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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

I recommend reading Christopher Fowler's excellent Bryant and May series. The characters appear in many of his previous books, but now they have their very own series. You can find more details here: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/christopher-fowler/

Plenty of Fortean themes, and FT itself gets the odd mention here and there!
 
tonylovell said:
gncxx - I LOVE House Next Door! It's my favourite haunted house novel next to Haunting of Hill House. But yes, I hated the ending, too. Had to happen, but wish it hadn't.
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The House Next Door is all about disquietude and disturbing jolts. Excellent book, and yes, the ending had me ... "huh... whhhat... OMG!". I had to reread the ending like three times before I officially closed the book.

The only haunted house novels that hold a candle to it is The Haunting Of Hill House, Burnt Offerings, and The Shining.

Matheson's Hell House is good too only it doesn't go with the subtle psychological angle more blunt gratuity and bloody macabre. McDowell's southern gothic, The Elementals is another good read with a decidedly more Lovecraftian angle and sense of setting plays a large role.
 
gncxx said:
Next on my cult horror novel list was The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier. I'd read one of his before ages ago, Rapture, which was a very decent psycho-stalker thriller, and this was kind of similar as it focused on one twisted mentality. It's about an American man in London who thinks he's a werewolf, and before you say, "rip-off!" the novel was published at the same time as that more famous film. A bit short, but it's lean and mean and you are left wondering if he really was a wolfman or not. Disgusting sex scene halfway through, be warned, but yeah, one of the better werewolf books.
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Werewolf novels I enjoyed more are Whitley Strieber's Wolfen and David Morrell's The Totem.

The former is a flawed horror novel but Whitley presents the inner pack mentality of the "wolfen" their communication with chilly success and there are many creepy moments seen from the human point of view. Good novel.

With the latter, skip the expanded Complete And Uncut version of The Totem as David Morrell attempts to update the 60-70s counterculturism backstory of his horror novel and fit it into the 80-90s setting and fails miserably. Buy the original 1979 published editor's version or check out it at the library. I believe the expanded version was published in 1994. The story evokes The Crazies, 28 Days Later, The Hills Have Eyes horror tropes. Another good novel.

Other good classics are Lortz's Dracula's Children, Levy's The Beast Within, and McCammon's The Wolf's Hour. Both the Lortz and Levy books are criminally overlooked.

I have yet to read Kerruish's The Undying Monster and Endore's The Werewolf Of Paris, two werewolf classics. Have you read these?
 
No, I haven't but I have seen the movies! The Wolfen was pretty good, nice atmosphere of "otherness" to it, but The Totem was a fantastic page turner and I hadn't realised Morrell had updated it. Thankfully I read it before he rewrote it unnecessarily. It would make a great film if handled right (like The Wolfen wasn't).
 
Do Not Lick the Phones

I recommend this book! I've just finished it. it's pretty good (a page turner, romantic-comedy) billed as "The True Confessions of a TV Psychic!". It's funny. I liked it a lot. Reading it in three days.

It's FT interest is the author claims the psychic experiences are true, but goes on to question them regarding the way small details keep being wrong; and how fortune tellers Get It Wrong and explain it away.

It has a few info-dumps (how is a spirit different to a ghost...) and I happen to know that there is A Big Stink in the Media Psychic circles as they try to trace the author.

If anyone else has read it, I would appreciate an opinion on whether to write a review of it for FT.
 
I'm on the look out for good UFO books. Can anyone recommend any? Not fiction (as far as we can tell!) and the more "sciency" the better.

Also interested in Ghost and Haunting books as well.

Thanks.
 
I came around to the graphic novel form rather late - originally inspired by the architectural artwork of Jacques Tardi (who penned the Adèle Blanc-Sec stories recently adapted for film by Luc Besson) which introduced me to his extraordinary C'etait la guerre des tranchees (which is now available in English).

Anyway, I've just bought Martin Rowson's adaptation of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - which is a howl. If any classic lends itself to the graphic novel form it's Tristram Shandy. Surreal, boisterous and digressive - great stuff, beautifully drawn.

Little video about Rowson's book here.
 
Second the Rowson - although anything SHandy connected is good for me.

Main read currently is Michel Foucault's "The Birth of BioPolitics" - his account of the genealogy of neoliberalism - as done in his lectures for 1979. Excellent for working out where a lot of the current British neoliberal BS has its ideological origins and justifications. Shame we get the text 30 years after the lectures, but worth reading anyway.
 
For good old fashioned chills I can heartily recommend "The Birthing House" by Christopher Ransom.
 
A 17 year old niece gave me her school library copy of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.I took and and started reading just to humour her,and loved it.Kept me engrossed right from the start and had a huge :shock: moment.Not the kind of book i would normally read but glad i did.
 
Reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles right now.. tell me it has a happy ending or i dont know if i can finish it. :(
 
I didn't make it to the end of Tess, and if I did, I can't remember. Hated that book.
 
titch said:
Reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles right now.. tell me it has a happy ending or i dont know if i can finish it. :(
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Sad ending I'm afraid.
 
ramonmercado said:
Sad ending I'm afraid.
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It is, isn't it? Now I'm forced to remember. A sad ending made worse by having to suffer all the way through the bloody book to get to is.

I really did hate it, did I mention? ;)
 
Just finished Starbound, 2nd in a trilogy. Young woman emigrates to Mars encounters creatures underground but they are just the creation of the Others from Wolf 25. Don't want to give too much away, vgood. By Joe Haldeman. 1st book is Marsbound.
 
Ravenstone said:
I didn't make it to the end of Tess, and if I did, I can't remember. Hated that book.
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Oooo why hate? i find hardy a bit to wordy at times , using 100 words when 5 would do,and i doubt the book will be in my top 10,but why hate?
 
Four words :

A Level English Literature.

Although, to be fair, that and Larkin are the only things I disliked about the subject.

I didn't enjoy it; found it deadly boring and it completely failed to hold my attention. Didn't care about any of the characters; didn't want to know what happened next. All of the reasons for reading or watching anything, basically.
 
ramonmercado said:
Just finished Starbound, 2nd in a trilogy. Young woman emigrates to Mars encounters creatures underground but they are just the creation of the Others from Wolf 25. Don't want to give too much away, vgood. By Joe Haldeman. 1st book is Marsbound.
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I thought Marsbound was a good juvenile of the old school, but with a lot more sex, up until the point the aliens appeared. Especially as they were so hokey. I think Haldeman sort of lost it in the last half. Some of his more recent stuff has been a bit like that. Forever Free for example. He's dropped from being one of my "must reads" to being "keep an eye on him, and see if anything interesting crops up".
 
Anome_ said:
ramonmercado said:
Just finished Starbound, 2nd in a trilogy. Young woman emigrates to Mars encounters creatures underground but they are just the creation of the Others from Wolf 25. Don't want to give too much away, vgood. By Joe Haldeman. 1st book is Marsbound.
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I thought Marsbound was a good juvenile of the old school, but with a lot more sex, up until the point the aliens appeared. Especially as they were so hokey. I think Haldeman sort of lost it in the last half. Some of his more recent stuff has been a bit like that. Forever Free for example. He's dropped from being one of my "must reads" to being "keep an eye on him, and see if anything interesting crops up".
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I thought MB was superior to a juv. All I'll say tho is theres more to learn and you get improved aliens in SB.

I read MB as a serial in Analog so the book version may have been padded out a bit.

Analog is a SF mag which also publishes science fact articles.
http://www.analogsf.com/2011_07-08/index.shtml
 
"Juvenile" has nothing to do with quality, it's more about the type of story, and the content. Some of the greatest SF authors started out writing juveniles.
 
Anome_ said:
"Juvenile" has nothing to do with quality, it's more about the type of story, and the content. Some of the greatest SF authors started out writing juveniles.
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I agree, its the setting. But although the main character starts as a teen, imho the novel moves beyond the juvie tropes.

Heinlein, Asimov and even Clarke wrote some great juvies but again imho they do not compare to the authors adult books. Podkayne of Mars pales alongside Friday.
 
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