I could write a novel on what I think about this writer.
James Herbert – My all-time favourite horror writer.
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Category: auld author
Writers Reading – Review by Dale Willliams Barrigar
Kafkaesque
Franz Kafka has a sixty-something-word story called “The Watchman” in the translation from German. In this piece, the narrator keeps running back and forth in front of the watchman in order to taunt him, while also being terrified that he might be arrested at any moment, but unable to desist. In sixty or so words, Kafka encapsulates the outcast outsider, the paranoid underdog known as the modern human being: the contemporary everyman.
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Writers Reading. Review by Mick Bloor
Re-Reading ‘Lucky Jim’
Note: This review contains spoilers.
I’m a big fan of re-reading, a sovereign cure for Life’s Disappointments. Whenever you injure your foot at the start of a walking holiday, or your team gets relegated, or the school bully turns up again as your new line manager, there’s one guaranteed restorative: re-reading a favourite story. And not just any favourite story: for my money, it’s got to be either a galloping adventure story, or a comic novel. (Notice I don’t say ‘favourite author:’ Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island,’ or ‘Kidnapped,’ definitely fall into the ‘sovereign cure’ category, but don’t ever pick up his ‘St Ives’).
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Writers Reading. Review by Paul Kimm
The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson
I’ve always enjoyed reading books that challenge the reader, turn the experience on its head a bit, make me do some work in return for the work they’ve done, and just make me think about what’s possible with writing. There are those that do it with such force it makes for some mental heavy lifting and cognitive contortionism from the reader, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch being prime examples (even though I admit to having enjoyed reading both those), but I want to talk about one of my very favourite writers, B. S. Johnson.
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Auld Author
A slightly different take on the auld author recommendation from Tom Sheehan who has written about a personal experience as a connection with this poet
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Auld Author – A Bard of the Old School
Auld author – On the Beach by Nevil Shute
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The TS Eliot quotation is appropriate here. As time passes some books become better known for their film counterparts than as novels–as it is with Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. Yet despite some here and there details, the film remains faithful to the story.
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Auld Author – The Bad Place by Dean R Koontz- by Hugh Cron
Okay, this is a weird one.
I have a story about a story that has fuck all to do with the story.
Please bear with me.
I’d like to write about Dean R Koontz’s ‘The Bad Place’.
As I have said before, with any of these that I do, I want to tell you more why the book has stayed with me rather than all the technical stuff. I have read six or so of Mr Koontz’s books and have enjoyed them. He does have a tendency to use
children and dogs within his plots. (The dogs, I can forgive – Kids not so much!)
But this book stands out due to it being so random. Here comes the story within a story, well sort of. Years back I read something that stated Bobby Darin had said that he could write anything. Someone, a DJ, I think gave him the line ‘Splish Splash, I was taking a bath’ and well, we know the rest. The reason that I mention this is, I reckon (Wrongly, I might add!!) that Mr Koontz was bet that he couldn’t get these topics into a story.
Telekinesis.
Inter-Planetary travel.
Vampirism.
And hermaphroditism.
By fuck he did!
I give you ‘The Bad Place.’
What a bonkers but entertaining book!!
And I don’t want to spoil anything but I do need to give you one line.
When the MC knows that the evil guy was coming for him, he tried to warn his pal. They were both in a unit for Special Needs. He told his friend, ‘There’s a bad thing coming’ and the wee soul replied, ‘What, poached eggs?’
May sound like fuck all but it makes me laugh every-time I think on it!!
Koontz isn’t my favourite horror writer, I prefer King, Laymon and to me, the best ever, the late great James Herbert. But for something so inventive that, in my mind, has a link to Bobby Darin, I would suggest that you have a look at this book. It is by far, the most inventive book that I have ever read.
Hugh Cron
Three Miniatures by Hwang Sunwŏn
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
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Auld Author – Katherine Mansfield by Leila
The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is available on Kindle for next to nothing. She was from New Zealand and is yet another scribe whom TB scythed early.
I’m rather tired of reading “a person of his/her times.” Who isn’t? Goddam unfounded superior attitude in my mind. Anyway, all times are pretty much the same–bullshit and power rule and people must conceal their true selves or risk expulsion from their tribes. Social media is just another form of the grapevine. Anyway, Katherine Mansfield was attracted to women and was smart enough not to make that lead news in the nineteen-teens and twenties, yet she was brave about such in her work.
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literally stories 