting alien spies to boot! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
There's an absolutely lovely scene which harks back to one of his earlier novels as well. I bet it's 'The Dead Zone'? The past novel that seems to bear most resemblance to this new one. Kind of a paranormal/sci-fi/political thriller. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I'll admit there are some King novels whis I really don't like. From Buick 8 i thought was repetitive in the extreme. there was a very good novella in there but there wasn't enough story to make for a good book. I never liked the book of Christine come to think of it.. Rose Madder was good for the first quarter and slipped off after that. I thought the same about Bag of Bones - which opened brilliantly but the supernatural elements in that one really didn't work for me. Cell was fantastic. I loved Duma Key recently. I've loved far more King books than I've disliked. The thing with the bike at the end of IT, that was simply a closing of the theme that had been running all through the adult's storyline, about how the events of their childhood would save them. I thought it was a great ending. Sentiment can work when done properly - and it was done properly in IT. The ending of the Regulators is sentimental, but actually brought a tear to my eye. When he's good, King is close to unbeatable. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
*which *From a Buick 8 | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I didn't catch any of those references, Stevie. Maybe that's part of it, it's a novel with much added richness for those in on it.... I'm leery of King, like I'm leery of Joyce Carol Oates (though I've never read an actual novel by her): their staggeringly abundant output is suspicious. But unlike King, I've yet to read an Oates tale that is anything less than excellent. But despite that with Oates, the suspicion never leaves me, so that I don't go out and seek her, but rather stumble across her regularly - case in point, her short story (from this noir anthology I'm picking away at), "Faithless" (Kenyon Review, 1997): a fairly straightforward and simple tale, but elegantly told, with a gut-punch of a climax. Every time I'm floored by Oates... not so much, with King.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks, Mick. I've got the washing machine and tumble dryer working in happy unison but as for knowing the difference between a half load and a too-full load and a quick wash and one that actually cleans... I'm still experimenting! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Incidentally, Neil Young was right! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.33 |
King has made me groan so often, let me down too much. But he has enough gold in his history for me to not want to stop at least looking at his books when they come out. My recent favourites have been Green Mile, the first book in Hearts in Atlantis (until the overtly Dark Tower bits, at which point I felt duped/robbed), Colorado Kid. I am as fond of those as any of the early books. Craig, I feel just the same about Oates. She's clouded for me by her skill, if that makes sense. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.33 |
Oh, reading the life of Jung. It's as weird as any fiction I've read. And it's official (at least for me) - childhoods are the most fascinating part of any life. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.191.33 |
Stevie - just bought After the Goldrush. That title song is just sublime. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Jung was right too, Tony. In everything he said. Great to have you back, man! But as for Neil Young, I was thinking more of his paean to the domestic organisational skills of a good woman when faced with the helplessness of a bloke and a bundle of washing. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Stevie - your song now should be Kate Bush's "Mrs Bartolozzi"! All together now - "get that dirty shirty clean"! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Kate Bush could be my maid anyday! I'd even let her clean my aquarium... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Craig, the more we learn about Woldercan and the strange abilities of its inhabitants, and of its human(?) emissaries sent back to Earth, the more resonances with Heinlein's 'Stranger In A Strange Land' I'm becoming aware of in 'An Evil Guest'. A race of beings technologically inferior but biologically superior to us who bring the gift of opening up the human brain/mind/soul to 100% of its potential. The fact that Valentine Michael Smith could change his physical appearance at will (ala Gil Martin) makes the correlation complete and, when I looked up "Woldercan" in Wiki (as something about the name rang tantalising bells) I became aware of another satanic link... but you'd need to have seen 'The 7 Faces Of Dr Lao' to know what I'm talking about. So far I'm aware of 4 of "his" faces and keeping my mind open for the other three. Not only that but references to 'Billy the Mountain', werewolves and the Devil have me thinking of one of Frank's other great rock narratives. You know the one. I've heard of books to get lost in but this is ridiculous... and quite wonderful! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.39.255 |
Stevie, I assumed you were referring to the runaway oxidation of ferrous metals, requiring ceaseless maintenance – always an issue for any homeowner. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay, there's no way I'd have caught those references, Stevie - I'm just not as savvy/up on these matters as you are, not having read them all. Clearly, a lot of inside material is what's going on here - not actually unknown for Gene Wolfe: THE KNIGHT too had seemingly mystifying takes on fantasy, that appear at first blush much of the time to be original creations - but then it seems (from my researching) he's basing this too on a number of myth cycles/elements (some quite obscure!) and mashing them together, and much of the references I'm simply missing again. Doesn't make for any less entertainment - the sign of a great writer, that all (including the ignorant) can enjoy his work! | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 89.19.88.126 |
When I first read of Jung's theories I didn't feel I was learning much new, I just felt a profound sense of recognition. Here was someone saying things I'd always thought and felt were true. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.0.77 |
Well, philosophy isn't invention. It's elucidation. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.116 |
...other than perhaps inventing new ideas or new ground upon which to philosophise? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.0.77 |
But the 'voice of the world' is always in the backgroud, Des. Well, the voice of the universe, maybe. Brute being, I mean. The mother of all thought. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
His best album, Joel. | ||
| Karim (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 193.89.189.24 |
I just received the massive Vandermeer tome 'The Weird' My goodness it is a big volume. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.116 |
It is both massive in size and fiction substance. Probably the best book for me ever produced. I'm about two-thirds through with my RTR of it. | ||
| Karim (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 193.89.189.24 |
I will look forward to going back and reading your thoughts after each story, Des. I just had to dip in and read two stories I had been wanting to read forever, but didn't get a chance to until yesterday. One was Shea's 'The Autopsy', and Chabon's 'The God of Dark Laughter', which were both excellent. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Well, the voice of the universe, maybe. Brute being, I mean. The mother of all thought. I wish I'd said that... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.59.116 |
Shea's 'The Autopsy' ============== That's really a WOW! story, Karim. Gary F, are we talking templates or archetypes? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.84.174 |
"I wish I'd said that..." So do I. Then I could pretend I understood it. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I read "The Autopsy" earlier this year, and was riveted as usual by Michael Shea's prose and imagination: a story that only deep in do you realize, the title's a pun.... I rather liked Shea's "Dying Earth" knock-off A QUEST FOR SIMBILIS, and his other equally uber-weird fantasies of the time. I'm sticking with this massive noir anthology for now, though the stories aren't quite of the caliber of the mystery anthology by the same (series) editor. Of the latest I read, standouts include: the page-turning Cornell Woolrich-styled thriller "Man in the Dark" (1952) by Howard Browne; and the perversely dark scenario "Crack" (1999) by James W. Hall. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Two more worth mentioning: "A Ticket Out" (1987, awful title by the way) by Brendan DuBois, a story that almost seems to have followed a recipe, it so perfectly places its elements - but again, places them perfectly; together with "Dark Snow" (1996) from the last one, makes him an author to pursue. But then... ever read something that just blows you totally away? I've never heard of Scott Wolven before, and the story here, "Controlled Burn" (2002) is quite short, and I can't even tell you I exactly know what it was quite all about... but holy shit, does this guy's talent and ability reach out and grab you! If this guy keeps writing like this, and he's always this good? There will be a new American luminary you'll have to mention along with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc. Wow... I mean, wow.... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I read The Autopsy for the first time last year, and at the risk of going against the grain, I think it's overrated. A good tale, yes, but from everything I'd heard I was expecting something really amazing. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.4.163.216 |
Just finished King's (yes, King again) "The Library Policement" and although it was a mini "It" in many ways I thoroughly enjoyed it. one mroe "Four Past Midnight" story to go - "The Sun Dog". it's been a tearful reunion but a happy one. Regards Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
I thought 'The Library Policeman' was by far the best story in that collection, Terry. King at his very best. Then 'The Langoliers' (wonderfully 'Twilight Zonish'), then 'The Sun Dog' (an entertaining rip-off of M.R. James), then 'Secret Window, Secret Garden' (which was okay but fairly forgettable). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.0.77 |
I loved Library Policeman. I have a great audio book version. Well creepy. I love The Langoliers, too, in all its silliness. Great storytelling. I felt The Sun Dog too long for its material, but very effective for all that. Secret Window - not bad, but come on, Steve, you can do better than that twist. The book is a real treat for fans, tho. Four short novels! Who else would give us so much in a single tome? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.0.77 |
Just going up a bit, that stuff about brute being. It's existential phenomenology. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Consciousness as an accretion of perceptual experience reflected upon. To wit: "Man is in the world and only in the world does he know himself." The whispers of the world rendered indistinct by translation into our crude languages - what Flaubert described thus: "We play tin drums for bears to dance to while wishing to move the stars to tears." The extra-discursive knowingness of the body that governs intuition - what Freud called, and Hardy identified, as the subconscious. And Jung understood as the collective unconscious. It's hard to convey the powerful vision of life presented by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, but try to imagine it this way: for Descartes, the human being is a photograph of a person snipped out of a catalogue and glued onto a great oil painting, just lying there, impervious to proximal activity. For Merleau-Ponty, the human being is a figure worked into the original art, integrated in its lived world, the light catching it properly, his or her body responding to contextual events, eyes taking it all in, etc. 'In-the-world' rather than 'in the world'. But - Merleau-Ponty's point - we can never adequately describe it. You live it every day. Phenomenology is about getting back to the things themselves. Reflecting on those ineffable dimensions of experience, the arena we bring to life by being embodied and sentient. The cosmos and our lowly place in that. An ant at Disney World. Read Phenomenology of Perception. As close as anyone living will ever come to catching it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.0.77 |
Anyone catch Match of the Day this morning? Fuck me, that was a stone wall penalty. That ref must be fucking blind. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 58.165.6.105 |
Reading heaps of Ramsey shorts at the moment. Started with Demons by Daylight, then onto Height of the Scream. Right now I'm halfway through Dark Companions, probably my favourite collection of all time. I'm going to keep reading them (the collections) in order, until I feel like a change. I've barely touched Told by the Dead or Just Behind You, so plenty of good stuff ahead. Also read Nadelmans God, by T.E.D. Klein, from Dark Gods - excellent, though not quite as good as Petey. Will read the other two stories in between Ramsey books! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
It is my belief that reality is eternal and that what we speak of as the "universe" is infinite and conscious and aware. Each individual facet of that One infinite consciousness creates its own eternal reality - YOU - an infinity within endless infinities, as mathematicians have proved exist but can't quite bring themselves to believe. All that we see and hear and experience, what we call our "reality", is created from our own limited perceptions, based initially on the illusion of our individuality. To gain understanding of the true nature of reality we need to break through the perception barrier and consciously engage with the other "realities" around us. Jung's collective unconscious refers to the instinctive psychic interactions (I call this reality leakage) that goes on all the time between individual consciousnesses without us being directly aware of them - or on the odd occasions when we become aware of them they are shrugged off as randomly meaningful coincidences. "Reality" reasserting itself. Serenity, nirvana, power, magic, or however you care to use it, comes from Awareness of what we really are - LEGION - for from that Awareness comes the ability to warp perceived "reality". Jung's later controversial writings - when many assumed he had lost the plot and descended into meaningless mysticism - were a rational philosopher's attempts to understand and quantify this natural universal process. Only "reality" considers it supernatural. The man was perhaps the first scientifically rational visionary mystic that the human race has produced and was one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century (or any time) and I believe history will come to judge him as such. A bit like Frank Zappa, really. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I thought King's Secret Window was brilliant. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
I really liked all of the stories in FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT. THE LANGOLIERS is probably my favourite, mainly because of the Twilight Zone-esque quality mentioned above. Lincoln - the two remaining stories in DARK GODS are both wonderful. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
'An Evil Guest' isn't half getting creepy in the final quarter. That scene with the wolf, the bat things on the window sill and the "romantic" visit to that weird restaurant, 'The Silent Woman', with its headless female emblem, are the very stuff of fevered dreams. I reckon Gene Wolfe has invented a new strand of genre literature with this book that I shall call "freeform genre" from now on. The only other writer who has come close to this effect, that I can think of, is Jonathan Carroll - though his brilliant novels straddle the surreal dream highway between horror and fantasy only. Wolfe is all over the place - inspiredly so!! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'm gratified to know indeed An Evil Guest does defy genres, and wasn't just me ignorant of a new brand.... Another story of note from this Best American Noir of the Century anthology: "The Paperhanger" (2000) by William Gay, a lyrical, beautifully-rendered story that could easily pass as "literary" fiction, as noir yes, but also most certainly as horror. I've never heard of William Gay, but he's apparently (according to his blurb) quite respected in literary circles... and get this, he beats Raymond Chandler: he was published for the very first time in his life (two short stories) at the age of 57! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Still reading 'Arslan' - bit of a struggle through the middle section but nearing the end now and it's pretty good. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
One more thing, Craig. 'An Evil Guest' most certainly is a Cthulhu Mythos novel, as is made explicit in the final chapters - shedding a whole new light on all that has gone before. It was Wolfe's inspiration to set his homage to Lovecraft in a future world full of Heinleinesque wonders. For even then, in his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming... and his minions still flock to his call. Poor Cassie has no idea what she's up against - she can't even pronounce his name for heaven's sake! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've enjoyed this book so much, Craig, that I've decided to work backwards and keep Wolfe's reputed masterpiece, 'The Book Of The New Sun', till last. So it'll probably be those 'Knight/Wizard' books, 'The Soldier Trilogy', 'Peace' & 'The Fifth Head Of Cerberus' next - in that order. Thanks, mate. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
My pleasure, Stevie. And that sounds like a great plan, too. Hey, when you get to THE WIZARD, I'll probably have enough free time to join you in reading it - we can read along together! That'd be kind of cool, actually, to actually be reading something for once someone else is too, at the same time.... I've already been vexing in not getting to it, because THE KNIGHT is so complex (well, it has a lot of characters and situations, it's not hard to follow), that after this gap in time in not reading it, I've forgotten a lot. Luckily, I found this great book online someone wrote (er, well, duh), an analysis of these two Wolfe novels - it's in google books, and thank god, one of the sections excerpted, has a detailed, multi-paged synopsis of the first novel; so I can reread that, and be totally up to speed. Thank god for the internet! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
Just finished the first real horror section of Harbour and by God it's a doozie! A great payoff for great build up. This could be his best book yet. Still half the book to go. I need to really set a couple of spare hours aside to get through the rest of this book. I think that scene is going to haunt me tonight... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Craig, having just finished 'An Evil Guest', and been surprised at how touching the final chapter was - it got me quite misty-eyed - I now think the key to understanding this book, and some of the apparent illogicalities in the plot, is to remember Klauser's quoting of Einstein, when discussing the temporal peculiarities of ethermail; "The distinctions we draw between past, present and future are discriminations among illusions." And to apply this reasoning to the physical act of hopping between Earth and Woldercan, and back again. I'm going to miss Cassie Casey... she was one hell of a woman. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Just about to get stuck into 'Bryant & May Off The Rails' (2010) and at last Christopher Fowler has taken his heroes into a part of the metropolis I'd long hoped he would... the forgotten disused depths of the London Underground System, where strange things lurk having never seen the light of day, and where their (frankly terrifying) arch-nemesis has fled... I really fear for the old goats this time, and that's no hyperbole! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
A third through it already and it's an absolute doozy! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
This is fabulous storytelling. One of the very best of the series so far and I'm two thirds through now. Once again the story has taken the form of a classic whodunnit, with a closed group of suspects, all with something to hide, and red herrings aplenty. Add to that one of the most frightening and enigmatic villains in crime fiction somehow pulling the strings and always one step ahead of our intrepid team. For all the humour this is an oddly disturbing and emotional read... one has long since come to care deeply about these characters like real personal friends and Fowler has a way of doing terrible things to some of them just when we least expect it. Unputdownable! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
Just started readng "Love for Lydia" by H E Bates. and what beautiful, beautiful writing. The descripitons of a 1929 winter in the industrial town of Evensford (presumably mythical), the flesh searing cold, the gloomy chapels and odour of boiled cabbage and gas rings, are so visceral I can feel it, taste it and smell it. Many years ago I was similarly enamoured of Bates' "The Restless Moon" which I read in one day because, despite the intensity of his writing, he is utterly compelling, addicitive and un-put-down-able. If only I could write like that... And I must try Bryant and May. Rgards Terry | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.9.228 |
Perfick. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.254.46 |
Almost at the end of PKD's Time Out of Joint - read it once, back when I was a lad - excellent stuff it is, too. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Two more stories worth noting from this century's-best noir anthology.... James Ellroy's "Since I Don't Have You" (1988) is an exhausting read - I mean that in a good way: Ellory style makes Tarrantino seem mild, and illuminates the real big stinker from this anthology, the Harlan Ellison story I mentioned, "Mefisto in Onyx": it seems Ellison was trying to imitate Ellroy and Stephen King at once, having first taken a dozen espresso shots. Ellroy's style is dizzyingly rich and engaging, and appears to imitate nobody; as well, Ellroy seems to have taken two dozen espresso shots before writing. Lorenzo Carcaterra's inaptly titled (i.e., it has absolutely nothing to do with the story, that I can see) "Missing The Morning Bus" (2007), is a static, strange characters[sic] study, that waxes increasingly disturbing, finally verging right on the tippy-toe edge of horror. Haven't heard of this writer before, but he's promising... I mean, only to me, the one who's never heard of him.... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.24.25 |
"Just started readng "Love for Lydia" by H E Bates. and what beautiful, beautiful writing. The descripitons of a 1929 winter in the industrial town of Evensford (presumably mythical), the flesh searing cold, the gloomy chapels and odour of boiled cabbage and gas rings, are so visceral I can feel it, taste it and smell it. Many years ago I was similarly enamoured of Bates' "The Restless Moon" which I read in one day because, despite the intensity of his writing, he is utterly compelling, addicitive and un-put-down-able. If only I could write like that..." By gum, you've reminded me that M. John Harrison recommended Bates to me years ago. I shall follow up this dual enthusiasm. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.107.193 |
Ramsey! I mentioned Bates on here this year. He really would appeal to people on this board. He's not directly fantastical but his prose has such an eerie quality, like an eavesdrop on a dream or memory, that I couldn't recommend him enough. I keep harping on about Capote for the same reasons. I hope people have done something about it. It can sometimes feel like people are filing past the little tent marked 'God'. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.107.193 |
Terry - my story for your Monster book was written while I was reading him. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.18.250 |
Didn't lorenzo carcaterra write the book that the film Sleepers was based on - about the boys who were abused in a juvenile detention centre and one killed the guard at the heart of it all when they were grown up. Film had Kevin Bacon as the molesting murderee and De Niro as the friendly priest. Unusual in recent times for a paedophile story involving a priest to automatically make the priest an abuser. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.19.59 |
You mean not make him an abuser, Weber. The same is true of the film Priest. I still don't think you get the point on that issue: the real atrocity is not that some priests have been child abusers, but that when they have been the Church has used its considerable power to shield them from prosecution. Another case reached the papers last year, long after the Ryan report: a Birmingham priest who had fled to the USA in the 1980s to escape prosecution of child abuse charges was finally extradited, tried and convicted. It transpired that the Church had not only known where he was hiding but had kept paying him a salary up until 2001, when its policy changed and it began to co-operate with the police. The change of policy is to be welcomed – but as the judge said at the trail, the role of the Church in protecting a fugitive from justice demands a proper enquiry. These are not rumours but matters of recent public record. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.31.24 |
"I still don't think you get the point on that issue:..." This seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. Maybe I've missed a bit where Weber said something wrong? "It can sometimes feel like people are filing past the little tent marked 'God'." What a lovely image. Straight out of (good) Gilliam, that. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That's the guy, Weber, from the blurb on Carcaterra. He's mostly a television writer, but did write some novels. I can't believe I've never heard of SLEEPERS!... Another one from the anthology: a novella by Christopher Cloake, "All Through The House" (2003). Gripping, excellently written, going backwards in time like MEMENTO... but holy God, what a depressing downer of a despairing tale. Bleak, bleak, bleak.... | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.25.141.120 |
I'm into "The Honorable Schoolboy" by le Carre and loving every word of it so far. Also "Boardwalk Empire" by Nelson Johnson. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Another one worth noting, from this noir anthology: "Midnight Emissions," a novelette by (the late) F.X. Toole (pseudonym for Jerry Boyd), all about boxing and betrayal, superbly written, stylistically dense yet lucid, gripping. F.X. Toole is the writer whose anthology of stories Rope Burns was adapted to become the film Million Dollar Baby... and get this, he has William Gay (see my post above) actually beat: F.X. didn't have a single published piece of writing to his credit, in his lifetime... until he was age 69! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished 'Bryant & May Off The Rails' and can't really say much, as to even hint at the denouement would be as unforgivable as spoiling a Christie whodunnit, but a whirlwind of heart-in-the-mouth suspense was followed by as richly gobsmacking an elucidation as one could find anywhere in modern fiction. Now I have to wait until bloody well March next year for Volume 9, 'The Memory Of Blood', to appear in paperback! Noooooooo..... Time for the penultimate Holmes collection, 'His Last Bow' (1917). | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
Finished "Love for Lydia" thsi morning and oh what a beautiful, sad, dark novel it is, repleat with horrifying twists and turns and such visceral prose. Polished off Paul Finch's chapbook "King Death" as a dessert (Mr Finch just keeps getting better and better)and my next read is Harry Potter (yes, Bates, Finch then Rowling) "The Half Blood Prince". I'll probably move straight on to "The Deathly Hallows" afterwards. I've enjoyed dear old Harry P, just for the sheer fun of it, and have a huge admiration of the lovely J K R for getting so many kids to read books,no one can take that away from her. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
Excuse my appalling editing, I don't feel well this morning and have been slaving over "The Monster Book for Girls", knocking it into shape and pesetering folk for their bios. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
For a complete change from genre fiction I've just started 'Bilko : Behind The Lines With Phil Silvers' (2000) by Mickey Freeman (alias Fielding Zimmerman) & Sholom Rubenstein. Sometimes a guy just needs to wallow in some shameless hero worship. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
I love biographies Stevie. Among my favourites were those of George Orwell who was an astonishing character and led a fascinating life, and Anthony Eden who was from a generation of flawed but immensely human conscience politicians that, despite their aristocratic backgrounds,I admire. After he resigned, Eden went on a cruise, and made friends with one of the stewards who boxed as part of the ship's entertainment. The steward was John Prescott. Regards Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
I enjoy reading biographies of people who make me happy - especially the warts and all ones. Among my favourites are; 'Stan And Ollie' by Simon Louvish, 'Electric Don Quixote' by Neil Slaven, 'Shakey' by Jimmy McDonough, 'Ginger Geezer' by Chris Welch & Lucian Randall, 'Seeing Things' by Oliver Postgate, 'Goddess' by Anthony Summers & 'The Confessions Of Aleister Crowley' by the man himself. Great reads all... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The chapter on Maurice Gosfield, "The Doberman Mystique", just had me laughing out loud and then sniffling back tears at lunchtime. The man was a talentless non-entity, with a funny face and voice, who was plunged into international stardom, during the four years of Bilko's run, and then quickly faded away and died - from complications of diabetes, including blindness - in a home for retired stars at the age of 51 in 1964. The man was as much of a shuffling, mumbling sweaty slob in real life as was his character. Women would throw themselves at him and leave hurriedly the next morning when they realised he wasn't acting! Yet to his dying day he believed that he was the real star and principal talent of the show - something that Phil Silvers good naturedly indulged him in. The scene in which Zimmerman and his wife visit him, pretty much on his death bed, and relive the glory days (of only 5 years before) had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and my swallow reflex going into overdrive. To think a man's life could be encapsulated in a few years of accidental fame. Only biographies have the power to affect me in this way. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
I'm going to read that book. You've hooked me. i also want to read the Laurel and Hardy bio. I woudl also liek to know if the led Zeppelin bio "When Gods Walked the Earth" is any good, some say aye others nay. Would I be better off reading "Hammer of the Gods" instead? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I read HAMMER OF THE GODS ages ago. All I remember from it is something about a fish diddling a woman, and furniture being pushed out of hotel windows. Even those fragments are hazy. Jesus, I hope they're me remembering that book.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Stan And Ollie' is the best bio I ever read, Terry, but haven't read either of those Zeppelin books. Needless to say I am a fan. Some of the behind-the-scenes anecdotes in this Bilko book are hilarious. For the first few live shows they had to ship the audience in from a local old folks home, so they couldn't run away, but within weeks word of mouth had celebrities like Cary Grant, Jack Benny & Milton Berle fighting for seats. The word was "you gotta see this show, it's funny, not TV funny, but funny funny!" I love the fact it was filmed as a live stage show. The naturalism of the performances and spontaneity of the ad-libs, even the fluffed lines and corpsing, all added to the magical atmosphere they created in those shows. Apparently Phil Silvers would often be seen throwing up in the bathroom before going on stage - he was that pumped up on nervous energy! But the book's not just a bio of Phil but of all the cast - even down to those occasional regular bit part players. You know Doberman did have one last brush with fame post-Bilko, as the voice of Benny the Ball. Two legendary characters in a lifetime isn't bad going for such a "talentless schmo". Wonderful heartwarming stuff. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
This book is giving me such an appreciation of what a great man Nat Hiken was. The unsung mastermind behind the genius of Bilko. It was his idea to pluck Phil Silvers from word-of-mouth obscurity as a stand-up comic and build a never before attempted ensemble sitcom around him. He was the man responsible for hand-picking the cast, based on a specific idea of how each character should look. Many of the platoon were non-professional ordinary joes he bumped into in the street and thought "there's Mullin" or "that's my Paparelli", etc. - and his instincts were invariably spot on. Scripting, producing, directing, casting was all down to him. Incredible! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
**** THE PANDORA SEQUENCE SPOILERS **** Into the final climactic chapters of 'The Ascension Factor' and full-scale war has broken out on Pandora, with all the tangled plot threads and characters converging on a common fate. It's been great to complete this epic fantasy (22 years in the writing) with clearer insight beyond the enthusiasm of youth. 'Destination Void' (1966) was a tight-as-a-drum suspense novel, with a cast of four crew members and a sentient Ship, that concentrated wholly on the perilous voyage of the generation starship Earthling through uncharted space to its fateful encounter with Pandora. 'The Jesus Incident' (1978) was the most viscerally exciting of the series as it concentrated on the early struggle to colonise this nightmarishly hostile planet with its brilliantly realised ecosystem. We had early intimations of the political strife and factionalisation to come but it was the pioneering adventure and the monsters that made this book shine. 'The Lazarus Effect' (1983) leapt forward millennia to show us humanity triumphant and the planet cowed by its new dominant lifeform. Political machinations, feuds, internecine plots and assassinations were the order of the day here as the race had split into two divergent sub-species; Mermen & Islanders. But Pandora still had a few tricks left up her sleeve... 'The Ascension Factor' (1988) leaps forward again to an age of technological dictatorship and media brainwashing, reminiscent of 'Brave New World' or '1984', and tells a currently topical tale of dogged underground resistance leading to popular uprising and eventual full-scale war. While the ruling human elite rush to complete their plans for escape to the stars in a new generation starship with a crew of... Nevermind storytelling, this is world creating and mythmaking on a scale that rivals Tolkien and is bettered only in the sci-fi field by Herbert's other masterwork - 'The Dune Chronicles' (1965-1985). Complete re-read imminent. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Finished it, Craig, and will be starting 'The Wizard Knight' today - if you want to dig out your copy. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Oy! Well, surely I have at least a couple days till you get through the first part, THE KNIGHT. But yes, Stevie, I shall dust off my copy here, and reacquaint myself with "the story so far".... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Nine chapters into 'The Wizard Knight' and all the hype about this humongous epic is proving, if anything, rather understated! The effect of reading this wondrous prose is like drifting through a stream of consciousness dreamland, filled with familiar fairy-tale imagery that seems to emerge as from a hallucinatory fog, while the irresistible narrative - of a young boy lost Alice-like in a world of the imagination and trying to find his way home - is as effortlessly readable and utterly beguiling in its deceptive simplicity as any of the classic allegorical children's fantasies by C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner or Ursula K. Le Guin. I am lost in admiration for Gene Wolfe's ability to paint pictures with words that transform all the old fantasy tropes of knights, elves, witches, giants and dragons into something new and indescribably haunting - while returning this most magical of genres to its primal roots after the nuts-and-bolts tangibility of Harry Potter and 'His Dark Materials'. I am reminded of what George MacDonald attempted to do for adults in his bizarre novel 'Phantastes' but, where he created crazy beautiful images and landscapes while forgetting to include a gripping narrative, Wolfe here has his cakes and eats it too. I'm only dipping my toes in this weird and wonderful universe so far and already find myself haunted by something on almost every page. From the unnamed boy narrator's abduction from our world, for a simple crime against nature, through his frightening renaming by the razor-toothed witch sat spinning by the shore, the encounter with the black knight composed of mist, Berthold's brave but futile stand against the Angrborn giants, and the stirring yet curiously moving lessons in chivalry from the good knight, Sir Ravd, this book is a magic carpet ride and beyond sublime... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
It is an effortless read, Stevie, isn't it? And yet, complex, unfolding like an onion, as you'll too discover. It's only magnified (think: magnificent) in the time since I've finished it, to become larger in my mind than when I was even reading it. Thankfully, you're not too far in, Stevie... I still have time to get ready to begin Part II.... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Possibly the most beautifully written book I've read all year. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.7.224 |
Ooh, I watched the movie version of Winter's Bone just the other week, it was really good. Made me interested in reading the book. I decided I needed a Christmas horror story and started The Ritual by Adam Nevill yesterday. I really enjoyed his first two books and this is looking just as good so far. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Craig, the effortless readability of the prose style is what makes the story development so incredibly subtle - as it pulls the reader along from one reality altering revelation to another, refusing to over-stress any one encounter or action, no matter how pivotal, the way a lesser author would be tempted to. One can feel the boy altering, transforming into a man almost subliminally and the persistent undercurrent of a soul becoming ever more hopelessly lost and detached from one's true nature and identity - the way the boy can no longer remember his own name or the name of the place he lived, as he falls under deeper and deeper enchantment, is intensely poignant and rather creepy. The scene in which he is lured away from Sir Ravd and seduced in that forest glade by Disiri the Mossmaiden is both breathtakingly beautiful and skin-crawling in its sinister implications. Wolfe intensifies this feeling of aching loss and victimhood to almost unbearable levels by his trick of having the story been written down by the narrator at some point in the far future, as a missive directly to his long lost brother, Ben, the only name he can still recall from his former life... I know I'm barely a twentieth (if that) into this beast of a tome but I already feel I've travelled a world's length. I feel as inextricably lost in Mythgarthr as poor Able (or whoever he is). On the surface this is a simple heartbreaking allegory of the journey from childhood to adulthood, and the accumulation of experience and responsibility and the loss of innocence and dreams that this entails, but that is only the most obvious subtext and I'm well aware, after 'The Evil Guest', of how mesmerisingly multi-layered Gene Wolfe can be! Maybe we should start a separate thread for this book, Craig? I can tell it's going to be that absorbing. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
David (hi again, btw) - I loved the film, too. The novel's sublime: short, with wonderful prose and a great sense of mood and location. | ||
| Rosswarren (Rosswarren) Username: Rosswarren Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 81.153.109.10 |
Picked up A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood today in time to take on holiday alond with a million things on the ole Kindle | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Yes, that might be preferable, Stevie.... Your analysis so far, is illuminative, and true. To the topic at hand for this thread: Until I start reading that Wolfe book at the proper time, I'm trying to finish off (been reading this all year too!) A Century of Great Suspense Stories, edited by Jeffery Deaver - the one whose excellent borderline horror story "The Weekender" is also collected in this antho (like the noir one I recently finished). The stories are all fine, if by the numbers (which is not to denigrate them). Some standouts include subtle gems like "Batman's Helpers" by Lawrence Block and "Burning End" by Ruth Rendell; and nasty thrillers like "A Matter of Principal" by Max Allan Collins and "Among My Souvenirs" by Sharyn McCrumb. Of course, there's a grip of classics ("The People Across the Canyon" by Margaret Millar; "Quitters, Inc." by Stephen King; "Reasons Unknown" by Stanley Ellin; etc.). Still have half the book to go, bulk-wise.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
David - Snap! I'm also on The Ritual by Adam Nevill. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 82.6.90.110 |
Just finished the final Harry Potter, and despite cirtisism of the Part 1 film (I haven't seen any of them) it was a very entertaining novel. So now, I've almost finished "Vernon God Little" by DBC Pierre (that's got to be a pen name!) and what a fantasticaly well-observed and blackly funny book this is. Highly recommended. Cheers Terry | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.141.209 |
By god am I loving the Ritual! I hope it continues as well as this and doesn't fluff the ending. If it does it will make it easily as the best horror novel I've read this year. The nightmare sequences in the house are some of the most genuinely scary bits of prose I can remember reading. I will admit though that I guessed who would be first to die. I hope thats it for any predictability in the plot. I finished Harbour by Lindqvist just before Christmas and I feel I need to retract a couple of my statements that I made about it. Unfortunately he managed to completely blow the ending. The townsfolk never became integrated with the story. they would appear, drop a plot detail and vanish never to be mentioned again. Even the two most interesting characters in the book were allowed to fade out of the narrative without ever really contributing to the actual plot. Its the first time I've found myself disappointed with one of his books and I hope that little Star (which I will be buying next time I get paid) will be a return to form. In between finishing that and starting Ritual, I read Killing the Beasts by Chris Simms - a rather good police procedural thriller set in and around a very recognisable Manchester. It has slight flaws, the dialogue is a little ropy in places and the last chapter has one or two coincidences too many for my liking but it was a solid enough piece and never less than enjoyable to read. I will continue to pick up his books as I find them. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.183.126.98 |
I loved The Ritual - it does sort of change around half way through, but it's still wonderful, and my favourite of Adam's work I've read so far. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Read the first 30 chapters which puts me halfway through the first Book of 'The Wizard Knight'. Simply magnificent!!! Far too much and too little time to go into here but getting lost in the beauteous joys of this book is like succumbing to mind altering drugs and taking the trip of a lifetime. Suddenly the world I'm walking through, the ground underneath my feet and the Skai above me feels full of wondrous possibilities. I can see this being one hell of a New Year's Eve so I'm going to wish everyone here a Very Happy New Year - right now. Make 2012 a good one... it's in your power to do so. Now I'm off to chase another Aelf maiden. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.24.28.118 |
Wishing you and all RCMB members the best of Aelf, Stevie! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Thanks, Joel. My new year's resolution is never to drink again! A day in bed suffering the hangover from hell has me sat up wide awake at 3 in the morning. And so back to 'The Wizard Knight'... I'm glad Wolfe included a full list of all the characters and place names at the start of the book as it is essential, and rather compulsive, for keeping track of events. The tone has shifted, almost without noticing, from the clear-eyed children's fantasy of Lewis & Garner to something approaching the esoteric poetry of Lord Dunsany (quoted at the beginning) or Tolkien's adult works as the years pass and Able(?) learns the lessons, responsibilities and temptations of having an adult body. The Freudian symbolism of his ascent of the Tower of Glas and embarrassed diving into the Pool of Kulili to hide his spontaneous erection needs no elaboration from me. But what he encounters in the deep blue depths is one of the most staggeringly beautiful images I can recall in literature (irrespective of genre). From then on we're in the realms of Robert E. Howard or Fritz Leiber as Sir Able takes his rightful place in the pantheon of great fantasy heroes. I'm going to stick my neck out and guess that his attainment of Knighthood is equal to physical transformation while his becoming a Wizard in the second Book must surely refer to emotional growth and the getting of wisdom. What ya think, Craig? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That sounds about right to me, Stevie - as a guess too, since I'm not yet into the second one. Though it sounds like you're approaching it quickly, so I better get ready for it.... Wolfe's longer works do seem to often center around an "ephebe" seeking an idealistic mate, the classic "Faerie Queene" quest. Those who inhabit his worlds, are often enticingly - invitingly - familiar... but he's great at pulling the rug out from our expectations, and reminding us of the alien in the alien, the aelf in the aelf. The giant monster in the man's-best-friend. At the core, this is as high-concept a premise as any Hollywood movie: a teenager is transported into the body of a knight, and so must learn what it is to BE a knight, not just on the outside.... Of course, Hollywood would f*** it up considerably. And you must be right, Stevie, the natural part 2 would be the same premise, only utilizing the metaphor of the wizard; and "emotional growth and the getting of wisdom," surely. Yes, it should be a romp! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
Although I'm a dog lover, and currently looking one of my own, I find the character of Gylf strangely unsettling, Craig. If I were Able I'd have tried to lose him as well. A big cuddly mutt that transforms into a hellhound when aroused to anger and that can literally melt into the shadows when not wanting to be seen isn't my idea of your typical "man's best friend". It wasn't as if Able had a choice whether to let the hound follow him or not... it just did, and refuses to leave his side. Something is surely amiss here. Also going back to one of Able's first exhortations to his brother Ben, on reading the journal: "Remember that Disiri was a shapechanger, and all her shapes were beautiful" has me suspicious of every benign creature he encounters. The Aelf are liars, Setr is the Evil One who must be defeated but also the deliverer of experience & Kulili is the "monster" with which he must do battle. The Desire for Pleasure - Temptation and Abandonment to Lust - Shame and Dishonour. All the old enemies of the chivalrous that drain the purity from the pleasures of the flesh. On the surface this is an old fashioned morality play straight out of the Garden of Eden... or is it? Either way it's sublime literature! | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.166.73 |
Just finished the opening tale of Steve Duffy's Tragic Life Stories, which I downloaded onto my Kindle along with The Night Comes On, A.M. Burrage's Intruders and Reggie Oliver's Masques of Satan. There might be something to this ebook thing after all. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.183.126.98 |
Steve's collection is wonderful - his best so far. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
As I kill time before starting THE WIZARD, I'm still working my way through this A CENTURY OF GREAT SUSPENSE STORIES, edited by Jeffery Deaver. Just thought I'd mention one story, "The Wench Is Dead"(1953), by Fredric Brown. It's funny how a story can throw you: I, being oh-so-sophisticated, yawned as I thought I'd figured this one out early, as being no more than a brainless potboiler... I even nearly stopped reading, figuring, it had nothing new to offer me... good thing I'm anal, because it's funny how a good story can throw you. And this one upended my every expectation! To cap it off, it ended on a darkly ambiguous note, raising it well above its genre. It's hardly going to dethrone Hemingway or Joyce, but it's nice to be surprised every now and then. I've heard of Fredric Brown, but never paid attention to the name - wonder now, if I should...? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
My new favourite character in 'The Wizard Knight' is Mani, the cat, Craig. The comic interplay between him and Gylf (who, after initial trepidation has finally won my heart - it was the burying his head under his great big paws to try and become small that did it) is laugh-out-loud funny. I mean this great big loyal mutt has swam oceans, fought monsters, been by Able's side through thick and thin and all Mani needs to do is purr and rub up against his legs to be fawned over and given the choicest giblets while whispering in "his master's" ear about how much better cats are than dogs. I think it's the curling up in the laps of buxom wenches and getting him laid that does it! What a bloody brilliant book!! I mean this fantasy makes even 'His Dark Materials' appear as shallow as the 'Harry Potter' series by comparison - but, crucially, is every bit as entertaining as either. The man is an absolute marvel!!!! | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Fredric Brown is a fine writer – best known for very short stories with exquisitely timed puns and twist endings, many of them surprisingly near the knuckle for 1950s magazines. But his novelette 'Come and Go Mad' is a clever and disturbing exploration of paranoia (and a sardonic parody of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'll be looking for that story and more by Brown, Joel. I've actually discovered a number of fine writers in the pages of this anthology, writers whose work I was previously unfamiliar with. They include Max Allan Collins, with his nasty-mean bent; Edward D. Hoch and John Lutz, simple inventors who compose in crystal-clear, almost pre-digested styles, reminiscent of Margaret Millar; Lisa Scottoline, with her surprising innocence and good-humor; and Janwillem van de Wittering, whose dense style and lush evocation was closer to fine literary fiction, than anything as unseemly as genre writing.... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
I will almost certainly be finishing the Ritual tonight. I love the way he's managed the change at the mid point of the book. The second half is just as nightmarish - if in an entirely different way - from the first half. Then onto a bit of Lane - while I'm not reading Caught on the Hop by Derek Benfield - that sparklingly funny play I'm appearing in at the end of this month. Oh - and I think I just got cast in a lead role in a play called Tomb with a View last night as well. That one goes on in March oop in Bolton. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.28.28 |
I'm hoping to get The Ritual finished this weekend, I just need to find time to get through it in one sitting. I was expecting the change in tone as I'd read a bit about some of the research he did for the novel and didn't think it could be relevant without a big shift. It's an excellent book, though I think Apartment 16 is his strongest novel, for me at least. That got to me in ways no other horror novel has for a long time, I think it hit some triggers in my psyche. I had to put it down for a couple of days at one point to clear my head, it was disturbing me that much. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.142.245 |
Just finished the Ritual (didn't manage to get any reading time in on Friday or yesterday). How the fuck do you keep something that intense for so long? It's the sort of book that makes me wonder why I bother trying. Everything I've written seems like Mary Poppins in comparison. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Cracking novel, isn't it? I had a few minor issues with the final section, but on the whole it's one of the best straight horror novels I've read in years. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.28.28 |
Finished it yesterday. I've been a bit ill and didn't get much sleep on Friday night so I was drifting off now and then while reading it, which I think actually added to the nightmarish feel of it all. I'm going to read some non-fiction (or at least non-horror) for a bit now, because nothing's going to be able to follow that without feeling weak in comparison. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.29.252.215 |
'The Wizard Knight' has left all vestiges of children's fantasy far behind with the horrendous revelation of what lies in store for the Lady Idnn. A human woman, and a terrified virgin, who has been betrothed to King Gilling of the Angrborn Giants as, "a silver goblet into which he may pour his sperm", by her ambitious father, to whom our hero is under sworn allegiance. Now we're going to see Sir Able's sense of duty and honour tested to the limits... what price chivalry now? Into the final quarter of Book One, Craig, and I'd say I'll be finished it this week. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.142.245 |
I loved the way he managed to segue from the horror of the chase to the horror of confinement so brilliantly. Two entirely different types of horror and he managed to get both into the one book. The first scene in the attic in the last third of the book... OMG that was scary stuff. Those things in there may well be in my dreams tonight if I'm unlucky. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.150.142.245 |
My next read was supposed to be From Blue to Black, but due to being cast in A Tomb With A View by Norman Robbins it appears I'm going to have to read that first. I will be appearing in A Tomb with a View at the end of March in Bolton somewhere. I will also be appearing in Caught on the Hop by Derek Benfield at Chorley Old Road Methodist Church from January 25-28. http://www.phoenixtheatrebolton.co.uk/page11.html | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
(Stevie, you may want to take a break between the novels - read something else in the interim, just to catch your breath. Do tell me if you do; also, I can send you the link I found, that gives a very detailed synopsis of the first novel, so that you can refresh your memory beforehand. But either way, keep me abreast....) Sorry for the interruption all. But anyway - can't we start "What Are You Reading? (9)" anyway? This one's become terribly long to load now. We've just started the new year, a natural breaking point, as it is... what'd'ya all think?... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Craig, my plan is to get back into 'Imajica' - which I left nicely poised at the halfway mark - when I finish 'The Knight', and then to read 'The Wizard' after that. So no need to panic. |