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Post by cw67q on Dec 29, 2010 13:54:32 GMT
Best story: The First Time by Steve Duffy. I'd agree with that - I read it a couple of nights ago and I thought it was absolutely marvellous. And the entire collection it's taken from, Tragic Life Stories, is very good indeed. Yes, I forgot about this collection when I made my selection or I might hace chosen it over the Richard Gavin: can I call a belated tie? I found the first tale very difficult to read, really quite upsetting. I think my favourites were the First Time and Tantara. A much darker collection than Steve's earlier more Jamesain collections from ATP, more representative of his recent work as scattered around anthologies. But you can't go wrong with Steve in my expereince, whether in Jamesian or more modern mode. - Chris
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Post by pulphack on Dec 29, 2010 14:53:48 GMT
bit blurry on timelines, but i think the best stuff i read this year was vols1-6 of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol (discovered by chance when i came across some old issues in someone's comic cupboard) and the three volumes of Sandman Mystery Theatre i picked up. read some great 50's true crime memoirs this year, but not much horror. that's where i feel out of place here; it was the crime pulp that dragged me in, and is still my preference (as anyone who looked at what i got at Zardoz will know).
tv wise, i was astounded to come across Kolchak:The Night Stalker as a box in Fopp for £8 - i didn't even know it was out in the first instance and would gladly have paid full price. all the criticisms about it are valid - monster of the week, formulaic, etc - but the writing is good within this, and the acting from Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland is wonderful and sparky (and it has an episode by Jimmy Sangster, too). Ashes To Ashes 3 was good - of course it had to be something like that, but it was well written and acted, and to be honest i don't believe for a minute that it was designed that way - i think they had to pull it together and did some great back-engineering (though bits of Life On Mars don't fit too well) under the circs. Whitechapel 2 was a bit too contrived, though as stylish as the first.
paperback fanatic is the best mag, though shindig is as good in its own field.
bookwise, best new stuff for me was non-fiction again: rich deakin's book on the pink fairies and the ladbroke grove political and music scene late sixties/early seventies was detailed and fascinatin, throwing new light on legends and records i grew up with. i suspect the best new stuff fiction wise is to come for me as i picked up zombie apocalypse last week (on the recommendations here) but haven't read it yet. the design is great, and the format is strong, though. can't remember many multi-author novels before, though 'Seaton Point', written by seven hackney authors and published by spare change about ten years ago was one to treasure (punk, lovecraft, mulder and scully and the nightingale estate in E8 mashed up horribly). i say novel, as it looks to me like mr jones has taken the concept, the short pieces and woven them into a salmagundie of a novel. well done, sir - and that's before i've done more than looked at it. i'm envious, but in a good way.
best events of the year? zardoz and seeing justin, johnny and dem again (though not necesarily in that order), as well as mark the pitbull. and listening to jasper fforde discuss lewis carroll in the uni of london, so thank you to my chum ian for inviting me.
that'll do for now, anyrate.
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Post by Dr Terror on Dec 29, 2010 15:28:08 GMT
I'm afraid I've read very few books this year, but some of them were excellent. The ones I enjoyed the most were collections by Paul Finch and Lord P. One Monster is Not Enough, and Wicked Delights tied for first place. Followed by Paul's Walkers in the Dark, and After Shocks. Anthology was the Ash-Tree Press, Shadows and Silence.
Been watching quite a few old British horrors on DVD, but Twins of Evil still remains my favourite.
Music: Living With You is Killing Me - Hits
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 29, 2010 17:55:57 GMT
I'd agree with that - I read it a couple of nights ago and I thought it was absolutely marvellous. And the entire collection it's taken from, Tragic Life Stories, is very good indeed. Yes, I forgot about this collection when I made my selection or I might hace chosen it over the Richard Gavin: can I call a belated tie? I found the first tale very difficult to read, really quite upsetting. I think my favourites were the First Time and Tantara. A much darker collection than Steve's earlier more Jamesain collections from ATP, more representative of his recent work as scattered around anthologies. But you can't go wrong with Steve in my expereince, whether in Jamesian or more modern mode. - Chris Hi Chris - I thought it was much darker too, and it almost got a bit too miserabilist for me at times, but Steve's such a great writer and each story had something to commend it. I actually really liked the first story because it was so unsettling and definitely proper horror. I'm looking forward to his next book
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Post by cw67q on Dec 29, 2010 19:45:22 GMT
Hi Chris - I thought it was much darker too, and it almost got a bit too miserabilist for me at times, but Steve's such a great writer and each story had something to commend it. I actually really liked the first story because it was so unsettling and definitely proper horror. I'm looking forward to his next book I thought the first tale was very powerful and very well written. I don't know that like seems like the right word for how I feel about it, I couldn't see me rereading it again, too unbearably tense. I'm pretty sure that's what Steve was aiming for and he nailed it. I'm a big fan of Steve's writing. - chris
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Post by weirdmonger on Dec 29, 2010 20:39:11 GMT
Hi Chris - I thought it was much darker too, and it almost got a bit too miserabilist for me at times, but Steve's such a great writer and each story had something to commend it. I actually really liked the first story because it was so unsettling and definitely proper horror. I'm looking forward to his next book I thought the first tale was very powerful and very well written. I don't know that like seems like the right word for how I feel about it, I couldn't see me rereading it again, too unbearably tense. I'm pretty sure that's what Steve was aiming for and he nailed it. I'm a big fan of Steve's writing. - chris For what it's worth, this is the detailed review I did of this book last May.
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Post by jamesdoig on Dec 30, 2010 1:33:42 GMT
Ah, Dem - nice to get a mention! Long may the Vault and associated goodies like Paperback Fanatic and Wordsworth continue. As for best of the year, I've hardly scratched the surface. I don't think I've read any of the collections and novels mentioned by others. Did read Caitlin Kiernan's Tales of Pain and Wonder and a few of her novels - all a few years old now, but really fine. Enjoyed Kaaron Warren's Slights and Stephen Irwin's The Dead Path. Read a lot of John Connolly, who is always amazingly good. Read the Aus collection Macabre, which was great. Loved Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale. Let the Right One In was brilliant. Reread Sarban - hopefully that's who Wordsworth is reprinting - an amazingly good writer. Can't recall at the moment what else was worth reading - really liked the Wordsworth Gothic Short Stories, and reacquainted myself with collections like In Ghostly Company - "Brickett Bottom" is a fine story. Also read some Conan stories - loved Red Nails. Read a fair bit of Vault inspired retro paperback fiction - Tandem and Sphere anthologies, Chetwynd-Hayes etc - all good fun. Read a lot of old Australian stuff in magazines and collections - some good stuff amongst the usual garbage. Just reading the new Roald Dahl biography - incredible bloke and as a lark reread "The Landlady" last night - very creepy story - he had a great sense of the macabre with a real cruel steak. The biog says as a school kid he loved reading Victorian ghost stories, and was especially terrified by Bierce's Can Such Things Be, which I must reread.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 30, 2010 8:35:45 GMT
I completely forgot to add my worst! And by worst I don't actually mean books I hated (those are best forgotten) but the books I read that were so terrible, so unbelievable, and in one case so reprehensible that for me they bordered on anti-genius (I think we all know what's coming in a bit) Worst Collection: Oscar Williams - The Dance of DeathWe still can't quite believe old Oscar and his Ed Wood-style prose telling sometimes pointless stories with totally-out-of-left-field-that's-the-word-count-managed endings. We're keeping our copy for re-readings of 'The Tooth' (wife's tooth drives husband mad) 'Alf's Bombshell' (useless son who can't hold down a job eventually disappoints his parents by becoming a murderer), 'Puzzle - Find the Thief' which is neither puzzling nor remotely suspenseful, and of course the title story which compared to the others is a masterpiece of EC-style revenge. Worst Other Collection (A Tie): Oscar Williams - Harringay's Last Gamble.I really haven't got it in for Mr Williams - indeed, I think his work needs to be more widely known, but only by about two or three other people, all of whom visit here regularly. If anything this is a bit of a let down after Dance of Death, but Oscar's sentences have got much longer, with a lot more semi-colons, and there's a real feel of "God I really need the money now" with this one. Checking my review on here I see that 'The Swinging Pendulum' was "one of the shabbiest pieces of storytelling I've ever come across". This one's probably best enjoyed imagning the cast of 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum' playing all the roles. Especially the female ones. Worst Novel: Pierce Nace - Eat Them AliveI couldn't possibly let the end of the year come and go without giving this another mention. It is a testament to the skills of any writer, no matter how rudimentary, crude or in fact just downright lacking they may be, that I can still remember everything that happens in this unbelievable piece of literary carnage. I could blame Johnny Mains as he found me the copy but instead I'm going to thank him, as finally here is the benchmark by which all terrible horror fiction can be judged. I cannot even bring myself to get rid of the book - it's entertaining awfulness has cast a spell on me and oh the fond memories of laughing out loud while reading it and then having to read to Lady P exactly what it was that had caused my outburst. I'm sure I don't need to summarise the plot as I believe that's been done elsewhere . All I can say is that 2011 is going to have to try bloody hard to beat this one and to be honest I don't think it will. For which, actually, I'm rather grateful
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Post by dem bones on Dec 30, 2010 10:09:06 GMT
Ah, thank you for taking that "worst" in exactly the spirit intended, Lord P! The Oscar Williams pair, The Dance Of Death in particular, went straight-to-wants-list when first you reviewed them and i'm sure, like so many of us, you will remember Eat Them Alive with warped affection long after you've forgotten a string of far better/ "better" novels. Ah, Dem - nice to get a mention! Hey James, actually that's two mentions now. see Chris's 'Best New Anthology'. Have you seen Wordsworth's revised edition of Sweeney Todd: The String Of Pearls from July this year? i landed a copy last week and i'm sure you'll appreciate Dick Collins' new introduction as an outstanding feat of literary detection. Have to feel a bit sorry for Thomas Peckett Prest though! Ashes To Ashes 3 was good - of course it had to be something like that, but it was well written and acted, and to be honest i don't believe for a minute that it was designed that way - i think they had to pull it together and did some great back-engineering (though bits of Life On Mars don't fit too well) under the circs. Whitechapel 2 was a bit too contrived, though as stylish as the first. Glad you reminded me of Ashes To Ashes 3 - which i loved - and Whitechapel, as i couldn't for the life of me think of anything on TV that did it for me this year beyond the Midsomer Murders repeats. "Contrived" is about right for Whitechapel's 'Kray Twins: The Second Coming' extravaganza, but the actors perform miracles with a wobbly script, just as they did with the clunky debut featuring the return of Jack the Ripper. Trouble is, the writers are running low on local legends now. Who are they going to exhume for the next series? The Ratcliffe Highway Murderer has potential. Maybe the Elephant Man or, at a push, Jah Wobble ... it's probably not one to 'fess up to on a board with its share of horrible piss-takers but *sotto voce* does anybody else like Holby City?
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Post by cw67q on Dec 30, 2010 13:09:36 GMT
Funny all round Lord P, but this in particular made me I completely forgot to add my worst! I really haven't got it in for Mr Williams - indeed, I think his work needs to be more widely known, but only by about two or three other people, all of whom visit here regularly.
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Post by noose on Dec 30, 2010 17:15:16 GMT
Oh, worst as in "worst". Gotcha!
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 30, 2010 17:24:48 GMT
Funny all round Lord P, but this in particular made me I completely forgot to add my worst! I really haven't got it in for Mr Williams - indeed, I think his work needs to be more widely known, but only by about two or three other people, all of whom visit here regularly. Thank Chris! Go for it, Johnny!
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Post by noose on Dec 30, 2010 18:06:20 GMT
Right - Worst Anthology: Lovecraft Unbound ed by Ellen Datlow. For the life of me I just couldn't get into this book - and maybe I'm missing something that all the other bloggers/reviewers seem to get - they gushed all over the shop for this anthology. She stated that she didn't want a pastiche of Lovecraft's work, but that's exactly what the book is - and the bulk of the stories were just boring. There were two standouts to the book, Laird Barron's 'Catch Hell', and 'That Of Which We Speak When We Speak Of the Unspeakable' by Nick Mamatas - but when they are surrounded by people who seemed to have turned in a story just to get the cheque (Joyce Carol Oates the guilty offender with her story 'Commencement') and others where they were just used as page fillers 'One Day, Soon' by Lavie Tidhar, (a really appalling, thinly veiled Holocaust story and only put in there as a lame attempt to challenge Lovecraft racism) - even Simon Kurt Unsworth's solid, if draining tale makes you despair that it's in the book - in any other anthology it would shine - here it's just swallowed up by too many mediocre tales. Worst Collection: Wine and Rank Poison by Allyson Bird I should leave well alone, but I did read WARP this year and out of everything I read it was by far the poorest collection of them all. Saying that, I found the book a vast improvement on BRFG, but WARP is beset with the same problems as the former collection - Allyson seems to bog the reader down with porridge prose and dialogue that when you read it out aloud, sounds utterly alien. She has some good ideas, I will give her that - and it's sad because I genuinely DO want to read a story by hers and go, shit that was great. It just hasn't happened yet, but came close with 'The Legacy'. And I'm past the point of caring whether she and her buddies thinks this is a personal attack or not. I write this while drinking from a Wine and Rank Poison mug, which you can buy from here www.darkregions.com/products/Wine-and-Rank-Poison-by-Allyson-Bird-%252d-coffee-mug.html for only $14.95 Worst Story:The Family Business by Johnny Mains GROAN. PASS THE SHOTGUN NOW. This could most possibly be the worst story EVER committed to print by anyone. And for all you unlucky chaps and chapesses it's in WDS. A young boy is shown the ropes of the mortician's trade by his father, and reading it now it's just embarrassing. An example: DAD: 'I am going to cram her anus and v@gina* with cotton wool so it soaks up the seepage when we start embalming.' SON: 'I think I'll pass on the ass Dad.' The story is simply shit, I really don't know what I was thinking of by putting it it - just inane, dreadful filler material, and the only good thing about it is the ending which couldn't come too soon. *proboards is changing the spelling of v@gina to girl thingy
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 30, 2010 18:17:13 GMT
proboards is changing the spelling of v@gina to girl thingy Do you mean vag ina?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 30, 2010 18:24:37 GMT
The best new film I saw this year was the insanely clever TRIANGLE---a truly original cross-breeding of MEMENTO, THE MACHINIST, and a generic 80s slasher film, if such a thing can be ímagined. It is best seen knowing no more about it.
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