MobileRead October 2012 Book Club Nominations

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by RoccoPaco

For my second nomination, I second The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.

Third!

[orlok]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

What I see is different. It may be because you're not blocked from purchasing it in your country.

Ah, that's a pain. What about via Kobo, does that work?

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by orlok

Ah, that's a pain. What about via Kobo, does that work?

No, Kobo can't sell it to U.S. customers.

This content is not available internationally.

[Kevin8or]

Is Stephen King's "The Stand" considered horror? It's been on my list for ages. I nominate it if it qualifies.

[Grey Ram]

I'd like to third "The last werewolf" and "We have always lived in the castle" and to second "The Stand"

[issybird]

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is fully nominated; see preceding post.

[usuallee]

I'll second The Shining. Never participated before, looking forward to it!

[Prestidigitweeze]

I hesitated to comment further on my own nomination, but a certain MR member with whom I conversed in private felt the following comments might be of value.

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The trouble with most of the nominations so far is that I've read nearly everything that's been suggested. Besides which, I'm not a fan of Stephen King's style or sentimentality. He's one of the few writers whose books I prefer as films. If you want to see why, look at King's complaints about Kubrick's version of The Shining. Then watch King's serialized film adaptation of the same book and notice how Kubrick had the taste to remove every single wretched flaw that King chose to cling to loudly and tenaciously.

If you pay attention to multicultural criticism, and to sites like Racialicious, you'll be familiar with the trope of the black character invested with special powers -- a kind of paranormal butler who appears in order to solve the white characters' problems. In multicultural social criticism, this character is often referred to as The Magic Negro, and you could argue that Stephen King practically invented that character. Famous examples of the Magic Negro appear not only in The Shining, but in The Stand, The Green Mile and a number of other books. Watch Kubrick's film and, again, you'll see how the late director made the black character flawed and unrepentantly sexual -- something the saintly self-sacrificing butlers in King's fiction seldom are.

Then again, I've been friends with a few established horror writers for decades, and carefully avoided most of the schlock which might otherwise slake my constant thirst for morbidity, so I've learned to be rather picky when we're not talking about Henry James or Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

My friends all seem to like Ramsey Campbell, but I find him too prolific to be the sort of jewel-cutter I prefer. The early short stories are my favorite work by him.

Thomas Ligotti is an uneven stylist, but he seems to me to be doing the most original work of any of the currently living horror writers I've read. People compare him to Lovecraft, but he's just as influenced by people like E.M. Cioran. The tone and atmosphere convey metaphysical pessimism, which is far more disturbing to me than a high body count.

And now back to our regular feature.

[Kevin8or]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

People compare him to Lovecraft

Hey, what about H. P. Lovecraft? He might be a good choice for the book club, for those of us who are horror neophytes (or even those who are aficionados but haven't read the classics).

[JSWolf]

To be honest, I don't think any eBook not available in the USA will stand a chance of winning.

[JSWolf]

I shall third Summer of Night and there we go, 10 nominations. Let the voting begin.

[WT Sharpe]

Thanks, Jon.

It was beginning to look as if this one one would go the whole 10 days. This has to be the slowest nomination month since I took over the club's Grand Poobah duties. I expected things to go slow last month when we were voting on the non-fiction selection (my personal favorite, but you know I'm a bit strange), but that when rather quickly. Evidently horror isn't all that popular with The MobileRead Book Club members.

Will return shortly to announce the voting poll.

[WT Sharpe]

Prepare to be terrified. The first voting poll is up and running scared.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Kevin8or

Hey, what about H. P. Lovecraft? He might be a good choice for the book club, for those of us who are horror neophytes (or even those who are aficionados but haven't read the classics).

I think H.P. Lovecraft is an excellent choice. One problem is that the best editions of Lovecraft are of the collected works and not individual books which we're likely to tackle in a month. The Mountains of Madness might be a good choice if we actually have members who are interested in that sort of horror. Nominate it and I'll second it.

When it comes to individuals' taste, horror can be a telling divider between sensibilities.

People often associate good taste with a lack of carnage and morbidity. That's one reason that Thomas Lovell Beddoes, one of the most important poets of the romantic period, never achieved fame in his lifetime and is only now being rediscovered -- because he was overwhelmingly the poet of death and things funereal (he was certainly the only English romantic poet with a degree in medicine from Bavaria and philosophy from Zurich). Ezra Pound thought he was brilliant, but the kind of person who prefers coffee table books will often dismiss Beddoes because his subject matter is deemed to be in inherently bad taste. The same attitude in previous ages led people to dismiss writers like Wilde, Huysmans and Baudelaire. Purple is not just symbolic of excess. It is also a legitimate shade.

In fact, Beddoes had the kind of rarefied taste that has yet to be understood by many people who decorate their houses with Victoriana.

The annals of cinema are littered with wretchedly bad horror novels and films. That said, some of the greatest art ever created is also horrific.

Young soul, put off your flesh, and come
With me into the quiet tomb.
Our bed is lovely, dark, and sweet;
The earth will swing us, as she goes,
Beneath our coverlid of snows
And the warm leaden sheet.

Dear and dear is their poisoned note,
The little snakes of silver throat
In mossy skulls that nest and lie,
Ever singing, "Die, oh! die."