What's top of your reading list?

[delboy]

I have a bunch of non-fiction and writing relating books on the go, but have just finished the novel I was reading so this weekend I will peruse the shelves and start a new one. I love that moment of choice!

Derek

[Ed]

I'm still languishing in the doldrums at the middle of Best New Horror 18. Have you read that one, Bec? If so, what did you think of the stories? I've also got #17 sitting on my book shelf unread.

I have a bunch of non-fiction and writing relating books on the go, but have just finished the novel I was reading so this weekend I will peruse the shelves and start a new one. I love that moment of choice!

Derek

Yeah - I like that moment, too. It's a bit like when you're at the airport and just about to depart, looking through the book shop and picking out stuff you're going to read over the next couple of weeks. I always end up buying too many, but that's OK. I'll get around to them sooner or later.

Haven't read any more of my text book 'HWA On Writing Horror'. So far it's all been fairly obvious stuff, or things I've heard before. I'll keep reading it, though. It's interesting all the same.

[Bec]

No, I haven't read any of the others in the Best New Horror series, Ed. I also have the HWA On Writing Horror on my shelf waiting to be read. Maybe I'll start it this weekend.

[Geoff_N]

It's difficult finding time to read anything other than the Whittaker fiction comp entries. Just finsihed round four and I have about 10 days before the next batch whizz in. However, I am reading Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It's a bit of a murder mystery road book (yes it is fiction) and I love the wordcraft. For my 3D book group I need to read Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. This is good for me because it has nowt to do with fantasy or scifi but is allegedly good lit. I hope so.

Off on Wednesday to Groningen, The Netherlands, for my book launch of Hot Air. It's a thriller I wrote years ago but won a silver for best unpublished novel. A Dutch Arts Academyy is publishing it. I think they are pretty amateur bunch but they do know how to throw a great party

Geoff

[Caz]

  I just finished ‘The shrinking Man.’ I’d like to say it’s good but that wouldn’t be true. Instead I’ll settle for saying it’s brilliant, a joy to read and has one of the greatest battles to have ever graced the pages of a book. Ooh, spiders have never been so scary.

  Whilst I remember, I found a website called ‘moviesfoundonline.com’ There’s a fair few cult classics there that can be watched on-line and in segments if so desired, just make a note of how far into the film you are then go back to that spot when ready to watch more of it.
  ‘The last man on Earth.’ starring Vincent Price is available there.   
 
 

[Caz]

  Well, I give up. It may have been recommended by Stephen King as important and one of his favourites but to me it’s just plain dull. I found over the course of the week that I was drawn less and less to it. There was nothing to grip my attention and the characters  blurred in my memory until I hardly knew who was who and what their motivation was. Dull, dull, dull, that’s my opinion of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.

  Anyways, I’m of to find the steel helmet, flack jacket and the key to the bunker door. I’ll be okay in there, I’ve got a proper book to read this time.
   

[Woody]

Caz, I've just finished Peter Straub's Ghost Story and found it rambling and certainly there were places where the guy used a thousand words when just one or two would have done - I think this book was part of his "Listing" period, where long lists of words mark it out as the fore runner of this period.

I have read Peter Straub books supremely better than this. Mr X. is good and I have found all the King/Straub collaborations brilliant, especially Talisman but Black House is another good one.

Also just finished James Patterson and Howard Roughman's You've Been Warned and although it says "Fear is just the Beginning" on the front cover - didn't strike me like that at all - but a good story anyway, some weird time lines that aren't explained directly but acceptable once all is revealed.

Gone back to James Herbert's The Fog as I have no recollection of reading but know I must have done because I bought the bought when it came out and now see what you meant when you said that the Dark is the Fog with a little bit more colour. Anyway will finish it to see how close the plots are.

[delboy]

I read Ghost Story probably 25 years ago and recall thinking it was great. But there are many books from that period that I've subsequently reread and haven't thought much of... I do like Straub, though (*). I borrowed Mystery many years ago, too, and thought it was so good that as soon as I'd finished it I went out and bought my own copy. Haven't reread it yet though. I recall enjoying KoKo, too. But then, any book named after a Charlie Parker number is surely a winner.

(*) Recently bought a copy of his non fiction book Sides and couldn't get into it (or rather, I didn't 'get it') at all.

James Herbert... hmmmm. Gave up reading his stuff long ago. We used to pass his and Guy N Smith's books around at school, so for a few years I read them all - Rats, Lair, Domain, Dark, Fog, Spear etc etc. I used to enjoy them all until the end, when every time I felt let down. In the end I simply stopped reading them because of this disappointment. Tried again not so long ago with a book I forget the name of about a hospital for terribly mutant children and realised I should have stuck to my original decision.

Del

[Woody]

I would suggest giving '48 or Nobody True a go - I particularly liked '48, not a usual plot for a James Herbert novel - post apocalyptic London after the second world war with neither side winning out right, I suppose it's a bit slipstream as well. That I felt, was really good.

[Ed]

The Secret of Crickley Hall was awful on many levels, and that put me off ever reading anything from James Herbert's back catalogue.

[Rev. Austin]

I'm halfway through Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man....

I absolutely love Somthing Wicked This Way Comes, but generally find Bradbury a bit boring, especially since alot of his sci-fi stories are set on bloody Mars.  But luckily, this is, by and large, proving interesting reading so far...

Next up: Pronto, by Elmore Leonard!

[Woody]

The Secret of Crickley Hall was awful on many levels, and that put me off ever reading anything from James Herbert's back catalogue.

I think a lot of things of the artist bent will always have the good and the bad; it's practically impossible to produce excellent stuff all the time.

I remember, many moons ago, when I was heavily into Deep Purple. I'd gone through a spate of collecting every piece of vinyl they produced and then I came across "Come Taste The Band" - it took only 45 minutes from handing over the cash in the shop to me being back there asking for a refund and accepting a refund significantly short of what I'd paid for the album - I needed to get rid of it. However, it didn't stop me trying other stuff - I knew what they could do.

Ed, if you can ever forgive him for that novel (I wasn't impressed by it) and have it cross your mind that you may dabble one more time, try Sepulchre. Over the intervening years since it was first published I've gone back to it at least five times and each time I've never questioned myself as to why I read it in the first place.

[Ed]

Thanks for the tip, Woody. I'd be willing to have a crack at Sepulchre. I actually quite enjoyed the first half of Crickley, but it dragged on too long, and by the end I was thoroughly pissed off by it on a number of levels.

[Woody]

... but it dragged on too long,...

It does seem to me that these days verbiage has a higher priority over succinctness in the traditional publisher's mind set.

[Woody]

Futhermore, once I've finished reading "The Fog", purely for academic reasons now, I'm going to take Sepulchre from my shelf and read it again - it's been a few years.