#but i know for a fact palaihnuik's style influenced me

[northern-passage]

hello!! i was wondering if you have any book recommendations, whether it's entire series or oneshots. i adore your writing style and the type of fantasy world youve created and the way you explore mental health struggles as well as just the general Horror vibes and unsettling scenes. plus dialogue and actually i just like your writing in general it's all great.

i'd also love to be able to pick up a book that has influenced your own writing style/that you take inspiration from because i definitely see your own writing as an inspiration!

aw thank you!!! 🥺

i did (kinda) recently do a reading rec list which was basically just me sharing my to read list. i can't find it now, of course, since tumblr's search function doesn't work... but i can tell you some of my favorite authors!

carrie fisher, gillian flynn, cormac mccarthy, ocean vuong, mary oliver, stephen graham jones, jeff vandermeer and john darnielle (yes this is the mountain goats and he just released a new book this year)

jeff vandermeer's southern reach trilogy is like... one of my all time faves. my favorite horror, definitely. stephen graham jones writes some good horror as well, and so does john darnielle. carrie fisher is an excellent story-teller and always keeps a bit of humor in everything she writes. gillian flynn has the most interesting characters, most of whom are not good people. cormac mccarthy has a very distinct style and author's voice and like flynn he writes very interesting characters. his books typically scratch my western itch. ocean vuong has the most beautiful prose and his writing sticks with you for weeks, months, years. mary oliver is my favorite poet :-)

i don't read a lot of fantasy, i typically get my fantasy fix through video games but i'll recommend the books of the underrealm again, the series and publisher focus on diversifying the fantasy genre. i'm still reading a cloak of red which has been quite fun. priory of the orange tree is another fantasy book (not a part of the underrealm) that has been on my to read list forever... one day i will read it </3

unfortunately i don't do a lot of reading these days. i have a lot of to read book piles in my room, and none of them are getting any smaller.... 😔 there are a lot of newer authors i really want to read but just haven't.

also i asked my friend @nyehilismwriting and they have some recs, too!

- blindsight by peter watts (super in depth speculative scifi about first contact with an alien species, heavy on the science, written by a marine biologist but touches on various ideas of neuroscience, ecology, space travel, very tongue in cheek, beautiful turn of phrase, lots of very interesting concepts. also, vampires)

- children of ruin by adrian tchaikovsky (sequel to tchaikovsky's children of time which I also cannot rec enough: speculative scifi abt different types of intelligence with some really nice exploration of interpersonal relationships; children of ruin expands on everything that was good in the first book while introducing even more interesting characters and some horror aspects. very delicious)

- the calcutta chromosome by amitav ghosh (scifi/medical thriller mystery set in the near future, haven't finished this one but it's very interesting so far)

- the antelope wife by louise erdrich (dreamy horror/generational mystery ?? follows the lives of several generations of two native families from the american revolution down to modern times, alternates between surrealist horror and very gritty realism, beautifully written with some really interesting characters.)