Saturday, May 26th, 2012
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8:59 pm - Another Datlow anthology
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joysilence
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I do try to keep up with all the latest horror anthologies, so it was with some alarm that I recently learnt of the impending publication of Volume 4 of Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year series. Why? Because I didn't even know there was a Volume 3! Needless to say I immediately grubbed a copy of Volume 3 from the internet, so that all my lucky readers may read my thoughts on it.
( The magic number? )
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Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
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8:54 am - Simon Clark collection
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joysilence
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Readers of this parish may remember that I was recently impressed by Simon Clark's sea-horror novel Nailed By The Heart. After finishing it I decided to look into Clark's shorter fiction, and chose to order Hotel Midnight (mainly because it was the cheapest of his collections - his earlier collections are all small press publications costing £75-£130, and that's second-hand!)
( Time to check in! )
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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Monday, May 7th, 2012
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7:51 pm - Ghosts: being the experiences of Flaxman Low
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dfordoom
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Ghosts: being the experiences of Flaxman Low includes all twelve adventures of ghost-hunter Flaxman Low. The stories were written between 1898 and 1899 by a mother-and-son writing team, Hesketh V. Prichard (1876-1922) and Kate O'Brien Prichard (1851-1935), under the pseudonyms E. and H. Heron.
( read more )
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Saturday, May 5th, 2012
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12:36 am - E. Hoffman Price’s weird fiction
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dfordoom
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E. Hoffman Price (1898-1988) was a pulp writer and from all accounts a rather colourful character in his own right. He not only corresponded with Lovecraft but actually met him in person and collaborated with him on the story Through the Gates of the Silver Key. He started writing in the 1920s and was still going strong in the 1980s.
( read more )
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Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
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6:31 am - Laird Barron collection
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joysilence
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As my readers are hopefully aware, I welcome book recommendations from friends on and offline. One author recently drawn to my attention in this way was Laird Barron, whose short story collections come warmly recommended by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) heksenhaus After reading a few of Barron's stories in anthologies by Ellen Datlow, I came to the conclusion that it was indeed a good idea to fork out the £10 necessary to procure a copy of Barron's recent second collection Occultations (Nightshade Books, 2010.)
( Sleepless in (and around) Seattle )
Bibliophiles will also be glad to know that Occultations is a beautiful hardback with no obvious typos, thick paper that's a pleasure to handle, and very attractive jacket art. Altogether a class act, and definitely worth the price! I am currently wondering whether to read Barron's earlier collection The Imago Sequence, though I'm told it's more Lovecraft-influenced so I don't know if I would like it as much.
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Thursday, April 12th, 2012
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7:39 am - Simon Clark novel
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joysilence
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Time for another FoAM book auction find - a novel this time! There were two Simon Clark novels on offer at the silent auction, Nailed By The Heart and Ghost Monster. The latter's title was so stupid that I decided to eschew it on the spot, but I did fork out the princely sum of £1 for Nailed By The Heart, mainly because it was set in an old sea fort on the East Anglian coast.
( Oh I do like to be beside the seaside... )
Anyway I don't know if Clarks many other novels are of the same standard, but I'm certainly keen to try a few out. Any recommendations/warnings would be very welcome at this stage!
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
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9:35 pm - Justin Evans
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Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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10:17 am - Black Books
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joysilence
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Readers of this parish may remember that I was a bit underwhelmed by the Seventh Black Book of Horror, edited by Charles Black. But at the FoAM book auction I couldn't resist the temptation to snap up the latest book in the series, The Eighth Black Book of Horror, since it was only a couple of pounds! So here are my thoughts on the swarthy tome.
( Back to Black )
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
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1:12 am - Lake District anthology
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joysilence
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And now I shall turn my attention to my spoils from the FoAM silent book auction! The most promising book I won on that glorious day was the recent Grayfriars Press anthology Terror Tales of The Lake District, edited by Paul Finch. I've lived in the North of England for much of my life and have visited the Lake District a few times, so the prospect of returning to that charming area via fiction was very appealing. And there is certainly no shortage of sinister local legends and unexplained paranormal events to inspire the writers of these 13 tales! In this collection Paul Finch alternates intriguing accounts of "real-life" local hauntings with the fictional contributions to make a very sound case for the Lake District being a thoroughly scary (if beautiful) place to be.
( Off the beaten track )
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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12:35 am - Stephen M Irwin
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joysilence
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While I was enjoying my recent holiday in Stratford-upon-Avon I perused the fine PDSA second-hand bookshop and decided to take a chance on Australian horror author Stephen M Irwin's latest novel, The Darkening (known originally as The Dead Path.) I knew nothing whatsoever about the writer, and bought the book because a)it was about trees, b)I've been trying to read more Australasian fiction lately and c)it cost £1.
( It's in the trees! It's coming! )
Do any of you have any recommendations for Australian and New Zealand supernatural fiction? If so I would like to hear them!
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(comment on this)
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Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
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6:23 am - John Ajvide Lindqvist novel
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joysilence
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Well I'm sure you're all dying to hear what your illustrious moderator thinks of the recent Scando horror sensation, John Ajvide Lindqvist, who found international fame when his novel Let The Right One In was adapted for cinema (first Swedish, then the inevitable American remake.) I haven’t seen either film, but fortunately Highfield Library has provided me with a copy of the book, so I am now qualified to opine on it at length.
( Of Buildings and Baby-Bats )
All in all, Let The Right One In was a disappointment, the sort of novel that would appeal more to alienated young teens than adults. Bursts of sardonic humour, a willingness to include modern social issues and the occasional jolt of existential terror stop it from being a mindless Shaun Hutson-type blockbuster, but I was left with an impression of good ideas poorly executed, which funnily enough is what I feel about a lot of Stephen King novels! So I suppose the critics must be right...
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, March 18th, 2012
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4:31 am - Ellen Datlow Poe Fandango
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joysilence
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I have mixed feelings about Edgar Allan Poe - I think he's an overrated, uneven author, and his poems in particular can be appalling. Although I was frightened by his stories as a child, his technique doesn't always stand up to adult scrutiny! But some of his stories, like 'The House of Usher', fully deserve their status as classics and Poe also seems to have had an intriguing sort of life. His life and works certainly seem to have intrigued Ellen Datlow, who's just put out an anthology of modern tales inspired by the morbid chinless writer, with the pretentiously simple title of Poe.
( A Demon In My View )
Anyway I am sure you are all simply GAGGING to hear about the FoAM meet-up, so in my infinite kindness I have made public my LJ-post on the topic. Be warned though, there is quite a lot of blether about Stratford and Wot I Did On My Holidays.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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Saturday, March 10th, 2012
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1:37 am - Keith Roberts Collection
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joysilence
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Lovers of luxury hardbacks and hard-to-find works of supernatural fiction will no doubt be familiar with Cold Tonnage Press. But don't let the pricey reputation put you off visiting the website! I often like to browse the Cold Tonnage catalogue for cheaper books, and though it's a bit of a slog working through all those pages you can often find some real bargains for under £10. It’s also a good way of discovering authors you wouldn’t normally hear about. My latest find in that area is Winterwood and other hauntings (1989) by Keith Roberts. Roberts is mainly famous these days for his classic alternate-history novel Pavane, but it turns out he also writes Robert Holdstock-endorsed ghost stories! So here’s what I thought of them.
( Winterval! )
Altogether I found Winterwood to be a pleasing collection. Roberts uses a palate of delicate hues to paint a wide range of different pictures and his writing is as far from the crass obviousness of much modern horror as it is possible to get without turning into Walter de la Mare. Not that there's anything wrong with turning into Walter de la Mare, of course. In fact I wish more writers would ;)
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
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9:13 pm - Simon Bestwick collection
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joysilence
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One of my favourite stories from Ellen Datlow's 2010 Best Horror of the Year trilogy was Simon Bestwick's 'The Narrows', a doomy but relentlessly gripping vision of a Manchester high school class who take to a network of underground tunnels in the wake of nuclear catastrophe. Although I'm pretty much fed up to the back teeth of apocalypse horror at the moment, Bestwick's writing made the story seem fresh and exciting, so I decided to comb the web for more of his fiction. Pictures of the Dark, a retrospective collection from Gray Friar Press, seemed like a good place to start. This affordable paperback charts Bestwick's career from his beginnings as a writer to 2009 (though the tales are not in chronological order), and contains an impressive 25 stories crammed into just 270 pages.
( The Not-very-mammoth Book of Bestwick New Horror )
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
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6:56 am - Haunted House Anthology
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joysilence
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There aren't all that many talented editors of short horror fiction working in the UK at the moment, so I was pleased to hear of House Of Fear, a themed anthology of haunted house stories by the young editor Jonathan Oliver. Nor did the highly attractive price (about £5 online) escape my attention! When the paperback came in the post, it turned out to be unusually small in format and also weirdly bound so that holding it open is a struggle. Still, I decided to actually read the book before getting too angry about the production values!
( Welcome to the House of Fun! )
In other news, I should perhaps mention that the Friends of Arthur Machen are having their annual Machen Weekend on the first weekend of March. It's being hosted in Stratford-on-Avon this year, which is quite central, so perhaps some of you would be interested in giving it a try? I am definitely going this year anyway.
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Saturday, February 11th, 2012
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11:53 pm - More Stephen Jones Fun
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joysilence
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I've just finished Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead, Stephen Jones' second collection of stories to come out this year. His publisher in this instance is Ulysses Press, an American smallish press who seem to mainly specialise in health and lifestyle publications with 'Paranormal' fiction (mainly vampire romance and the ubiquitous zombies.) Whereas A Book of Horrors was intended as a snapshot of current horror fiction, Haunts... is a themed collection. These are ghost stories concerning haunted objects, places or people, and unusually Jones has not limited himself to stories from the past decade or so.
( They Return At Evening )
Altogether Haunts...: is one of Jones' better collections, though I think he over-reached himself a bit by trying to introduce older stories to the mix - you would in any case need a much longer book to do that successfully. It's also pretty good value, weighing in at under a tenner for a softback with no obvious typos and a nice layout. While I can't say I'm tempted to buy Jones' other anthologies for Ulysses Press (angels this, zombies that) I do hope this one succeeds and encourages them to put out more 'mixed bag' collections.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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2:39 am - The Haunter of the Ring and Other Stories
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dfordoom
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Robert E. Howard will always be best remembered for his sword and sorcery tales, especially the Conan stories, but his work was extraordinarily varied. He wrote westerns, adventure stories, gothic horror and even detective stories. The one thread that connects all his work however is horror. Even when he wrote detective stories he still added a dimension of the horrific.
( read more )
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
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11:52 am - Mark Samuels Collection
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joysilence
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Well here as promised are my thoughts on the latest Mark Samuels collection, The Man Who Collected Machen and other weird tales from Chomu Press (well-known to fans of Quentin S. Crisp!). This paperback is not 100% new material, being a mixture of seven stories from the first edition of the identically-titled Ex Occidente publication from 2009, and four bonus stories that are either unpublished or only published in modified form previously.
( Of Machen, Mexico, Madness and More! )
I do wish I'd bought the book earlier though - the typewritten sheet of paper on the cover actually contains a cryptic message, which readers were invited to solve a few months ago. I love that sort of thing, but the competition has ended now, having doubtless been won by my arch-nemesis, Some Bastard...
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Friday, January 27th, 2012
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11:51 pm
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joysilence
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I was fortunate enough to receive book £30 vouchers for Christmas, and the books I got were Mark Samuels The Man Who Collected Machen (to be reviewed later) and the Stephen Jones collection A Book of Horrors (see here for a list of contents.) When I first heard about Jones' latest selection of modern horror, I assumed it would be a Mammoth publication, but in fact it's by Jo Fletcher Books. Perhaps this explains why you get a stout hardback with a luxurious shimmery cover for your £8.99, as opposed to the measly Mammoth paperbacks!
( On horror's head horrors accumulate! )
In other news there is a new number of the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies available online here!
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
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1:26 am - Machenalia
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joysilence
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I have some good news for cash-strapped Machenites! The Library of Wales has recently added Arthur Machen's novel The Hill of Dreams to its paperback series - for less than £10! (They've done the same for The Great God Pan, though cheap copies of that have always been easy to find.) I actually got my copy for even less money than that, since I borrowed it from Highfield Library! And I was very glad of the opportunity to re-acquaint myself with the novel - I'd tried to read electronic copies of it several times over the past decade, but I find it really hard to read whole novels online (I can't begin to fathom the success of Kindle etc.) and this is a book that demands your full attention.
( What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us? )
Here's to more affordable Machen re-editions! I'd love it if someone did paperback versions of Ornaments in Jade or The Green Round, for instance...
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