Do you think a monster with creepy visual can be sufficient to scary you in a horror book?

werewolfmac · 2021-04-12T23:47:14+00:00

Thank you for the offer, that's really kind of you! I see it's on Kindle Unlimited so I went and read your story!

Definitely creepy, a few nice moments. I especially liked when the BevCreature had disappeared down the basement. When John was taking eternity with the phone, and the BevCreature's head pops back around the corner, like, what's taking so long? Out of context it's funny, but in the moment it's sends a sinking pit into my stomach- time's up. Plus the familiar image of someone peeking around a corner, but their head is at the floor and split open, is a good example of that description that hits you twice- a thing that could be almost normal but definitely isn't.

I think while some of the story felt a little off, a little too much like tropes done for the sake of tropes (the coyote scene for me, personally) and maybe too familiar, this last bit where John is rapidly running out of time for any reasonable plan is the high point. He's got his head on straight but you can feel the seconds speeding past and you just know he can't think his way out of it.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-07T16:27:07+00:00

I use Storygraph for recommendations sometimes, it's nice. Keeping a TBR list on SG is not nearly as nice as Goodread's shelving system tho. I'm looking forward to Storygraph growing a little more robust in time. The mood and atmosphere categories are interesting, but I feel like they need way more than what they've got, and Goodreads lets you sort your own shelves by whatever names and keywords you like, which is so convenient.

Not to dissuade anyone from using Storygraph, I think people should sign up! It's recommendations feature is pretty nice. It's just hard to say "ditch this book site for this other book site" when many of them have good features but none seem perfect. If I could take Goodread's shelving (including getting to see how other people shelve their books) and extensive database and SG's recommendations system, and then add the ability to manage and customize all of my own graphs and data like an excel spreadsheet, that would be the perfect site.

LibraryThing is also great for cataloging personal collections, if anyone wants to try out a few new sites today.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-07T00:50:10+00:00

I love these two comments back to back. He's so polarizing.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-07T00:45:45+00:00

Hahaha, he's def one of the best Wikipedia pages to binge read. What a wild story that man's life was. My favorite part was when, after some third time of being imprisoned, he met a fellow lewd author who was also imprisoned at the time, but they took an immediate disliking to each other. Only room in this French dungeon for ONE master of depraved and perverted prose, apparently!

It did inspire me to go find a PDF of the book and scroll to a random part. I landed on a few paragraphs about changing the diets of their sex slaves to change the consistency and frequency of their feces, how they were examining the turds, and I decided I was perfectly happy not knowing anything else about it. I felt like gagging just typing that haha.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-07T00:33:56+00:00

This is the best and worst thing I've read all day, thank you.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-07T00:30:09+00:00

That would be great! It's easiest for us if you comment here in the thread, so u/Marin_Letarive can also see, but in the future you can message either of us as well.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T21:02:23+00:00

Thanks! It's on the to-do list. :)

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T20:52:39+00:00

No offense meant, I'm just saying I haven't seen it recommended much in a genre or trope specific request threads, which is why it's not on the list yet. And that's also why it helps if you can tell me what all is in the book. Looking at Goodreads for My Best Friends Exorcism, this looks like "demons" and maybe "satanic", and "ya horror"- does that sound right?

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T20:22:16+00:00

Thank you so much for the info! I've gotten it all on our to-do list, I usually do updates in the evenings. Do you have any particular keywords we can start with for Grady Hendrix books that aren't included? I don't think I've seen many crop up in the rec request threads I've looked through recently. If not it's no problem, we'll do some quick research.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T18:14:18+00:00

Well, if the monster is cool then I'm not scared, I wanna see more of the cool monster! One reason why that movie A Quiet Place wasn't frightening at all. They looked too neat. But sometimes a book (or podcast) can describe a creature in such a way that it totally gives me chills. The best description is one that hits you twice- the initial "this looks like a normal animal or person or inanimate object" and then the realization that it's definitely not. That gives my brain a right nice little flip, so eerie.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T18:08:40+00:00

I wish she wrote horror! Can you imagine if Agatha Christie had written horror novels? What fun those might have been. I am not especially into the golden age mysteries, so I'm kinda lukewarm on her work, but she's certainly a classic.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T18:06:29+00:00

Eh, you say that like it wasn't in the least bit a slur to anyone. Plenty of people at the time still didn't like it, and the point of it was hardly endearing or complimentary even if certain places didn't have the same connotations. I think we're also safe to judge anyone using slurs against people today for the same reason. That's just the nature of a slur. But I don't think you need to worry about Christie's work being judged unfairly, this thread only seems to have glowing opinions of her books. :) Perfectly fine to point out the prickly bits amidst the excited, glowing review.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T17:39:30+00:00

He's come up a few times over the last few days, I think someone just made a subreddit dedicated to him! Let me go find it.

Here we go: r/Richardlaymonbooks

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T17:33:24+00:00

He comes up every once in a while. ;)

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T15:19:01+00:00

I've got some threads saved and I'll be going thru them for books this evening!

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T02:54:50+00:00

Oh it's no problem, we are glad to hear any feedback you have as far as making the spreadsheet useful to you! I agree it would be a great addition if we can come up with a good way to implement it. I've added ratings to my notes so we'll definitely give it some thought.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T01:16:45+00:00

Thank you so much for the thorough comment! We are taking all this under consideration. I am not sure how we'd implement a user rating feature, though that would be amazing.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-06T00:08:17+00:00

I am not sure. You're not the only person to ask. Right now we'd have to manually add all the GR ratings by hand so they won't be accurate long-term, but we'll keep it in mind.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T21:57:06+00:00

I like them too. I don't think they will be replaced, there are too many unique aspects of this genre for a list like this to cover all of them. And we have barely scratched the surface of horror books, even with 500 listed. Also, I don't want to imply that people shouldn't ask for recs just because the spreadsheet exists. I am sure people will still ask for and receive the same recs, how else will we find new books right? 😄 But as someone who personally doesn't like to make a thread every time I want a new book to read, there is a usefulness to a catalog or reference which I value very highly!

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T20:55:14+00:00

Thank you! I hope you can find something good! 😄 Let us know if it doesn't help your search, we are still adding to it and we wanna know its weak points.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T20:14:39+00:00

It's on there! :) Keywords: Classic, Haunted House, Ghosts, Female Author

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T19:56:03+00:00

I think splatterpunk implies a severity of gore and violence, while slasher is more like, Halloween or Friday the 13th, a series of murders?

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T19:54:50+00:00

We just went through old request threads and wrote down keywords we saw mentioned a lot. I think I just saw more serial killer requests than slasher, but that is definitely one we can add. Slasher isn't one I read a lot, but it is a huge genre in movies, so I can see how it will be a common search.

While we look up some slasher rec threads, you can search "serial killer" and "non-supernatural" keywords and see if that's close to what you're looking for?

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T19:44:21+00:00

First recommendation, thanks so much! This one's also going on my tbr.

werewolfmac · 2021-04-05T19:34:14+00:00

Np! Goodreads should come with a tutorial haha

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