Noctuary actually gave me bad dreams last night.
Awesome.
I can't remember the last something I read or saw gave me nightmares.
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Noctuary actually gave me bad dreams last night.
Awesome.
I can't remember the last something I read or saw gave me nightmares.
just finished home to roost, a mystery by a relatively unknown author, andrew garve. quite terrific. every time i read stuffs like this i feel d_davis's pain of how unfairly biased people are toward the genre.
I've not heard of this.Quote:
Originally Posted by lovejuice
I will check it out.
What style would you say it is? Strange and weird, or gross and scary, or what?
I recently got a collection of 4 novellas by T.E.D. Klein called, Dark Gods. It is supposed to be quite good.
Even though I don't read a lot of horror, I could see myself making an argument that the best horror could be the most "literary" of all the genres.
Agree?
umm...suddenly i feel like a visitor to a halloween town. :) no, when i say "mystery," i mean whodunit/detective/crime fiction, my pet genre. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
d'oh!Quote:
Originally Posted by lovejuice
I totally misread your post.
Just ignore me...
:|
Thomas Ligotti's story "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech" blew me away.
I think my interpretation is totally off, but whatever, right? I took from it what I did, and I thought it was brilliant.
Some incredibly strong, gothic horror imagery.
Awesome. I haven't read this one yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Good stuff, eh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
Yes, very.
I wanted to ask you, D, have you ever read any Jack Ketchum?
I read "Off Season", which wasn't particularly frightening - it seemed like it was just a venue for Ketchum to show off how brutally he can torture a character.
Maybe this is frightening to some readers, but I need something more than "wow, that's brutal" to really resonate with me.
I have very little desire to read Ketchum - just sounds kind of gross to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
D.S. read Off Season and reviewed it.
just finished a dickson carr's. like christie he's among golden age detective novelists. reading "lesser author" make me appreciate how good the dame is. carr might be cleverer as a trickster, but his prose and narrative is insufferable.
The whole time reading Ligotti's "The Last Feast of the Harlequin", I kept thinking "gee, this guy writes just like a modern Lovecraft".
Then when I got to the end of the story there was a line that says "Dedicated to the memory of H. P. Lovecraft"
Huzzah!
Many Horror-lit critics consider Ligotti to be one of the three pillars of the genre, the other two being Poe and Lovecraft.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
Yes, it mentions this on the back cover and (I believe) in the intro.
I'm enjoying the collection greatly. I'm looking forward to my bus ride home so I can read the next story!
I just got:
Mad Dog Summer - Joe R. Lansdale, a newer collection including a story about some guys that drive a Chevy into Hell to rescue Satan (1st edition, signed)
Grimscribe - Thomas Ligotti (for under $50!)
Legion - William Peter Blatty
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
Sweet!
I'm having trouble finding stuff by Thomas Ligotti - which is a damn, dirty shame.
And I realize it's off topic, but I was really happy to see your very positive review of Exorcist III. I love it, and I think when it comes down to comparing it to the original film, the only reason I give the original my top spot is due to purely sentimental reasons.
Exorcist II is one of the few films which I have seen many times and still manages to frighten me.
Still really enjoying Ligotti's collection.
Even the works that I don't find particularly frightening are very, shall I say, mind-expanding.
The last one I read is probably my favorite so far, called "The Spectacles in the Drawer".
I read about 1/2 of The Exorcist yesterday, and I really like it.
It's definitely creeping me the heck out.
The story "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World" was fantastic.
Such a totally weird concept, which Ligotti communicates with great precision.
Did you read The Tsalal yet? I didn't care for this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by megladon8
Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Davis
No, I think I'm like one or two stories away from it.
They haven't all been mind-blowingly amazing, but what author can you possibly name whose every single work is a masterpiece? Especially with someone like Ligotti who's written so much.
I really like the way this collection is arranged. Stories with very superficial similarities are put next to one another, seemingly in an effort to get the reader to look deeper into the stories than "here are two stories about mannequins and dummies", or "here are two stories about folklore".
Just finished The Exorcist.
Good book.
I love how subtly it deals with Father Karras's crisis of faith. It really is an extraordinary study of this character's problem.
I also appreciate how Blatty doesn't give any easy answers. It's a mystery without a real solution, much like real world questions of faith, theism, and atheism.
There are some wonderful exchanges of dialog in the book, and Blatty totally captures each of the characters and gives them all a unique voice. Really well done.
Also, some of the situations and lines of dialog in this book were eventually used in the filmed versions of The Ninth Configuration and Exorcist III.
Good stuff, and now I'm on to Legion.
Legion starts off great.
There is a marked improvement in Blatty's prose and thematic direction here.
:lol:Quote:
Q: It's always seemed to me that The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration, and Legion formed a sort of "unofficial" trilogy -- with The Ninth Configuration serving as a thematic bridge between the more overt horrors in The Exorcist and the intensely introverted struggles of Kinderman in Legion. Do you view the three novels as a trilogy? If so, why? And if not, why?
WPB: Yes, they form -- at least in my mind -- a trilogy. Taken together, they are all about the eternal questions that nag at Woody Allen
http://darkplanet.basespace.net/nonfict/Blatty.html
Legion is really, really good so far (1/2 through).
Blatty totally nails the personality of Kinderman, the policeman, here. He was already an awesome and memorable character in the Exorcist, but in Legion he is even more so. Blatty really captures a certain amount of maturity in the character - Kinderman has grown and changed in between the time of the two novels. He is wiser, more inquisitive, more curious, and a bit more sarcastic. He is also more thoughtful. I can tell that the events in the Exorcist had a profound impact on him, but because of his skeptical nature he is not easily swayed to any one answer.
This is a really well written mystery, teeming with nuanced character interactions and a very interesting plot.
So, Legion is dang good.
A little anti-climatic in terms of plot, but still...it is a very interesting and well written novel.
The final reveal of Kinderman's theory of evil and the universe is fascinating, and one that I've never heard of.
Highly recommended.