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Post by noose on Sept 27, 2012 14:17:55 GMT
John Holmes cover
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Post by killercrab on Sept 28, 2012 15:25:25 GMT
The Hellbound Heart didn't work for me, either!
Funny but this book reads like a lost NEL classic to me.Certainly my favourite Barker ( as is Hellraiser a favourite film). There was alot of deserved hype over Barker imo - he really sparked up a turgid genre when it needed it.
KC
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Post by Dr Strange on Sept 28, 2012 15:38:41 GMT
The Hellbound Heart didn't work for me, either! Funny but this book reads like a lost NEL classic to me.Certainly my favourite Barker ( as is Hellraiser a favourite film). There was alot of deserved hype over Barker imo - he really sparked up a turgid genre when it needed it. It's funny, I read both Weaveworld and Cabal very shortly after they came out and enjoyed both. And then I never read anything else by him. I thought Hellraiser was an OK film - it certainly had some inventiveness about it - but it didn't leave the lasting impression that it seemed to on others.
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Post by killercrab on Sept 28, 2012 18:19:21 GMT
Cabal is great too. I have a stack of his doorstops waiting for the mood to strike. I do like his Books of Blood too. He's a pretty wild guy if his tweets are anything to go by!
KC
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 28, 2012 22:44:15 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. I didn't find it difficult to finish, either. I even found it entertaining in a rambling, silly sort of way. It's not one of Whitehead's better efforts, however.
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Post by andydecker on Sept 29, 2012 10:54:10 GMT
He's a pretty wild guy if his tweets are anything to go by! KC On the DVD of Midnight Meat Train is a large special about Barker. Normally I don´t watch these extras as I don´t care much about how something is done or the backslapping as if they painted the Mona Lisa, but this was actually good. It was less about the movie but more of a portrait of Barker. His work, his paintings, his ideas. Barker has had throat surgery which changed apparently his voice which made listening sometimes difficult. But the docu was really good.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 29, 2012 21:00:40 GMT
On the DVD of Midnight Meat Train is a large special about Barker. Normally I don´t watch these extras as I don´t care much about how something is done or the backslapping as if they painted the Mona Lisa, but this was actually good. It was less about the movie but more of a portrait of Barker. His work, his paintings, his ideas. Barker has had throat surgery which changed apparently his voice which made listening sometimes difficult. But the docu was really good. i've not seen it myself, but Bob 'The Duke' Rothwell founder of the Dennis Wheatley Website and dear friend of Vault MK I, appeared in Clive Barker's A-Z Of Horror in 1997.
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ghannah01
Crab On The Rampage
It's dark in here. Anyone have a match?
Posts: 28
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Post by ghannah01 on Oct 2, 2012 8:27:19 GMT
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Very popular novel with an interesting premise about alternative realities and cult religion but insufferably long and repetitive. I got about two thirds through it and then just couldn't go on. It has literary pretensions and I found myself just wanting the story to hurry up and move a bit (lot) quicker. It was a slog and was just taking too long for the pieces to come together.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 4, 2012 5:56:33 GMT
John Norman - Hunters Of Gor (Star, 1982; originally Tandem, 1975) Blurb: Volume eight of the Chronicles of Counter- Earth
Here is the magnificent world of Gor, known also as Counter-Earth, a planet as strangely populated, as threatening and beautiful as any in fiction. Here too is Tarl Cabot, the one picked out of millions to be trained and schooled and, disciplined by the best teachers, swordsmen, bowmen on Gor.
Three Women hold the key to Tarl Cabot's quest. Talena, daughter of Gor's greatest ruler, and once Tarl's queen; Elizabeth Cardwell, who had been Tarl's comrade in two of his greatest exploits; Verna, haughty chief of the untamed panther women of the Northern forests. Tarl pits his skill and his life against the brutal cunning of his foes to unravel their fate.Not sure everyone would agree they qualify as "good", but John Norman's Gor books are a personal blind spot. Have attempted three and in each case my eyes glazed over somewhere around the page fifty mark and that was that. I've no idea why as, God knows, i've persevered with far worse. Norman's clearly a talented pulpster and Captive Of Gor should be unputdownable, albeit not always for the right reasons.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 5, 2012 11:23:33 GMT
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Very popular novel with an interesting premise about alternative realities and cult religion but insufferably long and repetitive. I got about two thirds through it and then just couldn't go on. It has literary pretensions and I found myself just wanting the story to hurry up and move a bit (lot) quicker. It was a slog and was just taking too long for the pieces to come together. I went through a Murakami phase a few years back and read a number of his books. The one I liked the best was Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is trippy and existential but also a fun adventure. His Underground is a fascinating oral history of the sarin gas attack that the cult Aum perpetrated in the Tokyo subway system (remember that?).
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Oct 5, 2012 21:09:13 GMT
John Norman - Hunters Of Gor (Star, 1982; originally Tandem, 1975) Blurb: Volume eight of the Chronicles of Counter- Earth
Here is the magnificent world of Gor, known also as Counter-Earth, a planet as strangely populated, as threatening and beautiful as any in fiction. Here too is Tarl Cabot, the one picked out of millions to be trained and schooled and, disciplined by the best teachers, swordsmen, bowmen on Gor.
Three Women hold the key to Tarl Cabot's quest. Talena, daughter of Gor's greatest ruler, and once Tarl's queen; Elizabeth Cardwell, who had been Tarl's comrade in two of his greatest exploits; Verna, haughty chief of the untamed panther women of the Northern forests. Tarl pits his skill and his life against the brutal cunning of his foes to unravel their fate.Not sure everyone would agree they qualify as "good", but John Norman's Gor books are a personal blind spot. Have attempted three and in each case my eyes glazed over somewhere around the page fifty mark and that was that. I've no idea why as, God knows, i've persevered with far worse. Norman's clearly a talented pulpster and Captive Of Gor should be unputdownable, albeit not always for the right reasons. you're not alone with that, dem. I collected a load of Gor books (stupidly before reading any, a case of get them while you see them) & ended up getting rid of them all after I got a couple of chapters into book one & just couldn't get on with it. Maybe it's time to try & get book 1 again & have another go.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 6, 2012 8:15:46 GMT
you're not alone with that, dem. I collected a load of Gor books (stupidly before reading any, a case of get them while you see them) & ended up getting rid of them all after I got a couple of chapters into book one & just couldn't get on with it. Maybe it's time to try & get book 1 again & have another go. It's not the very early books that interest me, Dave, but book six, Raiders of Gor, onward where it's generally considered that Norman lost/ found the plot depending on your point of view. We had a decent Gor thing going on Vault Mk. 1 and there are some juicy revelations, albeit about something else entirely, on our ongoing Captive Of Gor thread. I'm determined to finish at least one of the bastards!
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Post by cw67q on Oct 8, 2012 7:49:04 GMT
Yes, Night Visions 3, and with that very cover. Thanks Matt & Dem.
- chris
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Post by cw67q on Oct 8, 2012 7:50:22 GMT
As I actually finished "the Sound of His Horn" (just didn't like it) and no-one else has had a problem, it should not really be on the list: 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. SarbanMysteries of Udolpho. Anne Radcliffe Varney the Vampire. Rymer The Damnation Game. Clive Barker Weaveworld.Clive Barker Lord of Light. Zelazny All of Stapleton Read more: vaultofevil.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=offtopic&action=display&thread=4938&page=4#ixzz28gwo0tGe
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 8, 2012 9:01:02 GMT
Unless someone else couldn't finish the Sound of his Horn We're reaching this stage. I actually finished Lilith in the end but I think it still counts as unfinishable when it takes twenty years or so to manage. (It had a great ending) Should be noted that some people finish these books and think they're great. Dune and the first two of the Gormenghast books are favourites of mine. John Norman is apparently extremely popular and he has big sales. He blames DAW for a feminist policy which withdrew his books from popular sales and for all I know he could be correct,
I just thought of another I wish I didn't finish so it could go on the list - A Canticle for Leibowitz: Walter M. Miller, Jr. Probably some sort of classic but was dull to me.
Dune. Frank Herbert A Cure for Cancer. Michael Moorcock Brothel in the Rosenstraße. Michael Moorcock The Ship of Ishtar. A. Merrit Gormenghast. Mervyn Peake Titus Groan. Mervyn Peake The Great Circle. Henry S. Whitehead Lilith. George Macdonald Cell. Stephen King Night Land. William Hope Hodgson
The Sound of his Horn. Sarban Mysteries of Udolpho. Anne Radcliffe Varney the Vampire. James Malcolm Rymer The Damnation Game. Clive Barker Weaveworld.Clive Barker Lord of Light. Roger Zelazny 1Q84. Haruki Murakam Raiders of Gor (and probably most of the series after this) John Norman All of Olaf Stapleton
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