Repetition is the essence of professionalism.
A math teacher told me that once, so there you have it.
Anyway, I haven't read 'salem's Lot since it blew my mind at age 15, so I wonder how it would hold up.
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Repetition is the essence of professionalism.
A math teacher told me that once, so there you have it.
Anyway, I haven't read 'salem's Lot since it blew my mind at age 15, so I wonder how it would hold up.
The thing that bothered me most about Pet Cemetery was the description of the boy's hat post-accident. Ugh.
So far, about 1/3 of the way through, Stephen King's Revival is very, very good. It's a really slow burn - there hasn't been a hint of horror or the supernatural yet. It feels like a companion piece to 11/22/63 in the way that it celebrates nostalgia, and it also touches upon two themes very near to my heart: religion and music. I have no idea where it's going to go, nor how it's going to get there, and I like that.
"Read" an audiobook of Island of Dr. Moreau today while I was baking for Thanksgiving. Fun! Thought its subject matter was gonna head in a Frankenstein-ian "tampered in God's domain" type of message, but realized halfway through it was almost a satire of a man confronted with mankind's own primal desires and the efforts of society to tame them ("the Law," the hero giving the monsters the idea of an afterlife). Thought of the works of Jack London, especially The Sea Wolf. The last chapter puts a little too neat of a button on that theme, though. Wish I could say more on the craft, but audiobooks sometimes make it tough to recall passages or notice the ebb and flow of a paragraph, etc., but the sequences of suspense still carry a raw stalk-and-slash urgency all these years later.
Wells really was some kind of something.
Stephen King's Revival is very good. It's a sloth-slow build up to what might be King's best ending; to say it's deliberately paced is an understatement, but it's better for it and never drags. For some that might not be saying much, since King is often accused of dropping the ball at the last moment, but any author would be envious of the way King punctuates his dramatic story. The final truth is dark and bleak; it reaches Lovecraftian depths of despair. And speaking of Lovecraft, (Revival was partially inspired by HPL, and more specifically by Arthur Machen's masterpiece The Great God Pan), Revival has it's roots firmly planted in the conventions and tropes of the weird fiction genre. It also happens to be full of those great little human-drama moments that King is so great at illustrating. It's not quite top-tier King, but it's solidly middle-tier.
Revival has been on my mind a lot during the last couple of days. It has staying power.
Started Fritz Leiber's Swords in the Mist, the 3rd collection of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, and it is great. The first story, "The Cloud of Hate," tells the story of a cult creating a toxic cloud that travels around the city of Lankhmar, turning all of those it touches into ruthless, hateful creatures. Of course the cloud has no effect on the Mouser (he's already selfish and evil) and Fafhrd (perhaps too into violence to be influenced thus), and then the two have to fight off a gang of assassins and an Eldritch horror. It's short, extremely well written, and, like most of these stories, developers the two main characters with the skill of a great master.
Fafhrd and Gray Mouser are two of the most interesting characters in all of fantasy literature. They're complex, nuanced, and always entertaining. I love how they each serve a demonic alien entity, and how they don't really like each other much, but they tolerate each other because it serves their purposes.
Highly recommended for fans of sword and sorcery and weird fiction. It's as good as the genre gets.
"Bird Box" was a great read. Have some reservations about the ending, but it was a very entertaining horror tale.
D - I sent you a pm, but I will just ask here.
I have two copies of Lansdale's latest, "Prisoner 489". Would you like one?
Sure - I'll buy one off you. Thought I responded to your PM.
I ordered it, but it never shipped, apparently.
Maybe mine shipped to your address! :)
No I never got a reply.
You don't have to pay for it, I got it for free. That would be a dick move on my part.
Well then I'll send you something for it.
We can book-swap.
Would you mind firing me a PM with your current mailing address?
Do you have the Hap and Leonard novel Rumble Tumble?
No I have not. I have the first one or two Hap & Leonard books but have yet to read either of them.
Alright, I'll send Rumble Tumble your way.
About a hundred pages into House of Leaves....loving it.
Taking a little break from House of Leaves (still loving it), to read one of my most anticipated novels in recent memory: Clive Barker's Scarlet Gospels. When I first saw the book, I was a little disappointed. This is his first major adult work in over 12 years, and I was expecting a massive epic on par with Imajica. However, it is a relatively slim volume, just over 300 pages. I really, really wanted epic Barker on this.
But that issue aside, it is very good and very nasty. This is Barker at his most gleefully-gruesome.
Wait, what?
I read several articles leading up to the release of The Scarlet Gospels saying that it was nearly 2000 pages.
It ended up just being 300??
Maybe he got a really, really good editor. :)
This is the one where D'Amour and Hell Priest (Pinhead) cross paths, right?
Yep! The opening scene with Pinhead is supremely gory.
And D'Amour has just discovered a puzzle box.
Scarlet Gospels is a pretty big disappointment. Of course, that's probably due to my own expectations. While reading about it the last few-many years, I imagined a much more significant and weighty tome, something more along the lines of Imajica, Weaveworld and The Great and Secret Show, something with some real meat and meaning. What it is, is a super action-packed (complete with action set pieces and one-liners) B-movie of a book, that reads more like Barker wanted to make a modern horror-action film/video game than a piece of literary body horror. The whole thing so slight and insignificant. There is a point about 1/2 through that I thought it was going to take a major twist, and become something incredibly awesome and different. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen, and instead what we get is typical action-film fair in which the villain kidnaps the protagonist's best friend and then the protagonist has to assemble a team of bad-asses to infiltrate the villain's layer. YAWN. And Pinhead is nothing more than a mustache-twirling superhero villain.
Joe R. Lansdale's At the Drive In has more gravitas.
I'm wondering if Barker has spent too long in YA land, because it reads like a YA adventure, just with more gore and sex talk.
New Hap and Leonard novel - Honky Tonk Samurai - coming next February. Also, coming to Sundance TV a Hap and Leonard series.
Finished Lansdales Prisoner 489. Pretty good little story. I wish he'd work with horror more often now, and leave the coming of age tales behind.