@Loki
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sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 27, 2025 02:31 AM)
Finished
Stage Fright
. A nice light read, not too intellectually taxing, set in a then-future 1990s which is more technologically advanced than 2025
Also read:
I picked this short story collection for my big horror read primarily because of "The Birds," but there was plenty to love here, horror and otherwise. I'll break them down story by story. No spoilers.
"Kiss Me Again, Stranger"- A mechanic meets a mysterious young woman at the movies and things happen from there… Astute readers will know where this one is headed long before our somewhat dimwitted narrator, but it's still an effective story.
8.5/10
"The Birds" - To say that this story is quite different from the Hitchcock adaptation would be a giant understatement. A more claustrophobic setting, different characters, and the story is far bleaker. Indeed, I'd almost label the story apocalyptic. And with the British setting, it becomes abundantly clear that what du Maurier is really writing about here is The Blitz. Hitchcock's film is undeniably a masterpiece, but so is the story and, in the right hands, a more faithful adaptation would be more than welcome.
10/10
"The Little Photographer" - A story of an affair with dire consequences. The setting - a holiday in coastal France - is intriguing and the prose excellent, but the main character needed to be fleshed out a little more for her actions to make sense and the ending was a little anticlimactic.
6.5/10
"Monte Verità" - What initially seems like the classic "folk horror" tale ultimately turns out to be it's very antithesis. Modernity and so-called civilization are, as in real life, the greatest horror imaginable and du Maurier's character study of a man coming to realize that he's wasted his life among them is quite poignant.
10/10
"The Apple Tree" - A black comedy story which goes on just a tad too long, but the lead character is one of the most delightfully insufferable assholes I've encountered in literature in recent memory
7/10
"The Old Man" - Very short, more of a sketch than a fully fleshed-out story. None of the characters are given enough focus to be sympathetic and our gossipy stalker of a narrator, in particular, comes off very poorly. Whatever du Maurier was going for here, it missed the mark. Unless, of course, the publisher demanded ten more pages for whatever reason. It avoids the lowest rating only because her prose is, per usual, flawless.
2/10
"The Split Second" - This one reads like a lost Twilight Zone episode and that's one of the highest compliments I can think of. I won't say more because it would be an easy story to spoil and everybody should read this one! It is particularly well-suited for Halloween season.
11/10
"No Motive" - A classic detective story in the vein of Agatha Christie and it remains highly entertaining and compelling throughout. I was going to give it a mere 9.5 for not being
particularly
inventive. But the ironic embrace of one of the most well-known tropes of the genre in the final paragraphs ends the story and the collection on a perfect note.
10/10
Bottom line: du Maurier - whose novel
Rebecca
I greatly enjoyed quite recently - reveals herself here to be a master of the short story. I will most definitely continue reading her. Final score
8.1/10 (9.0 without "The Old Man"
).
@Celestia Bloodshed - We should definitely compare notes when you get to this one.
Sticking with iconic English writers, up next I will be revisiting this classic novella from Clive Barker:
Draft Barron Trump - A mechanic meets a mysterious young woman at the movies and things happen from there… Astute readers will know where this one is headed long before our somewhat dimwitted narrator, but it's still an effective story.
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sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 29, 2025 01:45 AM)
Nice! I love Italian horror films, so I'll add it to my list! The book was actually published a year later, so it's unrelated. It's a run-of-the-mill cheap paperback horror of the era, highly entertaining if you're in the mood for that sort of thing, but nobody's idea of great literature. I picked it up because of the cover art
Draft Barron Trump -
Celestia Bloodshed — 5 months ago(October 31, 2025 08:38 PM)
ok so i've read
The Birds
today and i completely agree with you. i like how it's centered around a family being under attack in their home rather than the set of aloof characters from the film adaptation. the story here goes more into private and personal spaces being threatened, creating an apocalyptic bleakness and doom that is much more palpable here than in Hitchcock's version imo with an even more widely open ending than the film offered. and yes, i think, too, that this undeniably makes it an allegory of the WWII Blitz attacks.
for the record, i haven't read any of the other stories yet, and my copy actually only has the first five stories.
cursed, scarred & forever possessed -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 29, 2025 01:11 AM)
I finished my re-read of
The Hellbound Heart
. I decided to revisit this one after a discussion on another thread a few months back where
@merry christmas
and
@Casper
had diverging views on it and I realized that I had never read Barker as an adult.
https://www.filmboards.com/board/p/22730519/permalink/#p22730519
Overall, I found it very enjoyable, although the short length left the characters feeling a little underdeveloped. More backstory (Frank's alluded-to criminal past and the relationship between Rory and Kirsty) would have helped matters, as would a few more domestic scenes to fully explain why Julia was unhappy in the marriage and went to the lengths that she did. The Cenobites, of course, and the mystery behind LeMarchand's box are the most intriguing part of the story.
I prefer this novella to Barker's own film adaptation
Hellraiser
, which seemed to sacrifice much of the story's quintessential Britishness for a largely American main cast.
In short, I would recommend this one and I intend to revisit more of Barker's work in the near future. Probably beginning with
The Thief of Always
, which was my favorite of his growing up.
Up next, I'm beginning this massive behemoth of a book, which features contributions from several of my favorite contemporary horror authors, many authors I'm not yet familiar with and even a few whom I actively dislike. I'll likely be reading something else concurrently, but haven't settled yet on what it will be.
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 29, 2025 01:42 AM)
I haven't read that either. Or really any of his more recent work. I seem to remember that he went all George R.R. Martin for a while and wasn't really publishing anything and I never checked back in once that phase was over. I don't want to overextend my Halloween season reading list, but if I run out of things to read next month, I may go find that one at the library
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(October 01, 2025 06:15 PM)
While I continue to slowly make my way through
The End of the World as We Know It
, I've decided to revisit yet another classic horror author, the late great Peter Straub. I've read this one before, but it's been years.
@dbentley666- I can't remember if it was this one or
Julia
which you mentioned a while back?
Draft Barron Trump
- I can't remember if it was this one or
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sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(October 01, 2025 06:44 PM)
You're in Washington, correct? I read this one a few months ago and it's one of my favorites this year. It's largely centered around Tacoma and the author grew up in the area during that time.
Draft Barron Trump -
Cheeky — 6 months ago(October 01, 2025 07:12 PM)
Sounds good
I read Ann Rules book on Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me
If we take the time to see with the heart and not with the mind, we shall see that we are surrounded completely by angels ~ Carlos Santana -
Celestia Bloodshed — 6 months ago(October 04, 2025 12:06 PM)
my sister gave me a book to read from her shelf:
Cursed Bunny
by Bora Chung (2017)
Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.
Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.
3 stories in and so far so good!
i have also started reading another Patricia Highsmith noir,
The Two Faces of January
(1964), after i've been thoroughly blown away by her last novel that i've read,
The Price of Salt
, which became an instant favourite. this one is pretty good as well and i'm so back on that Highsmith kick, baby
cursed, scarred & forever possessed -
Celestia Bloodshed — 5 months ago(October 08, 2025 12:18 PM)
very good, it's definitely one of Highsmith' best noir thrillers that i've read so far. it's also a great sightseeing tour through Athens and the island of Crete. i would rank it just a tad below
The Talented Mr. Ripley
but above the Ripley sequels,
Strangers on a Train
,
The Blunderer
&
The Cry of the Owl
.
cursed, scarred & forever possessed -
sheetsadam1 — 5 months ago(October 08, 2025 03:05 AM)
Finished
If You Could See Me Now
.
It's a little odd that Peter Straub - to the extent that he's known by to the general public at all - is inextricably linked to Stephen King. While the pair did indeed collaborate on two novels and were lifelong friends, they seem like the definition of an "odd couple." Where King was always unabashedly commercial, with his novels (particularly in his "golden era") sometimes seeming to be custom-made for inevitable film adaptations, Straub's work has been adapted to film only once and quite badly (Fred Astaire! Are you ****ing kidding me?). Where King is a lifelong small-town Mainer who used to write his books in the midst of coke binges with metal blaring, Straub was a world-traveling, Ivy League-educated sophisticate who probably enjoyed a gin and tonic with some jazz records. And while King was a child of the TV era, influenced in equal parts by late-night showings of old horror and sci-fi films and the postwar horror fiction of Bradbury, Matheson, et al., the older Straub's work harkens back to 19th century's literary horror.
I read Straub as a teenager, of course, alongside King, Barker, Anne Rice, Robert R. McCammon, and even authors like John Saul and Dean Koontz. But I'd be lying if I said that he was an easy read back then, the themes often going completely over my head. What I remember most from his novels was the creepy, slow-burn atmosphere and a prose style unmatched in contemporary horror fiction. I really should have returned to him sooner…
Last October, I re-read Straub's 1979 novel
Ghost Story
, which cemented that book as one of my favorite horror novels of all time. After finding that
If You Could See Me Now- published two years earlier - is every bit it's equal, I've decided to make a Straub novel an annual tradition (and if the rumors are true about King's next novel, I'll be revisiting
The Talisman
and
Black House
even earlier).
Truthfully, all I remembered going into this one was the prologue and the vaguely suspicious small town vibe. This allowed me to read it as if for the first time and the theme I really didn't pick up on back then was the desolation of someone approaching middle age and still held back by old ghosts. Straub's Miles Teagarden is a bit of
'Salem's Lot
's Ben Mears, a bit of
The Shining
's Jack Torrance (King was certainly reading Straub for years before they collaborated), but even more troubled than either. Police corruption, homophobia, religious trauma, and misogyny are among the many things touched on here - and handled very well - but it remains, at it's core, a very effective ghost story that leaves the reader wondering until the final chapter if the ghosts are real or figurative.
Two books into rediscovering Peter Straub and they're both 10/10. Stephen King was likely correct in stating of him that, "He was a better and more literary author than I was." Now if only somebody would slip his entire bibliography to Mike Flanagan…
Next up, I will be taking a slight detour from my horror reading but not from the seasonal vibes with this Agatha Christie novel, one of her Poirot series.
Draft Barron Trump - published two years earlier - is every bit it's equal, I've decided to make a Straub novel an annual tradition (and if the rumors are true about King's next novel, I'll be revisiting
