can we get some spooky halloween books
>>24775578Night In the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon
>>24775578Malpertius
>>24775578This was his best book.
>>24775582Let me guess, you really like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen too?
>>24775594this sounds complicated
>>24775596It really isn't. It's pretty boring up until the third act.
>>24775578200 pages into this now and it's so many steps below Salem's Lot. Jesus Christ, Stephen King and not write a happy character. They act like the adults on kid's shows act. I also feel that as King has to spend more time with each character, as opposed to the bouncing perspective in Salem's Lot, the reader gets to see how little depth his characters really have
>>24775578Last I read from this guy is picrel. Felt too much like a poor man IT. I quite liked the investigative aspect in the first half though. Anyway anything like it that doesn't feel Stephen King-ey?
>>24775600It's not bad, I'm reading it now.
>>24775578This one scared the shit out of me in middle school, is it worth a reread or should I just hold onto this feeling?
>>24775578nothing by stephen king is genuinely spooky, it's just adult R.L. Stine
>>24775578Harvest Home.
The character building in the shining is so good, that it's a shame it's at the service of a haunted hotel. It should have been played completely straight, or at least with some ambiguity- it was all cabin fever and there wasn't actually any ghosts. The father broke because of stress and his past history with outbursts of rage, strain in the family, ect
>>24775578>you have to get through 500 pages of sol snore fest to get to the good shit towards the endConsidering all this was still King's best book, but that just means that he sucks balls
>>24775693The characters in the shining were really good but then he just wasted them on retarded ghost shit
>>24775693i can't tell if you're ignoring that this is a story about baby boomers or you're just too dense to realize that's what you're saying
>>24775578is it wrong that i enjoy stephen king, why does lit hate stephen king
>>24777251YepB-cuz
>>24775693I liked pet cemetery and hated salems lot
>>24775578Horror is kind of a bitch to nail in full length novel form, it's more of a short story or novella kind of thing. Hell, most novels that are horror usually switch character perspectives and such during the more horror focused elements effectively making short stories inside the novel.Then you got heaps of different horror genres and some might appeal to you while others won't. You also have people that do not realize Thriller and Horror are two distinct things.If it is something that could theoretically happen, no matter how improbable, it is a Thriller. Horror requires an outright impossible or clearly supernatural element. A deranged woman kidnapping children to use their blood to obtain eternal youth? Thriller unless the blood is shown to actual work in granting her that eternal youth, then it's Horror.Personally, I'm a fan of Splatterpunk Horror (which is shockingly rare these days) because Horror should have elements of disgust and revulsion.
>>24777652That said.The Book of the Dead, a short story collection that came out in 1989 that is unique zombie stories with several different takes on how the living dead function and behave.Cabal by Clive Barker. Was the basis for the movie Nightbreed and also contains some short stories in the back like Raw Head Rex that are also quite good.Also from Clive Barker, his Books of Blood short story collection is pretty solid. Has some misses but a lot of hits in that collection.House of Leaves is a dog shit story but a really neat presentation. I WANTED to like it because it was such a unique experience, but the meat of the book is just awful.Dracula holds up well and so does Frankenstein. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde does not, although people wrongly assume that Jekyl was altering his personality, however, he was just changing his appearance and committed all his vile acts because he assumed he would never face consequences for them. It was a story about people are only polite and well meaning because they know there are consequences for being a moral dickbags but given the chance to be a moral dickbags with no consequences, people would absolutely do so.
>>24777652>Thriller and Horror are two distinct thingsI really wouldn't say they're completely distinct. They're related, or rather they can be and often are. The Silence of the Lambs is a good example. Another one that would lean more towards thriller but with horror elements would be The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
>>24775827>Stephen King-eyThere's not some unknowable, unspeakable quality called Stephen King-ey-ness that makes him Stephen King. His writing is just generic and bad.
>>24778689Bodied that author
>>24778689Hence the awkward phrasing
>>24778754You can just say generic and bad.
>>24778794I was asking for book recs that aren't influenced by his mannerism
>>24775578Between Two Fires
>>24775594Seconding Malpertuis, fantastic novel.>>24775965How is the prose? I read Between Two Fires but the writing was absolutely awful and amateurish.
>>24779571> How is the prose? I read Between Two Fires but the writing was absolutely awful and amateurish.Well, he’s no Melville. Narrator is a teenager in 1970’s New York, so it’s not as jarring as his attempts at medieval France. But yeah, he’s a horror/fantasy guy. The prose ain’t the main attraction.
>>24779622Does he still end practically every paragraph with a short sentence that's meant to be deep/meaningful? That shit drove me insane when reading BTF
>>24777251Writes very generic. It structurally all the same - the same action beats. Plodding beginning, supernatural elements gradually increase (these two first parts are usually the best parts of his novels - King knows how to create an unsettling eerie atmosphere), the realization/explanation of the main horror and how to beat it, race against time and against pursuit, climax, more or less happy ending.And the characters are all the same - a character archetype from Salem's Lot return in Tommycknockers and Under the Dome. King is best enjoyed every now and then because if you go onto a King's spree it'll become very dull quickly.
Swan Song was great
>>24775957The ending was so cartoonishly dumb, imo the movie did it better in that regard.
Bump
>>24777222Such wasted digits
>>24779894nta but I thought the ending of the novel was way better than that of the film adaptation.
>>24775596Despite the weird sex scene at teh end, IT is his finest writing. What a powerhouse of a halloween read.
>>24782644I thought IT was very, very bloated. It could've been 400 pages less and it would be a lot more streamlined, even for a story as huge as that one.
