November 2017; Reading Thread

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Continuing with Stephen King I will read Salem's Lot next.
I need to find other horror authors to read too. I see there's a Horror Recommendations thread on here...

I just love that book. So good.

I'm 100 pages into The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. He is one of those authors I read and instantly turn green with envy. So good.
 
Continuing with Stephen King I will read Salem's Lot next.
I need to find other horror authors to read too. I see there's a Horror Recommendations thread on here...

Besides the pinned threads, there's

What to read next?......... (help)

Question: Fav Horror Novel?

Horror authors/books you recommend


Among others that are most specific concerning author or types of horror story (haunted house, vampire, Lovecraft, etc.).

My recent reading has included The Fisherman by John Langan, a fine Lovecraftian weird tale and The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill, a good, old-fashioned ghost story. I was surprised to find some parallels between these, too: male narrators who married late in life, story within a story, and a sort of story-virus -- a character in the story cannot listen to the story without being infected and affected by it. Two quite good reads.


Randy M.
 
I'm 100 pages into The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. He is one of those authors I read and instantly turn green with envy. So good.

I had rather the opposite feeling. I had heard so much of The Fall of Hyperion I was expecting something really superior. I found it and the subsequent ones in the series to be in the average to good category. Nothing better than that.

I am listening to The Good Widow by Liz Felton, I really like mysteries and thrillers, and this one promised to be a mystery, but I'm having the sinking feeling that what I'm really reading is a first person love story. Not very thrilling.
 
Been trying The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher.

And, well, I think Butcher is great. I think he gets big action stories and larger than life characters with a real human touch in a way pretty much no one else does at the moment.

With that said, based on the opening 150 pages or so, I'd believe you if you told me this was in fact written by Kansas' number 2 Jim Butcher tribute act.
 
@Parson I can see that. His writing is just so smart, and the universe feels so deep, but I do agree that book one was quite the book, and hard to live up to.
 
The comic pile dwindles more, dare I say the end might be in sight.

Next up is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

Rather fitting for my profession, even if I do say so myself.
 
I finished Ben Aaronovitch's The Furthest Station, which was good. While I'd prefer to have a longer Peter Grant story to read this year, I thought a novella was probably the appropriate length for this story. While there isn't much movement for the overall plot of the series it does look like Abigail could be playing a bigger role in the series as it goes along, perhaps it's good for Peter to have someone to interact with at The Folly other than Nightingale.
 
Been trying The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher.

And, well, I think Butcher is great. I think he gets big action stories and larger than life characters with a real human touch in a way pretty much no one else does at the moment.

With that said, based on the opening 150 pages or so, I'd believe you if you told me this was in fact written by Kansas' number 2 Jim Butcher tribute act.
For me it was actually the opposite. I did not like the Codex Alera series. Read the first book and then decided there was no need to try any other book by Butcher. Then stumbled across The Aeronaut‘s Windlass by accident years later and liked the story outline - and don‘t ya know, I loved the book. Then moved on to Harry Dresden and read the entire series one after the other. However, The Aeronaut‘s Windlass is the one I liked best. Go figure ...
 
For me it was actually the opposite. I did not like the Codex Alera series. Read the first book and then decided there was no need to try any other book by Butcher. Then stumbled across The Aeronaut‘s Windlass by accident years later and liked the story outline - and don‘t ya know, I loved the book. Then moved on to Harry Dresden and read the entire series one after the other. However, The Aeronaut‘s Windlass is the one I liked best. Go figure ...

Funny how it goes sometimes? I found Dresden first and mainlined it, Codex Alera and liked it, Aeronaut's Windlass and... I dunno, I'm just not seeing anthing there. What did you love about it?
 
Funny how it goes sometimes? I found Dresden first and mainlined it, Codex Alera and liked it, Aeronaut's Windlass and... I dunno, I'm just not seeing anthing there. What did you love about it?
Where to start? The adventure, the steampunk atmosphere that never got too heavy-handed, interesting characters that feel natural and interact like humans, an interesting society, shaped by the spatial constraints and a not yet quite clear dangerous world and a hinted-at nefarious history.

And don‘t let me forget flying sailing ships that battle with steampunk cannon. Pirates, you name it ...

I am really looking forward to the next book, can you tell?
 
I just finished "The Stand", my first book by Stephen King. The first part was riveting, probably the best apocalyptic story I've read. The pacing slows down after the plague, and the focus shifts significantly enough that it feels like a different story altogether. This was still an excellent book, and now I want to read more Stephen King. I'm now starting "Salem's Lot", and I see I'm not the only one. (y)

I used to scare easily and avoided horror, but I'm evolving. My interest started with the creepy short stories of Ray Bradbury. Over the last few years I have read a good bit from Poe, Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson. I've discovered I like "atmospheric horror" best.
 
I just finished "The Stand", my first book by Stephen King. The first part was riveting, probably the best apocalyptic story I've read. The pacing slows down after the plague, and the focus shifts significantly enough that it feels like a different story altogether. This was still an excellent book, and now I want to read more Stephen King. I'm now starting "Salem's Lot", and I see I'm not the only one. (y)

I used to scare easily and avoided horror, but I'm evolving. My interest started with the creepy short stories of Ray Bradbury. Over the last few years I have read a good bit from Poe, Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson. I've discovered I like "atmospheric horror" best.

If you like Matheson, there's also his friend, Charles Beaumont. Penguin put out a collection of Beaumont's work a couple of years ago. It ranges from horror to something you could call proto-urban fantasy.



Randy M.
 
I used to scare easily and avoided horror, but I'm evolving. My interest started with the creepy short stories of Ray Bradbury. Over the last few years I have read a good bit from Poe, Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson. I've discovered I like "atmospheric horror" best.
Matheson's Hell House is fantastic piece of horror.
My review:
Open the pod-bay doors...: Hell House!
 
I've finished listening to The Good Widow by Liz Fenton and (I've just discovered) Lisa Steinke. Here's my Amazon Review. (3 stars)

This book is well written and is completely unpredictable. The story has well developed characters and an engaging heroine. It is about 15 percent mystery, 25 percent love story and 60 percent a story of self discovery. I was hoping for more mystery, but what makes me angry about this book is that the underlying message is "Don't trust nice guys and don't trust love, because neither of them can be as good as they seem."

I don't believe this to be true and I think this message could destroy some potentially beautiful relationships even if allowed to be considered critically, let alone uncritically.


I suppose it is significant that both of these authors are married and mothers. I really hope that this book doesn't supply a code that they live by, or an unrelenting pain they feel in their lives.

I've been pedaling along with "The Warmth of Other Suns" by the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Isabel Wilkerson. And although the writing is a bit suspect and hard to follow, it is a stunning history of Jim Crow laws in the U.S. told by 3 people who lived through this years. She is able to make me understand what it must have felt like to be black and live under Jim Crow in a visceral way. So far I would highly recommend this book.

Next queued up to listen to is The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson.
 
Took this home from the library --

hardcover-the-pennsylvania-state-university-press-2017.jpg


Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M. R. James by Patrick Murphy. We'll see if I stick with it or if it's too academic to complete since I'm not obligated to. Not nuts about the cover art, which gives a misleading impression (to those who haven't read them) of James's stories -- does even one of them feature a translucent misty human shape?
 
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