Currently Reading

[Stormbringer]

I've read all the Books of Blood, but that's about it for my reading of Barker.

I read the first tale, The Midnight Meat Train, which I enjoyed, but I got bogged down in the next one and never continued.

Ha, The Yattering And Jack is one of my favorite of his shorts! As for the sex, if it’s not his YA he’s going to squeeze some deviancy in there :p

I recall (and this is going back two decades) that it was the description of the demons that put me off 'The Yattering...'

While they fit perfectly well with the style of illustrations by Louis Le Breton, found in the Dictionnaire Infernal, I did not appreciate that aspect at the time! I just thought it was TOO SILLY!

[Snowy]

I recently re-read Imagica by Clive Barker - well, about two thirds before I drifted away from it. There was some fairly explicit stuff in there too. I am not a prude, far from it, but find sitting reading page after page of erotica, erm, tedious tbh. My brain says "Yeah I get it, they are fucking, can we move on now?"

[Sly Boots]

Am finding it hard to plough through the second Bill Hodges book by Stephen King (Finders Keepers). It's... fine, just a slightly bizarre decision imo to relegate the previous main character to the periphery to such an extent he barely appears in it until the halfway point, and even after then incredibly sparingly.

I persisted as long as I have largely because I hoped at some point the backstory would end and he'd take over the narrative once it was established, but I'm 80% completed now and starting to lose faith that will happen

I've heard the third book is the worst in the trilogy as well, so I might not even bother.

[Alan]

I quite enjoyed 2 but I do remember being a little annoyed at how much backstory there is, yeah. I think you may have a hard time with 3 but who knows, you might end up liking it!

I recently re-read Imagica by Clive Barker - well, about two thirds before I drifted away from it. There was some fairly explicit stuff in there too. I am not a prude, far from it, but find sitting reading page after page of erotica, erm, tedious tbh. My brain says "Yeah I get it, they are fucking, can we move on now?"

I think of Barkers explicit stuff much like over the top violence and gore, it makes me giggle. I have no idea what his intention is but it’s generally so ridiculous that you just have to laugh. I’m sure somewhere there’s someone loving the descriptions of manually breeding horses but surely the minority He is best known for BDSM demons that chain you up when you’re naughty so you have to expect it -_- That said I do recall a scene or two in Imagica being overly long and not really adding anything.

I think Coldheart Canyon is maybe the most egregious but again it made me laugh a bunch. Was the peacock with human male genitalia spaffing on a rotund lady’s stomach while in full plumage supposed to be horrifying or titillating? Fucked if I know! Is Barker laughing while writing it or rubbing his sweaty palms on his thighs? Some things are better left unknown…

[Stormbringer]

If I recall correctly, there's a passage in Galilee about a man being gang-raped by a group of men with "purple-headed cocks" and I was thinking "This is not what I expected... "

It was my first Barker book.

[Tommy]

About to start Endurance by Alfred Lansing. It's not something I'd ordinarily read (I know what happens, for one...) it's been forced upon me, but it's been introduced as "the best thing he's ever read"...

I'm also reading Fall of Cilivsations, the book of the podcast. It's weird, when I went through college, university whatever, I always thought I was far more interested in modern history and had little to no interest in culture and that sort of thing (basically, war only). Maybe that's an age thing, but now I'm a bit older the cultural and economical history of ancient civlisations seems far more interesting.