Horror, Fantasy, and other non-sci-fi genres...

[D_Davis]

Picked this up today:

A bizarro tribute to Spaghetti westerns, HP Lovecraft, and foot fetish enthusiasts. Screwhorse, Nevada is legendary for its violent and unusual pleasures, but when a mysterious gunslinger drags a wooden donkey into the desert town, the stage is set for a bloodbath unlike anything the west has ever seen. His name is Calamaro, and he's from New Jersey. Featuring Cthulhu-worshipping Indians, a woman with four feet, a Giallo-esque serial killer, a crazed gunman who is obsessed with sucking on candy, Syphilis-ridden mutants, ass juice, burping pistols, sexually transmitted tattoos, and a house devoted to the freakiest fetishes, Jordan Krall's Fistful of Feet is the weirdest western ever written.

[Marley]

What a great title, Fistful of feet...:lol:

Let me know how this one turns out because it sounds pretty darn cool, D.

[Russ]

What a great title, Fistful of feet...:lol:

..and should be read whilst listening to this:

[D_Davis]

..and should be read whilst listening to this:

Classic. This is great.

[D_Davis]

Up next...

[D_Davis]

So, apparently there is a book store in Clovis, Ca, that has a complete collection of the original Arkham House books. I'm scheduling some time in December to take a look; I'll also need to save a couple thousand dollars by then...

I picked up the one they had on the shelf - Lovecraft's The Dark Brotherhood - this week. Good price, too - $45. First edition, beautiful dust jacket, great binding. Some of the others range from $50-$500.

[megladon8]

Picked this up...






...because I thought the cover was uber-cool, and it sounded very neat.

"Like something you read on the underside of a freeway overpass in a fever dream. The Orange Eats Creeps is visionary, pervy, unhinged. It will mess you up." -Shelley Jackson

"Grace Krilanovich's first book is a steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism—the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe."—The Believer

It's the '90s Pacific Northwest refracted through a dark mirror, where meth and madness hash it out in the woods. . . . A band of hobo vampire junkies roam the blighted landscape—trashing supermarket breakrooms, praying to the altar of Poison Idea and GG Allin at basement rock shows, crashing senior center pancake breakfasts—locked in the thrall of Robitussin trips and their own wild dreams.

A girl with drug-induced ESP and an eerie connection to Patty Reed (a young member of the Donner Party who credited her survival to her relationship with a hidden wooden doll), searches for her disappeared foster sister along "The Highway That Eats People," stalked by a conflation of Twin Peaks' "Bob" and the Green River Killer, known as Dactyl.

With a scathing voice and penetrating delivery, Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps is one of the most ferocious debut novels in memory.

[D_Davis]

Re-reading one of my favorites...

[megladon8]

I lent that book to my previous boss and he never gave it back

[D_Davis]

I lent that book to my previous boss and he never gave it back

I lost all of my single-volume Elric books, so I feel your pain.

[Ezee E]

I'd hate to have the last name of Moorcock.

[D_Davis]

I'd hate to have the last name of Moorcock.

At least his first name wasn't Richard.

[D_Davis]

For as long as I live, I will always remember two things from the first Elric book: the choir in which each member has been surgically altered to sing one perfect pitch, and the torture scene with Doctor Jest.

[D_Davis]

Just picked this up:



Cannot wait to read it; it will be first experience with Manly Wade Wellman. Silver John sounds like a character custom made for me: he's a guitar-playing, folk-singing Christian warrior who fights demons and monsters in the Appalachian mountains. He's part Solomon Kane, part Johnny Cash, part Father Thomas Merton. I've heard this is old-pulp adventure at its absolute finest, and next up on my reading stack.

[D_Davis]

A recent re-read has confirmed my long-held opinion that Elric of Melnibone is, indeed, my favorite fantasy series. Moorcock creates an economic Epic, and within these short 200 pages more things happen than in many other fantasies that seem to go on and on, for thousands of pages, across multiple volumes.

This first volume sets the stage for what is one of the most bizarre, emotional, and creative adventures I've encountered. In this book, Moorcock creates the tapestry of high and low fantasy and cosmic horror that makes up Elric's world, a tapestry rich with evocative imagery and strange inhabitants.

There is simply a ton of plot packed into this first volume. A world is built, battles are waged, cities are destroyed, alliances are forged, men and women are betrayed, God's and elementals are summoned, and the fate of an entire layer of a multi-verse is set in motion.

I'll be revisiting the rest of this series over the next few months.

[D_Davis]

Read the first Silver John tale this morning, Ugly Bird. Really awesome. I can tell I'm going to love the heck out of this. It's a very American Fantasy, much like how LotR is a very British Fantasy. Wellman draws upon the history, folklore, and customs of the deep south in a way similar to what Lansdale does with East Texas, only Wellman clearly likes people more than Lansdale does. I can't wait to read more.

I also just ordered the 4 Silver John novels. I bought one years ago - The Old Gods Waken - but never read it. Now I know how big of a mistake that was!

[D_Davis]

Huh, apparently Manly Wade Wellman was nominated for a Pulitzer (I think the only pulp-writer to be so), and beat out William Faulkner for a mystery prize, to which Faulkner responded:

“What a commentary. In France I am the father of a literary movement. In Europe I am considered the best modern American, and among the first of all writers. In America, I eke out a hack’s motion picture wages by winning second prize in a manufactured mystery story contest.”

What a douche-bag.

http://orelitrev.startlogic.com/v2n2...t.htm#faulkner

[megladon8]

Purchased three books today...

[D_Davis]

Looks like some good purchases, meg.

[megladon8]

Looks like some good purchases, meg.

"Person" particularly intrigues me.

I've not had much luck with this recent wave of "bizarro fiction", as (in my experience) the writing is pretty terrible.

However this seems to be considered "bizarro fiction" by simple association as it's published by a firm that deals with a lot of bizarro authors.

It's a 90 page novella.

You see him at the liquor store. You see him at the bus stop, trying to look at you without being seen. Who is he? He is a person. In this debut novel, a person walks around Chicago contemplating the possibility of starving to death on purpose. He has sex with his neighbor. He goes out to look for a job but just buys little plastic dogs from homeless people instead. Who is the person? The person is you. The person is me. The person is sitting in his room shooting an empty pellet gun at his face, feeling the slow exhaustion of a Co2 cartridge. The person sits in a bathtub reading his roommate's yearbook. He wants to create a contract mandating worldwide friendship. Person invents new and splendid ways of not getting along. You will read this book and remember why you mainly read books that have sex in them. You will become . . . a person.

[D_Davis]

Sounds interesting.

[D_Davis]

Another character that reminds me of Silver John is Roland, from the Dark Tower. I'd be shocked if Wellman's creation wasn't an inspiration for King.

Man these stories are great.

[D_Davis]

Man, Silver John is the best.

[D_Davis]

You know that feeling when you meet someone and you instantly hit it off and wonder how and why the two of you had never bet before and how you ever got along without one another? That's how I feel after reading Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories. Some of the best fiction I've ever read. So full of American folklore, with lots of heart and a ton of scares.

[megladon8]

Have begun reading David Maine's "Monster, 1959".

It's good so far. Like if James Morrow at his most sarcastic were to write a novelization of King Kong.