Like being trapped in a strange weird dream that you can't wake up from
349033
The classic Primus line up with Tim Alexander back on drums release their first full length studio album since 1995's "Tales From The Punchbowl" and it is a re-working of Willy Wonkas Chocolate factory. Primus is probably the only band that could possibly get away with this and pull it off at the same time. On the first couple of listens this album just sounds all wrong and you begin to wonder has Les Claypool finally gone too far but it would be easy and unfair to dismiss it that easily.

However given time the magic and intention of the album filters through. At times it is completely sinister in delivery, as evident on "Candy Man". The vocal delivery on "Cheer up Charlie" might sound sincere on first listen but on further listens they are anything but. The zaniness of "Golden Ticket" which has already pierced my dreams and had me being thankful it was only a dream. In fact listening to the album it is like being locked in a bad weird dream that starts out nice thinking you can leave anytime when in reality there is no way out!

Ler's guitar on "Pure Imagination" is pure haunting and would be fitting of a serial killer chasing down a helpless victim. Of the instrumental pieces album closer "Farwell Wonkites" is the stand out. Having the four versions of the different "Oompa's" is overload. You will enjoy it the first time and tolerate it the second time but 4 times is way too much. This album does have a feel of a Les Claypool solo project rather than a full blown Primus album and it also features The Fungi Ensemble to round out the sound.
2068361
This book is a nonlinear mind-tripping voyage of mystery and black clouds, like a train making a fast run across the great plains of North America, while you stare out the window and contemplate the destruction of yourself, your society, and all you hold dear in the nuclear fires of armageddon.

You might might forget about this story by dinnertime, or it might haunt your nightmares until it pushes you to end it all with a dive off the thirtieth floor of a rusted skeleton of a seared out skyscraper, a hopeless non-survivor of the hurricane winds of the central blast radius.

Caitlin Kiernan paints a dusty memory of H. P. Lovecraft, Philip Marlowe, Fox Mulder, and Quentin Tarantino. The language of this story will suck you in and hold you as the stars finally go dark.
1358974
Had to give up reading (it) in bed at night and settle for lunchtime reading instead--scared me that much (and I'm not easily scared). But it's precisely because things like this have happened--and are still happening somewhere in the world--that this read is so unsettling (and only a very capable writer like Sirota can make it all feel so horribly real). Pick it up--you'll never forget Freedom's Hand (and you shouldn't).
3486634
This scary book felt like a mix between The Exorcist, Supernatural, and conspiracy theories.
3639659
I can't help but feel as though this book is trapped in some kind of mysterious time warp, where modern obstetrical technology meets the social values of the 1950's.
Some of the Best Odds recipes are pretty good, even if the whole diet is incredibly restrictive, and some of the information about hospital procedures is interesting (if overly weighted toward passive acceptance of whatever someone in a white coat thinks is best for you.)
But the section on labor was a trip. Let me get this straight -- after labor starts, but before I go to the hospital, I'm supposed to pass the time by *preparing food for other people*?
Yeah, right.
1950573
After you finish reading Exley, by Brock Clarke, you may need to take a few moments to catch your breath. You may not sleep well, and that's certainly not because of anything horrific or scary in the book. This book, quite simply, messes with your mind.

First, the characters are wildly created and completely unpredictable. It starts with Miller, or M-, who is a child prodigy on a quest to find his father who left the family suddenly and without explanation. He's a weird little kid, but likable, and you can't help but feel sympathy for him as he misses his dad.  The only explanation he can find is that his father must have left for Iraq (they live in an army base town), and this explanation doesn't sit well with his mother. She arranges for him to meet with a psychiatrist to discuss Miller's `wild imagination'. Miller and the doctor form a tentative relationship, with Miller's explanations sounding more reasonable than anyone else's.

The key to all of this, to separate it from any number of books about dysfunctional families, is Exley. Frederick Exley, is the author of A Fan's Notes, the favorite book of Miller's father. His father's so tied to Exley's books that when he gets a phone call on 9/11 to tell him to turn on the television, he can't be bothered. He's too busy re-reading the book. The book becomes Miller's only connection to his dad. He carries on his father's obsession and turns to Exley (or at least anything even remotely related to Exley or his writing) to bring him back. With book in hand, he searches all over Watertown to find a connection and an explanation. In between searching, he teaches his father's English class at the Junior College, meets a mysterious young woman who may have known his father, and visits the VA hospital searching for clues. This is one busy kid.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Pahnee, isn't exactly the appropriate choice for a mental health professional for Miller. This makes him perfect in terms of the book. Because while Dr. Pahnee utters the traditional psychobabble, he's also not above prowling Miller's house when no one's home, and following him around to verify if any of Miller's claims could possibly be true (both of them on bikes). He's not above hitting on Miller's mother, and as several of the chapters are written as his patient notes, we see just how far out of the range of normal he is. He is given to uttering repetitive phrases-repetitive and, indeed, annoying. (Just like that sentence!) Quirky doesn't even begin to describe him.

Clarke writes the characters in a brisk way that creates instant visuals: he describes the father "like a bear with hurt feelings." The mother is an uptight lawyer whose emotions are best deciphered by the position of her hands on her hips, and who is so rigid that her business suits are assigned a certain day to be worn. Everyone else that Miller meets fits the same non-mold, and the effect is dizzying. Despite the craziness, there is a genuine thread of humanity that aims to understand how much (or how little) of what we want to believe relates to what actually is true. It also toys with the idea of imagination as a therapeutic process, a means to adjust to and possibly accept changing circumstances.

The book reminded me a bit of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which has a child protagonist on a similar journey. Yet Clarke's novel has a more satisfying ending, and doesn't fold up quite as neatly. The flawed and outrageous characters for the most part were still sympathetic. My only irritation was that the character of Miller's mother seemed apathetic much of the time, and insensitive to Miller's father need. And to be honest, at times the unpredictable events almost became predictable once you get involved into the story...it's as if you begin to expect more of the same. The cleverness that was refreshing at first, did, albeit only a few times, get stale.
4809575
Mind bending and more than a little haunting but I know this can't actually happen in real life ever... can it?
1343527
The imaginary New England of H.P. Lovecraft is an eerily mundane place -- small towns where inhuman creatures lurk, lightless tombs and caves, sea-borne horrors that sleep under forgotten cities, and other cold, slimy, claustrophobic places.

So when reading "The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft," expect a constant gnawing sense of dread, even on the rare occasions when something creepy isn't going on. While his purplish prose can take some getting used to, Lovecraft's imagination was an avalanche of slow-burning nightmares -- and rather than explaining everything, he lets us know that everything seen and experienced is only the tip of the iceberg.

His stories include tales of immortal sorcerers, of mysterious creatures living in caves, soldiers haunted by alien worlds, a hick haunted by horrifying telepathic visions, an ancient family of cannibals, the mysterious Whately clan, a doctor whose reanimation fluid creates zombies, a house that opens into an abyss, the fishy people of Innsmouth, a mine with horrors in its depth, alien creatures that possess the bodies of humans, and a lot of people who end up in mental asylums due to having seen things Too Horrible To Describe.

Certain stories are part of Lovecraft's invented mythos... and it's a lot grosser and more terrifying than anything by Tolkien or Dunsany. He wrote about fishy monsters dwelling under the sea, of ancient ruined cities under the sea or ground, of vast indifferent Elder Things of immeasurable power, of people driven to complete insanity by what they've seen ("It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!").

Everybody is at least familiar with Lovecraft's oeuvre -- he's responsible for everybody's favorite tentacle-bearded Great Old One, and he's been a shaping influence on many horror writers, including Stephen King, Tim Powers, Mike Mignola and so on. And what do you think of when someone mentions Lovecraft? Probably tentacles. Lots of tentacles. Also, old horrifying godlike-creatures that will drive you mad instantly. And tentacles.

But it doesn't really sink in how expansive his imagination was until you read ALL of his short stories, and see the breadth of his subject matter -- everything from gothic horror to Poe-like suspense stories, and even early sci-fi. But one thing is always true of his stories: there is always the sense that something immeasurably vast and horrible is lurking under the ordinary world, and that what horrors we're seeing are only a minuscule glimpse of the whole.

However, Lovecraft's writing style takes a little getting used to. It tends to be ornate and verbose, and only the unrestrained grotesqueness keeps it from being purple prose ("for the taint of thunder was in the clouds, and a hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow"). And his descriptions of the misshapen supernatural creatures are enough to make you want to crawl under the bed and never come out ("Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms").

Flaws? Well, it's not a secret that Lovecraft had racist views that would make the KKK blanch, and there are moments that can make today's readers cringe. And that's the stuff that's explicit rather than merely subtextual (the fish-people of Innsmouth are meant to be a warning against interracial/interethnic relationships).

Expect things squamous and slimy in "The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft" -- while the writing style takes a bit of getting used to, the imagination and sense of creeping, slimy horror are second to none.
2618719
Okay, I admit it, I'm totally lost. And I like being lost. My favorite movie is The Magus. So lost is a good thing. But I have no clue what the hell is going on here. This is weirder than Inception because at least you knew there is reality and dream states. But this? No Clue. Which is why 3 stars. There's is a difference between fiction and non-fiction - fiction has to make sense. This doesn't.
4958501
I don't expect a great deal of true haunting stories and this one met those expectations.
  Typically, I find this genre interesting if presented well, but this story dragged on and on until I began to wish the characters would just slip into the abyss and be done with it!  The author informs us of every moment of every day, most of which we really don't need to know.  Yes, the house contains an antique clawfoot tub that the owner likes.  The author tells us how much she likes it every couple of pages.  Sadly, however, her daily ablutions therein always result in dreams or visions in which she nearly drowns.  Over and over and over again. How the hell many times does this have to happen before she figures out that showering might be a better option?
  In fact, there are any number of logical steps that people with any sense would have taken if they were actually in the situation of these characters.  One might be to live within their means.  We have a a woman, her boyfriend and her two sons.  They feel uncomfortable in their home after a break-in, so they move to a Victorian fixer-upper in a high-priced area and renovate while living there.  They don't sell their previous home but they spend a couple of years complaining about their finances and how difficult it is to make two house payments.  They live in Salt Lake City, where it gets a tad nippy during the winter, but for several years they do without central heating in their new old home.  They remodel the kitchen and install brand new hardwood floors, but never put in a furnace.  The woman works fourteen hour overnight shifts seven days a week and kvetches that this is very hard on her boyfriend and kids, but she can't cut back on her hours for financial reasons.  We are told over and over again that they own both a BMW and a Mercedes but it never occurs to them to replace their beloved luxury cars with a couple of second-hand Hondas and invest in a home heating system with the equity.  They are threatened almost unto death by a supposed demonic force but they "can't afford" to move although, as mentioned, they already own another house.  In fact, they go so far as to purchase a third house and move into that one, creating much financial distress, still hanging on to the other two and, supposedly, the two testimonies to German engineering.
  The author drags us through several four-season cycles but, after all of that, alludes to the misfortune of a previous owner occurring just one year ago.  However long they lived in their haunted house, lives constantly under threat, it is not until years have passed that they apparently meet any of their neighbors and inquire about the property's history.,
  Even then, learning very little, no one takes the time to actually research the place.  A psychic eventually investigates and relates a long story involving child-molesting Mormon polygamists, giving names, but no one ever calls the Register of Deeds office to ask names of previous owners to discover whether any of this lines up with documentation.  No one checks newspaper stories or, apparently, even Googles the street address.  Yeah, right.
  Call me a cynic but it is awfully difficult for me to empathize with characters that are this stupid.  It is even more difficult to buy into there being any truth in the story.
674927
Man wakes up to find he has no memory. A note from his previous self warns of dire things to come. What follows is a wild scifi thriller description of losing your mind. Evil takes the form of a conceptual shark, which eats your memories. The book had its moments, but it was quite frankly too long winded and strange for my tastes.
3683752
While waiting for her chance to hit it big, aspiring photographer Kristin Burns makes ends meet by working as a nanny to two delightful children who has the misfortune of having the clichd cold and uncaring stepmother.  Kristin dreams of one day having her photographs displayed at a gallery and continues to snap photos of every day New Yorker capturing those special moment.  One day, she awakens from a horrifying nightmare with scenes so vivid that they leave her bones chilled.  Grateful that it was only a dream, she goes on with her daily routine and takes the same route to work.  However, when she stumbles upon the same scene that she dreamt about, Kristin's life is forever altered.  The pictures she's taken of people appear transparent; some of them depict the subjects in a most gruesome state - brutally murdered.  When she thought life couldn't get any worse, she starts to see ghosts of people from her past.  As the line between dream and reality becomes muddy, Kristin feels like she is going mad, unable to decipher the meaning of the strange things happening to her.  What is the meaning of her father's warnings?  Why is a mysterious stranger stalking her?  Dare she heed their warnings?

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED is a creepy thriller spun out from James Patterson's writing machine.  Patterson deviates from his usual crime thriller.  This book has elements of paranormal, psychological and a dash of erotica.  Kristin is plagued by the same chilling dreams.  Her torrid affair with the man of her dreams is beginning to unravel.  As we see her world spin out of control, we see this nave aspiring photographer turn into a stalker herself as she develops an obsession over the family she's working for. However, what started off as an intriguing novel quickly became a weird and incoherent tale which, just like Kristin, left me struggling to separate dream from reality.  Add the inexplicable supernatural/paranormal aspect and what we have is one messy, convoluted plot that failed to make sense.  Unfortunately, Patterson's trademark short chapters fail to provide the profundity necessary for this type of plot to truly excel.  In the end, what started off as an interesting premise was ruined by a tortuous plot that failed to achieve a satisfying conclusion.  Two stars for those two adorable kids.
1359925
Having now read "Life After God," "Microserfs" and "Girlfriend in a Coma" back-to-back-to-back, it's obvious that Coupland had a mortal terror of the emptiness and faithlessness of the '90s culture.  This is the scariest, creepiest and oddest display of that fear.

The novel starts off in the late '70s when 17-year-old Karen loses her virginity on a skiing trip to boyfriend Richard and soon falls into a coma.  Richard already lost one young friend to cancer (a jock named Jared, who acts as our narrator in the beginning and end of the book) and his girlfriend's tragic disappearing act is something he never truly gets over.  The first section of the book shows us Richard and his friends -- sarcastic Hamilton, model Pam, lonely Wendy, smart but aloof Linus -- numbly trek into adulthood.  They battle addictions, they question life, they marry -- and they all end up back in their old Canadian neighborhood.

Karen awakes two decades later to a world she finds disturbing -- empty, mindless worker drones simply existing.  No free time, no fun, no leisure.  While technology has grown stronger, she feels like the world has become emotionally cold and disconnected.

The frail, emaciated Karen reenters the life of her friends -- she gets to meet her daughter for the first time (she was impregnated by Richard on that night) -- and she also has visions of a coming apocalypse.

The apocalypse eventually arrives.  The world "goes to sleep" -- people around the world simply pass out and die wherever they are.  The aftermath is a world gone quiet.  Streets filled with rotting corpses.  Animals running wild in the street.  The stink of death everywhere.  Coupland has never been better than when he describes the horror of this plague.  I think it may be the best writing he's ever done.

The friends and Megan (Richard and Karen's daughter) are the last people left on earth.  Like all humans, they adapt to their situation.  They watch videos and eat canned food.

At this point the three sections are like references to Stephen King -- "The Body" (a.k.a. "Stand by Me"), "It," and "The Stand."

Then things get "It's a Wonderful Life" as Jared rejoins the picture.

But the book goes deeper than that.  In fact, before Coupland brings on his metaphor for our lack of beliefs and emotional remoteness, his book is quite sharp and effective in rendering the lives of his characters.  Unlike in his previous novel, "Microserfs," where I often found it hard to identify with his characters, here I felt like I knew each one intimately.  Some of their more cliche drug and drinking addictions are the point.  Sometimes we're so lonely or angry or bitter that we don't know what to do but go to the cliche of drinking and drugs.

As horrifyingly real as the apocalypse is -- you can practically smell it -- I think Coupland's judgement is a wee too harsh.  I think too much faith is just as bad as no faith at all.  And I think religion (which is Coupland's major concern, it would seem) can be used too much to cover the reality of your problems.

Maybe my reaction is a bit of a "I resemble that condemnation" defense, but I don't think Coupland had to take the novel so far off the tracks, and I'm not really crazy about where the whole thing ends up (though the tone of the last section -- which is loose and blase -- will have you laughing).

But all flaws aside, this is an original, entertaining and powerful novel from a very talented author.
2420074
I'm not especially interested in guesswork at what the castle represents.  Instead, it is the dreamy, endless, circular prose that captivated my imagination from the first few paragraphs.  One has the sense of K. being trapped in purgatory as he attempts again and again to reach the castle or at least make sense of the confounding village and navigate its bureaucracies.  Bureaucracy, incidentally, is far too easy and uninteresting an answer for what this tale illustrates.

I encountered Kafka via Murakami, and it is especially the brain-bound city/afterlife in "Hardboiled Wonderland..." that points to Kafka's surreal prose and the sense of separation and distraction throughout.  In a way, "The Castle" reminds me of trying to focus on reading text in an actual dream:  the harder your sleeping self focuses, the more senseless and abstract the words become.
1256147
deeply strange. deeply offensive. surreal and beautiful. scary. off-putting.
check all that apply.

Krall has gone for the deepest pits of disgust with this one. he has written here, something dark and terrible. Incest. Torture. Drugs. Murder. Gore. Porn.

I loved it. really. Krall can really write. when a character hallucinates, you are right there with them, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel. black giraffes on bicycles. books exploding into "storms of doves".

A book that reads like a fever dream.
1773055
Borgman -- What a surprise. I'm still having weird dreams one week later. You will too.
2575164
The father and daughter team gets lured into dad's hometown by grandpa. ( I'm still not sure why grandpa insisted on them coming when I got to the end of the book,)  Her hopes and dreams of college and friendships from back home fall by the wayside when she's confronted with betrayal, a magical bond that prevents her from leaving, a rapist-populated, misogynistic, patriarchal society, and homicidal hybrid monsters.  In the end there is no escape and she become assimilated into the town.

It's pretty much my worst nightmare, that is terrifying in the way that it seduces you with the possibility of true love and then steals all of your dreams by way of artificial/forced obsession.  When she tries to go with her dad but can't make herself leave, it was really terrifying.