The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
- Thread starter Infidel Castro
- Start date
Infidel Castro
New member
Originally posted by supervike
Originally posted by elouchard
Cool, maybe they could put a banner up at the top of this site.
lollollollol
I\'ve not seen any of that stuff for a while here and I miss it :no:
boristfrog
New member
I came across World War Z by accident and really enjoyed it. A better quality of writing than might be expected of a zombie book. I am currently lending it to anyone who likes to read....and there is a queue.
I\'m kinda happy because I just picked up the first 5 Dark Tower books in a second hand shop. Now off to Amazon I go for the last 2...
Looking forward to a re-read of these in the future.
(Stephen King if you didn\'t know already - and book 4 is the best, after that it goes a bit weird!)
I\'m kinda happy because I just picked up the first 5 Dark Tower books in a second hand shop. Now off to Amazon I go for the last 2...
Looking forward to a re-read of these in the future.
(Stephen King if you didn\'t know already - and book 4 is the best, after that it goes a bit weird!)
alextheartist
New member
I have simelar feelings about shakespear..
Infidel Castro
New member
Shakespeare? Pah! Tat...
ScottRadom
Shogun of Saskatchewan
Apparently there is a movie being made of the book. Can\'t wait!
I have bought about 4 copies of the book and keep lending them out. Then those books grow wings and fly onto other readers. Thank god it\'s finally on paperback now.
With all this talk of Lovecraft and how bad I think I may provide a little bit of an explantation from where I come from on this regard. Feel free to scroll down now If you\'ve already gathered that I am an idiot, as this is a pure post on my opinion only and you wil not gain any uselful information.......
Still Here? Okay, pure written word as a form of entertainment is in my opinion the most difficult thing to do succesfully, especially on a consistent basis. With other forms like movies you are watching such an enormously more encompassing from of media that while you can have one portion of the film like the acting or the story be bad by your standards you can still enjoy it on some other level because they\'re might be some really exciting visuals or whatever. If you\'re a Star Wars fan like me then you understand what I mean. One bad piece from such a large puzzle like a movie may not wreck it for you or me. With written word the mind is only being stimulated through the authors words. The author can\'t relly on anything other than his words to conjure up atmosphere, performances and general connection to the work they are presenting. It\'s a tough gig!
I\'m not a cavemen, I read prolifically. Shit, I think I am mispelling prolifically which may detract from my anti-caveman status. I knock of at least a couple novels a week, and some authors are just NOT good at what they do. Lovecraft has an AMAZING imagination. His ideas are genius, but I find his writing awful beyond redemption. Generally. He wrote enough that I think he accidently made some less awful stories in his run (I liked at the mountains of madness).
We can give him credit for inspiring a slew of authors in his genre and beyond. But just because a band inspired the Beatles doesn\'t make that original band the Beatles. To grab my imagination and interest an author needs to make me care more about his horror story. He doesn\'t need the boogey man to jump out and go \"Boo\" but Lovecraft still didn\'t make me care enough about his characters or anything to make me care about their fate of insanity or whatever convoluted non-ending he had in store for his story. Ditto to the max for Donaldson and Thomas Covenant (I\'ll figure out someway to bring some joy into your life Dragonsreach!).
There are hundreds of thousands of books out there. Some are even good. When I find an author I seem to enjoy I try to read everything they have done. Usually I am still impressed by them at the end of their body of work. Just to show I do loke some things my list of current favorites would have to include
Terry Pratchett, Gordon R. Dickinson, Laumer, Dan Abnett (Yeah I mean the Gaunts Ghost books, sue me!), Richard Matheson. Frank Herbert and Asimov are always going to be special to me as well.
So there you have it. Good talking with you peoples
As you can easily guess from my avatar and name I`m a HUGE fan of Lovecraft.
I wrote my B.A. about his literary concepts, but it is in german (which should explain my shitty english) so it wouldn`t help to send it to some of you lovecraft haters. Maybe you could check out Michel Houellebecqs \"H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life\". Its quite good.
To cut it short: Lovecrafts Monsters are not so scary in themself, they are more like metaphors of an extremly pessimistic / nihilistic worldview (the universe is senseless, there is no god, only madness and chaos, humankind is not the crown of existence and will soon be utterly forgotten etc.) which never ever fails to give me the creeps.
(blood and gore? its just some bodyfluids spilled around, you get used to it quite fast, expecially when you have worked at a hospital)
I wrote my B.A. about his literary concepts, but it is in german (which should explain my shitty english
) so it wouldn`t help to send it to some of you lovecraft haters. Maybe you could check out Michel Houellebecqs \"H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life\". Its quite good. To cut it short: Lovecrafts Monsters are not so scary in themself, they are more like metaphors of an extremly pessimistic / nihilistic worldview (the universe is senseless, there is no god, only madness and chaos, humankind is not the crown of existence and will soon be utterly forgotten etc.) which never ever fails to give me the creeps.
(blood and gore? its just some bodyfluids spilled around, you get used to it quite fast, expecially when you have worked at a hospital
)painterboyroy
Member
must be the odd one out, Read the Thomas Covenant series twice and a couple of other Stephen Donaldson books have also been enjoyable.
Now Julien May , The many coloured Lands was hard to get through.
But have never dropped a book, always got through to the end.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova was hard to carry on about a third way through but a good second half.
Same as Labyrinth by Kate Moss a good Templar History book..lol
Now Julien May , The many coloured Lands was hard to get through.
But have never dropped a book, always got through to the end.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova was hard to carry on about a third way through but a good second half.
Same as Labyrinth by Kate Moss a good Templar History book..lol
Huh, Labyrinth was about the Cathars not the Templars.
But having said that the last few chapters of the book felt rushed and half heartedly done as if she was rushing to meet her deadline.
Infidel Castro
New member
Dirty man, his books are awash with sex, sex and more sex lol
painterboyroy
Member
Originally posted by Dragonsreach
Huh, Labyrinth was about the Cathars not the Templars.
But having said that the last few chapters of the book felt rushed and half heartedly done as if she was rushing to meet her deadline.
I stand corrected..
and have her latest book lined up for the next one to read..
No Such Agency
New member
This is why \"The Shadow out of Time\" is creepy... the Yith are not really a malevolent menace to humanity, but they exist on such an alien scale that they are still very eerie.
The sad thing I learned about Lovecraft is that he was really racist. Yeah, I know the guy\'s black cat in \"The Rats in the Walls\" is named \"Ni[size=-2]mumble[/size]er Man\", but people just did ignorant things like that back then. However Lovecraft himself was actually very repellently and openly bigoted for some reason...
It\'s hard to blame him for that. He grew up in a vastly different time and culture, where strength in diversity wasn\'t understood (not that it is now). Yes, it is cringeworthy to today\'s sensibilities, but it seems to be a more normal condition in that time frame.
I\'m not condoning it, but just saying that it is moreso a reflection of the era, as opposed to just on the author.
ScottRadom
Shogun of Saskatchewan
So I love arguing/debating and I find this discussion particularily interesting. Last night I got together with some guys for a few (too many, work sucks today) beers and I brought this up. Out of about a dozen guys the split was about down the middle of Lovecraft/Cthullu fans and haters. We were talking about bigger themes present in his works and other horror stuff and it became apparent then that there was one thing in common all the Lovecraft fans had in common, and I was wondering if it was the case here as well....
All the Lovecraft fans would describe themselves as spiritual people. Myself and the Anti-Lovecraftians would not call ourselves spiritual beings.
I\'m wondering if that observation can be extrapolated to include those discussing the man here on these boards? For the spiritual minded person I can see where the tone and suggestion of some greater alien or misunderstood force pulling the strings awaiting the downfall of man may conjure an emotional response, whereas I am less worried about my immortal soul and sort of don\'t care if there may be a great tentacled beast looming in the nether regions to claim me.
So I take little away from Lovecrafts Mythos as a horror work, because it maybe appeals to something I just don\'t have present. I know he did other stuff but the Cthullu stuff has to be what people do remember most of him.
My brand of horror usually deals with themes of isolation, downfall of society etc. Not a horror book at all, but the most disturbing and unsettling book I have ever read was \"The Road\" by Cormac McCarthy(sp?). That hit me in all the places it was meant to, as I have a young son especially.
So I feel I may be on the brink of a revelation here, and would love to hear from the Lovecraft fans, \"Would you describe yourselves as spiritual people, And does his stuff appeal to that part of your persona?\"
Definetely not picking on people who haved a spiritual streak here, I often wish I did. Good talking, and I am enjoying this thread immensely!
All the Lovecraft fans would describe themselves as spiritual people. Myself and the Anti-Lovecraftians would not call ourselves spiritual beings.
I\'m wondering if that observation can be extrapolated to include those discussing the man here on these boards? For the spiritual minded person I can see where the tone and suggestion of some greater alien or misunderstood force pulling the strings awaiting the downfall of man may conjure an emotional response, whereas I am less worried about my immortal soul and sort of don\'t care if there may be a great tentacled beast looming in the nether regions to claim me.
So I take little away from Lovecrafts Mythos as a horror work, because it maybe appeals to something I just don\'t have present. I know he did other stuff but the Cthullu stuff has to be what people do remember most of him.
My brand of horror usually deals with themes of isolation, downfall of society etc. Not a horror book at all, but the most disturbing and unsettling book I have ever read was \"The Road\" by Cormac McCarthy(sp?). That hit me in all the places it was meant to, as I have a young son especially.
So I feel I may be on the brink of a revelation here, and would love to hear from the Lovecraft fans, \"Would you describe yourselves as spiritual people, And does his stuff appeal to that part of your persona?\"
Definetely not picking on people who haved a spiritual streak here, I often wish I did. Good talking, and I am enjoying this thread immensely!
boristfrog
New member
How is Philip K Dick not in that list? There was one short story of his that had really creepy tones to it - where an ice-cream van collected kids to be aborted (you could abort a child up to the age of 13 - or when they could handle complex math in the story).
So far I have only read one Black Library book. It was shit - but it wasn\'t by Abnett - I\'ve heard he\'s one of the better ones. The one I read was a heap of tripe.
This thread has tempted me to try Lovecraft just to see how how I\'ll feel about it.
Time for a trip to the library...
ScottRadom
Shogun of Saskatchewan
I enjoyed a lot of the Philip K. Dick stuff, but some of it was pretty bad. I think the worst I read of his was.... \"Radio free Ameruth\"? If that\'s the one. Yes some of his stuff was great, and I did enjoy the one about the kids getting shipped off to be killed.
Black Library is very, very hit or miss. Like the game Battleship it\'s a lot easier to miss than hit, but I heartily reccomend the Dan Abnett stuff. Horus Heresy series was pretty neat-o too.
Don\'t bother going to the library, earlier in this thread someone posted a link to the entire Lovecraft library online! Now you can get un-shocked and bored without having to leave your house!
I\'d love to hear another opinion on Lovecraft, so long as it matches mine!:beer:
Black Library is very, very hit or miss. Like the game Battleship it\'s a lot easier to miss than hit, but I heartily reccomend the Dan Abnett stuff. Horus Heresy series was pretty neat-o too.
Don\'t bother going to the library, earlier in this thread someone posted a link to the entire Lovecraft library online! Now you can get un-shocked and bored without having to leave your house!
I\'d love to hear another opinion on Lovecraft, so long as it matches mine!:beer:
No, sorry, I don\'t fit in with your model. I\'m not a spiritual person, but I do digs me Lovecraft!
I guess one of the reasons I like it is because of the way the man writes sets me into a mind of a simpler time, when the hustle and bustle of the modern world was slowed to a crawl. There is a sense of normalcy to the everyday world of the 20\'s and 30\'s in his stories, and somehow I seem to relate to it.
Quite often his heros are just book smart folks, or curious types.
I also quite enjoyed how most of the narratives take place in the first person.
There is incredible tension in some of the stories, and again, they don\'t hold up well as they\'ve all become horror cliches\'.
My opinion is that you being such a voracious reader have read too many modern, sophisticated stories that Lovecraft would seem boring and pale in comparison. I guess I was able to read it, but keep in mind the era in which he wrote it.
