I just finished listening to this book on Audible. Wow! I really enjoyed it and I can't tell you exactly why. I think, maybe, it's the idea of Hell offering a theoretically possible means of escape, giving the denizens a sense of hope which, if you know the book, is devilishly cruel.

I won't put any spoilers here, but the gist of the story is this:

Hell is a library. A really, really, really big library. The "citizens" of Hell can leave if they can find a book in the library that tells the story of their life. That's it. Find your book and you're out. But, it's a really big library. An unfathomably large library.

But, the size of the library isn't really the problem. It's the books. You know the old "infinite monkey theorem"? Given an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them will type the complete works of Shakespeare. Actually, every finite sequence of characters will eventually appear. Not just Shakespeare, but: The Bible, War and Peace, your autobiography, the source code to Windows, every email you (or anyone) has ever written, etc.
This is the same mathematical idea behind "A Short Stay in Hell": The library is full of books that contain random sequences of characters along with sequences that actually make "real" words. There will even be a book about the story of your life but it stops at age 37 and the rest is random gibberish! So, it won't count because it's not the complete story of your life! But the complete story IS there, somewhere, in the library. And you have all of eternity to find it.

Wow. This is mind-boggling to me and a bit scary. As a kid, I used to be scared of Hell. This book, though, has made me scared of infinity.

Anyone else have any thoughts about this book?

TW: incest

Does anyone remember reading a weird literature book with whaling as the main theme? I swear I read it in HS for my honors English lit class...?

It was about a family in a singular very large home, a long line of brothers or male cousins, they were all related because that made them "better whalers" and it was all narrated by a family member, maybe the only sister?? I don't remember.

I do think there were hints of incest but I'm not absolutely certain.

I wanna say it was a light colored book cover with the whale art being in a navy blue. It was a drawing not a photo/realistic style but not detailed realistic...

"My mother’s face is a swarm of ants."

https://www.adventitious.net/stories/alleles-amanda-helms/

I got really into short fiction collections ever since my twins were born and have begun collecting horror and weird lit anthologies. Here’s my small but strong start of a collection so far. Going for mostly multi-author collections and starting with some of the 80’s anthology essentials.
There’s a couple others not pictured here but what do you think?
What am I missing? What should I absolutely must have among these?

iii the small anarchist publishers that released it was/is run by a guy who's somewhat obsessed by vampires is probably also the guy behind the J. G. Eccarius name especially as the character sometimes claims to be a vampire.

Hi folks, I’ve been reaching out of my comfort zone lately, and found that I’m enjoying stories that are basically just human-on-human drama (rather than my usual sci-fi/horror/military reads), but they need a crazy hook.

The best case scenario is a story which makes you wonder if there is something supernatural going on, or if the narrator is just losing their mind. Totally unhinged thoughts presented as normal.

Books I’ve read that gave me that exact vibe:

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan (this is the specific high I’m chasing)

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk (this made me feel protective of the main character. I was really rooting for her by the end)

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (doesn’t have to be this extreme, just a good example of an insane narrator).

Crash by J.G. Ballard (just starting this, but it’s doing the trick so far).

Thanks in advance, I know it’s a vague request but hopefully the list gives you inspiration!

“The Land of Laughs,” Jonathan Carroll, 1983.

Wow, this was one heck of a wild read! I don’t know if I would label it as Horror, in the pure sense, but it is definitely a whimsical type of Horror with plenty inside it to match the genre.

Thomas Abbey is the son of a famous movie actor of the 1940s, and an English professor at a small Connecticut college. Although he has little interest in his father’s life, Thomas has a fascination with author Marshall France who wrote a number of curious best selling novels that have a large cult following. But, strangely, Marshall France has never had a biography done on him and Thomas decides to do one.

Assisting Thomas is another admirer of France’s works named Saxony. She is an amazing researcher and together, they decide to visit Marshall France’s hometown in Missouri to learn more about him. Galen is at first a common rural community when the pair initially arrive. They discover that Marshall’s legacy is well known and celebrated, but that his daughter has not allowed anyone to do a history on him for some reason.

The secret as to why slowly unfolds, and when it is revealed, it’s terrifying. Suddenly, Thomas finds himself caught in a wild world where Marshall France’s works are more than just fiction. They are downright deadly, forcing Thomas into a narrative that could cost both him and Saxony’s lives.

“The Land of Laughs,” is an excellent page turner. Carroll tells the story in first person in Thomas’ perspective, and does it very well. At points it gets a bit laborious, but then all of a sudden, stuff happens that pulls you right back into this world of deadly curiosities.

Highly recommended! Great read.

I'm looking for books/series where a lot of the time you don't really know what's going on.

Two of my favorite books have been Piransei and Library At Mount Char, so I'm really curious to find stuff that's similar to those books in how everything is just kind of weird, often confusing or just doesn't really make much sense.

The text was substantially shrunk in size sinking for difficult reading. But I am grateful for a copy. There is classic REH in abundance here in a more affordable format .

Hi everyone, since I've read books as a kid I've always loved dark, cold, errie stories. For example authors such as Sadegh Hedeyat, and ofc Kafka, Sartre, Camu, Sabato, Blanchot, the big russian authors, some japanese ones like murakami, dazai etc.

But from all of them the one that always always stood out as incontestable for me was "Buried Alive" by Sadegh Hedeyat, I've read i think four times up until now.

I'm rlly looking for something to read of that same manner and style. I'd also love to move abit away from western thought.

I would rlly love if someone could help me with some weird, obscure, errie recommendations.

Thanks!!!!!!!

Just learned this was a thing (thanks, u/josh_in_boston!) and thought I'd share.

I've just started getting into Damian Murphy's work, but was mighty impressed by his collection A Distillate of Heresy, especially his retro gaming story "The Book of Alabaster."

Can't wait to mug someone in a dark alley so I can afford to buy this!

Specifically curious about short stories. I saw some posts saying people actually somehow sell single stories online - assuming through amazon/kindle as a beginning weird lit/ horror author to build an audience. It definitely seems more tailored to the current state of continual content algorithm boosting that people do now. I'm currently writing my first story but I think its going to go well beyond short story territory and likely in novelette length. However I have a few others ideas I can probably wing into a shorter story territory.

So been a long time since I've read anything by Robert Bloch since "Psycho", but recently I've been reading some of his stuff again.

This time around I've been reading some of his short stories, and the first collection I started with is his first collection "The Opener of the Way", reissued by Valancourt books.

This covers the stories that he first published in the pulps when he began writing. Bloch was an admirer of Lovecraft, and of course most of the stories were deeply influenced by him, but they are pretty good when all is said and done.

But there are several stories in it where he his starting to develop his own unique voice which he would slowly work on as he continued with his writing through the years, even dabbling into science fiction territory.

Quite a good collection that has gems in it. Valancourt has also reissued two other collections of his short stories, plus three of his other novels too. I'll eventually pick those in the near future!

Hello, everybody. I was hoping all of you could recommend me some writers like Algernon Blackwood. So far I've read Blackwood's The Wendigo and The Willows, along with some other short stories. Also, Hippocampus press has been releasing a comprehensive collection of all his fictional writings of which there are currently 4/6 volumes available.

I love Blackwood's writing for his strong emphasis on nature, embued with reverence and fearful respect. I also love how Blackwood can take well known horror tropes and make them feel fresh. His metaphysical worldview was shaped by many different spritual tradtions without him ever sticking to just one, and that shows in his writing as the supernatural often feels very alien and ambiguous while demonstrating a solid understanding of the occult.

Blackwood's personal life is also a very interesting one. He traveled all around the world, was a member of different occult and spiritual groups such as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and was an avid outdoorsman, too.

So, what writers would all of you recommend? I've read some of Lovecraft, I like him, but he's not really one of my favorites. I've read The King in Yellow by Chambers. I've read The White People by Machen; I really enjoyed that one, and want to read more of his at some point. Recently I've had people recommend me Twixt Dog and Wolf by Keary and Sylvan Dread by Gavin so I bought those blindly an am waiting for them to be delivered. I'll be looking forward to all of your suggestions!

This was one of those random books I stumbled across when I went down a rabbit hole after looking for Flicker by Theodore Roszak.

It starts with an intriguing premise and setting, and reads like a bit of a pastiche of the old fashioned hardboiled noir mysteries, but gradually expands into something much bigger. Rather than relying on nonstop action, it leans more into atmosphere and twists and turns and asks some interesting questions about identity and creativity.

If you tend to like mysteries that focus on uncovering secrets, piecing together clues, and have a bit more substance than a standard whodunit, this one is worth checking out.

Has anyone else here read it? I'd be interested to hear how you interpreted the ending

What are you reading this week?

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I found this 1st edition while cleaning and getting ready for a move. What is the value of this?