Paranoid Reading (Steven Ayy)
@paranoidreading
Crime, weird fiction, demonology & deep politics. How Noided, how Grim. Reviews on Substack, videos on YouTube
What will be your job in Blood Meridian? I’d be the guy who writes ‘NO CHILDREN’ on the scalp bounty contracts and die young because of my teeth
I need a name for this TBR pile. Wrong answers only.
Rereading Blood Meridian after a lot of weird fiction & cosmic horror, and the way he describes the landscape, what it does to the men, the judge as a living archon (Azhrarn from Tanith Lee's Night's Master). It reads closer to Hodgson than any Western. Truth's in the middle.
One of those paragraphs that sends chills up my spine and sends me running for a pen.
Just finished The King in Yellow for my third time and the connection to True Detective finally clicked. Carcosa isn't a place, it's your country once you stop believing. New essay up on the Substack open.substack.com/pu...
Nights Master by Tanith Lee is the fantasy book I fight for. No worldbuilding fluff but a rich vista of demons and curses, talismans, villains to heroes and back to villains again. Grim, horny, folkstories so cement I was waiting for Wishbone to pop up and narrate. Top tier
Name a harder opener than American Tabloid, I'll wait
Hard to think of a more final ending than Black Easter by James Blish
Reading My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue by Samuel E. Chamberlain The true account of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy A world as brutal and foreign as any fantasy novel set in the depths of Hell The most surprising B.M. revelation is that The Judge was a real dude
Sumer Read #1 The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock 5.1/5 Video review coming soon
1/2 through The Heavenly Table Can't put it down Like The Devil All the Time this is perfect Southern Gothic filth, murder sprees, bank robbing, venereal diseases, outhouse managers with horse cocks, every one working their bones for food, every page is nihilistic, sad, and disgusting.
Finished Red Sheet. It was fine I Loved American Underworld Trilogy Tons of locations (Miami, Vegas, Havana, Saigon, LA) dozens of characters LotR for the conspiranoided. Liked LA Quartet less (flat cops) and kinda hated The Enchanters. Starting to think my Ellroy love was just those 3 books.
I wish GCW and Brett Lauderdale the best but my time with GCW is over.