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Post by Bartwald on Oct 19, 2010 9:13:34 GMT -5
- Something about a death, something about a fire. Peter Straub. I'm pretty sure I have read it, but can't recall the plot... What was it about, Fenril? (Apart from the fact that it was, well, about a death and a fire, of course...) |
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Post by spacer on Oct 19, 2010 12:27:05 GMT -5
The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark - fine sequel of classic Wyndham's Day of the Triffids.
Author tried to imitate the style of Wyndham in which he succeeded quite well.
The only major setback - how the ending was handled - too obvious and too much of a crappy happy ending. On the whole, quite good and entertaining book.
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Post by Bartwald on Oct 19, 2010 15:11:16 GMT -5
Good to hear the sequel's fine. I remember it was you, spacer, who told me to get hold of The Day of the Triffids many years ago, and it's still one of the best postapocalyptic novels I have read to this day.
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Post by Fenril on Oct 20, 2010 17:12:16 GMT -5
- Something about a death, something about a fire. Peter Straub. I'm pretty sure I have read it, but can't recall the plot... What was it about, Fenril? (Apart from the fact that it was, well, about a death and a fire, of course...) Heh, naturally. The story is in the book "Houses without doors". The plot is hard to describe, basically a man puts up a show with a magic taxi (!) which gives the audience all sorts of 3-D visions, so like a modern update of "Nyarlathotep". This was one of the strangest stories on our "story club", very unusual both for Straub and for american horror (in this case, more like dark fantasy) in general. |
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Post by Bartwald on Oct 21, 2010 15:26:21 GMT -5
Oh yeah, it's coming back to me now. Not one of the best stories in Houses Without Doors, in my opinion, but it sure is weird. With Straub you have to be prepared to go all different places and you can never be sure if you really grasped all his ideas. But that's what like about his writing.
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Post by Fenril on Oct 21, 2010 16:41:28 GMT -5
Me, too. I like writers who can genuinely surprise you, especially in the horror genre.
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Post by Fenril on Oct 21, 2010 16:44:00 GMT -5
In the meantime, we've read:
- The suitable surrounding. Ambrose Bierce.
- The wind. Ray Bradbury.
- Homo homini lupus. Bef.
- La herencia de Cthulhu (The inheritance of Cthulhu). Emiliano González.
- The crowd. Ray Bradbury.
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Post by spacer on Oct 22, 2010 18:19:08 GMT -5
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Post by Bartwald on Oct 26, 2010 9:15:22 GMT -5
Reading now: Lee Child's The Killing Floor - a more than decent thriller with some spectacular action scenes and a very violent love him/hate him antihero Jack Reacher. If yoy haven't met Jack so far, you really should grab this book (the first in the series of fifteen) and make up your mind about him.
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Post by Fenril on Nov 9, 2010 14:35:08 GMT -5
We ended the "spooky story" thing with three more entries: - The return of the sorcerer. Clark Ashton Smith. - The story of Harry. Beatriz Álvarez Klein. - The haunted boy. Carson McCullers. Somewhat appropiately, the last one isn't so much a scary story as it's a story about fear, it's place in life and the need to both accept and deal with it. The round robin idea didn't quite work, so instead I offer one of the stories, traslated to english by the author herself: THE STORY OF HARRY
By Beatriz Álvarez Klein Harry Hurry was a Hari hurled into a hurricane of horror. Whirlwinds whispered hoarse, and his head hung hectically heavy. Haggard, he heaved himself and headed toward a hedge of hemlock. Here he was harassed by hallucinations, for heath, hedge and hill –all were haunted! “Help! Oh, help!” he hollered. But the hissing of wind and hail hampered his hap. He was helpless. Then he was heard… That horrid whine! That hideous howl! –hidden by the haze, hasting through the heath: a hundred heinous hungry hounds! Now Harry Hurry, the hollering Hari, is heard on windy nights and hovers helpless, harassed by the howling hounds, across the hazy haunted heath. |
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 9, 2010 18:12:32 GMT -5
Nice! Must have been quite a feat to translate it with all the necessary h's and everything. But it works fine for me.
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Post by Fenril on Nov 10, 2010 18:42:19 GMT -5
She's pretty good with translations in general.
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Post by ZapRowsdower on Nov 15, 2010 2:51:57 GMT -5
Just finished reading Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne (excellent book). Started on Chuck Palhniuk's Haunted.
Just got back into reading in the past few months. Here's a list of novels I've taken the time to read:
"Downsize This" by Michael Moore
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley
"It" by Stephen King
"John Dies at the End" by David Wong
"Survivor" by Chuck Palahniuk
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 15, 2010 8:31:26 GMT -5
Glad you've finally read something by Stephen King - and what a great start it must've been with this particular novel!
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Post by ZapRowsdower on Nov 15, 2010 21:23:37 GMT -5
"It" was actually my first Stephen King novel, and one of my favorite novels of all time. The movie doesn't even come close to doing it justice.
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