Book Talk discussion
What Are You Reading?
message 1451:
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Gatorman
(new)
Oct 16, 2012 08:51AM
I've read all three of Flynn's books. She is terrific.
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Just finished Boy's Life. Wow. Truly an amazing book. 5 stars easily. Thanks to all those here who recommended it so highly. Nice job!
I read Boy's Life earlier this year. Great book. Right now I just started Toby's Room by Pat Barker. I really enjoy her novels. She really gets inside the heads of her characters and I feel that she exposes how people really feel and act. I have read pretty much everything that she has written and especially enjoyed the Regeneration Trilogy about World War 1----not heroic at all, so dark it was hard to keep reading at times.
Just finished Comic-Con Strikes Again!, a kindle short about, well, you guessed it, the San Diego Comic Convention. Starts off a little slow, eventually picks up some good speed and becomes interesting. The very very ending is neither weak nor strong, but the thing on the whole turned out to be a worthwhile read.Also finished The Wendigo, which had some wonderfully chilling parts and some really clever writing. The monster itself, oddly enough, doesn't make the kind of appearance you'd expect, and I felt a bit short of a pay-off. But the atmosphere and foreboding and psychological detail was so good that I still enjoyed the read a lot. Oddly enough, no cannibalism, which the Wendigo myth is known for.
Took a peek into Classic Ghost Stories 2, but it begins with a story by M.R. James who can really drag things out, and has no table of contents. I hate it when there's no table of contents! I don't want to have to page through an entire book (or read through it) just to find the stories I might like.
Does anyone know how to see the bookmarks others make on your kindle? I already see the highlights, but there is nothing in my "settings" options to allow bookmarks, unless it's stuck invisibly under some other option.
Also reading "Morphology of the Folktale," an interesting but pretty academic study of how fairy tales are best classified and how their permutations work. In other words, the structures they hold in common. If you've ever heard of Joseph Campbell's "heroic cycle" or read "Hero with A Thousand Faces," his book that first proposed it, or Chris Vogler's attempts to distill it into screenplay-friendly books and lectures, you've got the gist of what "Morphology of the Folktale" is doing.
The first part is rough going, with plenty of passing academic references it is assumed one knows already (or cares about). Doing so raises issues a lay reader like me knows nothing about, so that makes the book a bit confusing to start. But when the preliminaries are out of the way, the book becomes very readable and interesting. So much so that I stayed up very late reading it.
Marc wrote: "Just finished Comic-Con Strikes Again!, a kindle short about, well, you guessed it, the San Diego Comic Convention. Starts off a little slow, eventually picks up some good speed and becomes intere..."I felt the same way about The Wendigo, Marc.
I don't know how to see the bookmarks of others. I don't even know if you can. A lot of the older collections of short stories that are free are like that-no clickable TOC. I HATE that!
Marc wrote: "Also finished The Wendigo, which had some wonderfully chilling parts and some really clever writing."Which "Wendigo" book would that be?
Just started
, the second book in The Passage trilogy.
Algernon Blackwood was the first horror author I ever read.I'm still a fan.
I have Wendigo on my Kindle. Sounds like I need to get to it.
You should.and The Willows.
That one made me a horror fan for life.
I just started THIRTY MILES SOUTH OF DRY COUNTY by some guy. I like how it incorporates elements from another of that guy's books.
Am reading Dracula for the first time.Read a good essay about it in Peter Straub's otherwise forgettable catch-all "Sides," a book of short pieces, and remembered it while reading Dracula, so now I'm reading that essay again. There are a few good essays in there, but there are quite a few clunkers and even super-clunkers.
Think I'll stop reading the essay for a while, though, as it assumes you've read the book and is rife with spoilers. The book not matching the movies means there are still spoilers to be had.
I liked it, Kealan.Bit of a departure for Grant, but I really liked the concept. Kinda like DUEL meets DELIVERANCE.
Mine, too.
Dracula for the first time Marc? I loved Dracula. I re-read it not that long ago and it stood the test of time, for me.
I hope you enjoy it!
Charlene wrote: "Dracula for the first time Marc? I loved Dracula. I re-read it not that long ago and it stood the test of time, for me.
I hope you enjoy it!"
I tried it when I was much younger, but the sort of meandering scene-setting common to its Victorian style put me off it, back then. I have more patience now.
I really am enjoying it quite a bit now. I think Straub's essay helped me discover a few subtleties in it that there's a pretty fair chance I'd have missed otherwise. The way Stoker handles weather and atmosphere, particularly.
I love that old Victorian style, so maybe that's part of the reason I loved it so much. I also have a soft spot for stories told in the epistolary fashion, so there's another reason.
I hope you continue to enjoy it.
I like the Victorian style sometimes too. I just like a beginning to give me an idea where it might be going while setting the scene. The introduction to Harker's diaries reads as a bit random. He blathers on about sundry minutiae and we don't know why we should care yet. I still don't think it's a particularly strong beginning.
I'll give it credit for setting the vampire archetype, and keeping the memory of Vlad the Impaler alive, but it's not what you'ed call a gripping book.Did you know that, at the time it was published, Richard Marsh's The Beetle was a bigger hit?
I didn't know that. I added that one to my TBR. I can't believe Dracula is getting such little love.
Some books just don't age as well as others.
Exactly.Give that man a smoking jacket and a pipe!
I personally prefer older, slower paced works to a lot of the modern "hit the gas and slam into the back cover doing 120 mph" style books, but there is a limit.
I think for a writer it's really important to read all sorts of things with different paces, but as a reader I'd rather have nothing but books where I go, "It's over ALREADY?"
My instinct is to compare to similarly slow-paced beginnings, like that of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" or Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" (which share strong similarities with each other). In both cases, no action is advanced -- you have scene setting instead. But both beginnings are very tightly written -- Jackson's beginning is a true masterpiece -- and immediately pull you from your ordinary life into a freefall into another world thick with atmosphere and intrigue. Though they concentrate on atmosphere instead of incident, still they let you know you are going someplace very special immediately and are already in masterful hands.
Dracula, by contrast, starts in a random, meandering way. "I'm someone you've never heard of, and I'm sort of futzing around and noodling in my diary a bit. Whatever's going on, there's no sense rushing it ..."
The book soon picks up greater speed and color, but its opening doesn't work hard to create a strong initial impression or sell the reader on reading further. Of it's type, it's not a top-notch start.
Jon Recluse wrote: "I personally prefer older, slower paced works to a lot of the modern "hit the gas and slam into the back cover doing 120 mph" style books, but t..."Those books can be fun, but wind up feeling like empty calories.
Marc wrote: "Jon Recluse wrote: "I personally prefer older, slower paced works to a lot of the modern "hit the gas and slam into the back cover doing 120 mph" style books, but t..."Those books can be fun, but..."
Exactly!
You've all presented valid arguments, I guess. I love both styles, Jon. The slow burn and the fast. : )
I find good things in both.
The sad thing is because of audiences attention spans forever shortening, the Victorian and gothic classics will no longer be read. It is a bit the same for old black and white films and television shows, due to their pacing, the younger generation does not have the patience. You will notice that they are all but disappearing from the television screens because of this.Everything today is as Jon wrote, hit the gas at 120mph.
Almost all Victorian novels at that time have a habit of meandering and Stoker's novels are probably the worse. It is interesting to read his short story 'Dracula's Guest'. It is quite an interesting story.
How much action can you get with your balls to the wall, anyway?Sounds uncomfortable.
Thanks to the remarkable kindness of Glen Krisch, a true gentleman, I am about to read SHARP OBJECTS!
Kealan wrote: "Cemetery Dance continues their 13 Days of Halloween 99 cent e-book series with "The Toll" by yours truly! i just finished reading THE TOLL. was like reading a long lost classic, a twisted love child of daphne du maurier an edger allen poe. loved it kealan! was it as fun to write as it was for me to read?
I thought this Dennis Lehane interview might interest some of you:http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/styl...
I read THE TOLL.A delightful little shocker, perfect for one of those old Hammer anthology films. Old school without the cheese.
I have to say, it reminded me of Le Fanu's work.
Mr. Burke's mastery of the short story is second to none.
Kealan Patrick Burke is the equal of Charles L. Grant, and a worthy successor to the title of "Master of Quiet Horror".
I'm almost done with [book:Rosemary's Baby|228296. It's surprisingly good!I love the author's sparse use of language. No word is wasted. As a result, this book goes by FAST! Plus there's the feeling of dread hanging over everything-it makes for a tense read as well as a quick one.
Just started McCammon's They Thirst. Three chapters in and I can see that I am going to really like this book.
I am not on Facebook. There are only a small group of us left. Eventually we will be hiding out in a small farmhouse in Kansas, hiding from the Zukerberg's minions who lack only our small group to complete world domination and open a portal somewhere to allow all of Lovecraft's monsters to slither into our dimension. Or I am just anti-social. One or the other.I bought the Kindle edition anyway. I am looking forward to his zombie book and the Brother's Keeper book coming out---hopefully soon.
Chris wrote: "I am not on Facebook. There are only a small group of us left. Eventually we will be hiding out in a small farmhouse in Kansas, hiding from the Zukerberg's minions who lack only our small group to..."I was a hold out for a long time, Chris. I finally got on there last year or so. Mostly I just use it to keep an eye on my favorite authors.
Thanks for the heads up, Jon! I did respond to Glen's post.
And the guys holding down your hands while Zuckerberg approached with the bolt cutters had nothing to do with it?I am being stubborn, I know. I would probably like it if I joined.
Chris wrote: "I am not on Facebook. There are only a small group of us left. Eventually we will be hiding out in a small farmhouse in Kansas, hiding from the Zukerberg's minions who lack only our small group to..."Okay.
Who's Zukerberg?
I always wanted a minion.
I'm anti-social, too. I'm only on Facebook because I thrive on abuse.
Looking forward to them, too.
Zuckerberg is the creator of Facebook.
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