#jonathan durham

[thlayyli]

Winterset Hollow

Auth: Jonathan Edward Durham

Illustr: Maura OConnor

[reasonandfaithinharmony]

Accurate

[imgonnagetkilledbynutstink]

This genre of dude has be in a chokehold every time

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

You know who I am thinking of :D (tweet)

[murakamijeva-muza]

Seems legit

[scenesandscreens]

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)

Directed by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, Cinematography - Barry Peterson

"...how everyone thinks we can solve any problem with magic. There are limits! This isn't some bedtime story; this is the real world!"

[spiced-wine-fic]

[celestialreadershaven]

Honestly, it's my favourite book ever!!

[imkeepinit]

[gaydelgard]

my fave is the fear institute but my fave short story is johannes cabal and the blustery day

dont say maple durham thats just a myth

[wmiqaqueen]

[reasonandfaithinharmony]

Exactly

[theessentialshandbook]

[cruelsister-moved2]

WAIT susanna clarke has a short story collection. and its all historical fantasy. about fairies. LETS GO WHIMSY NATION LETS GO

[freshlybrewedbookreviews]

Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham

I didn't realize when I started this book that the author, Jonathan Edward Durham, is responsible for a lot of funny, smart, and relatable tweets that I often see pop up on instagram. When I realized that, I felt equal parts of "that makes sense" and disappointment. Durham is still whipsmart in this novel, but he's also long-winded, which made me wish he'd written a book as tight as his tweets. It felt unnecessarily long, and every time the protagonist (spoiler!!!) was thisclose to death and had accepted it and was ready to go, he was saved at the last minute. This happened more than three times, and each fakeout made me care less and less about what happened to any of the characters.

I also had guessed a few events early on in the novel, so I didn't feel like this was anything particularly new. That said, I do think this would make for a pretty great movie, without having to read about all the mechanics of human and animal movement involved in the events that unfold.

[arcadevalorie]

Rating Books I’ve Read This Year So Far

(No one asked for this but in order to be free you must first be cringe.)

Of note is that these are all the horror genre because nothing else hits.

RING by Koji Suzuki

A hood classic of course. Loses some points because it starts at a crawl and doesn’t really improve from that pace for a good while, and the main character’s friend isn’t very likable (He’s not a token “annoying friend in a horror story” character, but I can’t explain him being unlikable without a slight spoiler)

8.5/10 A bit dated but I recognize that a lot of “tropes” hadn’t been done before and some of the parts about Sadako herself are just a product of the time and country from which the work originates. Solid and I completely understand how it laid the groundwork for a horror icon

—

Cows by Matthew Stokoe: I miss the person I was before I read this. I will not be taking the plunge into “extreme horror” ever again and “splatterpunk” books are off the table. A lot of this is gross in the intrusive thought way and I don’t mean the meme intrusive thoughts but ACTUAL intrusive thoughts. I have a strong stomach so I never gagged or anything but honestly? If I respected books a little less I would’ve burned this after I finished reading it. Instead it sits on my shelf as a monument to never having to read it again. 😌 I suppose I cannot rate it just one way because it wouldn’t be fair

Enjoyment: -100/10 As someone who has seen REAL GORE and worse, I was “what the fuck”-ing the entire way through and felt genuinely dirty. Not in a “whoa, good horror!” way. In a “is the author okay?” way. Also I think the author hates fat people or at least his portrayal of the main character’s mother (named only as “The Hagbeast” for the entire book) certainly makes it seem so.

Dead Dove Principle: 10/10 “Well, I dunno what I expected.”

—

The Vegetarian by Han Kang: classed as horror but it’s not scary, the horror is in how tragically sad everything is and makes really good use of Korean societal norms and taboos as a vehicle for it all. The arguments are genuinely infuriating due to both hypocrisy and an obsession with control because (spoiler) somehow your daughter scarcely eating due to gruesome nightmares is more shameful than trying to force feed her meat after she wouldn’t touch anything at the family dinner because everything on the table is animal products.

7/10 Starts slow but with the interest of taking place from the titular vegetarian’s husband’s point of view. The point of view of a man who hates his wife. Not that he would ever SAY he hates his wife, but whenever this man speaks about his wife it is only to talk about things he dislikes about her or things he’s ambivalent to but wishes she was more like other women about. By his own (internal monologue) admission this man is with a woman he finds so mediocre because he recognizes that he himself is MID. (If this is setting off red flags for you, the author is a woman.)

—

Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham: Surprisingly not too graphic even though there is violence and of course death depicted. I actually appreciate that a lot because the story not dwelling on the manner of a death really does reinforce that while there is personal stake in it for the characters doing the killing, it’s not a thoughtless murder spree. It’s a hunt.

7.5/10 Main characters were likable even if it was a slow roll, only really picking up in the last act. Kills were…efficient. Antagonists were actually very sympathetic and while their anger is 90% misdirected I won’t say it’s misguided.

—

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

9/10 HOO BOY this one took me a good while. First, to work up the courage to crack it open. Then it was a slog to start because the entire prologue is just about Johnny Truant who is at certain points the weakest part of the story.

There’s lots of ado about nothing, I must admit I started skimming his sections the further in I got because, sir, this is a Wendy’s Drive-Thru. There’s only so many times I want to hear about your day drinking, doing drugs or getting your dick wet. (A lot of his later writings also read like they were written by a person who’s completely hammered.)

He is a vital part, however, because the book itself is practically an ARG and once you actually get into The Navidson Record proper, Johnny’s footnotes help kind of ground it, and LORD do you need grounding with how trippy things get.

Certainly not for everyone, not just because of the length and formatting, but because there’s layers to the suspension of disbelief required, and while I personally like media this dream-like, not everyone is going to enjoy that sort of thing.

—

The Troop by Nick Cutter

6/10 This one was…really tame, to be honest? It took a LONG time for me to give a shit about any of these characters, (I honestly can’t tell if the characters are supposed to be likable) largely because the main cast is 4 teenage boys from a small town. And they act like it. I think I was supposed to feel sorry Kent because of how miserable he was in the end but…he acted like a teenage boy raised by a cop and it IS his own fault that he died. Ephraim was kinda my favorite of the group because he had probably the least egregious personality although Max was fine and Newton was just a fella.

(It does earn points for getting me to dry heave at the description of a character hacking up a “scallop of worms and mucus” and rolling it around in his mouth. Intrusive thoughts had me looping that imagery in my brain and I actually put the book down for a sec because I couldn’t stop gagging. I gagged while typing that out, too. Nice one.)