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Post by franklinmarsh on Sept 25, 2012 8:10:50 GMT
Jings! Not heard of half these but ..
Dune. Frank Herbert - went for this after being mesmerised (in a kind of good way) by David Lynch's film, and thanks to a book certificate from an aunt. A monumental struggle but succeeded - once. Funnily enough I've always kept a copy handy. Once owned the five sequels but never even opened a cover. A Cure for Cancer. Michael Moorcock - love this! and the others. The Final Programme is more linear but ACFC, plus The English Assassin and The Condition Of Muzak go all over the show. Fascinating. (And they're not big like Dune) Brothel in the Rosenstraße. Michael Moorcock - agree. Owned a copy but never got there. Gormenghast. Mervyn Peake - had a bash at this after the TV series but it was no go. Cell. Stephen King - have a copy of this on the 'to read' pile. Hmmmm.
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Post by cw67q on Sept 25, 2012 9:19:42 GMT
Hi Doug, Good to "see" you again. 'Twas me that mentioned the Sound of His Horn I'm afraid even though, as you may remember, I'm very much a fan of Sarban. I did finish the book but found it a struggle, whereas everything else Sarban wrote, with the exception of the rather weak short story A House of Call, strikes me as a masterpiece or near masterpiece. So it probably doesn't really belong on this list. I brought up tSoHH as another example of a story where I lost interest once the fantasy elements took over. I also finished the Night Land, enjoying the first 3/4s or so of the book. I found the misogynistic "romance" elements of the final section overpowering though and ended up skimming to the end. It does contain some very powerful passages and presents an inspired vision of a dark future. Best wishes - Chris I do wonder why anyone would put Sarban's The Sound of His Horn on it! It's such a short book, and though it has a clumsy narrative frame, I found it engrossing every time I've read it. As to the comments about translating The Night Land into English, well, there is such a beast: James Stoddard rewrote The Night Land in modern prose. It came out as an ebook in 2010, titled The Night Land: A Story Retold, and a trade paperback followed in 2011. Has any one read his version?
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Post by ramseycampbell on Sept 25, 2012 10:57:00 GMT
As to the comments about translating The Night Land into English, well, there is such a beast: James Stoddard rewrote The Night Land in modern prose. It came out as an ebook in 2010, titled The Night Land: A Story Retold, and a trade paperback followed in 2011. Has any one read his version? There's a long sample of it here. On the basis of it, I prefer the original myself.
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Post by Dr Strange on Sept 25, 2012 11:31:32 GMT
And I found the Gormenghast books very easy reads (well, maybe not so much the last one) - and I generally despise "fantasy". I read them long before the TV series though - maybe it helps if you don't know where the story is going to end up.
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Post by Douglas A. Anderson on Sept 25, 2012 16:58:35 GMT
As to the comments about translating The Night Land into English, well, there is such a beast: James Stoddard rewrote The Night Land in modern prose. It came out as an ebook in 2010, titled The Night Land: A Story Retold, and a trade paperback followed in 2011. Has any one read his version? There's a long sample of it here. On the basis of it, I prefer the original myself. Thanks, Ramsey. Your link didn't come through, but I found it. Let's see if my link works: www.sff.net/people/james-stoddard/The_Night_Land.html. I agree the original seems preferable. And I find some of what he wrote in his "explanatory note" to be, well, odd: "I began by rewriting the book, paragraph by paragraph, but soon discovered that Hodgson's prose did not hold up in a direct "translation." I grew bolder and began adding dialogue (Hodgson had none), character motivation, and even brief scenes not in the original volume, but necessary to support the logic of the story line. I was forced to name the main character, who Hodgson left nameless. I have divided the book into more chapters than in the original, breaking the action at various points to slow the relentless pace, and have renamed several chapters to avoid giving away the plot. Despite the many changes, I have strived to use Hodgson's thoughts (sometimes only bare hints) to recreate his world." Thus Stoddard's version, by his own admission, must be seen as interpretive of Hodgson's, and I don't think that's a good thing.
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Post by Douglas A. Anderson on Sept 25, 2012 17:06:22 GMT
'Twas me that mentioned the Sound of His Horn I'm afraid even though, as you may remember, I'm very much a fan of Sarban. I did finish the book but found it a struggle, whereas everything else Sarban wrote, with the exception of the rather weak short story A House of Call, strikes me as a masterpiece or near masterpiece. So it probably doesn't really belong on this list. I brought up tSoHH as another example of a story where I lost interest once the fantasy elements took over. Hi Chris: A House of Call is a rather weak story, and the sole disappointment for me of Sarban's novellas is The Doll Maker. Maybe I've seen the trope played out too many times before I read Sarban, but that's the one that I found least interesting. Ringstones always struck me as the best of the main three, with The Sound of His Horn a close second.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 25, 2012 17:42:11 GMT
Thus Stoddard's version, by his own admission, must be seen as interpretive of Hodgson's, and I don't think that's a good thing. It is a noble project! But it can be taken further. I shall begin by reparagraphing Stoddard's text and adding "smileys" where appropriate. Eventually I hope finally to be able to read this masterpiece.
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Post by cw67q on Sept 26, 2012 7:55:19 GMT
:-) Doll Maker is easily my favourite of the three longer tales, although I think Ringstones is also a terrific tale. I think His Number 14 is the most gloriously sinister tale I have read by any author. - Chris Hi Chris: A House of Call is a rather weak story, and the sole disappointment for me of Sarban's novellas is The Doll Maker. Maybe I've seen the trope played out too many times before I read Sarban, but that's the one that I found least interesting. Ringstones always struck me as the best of the main three, with The Sound of His Horn a close second.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 26, 2012 9:14:33 GMT
And I found the Gormenghast books very easy reads (well, maybe not so much the last one) - and I generally despise "fantasy". I read them long before the TV series though - maybe it helps if you don't know where the story is going to end up. Likewise. As a teenager, i picked up Titus Alone on the strength of Peake's cover artwork, found some of it a struggle but the scenes in the underworld grabbed me enough to try Gormenghast, which I adore as one of the great latter-day Gothic horror novels, even if it is a Fantasy title. Could have cheerfully lived without the TV series which just plain failed on every level. Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho weren't mysterious enough to hold my attention beyond 200 pages. Breezed through The Sound Of His Horn but didn't find it quite as jaw-dropping as unanimously favourable reviews had led me to believe. CB, if and when you get around to the Gothics, you could do a lot worse than start with M. G. Lewis's The Monk and David Blair's Gothic Short Stories selection for Wordsworth. Then on to Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, by which time you'll know if you want to pursue the subject further. One for the list. I never could get interested enough in Clive Barker's The Damnation Game to see it through to the bitter end.
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Post by andydecker on Sept 27, 2012 9:12:39 GMT
One for the list. I never could get interested enough in Clive Barker's The Damnation Game to see it through to the bitter end. Weird. I never thought of this, but now that you say it, I also have a hard time to go into Barker. The Damnation Game I couldn´t finish, the so promising Weaveworld I also got stuck twice. After watching the movie MIdnight Meat Train I wanted to read the story and got stuck. Sometimes Barker is not very accessable. Moorcock - I've tried reading three of the Colonel Pyat books, on separate occassions, and have never got that far. They're too well written in the sense that the character narrating is so believably objectionable that I couldn't be bothered to listen to his fascist, racist idiocy. Yes, this is really off-putting, isn´t it? As fascinating I find the idea and especially the setting - I just know the first volume, the rest is sitting on the shelves - it is hard to stomach. After I ordered the rest this year I started to re-read the first one after 20 years, and it is at times truly revolting. You really want to throttle the little shit Pyat after a few pages. Well done, on the other hand, does it merit to suffer through this for a thousand pages?
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Post by cw67q on Sept 27, 2012 9:27:15 GMT
I've never been a fan of Clive Barker. I worked through a couple of the Books of Blood when I got interested in horror fiction some years back but they weren't really my thing. I thought Hellbound Heart was awful, and I encountered it sandwiched in between some very fine work by Ramsay C & Lisa Tuttle in a three-author compendium (the name of which escapes me).
- Chris
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Sept 27, 2012 10:33:21 GMT
What is supposed to be the problem with "The Great Circle"? It is a not very good, sub-Abraham-Merritt effort, but I had no problems finishing it.
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Post by mattofthespurs on Sept 27, 2012 11:23:08 GMT
I've never been a fan of Clive Barker. I worked through a couple of the Books of Blood when I got interested in horror fiction some years back but they weren't really my thing. I thought Hellbound Heart was awful, and I encountered it sandwiched in between some very fine work by Ramsay C & Lisa Tuttle in a three-author compendium (the name of which escapes me). - Chris Night Visions 3. The UK version, if memory serves, was just called Night Visions and had a sort of human/pegasus on the cover.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 27, 2012 11:52:41 GMT
Night Visions 3. The UK version, if memory serves, was just called Night Visions and had a sort of human/pegasus on the cover. George R. R. Martin (ed.) - Night Visions (Legend, 1989) George R.R. Martin - Introduction Ramsey CampbellIn The Trees This Time Missed Connection Root Cause Looking Out Bedtime Story Beyond WordsLisa TuttleRiding the Nightmare From Another Country The Dragon's BrideClive BarkerThe Hellbound Heart Blurb: A lonely woman with a need to embrace death... the desperation of a man trapped in a forest of unnatural vegetation... an American relives her horrifying childhood on the bleak English moors... a train carrying people no sane person would be seen dead with... and a neighbourhood where Druids still permeate the daily lives of the residents...
These are just some of the Eleven chilling stories by three talented young authors, which will haunt your dreams...I've never been a fan of Clive Barker. I worked through a couple of the Books of Blood when I got interested in horror fiction some years back but they weren't really my thing. I thought Hellbound Heart was awful, and I encountered it sandwiched in between some very fine work by Ramsay C & Lisa Tuttle in a three-author compendium (the name of which escapes me). - Chris The Hellbound Heart didn't work for me, either! I deliberately left The Books Of Blood alone for years until the blizzard of hype surrounding them had blown itself out. There's nothing worse than being told from all sides that this is going to horrify/ frighten you to death, sonny, only to be crushingly disappointed. I'd been through all that with The Turn Of The Screw, sitting back waiting to be scared and, of course, it didn't happen. I can appreciate Clive Barker's achievement, and yes, a number of the stories are very inventive, but not everything over the six volumes is effective.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Sept 27, 2012 12:55:51 GMT
Dune. Frank Herbert A Cure for Cancer. Michael Moorcock Brothel in the Rosenstraße. Michael Moorcock The Ship of Ishtar Merrit (1926) Gormenghast. Mervyn Peake Titus Groan. Mervyn Peake The Great Circle. Whitehead Lilith. George Macdonald Cell. Stephen King Night Land. Hodgson The Sound of his Horn. Sarban Mysteries of Udolpho. Anne Radcliffe Varney the Vampire. Rymer The Damnation Game. Clive Barker Weaveworld.Clive Barker Lord of Light. Zelazny All of Stapleton
Sorry missed Zelazny probably because my eyes automatically glide past the name on bookshelves. Interestingly I forgot I never finished Weaveworld and I also found The Thief of Always a bit disappointing - finished it though; it was clearly a 'good' book by a good author but didn't grab me.
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