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Originally Posted by lovejuice
i'm quite surprised by how talky it is and philosophical it tries to be. from the moment she appears, the novel is one monologue on immortality after the other. as an adventure novel, it also defies convention; the conflict resolves itself without the main characters lifting any finger.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mara
I'm listening to Benchley's Jaws and Gaiman's Fragile Things in my car.
My opinion is that people should not read Jaws, but should consider Fragile Things. A short story collection, its first tale, "A Study in Emerald," is a curious, enjoyable fusion of H. P. Lovecraft and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. That's all I've gotten through, anyway.
EDIT:
"A Study in Emerald" is available to read as a PDF on Gaiman's site. View or download here.
Jaws is one of those books where the movie was actually leaps and bounds better. Still I kind of like it, more so as a guilty pleasure really.
I'm nearing the end of "Needful Things". I have about 200 pages left.
It really wasn't a good book to pick to try to get my reading binge going again, because with my work schedule (and the intensity of my work) I don't really read during the week. So when I'm only reading on weekends, it takes some time to get through a book that's almost 1000 pages.
That being said, I'm still really enjoying it. I can definitely agree that it's not top-tier King, but I really don't understand the hate it gets. It seems the general consensus is that it's bottom tier King and just not good at all, which I don't understand. It has serious problems, but it's still good.
I think there are a couple of formidable problems with it. First off, its sheer size (page length, setting, cast of characters) suggests that it's of loftier goals, but the whole thing is really just a twisted, jokey attack on these awful people. Second off, the premise is so derivative of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes that it's sometimes hard to forget that Bradbury's work was so much more interesting and delicate. Thirdly, the ending...Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
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I didn't hate it, and I enjoyed seeing how completely decadent some of the cast got by book's end. Also, Leland Gaunt is another loving addition to King's rogue's gallery of not-quite-human antagonists, which also includes the venerable Randall Flagg, Andre Linoge, and Kurt Barlow.
SIDEBAR: Is the best name ever for a supporting villain Richard Throckett Straker? I think so.
Tales of the Dying Earth is wild, and comical in a way....
It's all kind of like this:
"What ho, wizard! I will destroy you!"
"But alas, I can only be vanquished by one certain spell."
"You vile demon! I know that spell, and cast 'Orb of Penetrating Penetration!"
"Ha! You mortal fool! Feast your eyes upon this, the 'Totem of Protection from the Orb of Penetrating Penetration.' Now I will devour your soul with this, my blade, The Soul Devouring Blade of Hades."
"You lecherous villain! I actually used the 'Orb of Perfect Penetration!' Your totem is useless and I will banish you to hell!"
"Arrghghghghg!"
That sounds like Harry Potter.
Or Hellboy II.
Yeah - Vance pretty much defined a lot of what we think of when we think of fantasy. The term "Vancian" is used to describe this style of fantasy. Hellboy is definitely Vancian.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Finally started Algernon Blackwood's Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories.
So the first two stories I didn't like much. The first, "Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House," was OK, but not great. It had some good atmosphere, and I loved the esoteric nature of the Hebrew mysticism, but it didn't really pull me in. "The Willows," the second story, did even less to interest me.
However, all has been redeemed with the third tale, "The Insanity of Jones." Holy crap! Absolutely brilliant, on par with any weird fiction I've ever read, and better than most of that. As far as workplace/corporate horror goes, I'd say it's better than Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and as good as Ligotti's My Work is Not Yet Done. Published in 1907, I cannot fathom reading this back then - it must have been brutally shocking. Even by today's standards, the ending explodes with the kind of fervor and disturbing violence one might find in Lansdale, or even a Tarantino, or a Pekinpah film. It's twisted, frightening, beautifully written, and expertly executed. You can read it here:
http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a2334.pdf
If the rest of this collection is half as good, I'll be happy. Even if it's not, it doesn't really matter, because this story alone is good enough to carry Blackwood up into the ranks of a master.
He should let Alan Dean Foster write it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dukefrukem
Jaws was pretty poor. Benchley's prose was serviceable, impressive only when he described the shark attacks, which achieved a reasonably vivid life. One character's last image was "the black eye of the fish, fogged over by the red of his own blood." Visceral and immediate. However, some force compelled Benchley to devote a third of the book to an adulterous escapade between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper, and that subplot never even resolves. It slows the narrative to a crawl, switching the book's entire point of view for a space, and Benchley seems to purposefully ignore the fact that somewhere, outside his cornball affair, there's a shark that's eating people.
C
The audio recording I listened to was well-read by Erik Steele, although his voice takes a couple of cues from the film (his Larry Vaughn sounds much like Murray Hamilton).
i was confused at first, thinking i was in the FDT and thought to myself "whoa! someone on matchcut doesn't like jaws!!?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Dead & Messed Up
Algernon Blackwood's "The Man Who Found Out" - Pretty much the prototypical weird tale. A man discovers the ultimate secret, thus extinguishing his spirit and his will to live; and of course we, the readers, are never told of what exactly the man read. Classic, and very well done.
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Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
I imagine it was the number 42.
I don't know how many of you clowns use Google Books, but it can be a fun resource when you have time to kill at work, which I have plenty of. Anyway, I've found the following short story collections, free to read in full:
Robert Chambers's The King in Yellow
M. R. James's Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
An H. P. Lovecraft Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination
H. G. Wells's Twelve Stories and a Dream
I usually turn to Archive.org, but both are great.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dead & Messed Up
Lots of early weird fiction on both.
My mom finished "Under the Dome".
She said it was masterful until the last 100 pages, and King absolutely destroyed it with a horrible ending.
She told me a bit about it and while I admittedly haven't read it myself (will at some point) the ending did sound pretty stupid.
There is nothing wrong with the ending.
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Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
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Yeah. It's great. Right out of the Twilight Zone or something. It's chilling in its depiction of how beings can be so senselessly cruel to one another, especially when the cruelty is disguised as a form of flippant entertainment.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Plus, even if the ending totally sucked, I don't understand how the punctuation point can completely ruin all that has come before. The ending is only one point - the end. It's the journey that matters. Never really put much credit into a great ending. It's just the end. The end happens once, the journey happens the entire time.
Yes but the execution sounds horrid. From what she tells me, up 'til then the book is quite a horrifying look at this community of characters and how the arrival of this dome tears them apart and decimates them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
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Plus, even if the ending totally sucked, I don't understand how the punctuation point can completely ruin all that has come before. The ending is only one point - the end. It's the journey that matters. Never really put much credit into a great ending. It's just the end. The end happens once, the journey happens the entire time.
I'm 100% certain I've seen you dislike things due to bad endings in the past.
Apologies if my tone in that post came across as needlessly abrasive...I really didn't intend that. I'm just noticing it now upon re-reading.
I was actually smiling while I was writing it...and not a mean, spiteful smile.
Meh, whatever. Don't read it. I think it's his best book.
Algernon Blackwood's Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories
Both "The Man Who Found Out," and "The Insanity of Jones" are 5-star stories. Absolutely fantastic. In these two examples, Blackwood shines like a master wordsmith, crafting stories that are eloquent and frightening, haunting and memorable, and well written without the overly-purple prose that can sometimes bog down weird fiction. Unfortunately the rest of the stories here didn't capture my imagination like these two did, and I think it is because of that aforementioned overly-purple prose. Like Smith and Lovecraft et al., Blackwood does have a tendency to loose sight of the narrative and characters through the layer upon layer of abundantly-descriptive passages, and so, if not in the proper mood, I am unable to fully absorb the stories (this happened a great deal with The Willows and The Wendigo, two of his most highly praised stories). But those two first-mentioned stories are worth the price of the book alone.