Xander ,'Lessons'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I've read one single Clive Barker book ever, a very very long and twisted thing I can barely remember anymore except for a vague impression of something like a cross between Gaiman's Neverwhere and the first King/Straub Huck Finn pastiche collaboration, only approximately 90 billion times more fucked up.
The Great and Secret Show?
I have to confess I loved that book. The stuff about the war across the secret face of America and Fletcher just wanting to become sky gave me chills.
That might have been it, though the title doesn't quite ping me. I really can't remember much of anything specific, except multiple dimensions. And possibly sentient spiders. And a general atmosphere of nearly incalculable bentness.
Hmmm, may have been Weaveworld then.
I'd recommend reading "The Hellbound Heart" and "The Forbidden" (the latter being the story Candyman was adapted from) as finer examples of Barker's writing. I really think he handles horror in short story and novella form better than anyone alive.
I like Barker but sometimes he's confusing. I skim a bit when he goes off on his tangents.
I like Koontz to a certain degree. I enjoy the characters and the dialogue but then he seems (to me) to have this HUGE build-up with a corny reveal. I lovingly think of some of his books as being similar to the Big Bad Snake episode of Buffy.
I love King but I admit to skimming when he describes a field for three entire pages. All in all, though, I enjoy King the most. His voice and his characters ping me in (mostly) all of the right ways.
I still can't forgive Koontz for the phrase "his well-oiled piston of lovemaking."
Snerk. Puzzle Embedded in Da Vinci Code ruling [link]
If you pluck all the italicized letters out of the text, you find that the first 10 spell "Smithy Code," an apparent play on "Da Vinci Code." But the next series of letters, some 30 or so, are a jumble, and this is the mystery that needs to be solved to break the code.
I still can't forgive Koontz for the phrase "his well-oiled piston of lovemaking."
I'm not sure I can forgive Gutenberg for the phrase "his well-oiled piston of lovemaking."
I still can't forgive Koontz for the phrase "his well-oiled piston of lovemaking."
Well, he is a horror writer. Nah, I don't think there's an apologia for that. WTF? Piston? Oil? I think I'm trapped in the Uncanny Valley. Maybe I can make it a BSG thing in my head and escape. Toaster Sex!
Booooks. I owe them everything... if I speak English, it's cos I learnt it from ay booooook...
discreetly drags in her easy chair, hunkers down in a corner...
Hi, Lola... I'll have that song in my head, now. You don't "look like a woman and walk like a man" do you?