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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Someone mentioned Harlan Elllison - great stuff. Get hold of 'Strange Wine', as it has - in my opinion - the greatest short-story-with-a-fortean-bent ever: 'Croatoan'

Read John Connolly's 'Nocturnes' - not bad. Capable, but lacking atmosphere. For true spectral subtlety I'd go for either an M. R. James or Ramsey Campbell collection. Campbell is the only writer - that I'm aware of - who can invoke a genuine sense of unease in the reader.
 
greets

currently ploughing through:

Terry Pratchett "Going Postal"

Cornelius Castoriadis "The Imaginary Institution of Society"

"The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories"

(thanks for heads-up on the Tom Holland book Yith, will be a useful background read for "Barbarian Invasion" game on the PC.)

mal
 
I would urge and beg without reservation anyone with fortean interests to try the young adults section of their local bookshop, and I would also hazard a guess that many forteans will have first been inspired by what they found there as kids.
The imagination and vision of some authors writing in this field deserves recognition.
To start you off if you haven't read Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials trilogy manages to combine many-worlds theory, quantum physics, William Blake, and our relationship with our soul. The scope of his vision is immense, detailed and challenging. I could go on but I simply urge you to read it.
 
I recently acquired the 3-volumes-in-one Usborne Guide to the Supernatural, and passed them on to a suitable family of young Forteans.

My work here is done. 8)
 
I've read Incarnate. I'm not masochistic enough to read anything else written by him. :p

To start you off if you haven't read Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials trilogy manages to combine many-worlds theory, quantum physics, William Blake, and our relationship with our soul. The scope of his vision is immense, detailed and challenging. I could go on but I simply urge you to read it.
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The Amber Spyglass is wonderfully Gnostic! :D
 
I've read Incarnate. I'm not masochistic enough to read anything else written by him.
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Well, each to his or her own. But...if you ever come across a short story of his called 'Again', have a go at it.

You'll never read anything so brilliantly disturbing ever again!
 
barfing_pumpkin said:
Read John Connolly's 'Nocturnes' - not bad. Capable, but lacking atmosphere. For true spectral subtlety I'd go for either an M. R. James or Ramsey Campbell collection. Campbell is the only writer - that I'm aware of - who can invoke a genuine sense of unease in the reader.
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Agree with the M R James but I'm not a huge fan of Campbell.

I have a kind of craving for that "genuine sense of unease" which is rarely satisfied. There are a couple of early works by Peter Straub, Julia and If You Could See Me Now which I found very unsettling when I first read them. Ghost Story has its moments as well.

More recently I started Vivian Schilling's Quietus which is dripping with atmosphere and has a great sense of foreboding but which I never finished - that's not necessarily any reflection on the novel, I tend to have about four books on the go at any one time and am easily distracted.

I do find though that a lot of modern writers (and not just writers - film and TV program makers as well) are actually very good on what we vaguely call "atmosphere" but are not so good at pinning that atmosphere to the page with some of the more traditional storytelling tools like plot and characterisation - a kind of style over content thing I suppose.

In all the books I've ever read the passages that have made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck the most are actually from an autobiography - Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart. Gilmore deals with his life growing up in a dysfunctional Mormon family with a dodgy father and a brother who will become the more famous Gary Gilmore. Throughout there is a vague suggestion that something not quite "normal" is dogging the Gilmores on their travels resulting in hurried removals from various lodgings and a sense of pusuit throughout. It would be logical to conclude that this was all due to Gilmore Senior's dodgy dealings but there is a genuine sense of dread and a feeling that the family are cursed in some way. They appeared to lodge in more than their fair share of haunted houses - (one where sounds coming from a void were explained away as those made by a dying animal despite the fact that judging by the length of time involved said animal takes several weeks to die). There is another episode where the family are ejected from the house of their allegedly psychic host for bringing "something" (apparently fairly dreadful) into her house. Very unsettling in places.

I find the most genuinely disturbing books are generally non-fiction. I can honestly say that the only book that has ever given me bad-dreams was Antony Beevor's Stalingrad.
 
Well, i bought and read short story collections by Le Fanu and MR James (his ardent admirer).

Just out of interest, has anybody read Saturn over the Water by J.B. Priestly?

I picked it off a friend's shelf whilst waiting for him and ended up taking it home...
 
Incarnate runs The Hungry Moon a close second as my favourite Campbell novel. Read THM in one sitting, as I recall.

Concerning his short stories, I particularly like The Franklyn Paragraphs, The Tugging and The Voice Of The Beach.

An author I must read more extensively is Algernon Blackwood: All I've read is the The Willows, which I thought really was the masterpiece it has been cracked up to be, and the other stuff they have up at this site.

Concerning M.R. James' stories, I love 'em all, and would be very hard pressed to pick a favourite - possibly Mr Humphreys And His Inheritance - no, wait (see what I mean!) An Episode Of Cathedral History. But then, what about Casting The Runes / Count Magnus? Oh dear.

That all said, I am currently re-reading Operation Trojan Horse by good old John A Keel 'cos I like that sort of thing as well.

I will bore you all shitless with my H P Lovecraft habit in another posting another time.

PB
 
Having just read the third of these, I can recommend The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels by Michael Marshall. They're superbly written serial-killer / conspiracy thrillers with multiple viewpoints and sympathetic characters. I challenge anyone to buy all three and then not want to read them all from cover to cover. It's a dark world that Marshall depicts, but an all-too-believable one if you're a touch paranoid. Not much more to say; just go and read them!
 
I've read The Straw Men but I'll have to keep an eye out for the others, thanks for the heads-up on those.

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I've just finished Clive Barker's Days of Magic, Nights of War, the second book in the Abarat series.

I'd already posted the link to the official Abarat site here but it's worth mentioning again as I really enjoyed the books. They're classic Barker except this time without his signature gore or sex ;)
 
Finished Le fanu: great scenes, slightly dull stories.

Finished The House of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd - great. Builds up, revelation after revelation, parallel narratives crossing over.

Well, now (from the big pile) i take either MR James, Foucault's Pendulum, a Cyberpunk anthology called Mirrorshades or Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.
 
Concerning his short stories, I particularly like The Franklyn Paragraphs, The Tugging and The Voice Of The Beach.
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The Voice of the Beach is superb - apparently, it was RC's sign-off as a Lovecraftian writer, and by God he left us with something creepy there (the writing that the protag discovers in the deserted village - 'THE PATTERNS I SEE THE PATTERNS', or RCs vastly superior words to that effect).

I've recently got back into reading John Wyndham again - a genuine Fortean novelist if there ever was one, IMHO. The Day of the Triffids still remains an unsettling classic as ever (and count the Fortean and prescient stuff: gene-mod plants (in the 50s, no less), a stellar event triggering orbital armaments causing blindness and disease, (CF space anomalies and conspiracy theories)). I read The Chrysalids ages ago, which is a stunning book - the most extraodinary take on religious fundamentalism ("Watch Thou for the Mutant") coupled with psychic phenomena. I've just finished The Midwitch Cuckoos (UFOs, virgin births, child prodigies, and much debate on Darwinist conflict and the nature of the hive mind), and I am currently involved in The Kraken Wakes - where we have anomalous fireballs, unusual goings-on in the deepest parts of the oceans, disappearing ships...and lots of interesting discussion on the principles of 'rational' and 'outlandish' speculation!

Ignore Brian Aldiss' famed comment concerning Wyndham as a master of the 'cosy catastrophe' - there's a lot of good, unsettling stuff there (particularly in the case of Triffids and Chrysalids), and I'd recommend his work to anyone.
 
I bought Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down for 99p earlier (my local Oxfam is very good) and i just read it all. It's really good. Set in freshly occupied Norway in WW2: Simple story, well-told, 'real' rounded charcters. Powerful message.

To hear it was illegally printed and circulated in occupied France just makes it all the more valuable.

It'll take you 2 to 3 hrs to read. Give it a go.
 
Am onto Flashman & The Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser.

It's come bundled with The Pyrates, which, befor Ravenstone get's excited, i will be reading when i get to it!

So far, so Flash, Ravishing, Double-Crossing, Cowardice...
 
How about Mary Gentle's Ashe or 1610:A sundial in a grave. Both highly entertaining.

Or if you want a Wales run by the Druid mafia have a look at Martin Pryce's "Aberystwth Mon Amour" and "Last Tango in Aberystwyth", based on 20's and 30's detective fiction with nods to big-foot etc.
 
Just read Cormac McCarthy's new one - No Country For Old Men.

Phew!! Bit different for McCarthy, having at least one foot planted firmly in the traditional crime-fiction genre (albeit somewhere a little leftfield, roundabout where James Sallis might stand). That said it's certainly not your run-of-the-mill crime novel - or for the queasy. Not as violent as Blood Meridian, which is still the most gut-wrenching novel I think I've ever read, but its still way outside faint-heart territory. And, as with all McCarthy's stuff, only a fool would expect an easy ride!
 
Here's one for established Forteans to read and then pass on to the budding Forteans on their gift lists:

Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist. Although it's a novel, the illustrations are important because of the coded messages. All I knew when I picked this up in Atlanta after Thanksgiving was that it was a mystery and it was getting good buzz in the industry, so imagine how I felt when I opened it on the plane and found the epigraph by Charles Fort: "One can't learn much and also be comfortable. One can't learn much and let anybody else be comfortable." Then, on page 41, the heroine picks up a book outside the neighborhood used bookstore:

"The book had a cloth cover with several dark stains, and the paper was thick and creamy, soft at the edges. The title jumped out at her: Lo! The illustrations were done in black and white - distorted, rubbery figures clutched each other or screamed.

She read a few paragraphs."

And her way of looking at life changes, permanently. It is fair to say that Fort drives the plot, and when the characters grow discouraged or confused, they look to him as a role model.

Check it out. It'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy, and you get to work out the codes, too (key is provided but the answers are not worked for you, as they so often are in books with codes).
 
Thanks Peni. Just put it on my Christmas wish list. I could use some warm and fuzzies. :D
 
PeniG said:
Although it's a novel, the illustrations are important because of the coded messages.
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Reminiscent of Arturo Peréz-Reverte's The Dumas Club. Peréz-Reverte should be far more familiar to people on this board than he appears to be (says me - making all sorts of assumptions and sounding like a bitter and peevish schoolmarm to boot). Literate, complex and full of puzzles but still very readable - Dan Brown for people who can read!
 
I'm almost through reading Julian Barnes Arthur and George. I’m not really a fan of Barnes, although I prefer him to the other well-smug alumni of Granta’s class of ‘83 (apart, maybe, from Rose Tremain). However, I’ve enjoyed this book. Very readable, and the fact that the plot hinges on a famous horse-ripping case might mean its of interest to those of a Fortean bent. (I looked for the horse ripping thread - there must be one somewhere - but couldn't find it).

Decent summary of the Edalji case and Conan Doyle's involvement in it here.
 
Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre . It features some of the most original and imaginative murder methods ever conceived .
 
Peripart said:
Having just read the third of these, I can recommend The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels by Michael Marshall. They're superbly written serial-killer / conspiracy thrillers with multiple viewpoints and sympathetic characters. I challenge anyone to buy all three and then not want to read them all from cover to cover. It's a dark world that Marshall depicts, but an all-too-believable one if you're a touch paranoid. Not much more to say; just go and read them!
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He writes some pretty good cyberpunkish SF, too (Under the name Michael Marshall Smith).
 
Lavater and Calmet

There still remain after all these years two essential Paranormal works which I've never yet been able to track down (even those 40-plus years in new, used and rare books didn't help!), and I'm hoping that some e-book service will eventually publish them on-line. If I've merely missed them in my Net searches, please let me know.

1. Lewis Lavater's 16th Century classic OF SPIRITES AND SPECTRES WALKYNGE BY NYGHTE.

2. Don Augustin Calmet's 18th Century vampire writings (in English).

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
Re: Lavater and Calmet

OldTimeRadio said:
1. Lewis Lavater's 16th Century classic OF SPIRITES AND SPECTRES WALKYNGE BY NYGHTE.
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I just checked and my university library has one of his works in electronic format (and probably on microfilm)--not the one you're looking for, though. Point being, that may be the direction in which to look.

http://tinyurl.com/a43ku
http://www.loc.gov/rr/loan/loan-us.html

Dunno how easy it'd be to get, but...
 
Six really good books I've read with a Fortean theme this year, neatly dividing into 3 fiction and 3 non-fiction are:

Peter Kingsley - Ancient philosophy, mystery and magic - How the western tradition of philosophy has misunderstood the roots of ancient Greek philosophy;

Paul Devereux - Haunted Land - Excellent discussion of how myths we are aware of now, represent what was a common trend of shamanism all over the world;

George P. Hansen - The trickster and the paranormal - looks at the relationship between the Trickster figure and the paranormal;

Walter Moers - Rumo and his miraculous adventures - about a fighting, talking dog;

John Fowles - The Magus - Hard going but interesting story about how reality can be manipulated;

Count Jan Potocki - The Manuscript found in Saragossa - Surreal, absurd and entertaining.
 
The Man who Folded Himself

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.

A classic time travel novel which really highlights the paradoxical nature of time travel and how lonely a life a time traveller would have.
 
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