I Just Finished Reading...

[Viva June]

I finally read Hymns to Millionaires by Soren A. Gauger. A fine book, very Schulz-like at times. The best stories are the most fantastic ones, the ones involving academic conferences in Odessa, auto-evolving palaces, odd cloud phenomena. Recommended to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction with a twist of morbidity and humour.

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by damo

. one of my fave novelists is the english writer rupert thomson. brilliant stylist and weird enough for anyone. check out five gates of hell, the insult, soft, divided kingdom, dreams of leaving… .

I have heard good things about Rupert Thomson. I have The Insult. I picked it up at Goodwill years ago, but I still haven't read it. Another author of interest to me is Derek Raymond, who sounds like he writes similar novels.

[Mr Intolerance]

I'll also support the Aickman love. I have an edition of short stories called "Cold Hand in Mine", which is extremely impressive. Can't think which publisher it came out through - although another edition of theirs I have is a Ramsey Campbell anthology called "Dark Feasts", which is pretty much everything you'd hope for in a Campbell anthology - a story called "The Hands" is especially noteworthy, if you're not already familiar with it.

[Harksen]

I was absolutely bored by American Psycho--so much I gave the book away for free (and I never do that!). Yes, it has its graphic descriptions and it's probably very close to a realistic inside-the-mind-of-a-psychopat, but it just didn't "get" me. Funnily enough, I greatly enjoyed his Lunar Park, which many people seem to dislike. Hm--it's probably me...

Currently I am reading The Year's Best Horror Stories IX, ed. Karl Edward Wagner, which is a rather pleasent read, I must say. It's a publication from 1980.

Likewise I am reading Stephen King's latest, Duma Key, which is quite good, IMO.

A few days ago I finished reading Ramsey Campbell's Midnight Sun. Any of you here read it? Except for an important detail near the climax I found it a satisfactory story. The almost cosmic suggestions crawling forward throughout the story (and you don't see it the first many pages) + the whole "why storytelling is important" aspect was quite impressively done, I think.

[Gregory]

Hello everyone

I'm new here; great website.

Recently I read a book called Black Mass by John Gray. Itis a work of philosophy and an attack on athiest humanism. It was thematically very similar to Ligotti's work.

Has anyone read it?

[bendk]

Hello, Gregory. Welcome to TLO. At least a few of us have read Gray's Straw Dogs, myself included, but I haven't read Black Mass. I think it is in my shopping cart at Amazon (along with a hundred other books that I can't afford). I enjoyed Straw Dogs so I hope to read more of his work somewhere down the line. I'm not sure that I completely agree with his attack on Secular Humanism. Surely, some progress has been made and the world has pockets where there is a trifle more justice and less barbarity than in other places. Will these oasis last when their societies eventually crumble? Who knows. I am a progressive liberal and I believe in working towards a more humane future. I can't help myself.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Gregory]

Hi Bendk

I think that Ligotti has in common with Gray a perceptive athiesm. I would agree with Gray that a lot of authors who are called 'new athiests' or 'militant athiests' (such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens) actually preach an athiestic type of Christianity.

Both Ligotti and Gray seem to look more deeply into what it means to be animals and whether we are beneficial for the planet.

[bendk]

I just finished reading three novellas. The first was Bloodstained Oz by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore. Nice art by Glenn Chadbourne. An entertaining riff on the Oz mythology. If you've read Baum's original novel it will pay off. A couple of the creatures that were not in the movie show up in this book. As a kid I knew those flying monkeys were bad news, but even I never suspected they were this evil. I came across this title while reading a year in review of horror in one of those "Best New Horror" books. It sounded interesting so I thought I would buy a cheap copy on the net. The least expensive copy I could find was over $100! It seems this book has gathered a cult following. On a hunch I checked my library and one of the branches had a copy. It's funny, this one branch has all of these great horror books when our main library has squat. Someone working there must have a liking for the genre. I doubt if that book will last. Most horror books that get to be valuable are usually stolen. Here is a look:

http://www.earthlingpub.com/cgjm_oz.htm


I also read Utz by Bruce Chatwin. This was a very enjoyable story about a Jewish man in Prague (so far, so good) who collects Meissen porcelain. He uses questionable moral tactics to keep the world at bay from him and his collection. Some nice dialogue and interesting characters highlight this small volume. I picked this up years ago at a used bookstore. It was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1988. I am surprised at how often I have seen it referenced in other books. When I saw that it was mentioned, yet again, in Straw Dogs by John Gray, I thought, that's it, enough's enough, up to the top of the reading stack you go.

"...a face so featureless it gave the impression of not being there. Did he have a moustache? I forget."


The third novella I read was Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. An exciting story, but also eerie and touching at times. Reminded me a little of the original Pumpkinhead movie and "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. This won a Bram Stoker Award in 2006. A fun read. Nice cover art.

[candy]

Wow, Bendk Bloodstained in Oz looks great!!! The pictures themselves look like it is worth the purchase of this book. Maybe someday I will be able to afford to get this book. Thanks for sharing it.

[Bleak&Icy]

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, 1985) by Elaine Scarry. The linguistics of physical suffering. A brilliant and unsettling book... (so forceful are the ideas expressed in this work that my poor head could be on a stick held in the wooden hand of Mrs. Pyk)... Here is a memorable passage, on the agony of saints:

"The self-flagellation of the religious ascetic is not (as often asserted) an act of denying the body, eliminating its claims from attention, but a way of so emphasizing the body that the contents of the world are cancelled and the path is clear for the entry of an unworldly, contentless force." My italics. Reading this last sentence I felt a twinge of Ligottian unease. The word "contentless" fills me with a vague, sickly dread. The path is clear, my friends, for the entry of...