Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Other than our monthly book, not much that this group would be interested in:

My Life
Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977-1997

But recently, both excellent:
The Exquisite
We Show What We Have Learned: And Other Stories

And coming up soon:
Greener Pastures
The Dark Domain

We'll see how (ahem) overwrought they are.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I am currently reading


Love Reconnection

Hooray! Glad to see this thread as I can now recommend my favourite current read, which I'm calling "horror adjacent": Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lúcio Cardoso.

This is quite a long book at 600+ pages (I'm about halfway through) but it is enthralling and amazingly twisty and well-structured. Told entirely in first-person documents (memoirs, letters, diaries, confessions, etc.) by a multitude of narrators, this is complex and jumps around in time, yet it's never confusing or needlessly labyrinthine; Cardoso is telling a real old-fashioned gothic story about a doomed family and a creepy estate and he clearly wants you to feel the thrills and chills as well as admire his literary skill.

I like this novel so much that I sometimes find myself putting off reading the next chapter because I know that's going to take me just a bit closer to the end and I'm not sure I ever want to get there (I'm having too much fun!). Despite the fact that I'm only 55% through, I very highly recommend this for fans of old-style Gothic fiction, Rebecca, or One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Bill, I've been trying off and on to collect Green Integer and Sun and Moon Press books for the last few years. I think I have the Hejinian in hard copy somewhere (hopefully not in the storage boxes ravaged by silverfish!) I haven't read it and will be interested to read what you think.

Marie-Therese wrote: "Hooray! Glad to see this thread as I can now recommend my favourite current read, which I'm calling "horror adjacent": Chronicle of the Murdered House by [author:Lúcio Cardoso|27458..."

I just bought Cardoso's book -- looking forward to it.

Marie-Therese wrote: "Bill, I've been trying off and on to collect Green Integer and Sun and Moon Press books for the last few years. "
The Hejinian was actually from the SF Public Library; they have a surprisingly impressive collection! She's been mentioned by many of my favorite authors, so it's good that I'm finally reading this. Long multipage paragraphs (though on small pages, thankfully) are hard for me, but the dense chewy sentences keep me going.

NOS4A2

Just received NOS4A2 yesterday and am enjoying it very much, flows nicely

JuniperGreen wrote: "I'm reading The Glister by John Burnside. A slow moving story, but very atmospheric."

I have a lot of Burnside that I need to read! 'The Glister' is among them. Thanks for the reminder.

Nancy wrote: "Marie-Therese wrote: "Hooray! Glad to see this thread as I can now recommend my favourite current read, which I'm calling "horror adjacent": Chronicle of the Murdered House by [auth..."

I do so hope you like it, Nancy! It's very rich and intense; almost an immersive experience.

Barbara wrote: "Just received NOS4A2 yesterday and am enjoying it very much, flows nicely"
I loved many of Joe Hill's short stories, but really hated Heart Shaped Box. which is NOS4A2 more like?

Bill wrote: "Barbara wrote: "Just received NOS4A2 yesterday and am enjoying it very much, flows nicely"
I loved many of Joe Hill's short stories, but really hated Heart Shaped Box. which is NOS4A2 more like?"

It is about a serial killer, I didn't buy heart shaped box, thought it sounded kinda silly but Nos4a2 is so far really good, more like his father's work,lo, only other thing I read was the first 2 lock n key and the story was lacking, art was great tho

I'll be reading this one as soon as gets here on Monday --Stendahl's Italian Chronicles:

Aw, Randolph, I loved 'The Charterhouse of Parma'! Of course, I read it ages ago, in my teens, when I was still impressionable and romantic and Fabrizio Del Dongo seemed like an ideal hero. I doubt I'd have as passionate a reaction now but I do still like Stendahl's work (more the philosophical, essay type stuff and the personal reminiscences than the novels) and consider him a great influence on my adult reading tastes.

Shirley Jackson winners for 2016 announced!



I'm very disappointed Jeffrey Ford won in single-author collections; I remember not liking much of it. Both the Livia Llewellyn and Clare Beams are much stronger collections. Looking forward to the Wehunt collection with the group next month.

I haven't read any of the novels, but none of the descriptions seemed terribly enticing. I might get the Stephen Graham Jones though.

Randolph wrote: "Well I have the Caligari anthology and the Jackson biography. I might read them before I die."

Same here, although I had forgotten I'd bought Caligari. That seems to happen to me a lot -- buy, shelve, forget, become ecstatic when I find it.

Stendahl is quite good, by the way.

I have Lily but I haven't read it yet.

Finished (well, more like finished -with-) "Ana Kai Tangata". Kinda hated most of it, one exception being that short second story. Looking at that Laird Barron intro, and all these 5-stars user reviews around here, I think that I might be insane and/or particularly dumb. I'm fine with it tho, I've been called worse.

Bramah has been on my to-read list for ages now. I recall reading an article on some SF site wherein writer compared the language and humour of Bramah's Kai Lung stories to that of Vance's more humorous yarns.

Just finished and loved Dear Cyborgs. About to finish Greener Pastures.

Earlier, was less excited about The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories. Will probably move on to the new collection by Emily Cataneo soon.

I'm a little over halfway through The Patriot Witch, it very interesting and reads like a first hand account of the beginning of the Revolutionary War. With witches =]

The Last Portal, parallel universe with kids as potential saviors of many world. I like it.

2nd book of the Mercy Thompson series, Blood Bound

Finished Thomas Tessier's "Phantom", great stuff. Tessier needs more love.

Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories. The title story is pretty terrific, and some of the later pieces are good as well.

Bill wrote: "Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories. The title story is pretty terrific, and some of the later pieces are good as well."

Sounds interesting and the Kindle edition is certainly cheap enough. Might have to pick that up soon.

I'm reading Tetsuya Honda's 2nd Reiko Himekawa police procedural novel, Soul Cage. It's much more accomplished than the first book in this series and I'm liking it quite a bit. This series (which is up to seven books now) is very popular in Japan. I hope they translate more of these into English soon.

I'm also working on The New Black, an anthology of dark noirish fiction, much of which has a fantastic bent. So far (37%), all the stories have been good to great. I think this anthology would interest quite a few readers in this group (I know that Bill's already read it and liked it).

Currently reading John Dies at the End, almost finished. I'm pretty sure this series is gonna be one of my alltime favorites.

I am reading Ron Weighell's supernatural Sherlock Holmes pastiches, as collected in The Irregular Casebook Of Sherlock Holmes, as a preparation for the upcoming reprint of his collection The White Road.

Robert Coover's baroque Pinocchio in Venice.

And Rosalie Parker's The Old Knowledge and Other Strange Tales, a buddy read for the group this month.

Finished "Darkly Haunting", Sarob's latest offering. Mixed bag, but at least two stories are great and worthy of wider availability. James Doig's piece is worthy of modern Jamesian masters like Reggie Oliver at their better (will have to try and track down Doig's small collection, at some point), and Colin Insole's story is characteristically gorgeous.

³¢Ã -µþ²¹²õ, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, along with The Dedalus Book of French Horror: The 19th Century. Between the two, I'm not getting a lot of sleep at night.

There's a free ³¢Ã -µþ²¹²õ audiobook in the works at Librivox (older translation, same one that you appear to be reading based on that link):

Going by the chapters that he's recorded so far, 'twill be a majestic professional-grade reading.

Paul wrote: "There's a free ³¢Ã -µþ²¹²õ audiobook in the works at Librivox (older translation, same one that you appear to be reading based on that link):

Going ..."

I've been reading my old Dover edition which I've been carting around with me for years, but I also have the Dedalus version and switch back and forth every so often between the two.

I'm currently at a bit of an impasse with one of the Booker Prize short-list nominees, Elmet.

It started off exceptionally well, with a really strong sense of place and a fresh, if rather baroque, voice, but it started to drag around 30% as the plot twist I dreaded came inevitably and obviously into play. Worse, the language and imagery started to seem forced and increasingly clumsy, sometimes almost laughably so.

This is a debut novel and I wonder how much editorial advice the author, Fiona Mozley, had. Not enough, I fear.

On a brighter note, I finished the Rosalie Parker collection, The Old Knowledge, that's the current buddy read here. Hugely enjoyed it even though I felt that perhaps the basic structure of all the stories was too much alike. This would have been a problem in a longer collection, but in one so brief and so generally well-written, it hardly seemed to matter.

I'm also reading The Ginza Ghost. This is a really nice collection of "honkaku", Japanese locked-room mystery tales, from an early master of the form. Most of the stories I've read so far have an eerie quality reminiscent of classic Japanese ghost stories, although all of them ultimately have logical, purely natural conclusions, as the form demands. They're a bit like really well-plotted Scooby Doo episodes without the cheesiness and bad puns ;-)

Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

I've just finished Lemuria Book 1 by Karl Hans Strobl. Pretty enjoyable, some of the stories are like this weird combo of Hoffmann and Ewers at his more explicit.

Dissonant Intervals by Louis Marvick.
So far, I've liked the opening story and the novella The Madman of Tosterglope, both are solid aickmanesques. Two stories between them are far more conventional and not as enjoyable, not bad but not too memorable attempts at M. R. James style...

The Castle-Town Tragedy and Other Stories by Brandon Barrows. Pretty enjoyable little collection of tributes to Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-finder. True to form almost to a fault, meaning that you also get one of those Scooby Doo-like faux hauntings.

No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories by A.F. Kidd is free of those pesky Scooby-Doo scenarios.

A Lonely And Curious Country and so far I'm enjoying it but I'm only 3 stories in.

Going trough some Carl Jacobi. Nothing outstanding, but it definitively makes for some nice October reading. Worth checking out for those who enjoy early, pulpier Jean Ray or August Derleth's better non-Mythos horror yarns.

Slogging through Mirror Dead, giving it another day or two.

Just started And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe; pretty promising so far.

Reading In A Glass Darkly for another classic horror group. It's good so far.

Struggling with Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari. On one hand, introductions and appendices are invaluable for setting the cultural and historical context, and some stories would be indecipherable without them, like the first story which drawn from incredibly messy and complicated part of Japanese history... On the other hand, they are dry, elements that are actually necessary for understanding the plots are drowned in odd details that are of interest only to specialists and they tend to completely spoil actual stories (even though he claims otherwise, it comes trough as if Chambers treats them as historical curios rather than works of literature that can be enjoyed as such).

Tenebrae by Ernest George Henham. Ridiculously fun so far, it borders on hilarious in just how self-consciously gloomy and decadent it is. Narrator's voice and psychology are half the fun.

Daughters of Apostasy by Damian Murphy. Extremely erudite mystical weird fiction, with execution that is more than a little reminiscent of Gene Wolfe (I did a quick search on author's GR profile and, unsurprisingly, he's a Wolfe fan).