What are you reading?

[Alien Redrum]

Still reading The Wild Oblivion and really enjoying it. It's a neat take on the apocalypse. I'll review it once I'm done.

Scanlines is absolutely terrific. A great tale inspired by Budd Dwyer's suicide.

I also listened to North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud. The stories are hit and miss, with some being fantastic while others I skipped halfway through. Travis Young does a great job narrating this. If I were reading it, I probably would have tapped out of the two stories I didn't finish earlier, but his narration is so good, I was into them slightly more.

I'm currently hate-listening to The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren by Gerald Brittle. My eyes have rolled quite a bit in the first chapter. However, I'm digging it because Todd Haberkorn's narration is pretty damn good, and every time he does Ed's voice, it reminds me of Mort from Bob's Burgers and I laugh each time Ed says something.

[shiki-jitsu]

Right now I am reading The Silver Bridge by Gray Barker about the Mothman, ufonauts and Indrid Cold. https://amzn.to/4c4QuF3

Not sure why I haven't read this one before.

[Neon Maniac]

I've been reading the Silo series. I'm enjoying it. I would recommend it. I haven't seen the TV show but might one day when I'm done with the series.

[Alien Redrum]

I have the Silo series in my TBR. I'll bump it up.

I just finished Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders by Terry Sullivan and Peter T. Maiken. Found it kind of meh. Glad I read it, but not overly impressed. I can't decide if it was the meh narrator or the work itself. :threestars:

Today I just started Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim. IThis is another one free for Audible+ members* and HOLY SHIT I'm all in. I'm already wanting to read his other books, and I've only completed the forward and the first chapter.

The narrator on this is fantastic.

*Looks like I'm pimping Audible, I'm not. Just letting you know if you're an Audible+ member, these are free reads.

[Neon Maniac]

I finished the first Silo book, it was good, I'd recommend it. I started the second book, and I'm not sure if this one will take over from where the last one ended or be a completely different part of the story. It starts in our near future but in the series the far past and they're kind of talking about building the silos. So I don't know if they're going to jump back in or just go in a completely different way.

[Alien Redrum]

Why aren't we all reading this? It's even free.

[Alien Redrum]

Chirp is having an AWESOME sale on three X-Files anthologies, so I started listening to one, The Truth Is out There.

Also finished The Wild Fall (review coming soon!) and started Brian Asman's Our Black Hearts Beat as One.

[Neon Maniac]

The second Silo book is really good. It's a prequel of sorts. Again I would totally recommend this series.

No I'm not going to read dinosaur books even for free. Not unless they're raiding brothels and taking out Matthews.

[Alien Redrum]

Knocked out a few recently:

Our Black Hearts Beat as One by Brian Asman. I LOVE his book, Man, Fuck This House, so I jumped on the chance of reviewing this. The review is coming soon, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Hardcore Kelli by Wrath James White. White is generally far too brutal for me, but he's a helluva an author. This one, however, isn't his typical extreme horror. Yeah, it's violent as fuck, but fun violent. I didn't cringe (too much).

Found: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror Stories, edited by Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias. EXCEPTIONAL anthology. One banger after another. Was really pleased to read a second volume is coming soon. Every story in this one is great.

Speaking of anthologies, October Screams is another EXCELLENT anthology. It's edited by Kevin Kangas and Kenneth Cain and is seriously outstanding. Well worth all the praise. The two are now working on an anthology about clowns and I'm all here for it.

I'm currently reading Ali Seay's I Think I'm Alone Now and I'm all in. So fucking good so far. There was a part where I literally caught my breath. Good times.

[Neon Maniac]

I'm on the 3rd and final Silo book. It's called Dust. So far it's meh.

[Alien Redrum]

Are they big books? Like 300+ pages. It's hard to keep that momentum, it seems. Multi-book series inevitably have that dull one.

[Neon Maniac]

I have no idea how big they are because they're on Kindle. Part of the reason it's meh is that the guy who writes it is not a very good writer. I hate to say it this way but he has really good ideas and poor execution. So there's a lot you have to look past in this series because the way he has set it up would never ever work and makes zero sense, but the story itself is really good. And I take back the math part because now that it's going it's gotten better and things are actually happening.

I don't know if you know the history of these books but they were all self-published and we're supposedly the biggest sales for a self-published book on Amazon ever, and there became a huge bidding war to be able to publish these books. So the guy wrote them and published them himself in an echo chamber and didn't benefit from having an editor really critique some ideas and work with him through things, and you can kind of tell. But they're definitely worth a read and I'm looking forward to watching the TV series on apple plus one day

[Alien Redrum]

I get all of that 100%. Especially the echo chamber part.

[Neon Maniac]

I get all of that 100%. Especially the echo chamber part.

When I say he's a bad writer, he's really just bad at describing certain actions. He's a good story teller, but at times you have to either gloss over something or just kind of take away what you think his idea is and be satisfied with it. And the story is about people who have been living in an end of the world bunker for 500 years and don't remember why they're there and have been fed a lot of lies over the centuries, so I don't fault him for thinking how certain things might work to make a self contained shelter like that. No spoiler, but this is a good example: They have farms in the silo to grow food, and when people die they get buried in the farms for nutrients. None of that would work or be sustainable, they'd likely turn bodies into a slurry that gets added to the fluids in a hydroponic farm or something crazy like that, but nope. Just a lot of dumb stuff like that, that's easy to overlook and gloss over and be like, okay that wouldn't work, but in his world it does so fine.

I guess what I'm saying is that there is a lot to complain about, but it's not strong complaints and if you're interested in reading them I wouldn't let that stop you. But if you're logistically minded, it might drive you effing crazy at points.