What Are You Currently Reading?

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Do you like it any better?

Can't get it into it at all if I'm honest. Don't know what it is. Just isn't engaging me.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

I'm currently 160 pages into Cell by Stephen King.

Unusually for King the reader is dropped straight into the story which in this case is about a regular guy called Clay, a struggling comic book artist walking down the Boston streets when something turns those around him into raving, vicious animals. A dark and gritty read as King paints a picture of a world gone mad via a signal through mobile phones. It's very anti-tech so far with King seemingly disliking the way people are glued to their phones as much as i do. The three main protagonists characters are gradually unfolding as their plight and journey out of the city takes pace.

This is not playing out like i expected. I'm well into the third quarter of the book and we might be entering Scanners territory.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by J Harker

Can't get it into it at all if I'm honest. Don't know what it is. Just isn't engaging me.

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Think I'm getting there now. About 120 pages in its working for me.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

I've just read the first 90 pages of Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone.

This is quite interesting in that the book is speaking to you as you read it. It's a book possessed by a demon named Jakabok Botch who for the first few pages was trying to convince me to burn the book rather than read on. However he seems to now have decided i'm a stubborn sod and is reluctantly telling me his story.

I love how the cover looks old and battered even though it's in mint condition.

Stephen King's Cell played out far differently to how i imagined it would after the initial set up. Although i enjoyed reading it i'm not sure i'd ever wish to read it again. It's certainly no Salem's Lot or Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream when it comes to King at his best.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Finished Mister B. Gone tonight. Really enjoyed it. Very satisfying. Even if at one point the demon in the book tells me it would call me excrement but that would be an insult to the product of it's bowels.

Such a shame Clive Barker hasn't written a book in well over ten years.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Read the first forty pages of James Herbert's Haunted this evening in the lamp light. I would have read more but i fell asleep... and dreamed i was reading the book oddly. i was really liking it, Herbert's prose is lusher than other authors i've read recently. I'd forgotten what he was like. The last one i read was Once and that was years ago.

[J Harker]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Read the first forty pages of James Herbert's Haunted this evening in the lamp light. I would have read more but i fell asleep... and dreamed i was reading the book oddly. i was really liking it, Herbert's prose is lusher than other authors i've read recently. I'd forgotten what he was like. The last one i read was Once and that was years ago.

James Herbert is probably my favourite author, while I can't pretend I've read all his work. Haunted is my favourite of his novels though. It has that classic ghost story feel to it while still having that sort of frantic in your face approach of his. All three of the David Ash books I've enjoyed. I'd like to see the film version with Aiden Quinn and Kate Beckinsale.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by J Harker

James Herbert is probably my favourite author, while I can't pretend I've read all his work. Haunted is my favourite of his novels though. It has that classic ghost story feel to it while still having that sort of frantic in your face approach of his. All three of the David Ash books I've enjoyed. I'd like to see the film version with Aiden Quinn and Kate Beckinsale.

Had a good sitting with Haunted tonight. I'm now just over half way through it. I simply just had to put it down at the end of the chapter where the old aunt tells Ash to "Leave this house, no good will come to you". A line which is a staple of every good haunted house story ever.

The film is good, at least i like it. It's set in the 1920's whereas the novel is nearer present day, also the longest chapter i've read so far about Ash investigating a church is completely excised from the film. It also has the siblings mother as the woman who drowned and not their sister.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

My December Christmas reading, both of which i finished yesterday, has been Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, which was made into the movie Christmas with the Kranks, and the Doctor Who short story collection Ten Days of Christmas.

Christmas with the Kranks is very faithful to the novel but thankfully the book doesn't feature the burglar scenes at the end which come across as very klunky in the movie.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Started my first book of 2025. The Gathering by C.J. Tudor.

80 pages into it. It's a vampire novel set in Alaska in the month of November. Reminds me of a cross between the brilliant Christopher Nolan film Insomnia and 30 Days of Night, but leaning more towards Insomnia. It's basically about an out of state detective, Barbara Atkins, investigating the murder of a boy with his throat ripped out and drained of blood in a remote Alaskan town which the locals believe was carried out by a nearby vampire coven.

I'm enjoying it.