What are you currently reading?

Hoopla is a weird company. I think they have the licensing rights for all the stuff they lend and then charge libraries $1 (or something) every time something is lent out. Libby is owned by a middleman with an online store for libraries. They get books at wholesale and sell them at msrp. Everything on there is purchased by your library (and the audiobooks are hideously expensive - like $100/license, only one person can use the license at a time, and the license expires after 2 years). At least that was the deal in Canada.

I just read The Last of the Inca. It had more beheadings than I expected. Now I'm on the Traitor Baru Cormorant. Decent so far.

Really liked children of time. I thought the follow up was a bit weak.
 
Nothing great right now, but looking at the pile by the bed, my favorites this year were ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver, and ‘The Light Pirate’ by Lily Brooks Dalton.
 
drgonzo1969 said:
I am about halfway through Cabal by Clive Barker. Its a pretty great horror book about shapeshifters and supernatural murders. Its brutal as hell.
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I read that back in high school. Totally forgot about it, but it was great from what I remember.
 
Hey, fellow book nerds. I spent the majority of last year pouring through the Enderverse and recently finished Stephen King’s It after giving the horror genre a shot. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that horrifying! I’d call it more of a thriller.

Which of King’s books should I pick up next?

*Note: I’m not a fan of gratuitous horror or violence for the sake of themselves. I appreciate that It had a tasteful amount of both that directly served the characterization and broader themes of the novel.
 
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coltonius said:
Hey, fellow book nerds. I spent the majority of last year pouring through the Enderverse and recently finished Stephen King’s It after giving the horror genre a shot. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that horrifying! Id call it more of a thriller.

Which of King’s books should I pick up next?

*Note: I’m not a fan of gratuitous horror or violence for the sake of themselves. I appreciate that It had a tasteful amount of both that directly serves the characterization and broader themes of the novel.
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There are many great King novels – and quite a few stinkers (I'm looking at you Insomnia).

Pet Semetary, The Stand, Dead Zone and Four Past Midnight (a collection of four short novels among which you'll find the amazing the Langoliers) are among my favorites.
 
boji said:
There are many great King novels – and quite a few stinkers (I'm looking at you Insomnia).

Pet Semetary, The Stand, Dead Zone and Four Past Midnight (a collection of four short novels among which you'll find the amazing the Langoliers) are among my favorites.
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I remember watching the Pet Semetary and Langoliers movies as a kid. Those were terrifying! I’ll check out the books.
 
I've been largely disappointed by horror novels with some notable exceptions. Whenever I think of a horror story my brain always conjures up the Priests Tale from Hyperion (Dan Simmons) as the example. I think Blood Meridian qualifies as horror (horror-western?). That's probably my favourite. I've read a bunch of Stephen King's stuff, enjoyed some of it, but his stories meander. The Stand was good but it probably could have been half as long. Horror seems a lot more effective when it engages more of your senses.

I tend to bounce between non-fiction and fiction in my normal reading habits. A lot of the horror I've read pales in comparison to reality. I read Station Eleven (post-apocalyptic, horror-ish), which was a really good book, around the same time I finished King Leopold's Ghost. The writers conception of horror as the world falls apart just couldn't stand up to the real, horrifying indifference of a fucntioning foreign bureaucracy structuralizing and incentivizing casual, brutal human cruelty in a colonial territory. I'm grateful most authors haven't experienced the utter depths of human suffering necessary to properly convey true horror but something like a novel about an evil, haunted house seems objectively less horrifying than something like the Spanish conquest of Central and South America to me.
 
joeyd said:
I've been largely disappointed by horror novels with some notable exceptions. Whenever I think of a horror story my brain always conjures up the Priests Tale from Hyperion (Dan Simmons) as the example. I think Blood Meridian qualifies as horror (horror-western?). That's probably my favourite. I've read a bunch of Stephen King's stuff, enjoyed some of it, but his stories meander. The Stand was good but it probably could have been half as long. Horror seems a lot more effective when it engages more of your senses.

I tend to bounce between non-fiction and fiction in my normal reading habits. A lot of the horror I've read pales in comparison to reality. I read Station Eleven (post-apocalyptic, horror-ish), which was a really good book, around the same time I finished King Leopold's Ghost. The writers conception of horror as the world falls apart just couldn't stand up to the real, horrifying indifference of a fucntioning foreign bureaucracy structuralizing and incentivizing casual, brutal human cruelty in a colonial territory. I'm grateful most authors haven't experienced the utter depths of human suffering necessary to properly convey true horror but something like a novel about an evil, haunted house seems objectively less horrifying than something like the Spanish conquest of Central and South America to me.
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the priests tale in Hyperion is one of the most memorable stories I’ve read in my adult life. Definitely my favorite part of that book. And Hyperion is in my top 5 best books.
 
coltonius said:
I’d call it more of a thriller.
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You've cracked the code. I am a big SK fan and see very little of what he writes as horror. Some of it has scary elements and it's not always the way you expect it, because different things scare different people. But he really does some amazing character building throughout so many of his books. (I argued with my better half about this for a long time and finally after maybe 7 years she tried his work and immediately burned through 7 of his longer books) Lots of coming of age material as well. and yes, several are stinkers.

Some standouts to me are
  • Different Seasons (a collection of novellas but don't let that stop you. The Apt Pupil and The Body are amazing)
  • Misery
  • Salem's Lot
  • The first 4 of the Dark Tower series (he kicked a few habits somewhere in there and the books lost their way after a many years break)
  • Christine
 
drgonzo1969 said:
Oh man! You won’t be disappointed. I’ve read it again multiple times. Such a great read.
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awesome. I actually had to buy the book twice- the first one was a shitty print job and was painstakingly hard to read. Just paid $4 for an older print off eBay and got it last month.

I’ve heard the second book in that series ( is there only two) is not a good read. Have you checked it out?
 
KR Sound said:
awesome. I actually had to buy the book twice- the first one was a shitty print job and was painstakingly hard to read. Just paid $4 for an older print off eBay and got it last month.

I’ve heard the second book in that series ( is there only two) is not a good read. Have you checked it out?
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I really enjoyed the second book as well. I heard that about book two but I found it very entertaining. It isn’t as good as the first but definitely worth reading. There are 4 books in the series but I haven’t read the last two yet.
 
joeyd said:
I've been largely disappointed by horror novels with some notable exceptions. Whenever I think of a horror story my brain always conjures up the Priests Tale from Hyperion (Dan Simmons) as the example. I think Blood Meridian qualifies as horror (horror-western?). That's probably my favourite. I've read a bunch of Stephen King's stuff, enjoyed some of it, but his stories meander. The Stand was good but it probably could have been half as long. Horror seems a lot more effective when it engages more of your senses.

I tend to bounce between non-fiction and fiction in my normal reading habits. A lot of the horror I've read pales in comparison to reality. I read Station Eleven (post-apocalyptic, horror-ish), which was a really good book, around the same time I finished King Leopold's Ghost. The writers conception of horror as the world falls apart just couldn't stand up to the real, horrifying indifference of a fucntioning foreign bureaucracy structuralizing and incentivizing casual, brutal human cruelty in a colonial territory. I'm grateful most authors haven't experienced the utter depths of human suffering necessary to properly convey true horror but something like a novel about an evil, haunted house seems objectively less horrifying than something like the Spanish conquest of Central and South America to me.
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If you're looking for some decent horror, check out "North American Lake Monsters" by Nathan Ballingrud. It's a collection of spooky unsettling short stories that are more along the lines of making you feel uncomfortable and leaving you thinking about it rather than "haunted house jump scares" kinda thing.
 
drgonzo1969 said:
I really enjoyed the second book as well. I heard that about book two but I found it very entertaining. It isn’t as good as the first but definitely worth reading. There are 4 books in the series but I haven’t read the last two yet.
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I'm reading the 3rd one (Endymion) right now, and it's a bit odd considering it's set in the future. It's still a continuation of the first two's story, but it almost feels like you're starting all over with the world building/characters.
 
Elton_Sharp said:
I'm reading the 3rd one (Endymion) right now, and it's a bit odd considering it's set in the future. It's still a continuation of the first two's story, but it almost feels like you're starting all over with the world building/characters.
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Ya that’s what I’ve heard. I’m going to give Endymion a read after I finish Cabal by Clive Barker. I’ve heard good things about the third and fourth books.
 
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