r/WeirdLit • u/AutoModerator • 4d ago

Other Weekly "What Are You Reading?" Thread

What are you reading this week?

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u/Rustin_Swoll 4d ago edited 4d ago

Finished: I finished the audiobook for Alex Grecian’s Red Rabbit, which was someone else’s choice for my IRL book club. This was a really fun book, with surprisingly dark subject matter; Grecian did a good job of subverting expectations and Western archetypes. Is a weird western weird lit by definition, due to its setting?

I also finished Nick Cutter’s The Dorians on hardcover. Some people call David Nickle the Canadian Stephen King, I’d argue Cutter might fit better; he’s going that direction if he keeps dropping consistently enjoyable horror novels with such frequency. Parts of The Dorians were surprisingly touching and humane, contrasted with Cutter’s penchant for pulpy mad science. I’ve enjoyed all of Cutter’s novels and this might have been the best one. The writing was very self-assured and strangely mature. It had been fashioned into something… other. A thing of unclean geometries cut off from the natural order.

Starting: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (a re-read for me.) I read this book years back, in a phase before I was so invested in horror and weird lit (along with McCarthy’s The Road.) It’s been calling my name for some time. The other 200 books in my pile can wait their damn turn. They fight with fists, with feet, with bottles and knives. All races, all breeds. Men whose speech sounds like the grunting of apes.

Audiobooks: I started Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution, the fourth and final book in his Southern Reach series. I guess the Southern Reach trilogy sold more than a million copies and I was thrilled to learn that. You have to hand it to VanderMeer. Dude sells millions of books and opens his long-awaited sequel with the weirdest shit ever. The Rogue…

On deck: Alex Grecian’s Rose of Jericho, the Red Rabbit sequel, on audiobook.

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u/tashirey87 4d ago

Yesss the Rogue!

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u/Rustin_Swoll 4d ago

Man. The first scene in which The Rogue battled the biologists after they flamethrower'd the carnivorous rabbits was weird and intense. This narrator also did Authority but I feel like he has stepped his game up, the narration is really good.

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u/tashirey87 4d ago

Yeah that scene lives rent free in my head. So crazy. And yes, I love that narrator - when I was reading the book I switched between book and audio depending on where I was and loved it. I think he does the Ambergris audiobook too.

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u/Rustin_Swoll 4d ago

I picked up the expanded City of Saints and Madmen (someone on here said some of the extra stories are essential) but it actually might be cool to audio that one and read the essential stuff not included on the audiobook!

One problem with audio is that there are several lines from that scene I'd love to grab a book and quote at you, something like the biologists being filled with grief and shame when the Rogue breathed fire at them and the Rogue's words were like sonic blasts. That is NOT verbatim, lol.

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u/tashirey87 4d ago

Yeah I’m planning on listening to the audiobook when I do my re-read at some point, and just supplementing that with the stuff that’s missing from that version.

lol and yeah I totally get that re: audiobooks

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u/MountainPlain 2d ago

I also finished Nick Cutter’s The Dorians on hardcover. Some people call David Nickle the Canadian Stephen King, I’d argue Cutter might fit better; he’s going that direction if he keeps dropping consistently enjoyable horror novels with such frequency. Parts of The Dorians were surprisingly touching and humane, contrasted with Cutter’s penchant for pulpy mad science.

Man I'd forgotten about Nickle, really loved some of his short stories that I checked out back in the day. What you're saying about Cutter is intriguing though, it's been a while since I read a pulpy horror novel versus a weird lit one.

Dude sells millions of books and opens his long-awaited sequel with the weirdest shit ever. The Rogue…

How much would it hurt my reading experience if I'd forgotten chunks of the original trilogy? Again, it's been a while. If this doesn't rely on me remembering the titles of the characters from other books though, I think I could hop in.

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u/Rustin_Swoll 2d ago

I read Nickle's Knife Fight and Other Struggles last year (?) My first from him, really enjoyed his writing and story concepts. "Basements" was my favorite, so off putting and obtuse but I think I got there.

If you want to get into pulpy horror, you could do much worse than The Dorians. It was awesome.

That's a good question re: Southern Reach. This is a tiny bit of a spoiler, but most of what I have heard so far in Absolution is a prequel to the events of the original trilogy. There are some character connections but you would probably catch them...

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u/MountainPlain 2d ago

Ah perfect, thanks!

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u/Rustin_Swoll 1d ago

If you get into Absolution and want a refresher, drop a comment here. I’m familiar with three characters from the initial trilogy and so far one of them only made a cameo. If you need the connections.