#the wasp factory book

[bitterbanter]

Fanart of Wasp Factory ending

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[dwarvendiaries]

Just finished The Wasp Factory. Holy fuck that was just like being slowly being bitten into by a creature. I predicted the twist a couple chapters ahead because reasons, but still have so many thoughts

[thebooksareeverywhere]

life recently🥰

[wastingmytimehere]

I’m about to finish the wasp factory and I’m wee bit nervous.

Cannae get more fucked, surely, but what the fuck is in that old man’s study…

[frangenda]

Horror Book Recommendations Needed

Hey guys! I absolutely love horror in any form (ARG, Movie, Game, Book, etc.) and lately have gotten into Splatterpunk/Extreme/Disturbing horror books.

The only thing is that multiple books I have been recommended are from the perspective of the killer/person doing the disturbing stuff and from the ones that I've read so far those just... don't work?

Like not in a 'haha I'm so desensitized' way because there are books with objectively less fucked up shit happening that I am disturbed by and enjoy reading. It's just that no matter what the protagonist is doing if they are just clinically describing it to the point where it feels like just another Tuesday, that actively takes me out of the book and out of feeling disturbed. If I'm reading disturbing fiction I'm reading it for the purpose of feeling DISTURBED and if I'm not disturbed while actually reading it then it doesn't feel like its doing it's job as a book.

I'd love to go more in depth about my thoughts on it but for the moment I want to see if there are any recommendations for me to get more data about these kinds of books.

So if you do know of any books that specifically have the protagonist as the person doing the disturbing stuff please let me know I want to see if there are good ones.

Two last things about any recs tho:

Nothing that jumps around perspectives to like, show other peoples direct responses I need it to be one persons pov

Nothing where its like 'oh the protagonist is doing this messed up thing but its totally normal in this society' so no like Tender is the Flesh type of deal

Thank you for any help!!!

[malcolmreeds]

this is so sid coded

[erosology]

*buying erotica at the bookstore* this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes—

[bonejunky6669]

The Wasp Factory is starting to kind of piss me off. i seriously love the story and brand of horror it presents, but the racist and sexist remarks the main character occasionally makes just puts a sour taste in my mouth. i understand Frank is supposed to be a psychopath and a fundamentally horrible human being, but it honestly just gets irritating. he can murder his little cousins and spend all day burning rabbits to death without throwing in how much he thinks women are stupid and weak. it feels entirely unneeded. also, the fact that there is not a single female character present in the book so far just furthers my belief that Frank being sexist is less of an intentional, mean-spirited character trait and more of just the authors bias. im going to finish the book because the plot greatly intrigues and i need to see how it ends( and I've already bought the book so i don't want to waste it) but its unfortunately getting really annoying and a little hard to look past those things.

i recommended The Wasp Factory if you truly want to challenge yourself when it comes to reading books that are hard to read- as in the content can become so gross and unbearable. i do enjoy making myself uncomfortable when it comes to reading, so that's the only upside to this i guess.

[iishmael]

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT

[vile-bestia]

Holy triad of grotesque horror

In order according to how disturbing they were for me; considering how they might be interpreted at face value; with theme: child/childhood, puer aeternus, if you will, innocence (the innocence - that is to say, the disinhibition - in killing or hurting, with or without specific criteria), perversion and impulse, how and what the books might or might not criticize, what systems are questioned and so on.

Trigger warnings, from all the books sparingly (mentions, descriptions and representations of [...], etc):

Taboo.

Of the sexual kind. Sexual abuse. Incest (mentioned only and only in theory, as far as I remember); perversions in childhood, acts perpetrated by children, sexual phases and behaviours of the child, negation or acceptance and consequent indulgence in hidden desires.

Cults or sects, general abuse, drug use, blood, torture (on humans, on animals), gore, body horror, violent, but surely creative, death; general cruelty (children involved), bombs, explosions, rather accurate descriptions of death by such events, etc.

Misogyny, racism, transphobia; bad representation of mental illnesses; and, of course, any kind of discrimination and trauma that might go on in a family system.

Pros of reading the books if you manage not to get triggered:

Religious citations done right

Cool

...

Spoilers.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

God's Child (Kami no Kodomo) - published by Ohta Shuppan - Story and art by Nishioka Kyōdai (Satoshi and Chiaki Nishioka siblings).

Short manga, probably the most triggering of the list, as it also contains visual elements. It might be taken as disturbing for the sake of it, and maybe it is. No morals and apparently even fewer regrets.

The narration is great, but the story in an of itself doesn't hold any sort of very special value.

However, and this is important, I feel like the graphic style is what justifies the story and the very creation of the wonderful sacrilege. I won't waste any words and instead opt to attach some safe panels. In any case, if God's Child is not for you, I still recommend you to research other works by the same authors.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

The perfume - Patrick Süskind.

"The late 20th-century novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders) by Patrick Süskind (1949– ) is probably the best-known German literary text to appear in the last half of the century. It is a complex multilayered postmodern tale exhibiting features of many genres— at least partially alluded to in the seeming discrepancy between title and subtitle. Primarily, it is a detective fantasy set in 18th-century France, but it has also been interpreted as a critique of enlightenment attitudes, a (mock) historical novel, a bildungsroman, specifically a Künstlerroman, and it certainly is a pastiche with sheer infinite intertexts and allusions to cultural, artistic, scientific, and literary facts and events."

"But the privileging of one mode of perception, a feature observable in much of Süskind’s work, forms only one of several structures of fascination that grab the reader almost physically: disgust, human depravity, criminality, perverted erotics, but also the novel issue of olfactory aesthetics, the impressive and easily communicated knowledge of perfumery, and the quick sociohistorical sketches of the city of Paris."

Tremendously intriguing with two hints of irony hidden behind obsession and a destiny that seems to be fully supporting the protagonist- a maladapted genius, a manipulative loner and an ambulant death omen. I hope you're in for a fun time during your execution - if you wish to see a priest get so horny as to shake his green miter off his head without realizing; if you're in to witness dreams of crimson palaces that overwhelm all senses just as much as all reasoning.

Part of what makes this book my favorite is how detached the protagonist is. Grenouille's impulse towards his victims is not sexual nor sensual; instead, through his (surely distorted) perspective (surely, still that of an unjustifiable murderer) all faults and hypocrisies of the society that surrounds him come alarmingly alive.

(Section 2: I fucking hate the movie)

This however is not how the story is portrayed in the movie, that I was able to watch with only a little bit of disgust on my face EXCLUSIVELY because I was so stoned that all my muscles were locked in place. Imagine how bad the movie had to be in order to get them to move. More points against the movie, that you SHOULDN'T watch before reading the book (...I should have said: movie that you shouldn't watch at all, if you wish to keep sane; but you do you, since you're reading this post and it will only get worse from here):

The protagonist, whose actions are all about manipulation, lacks all manipulative charge and is made into a half-stereotype of an autistic kid with a special talent. Not say this kid couldn't be autistic, I'm talking about the representation/narrative the movie gives it (also, writing this as an autistic).

Not only this, but while he is supposed to be grotesque, utterly disgustingly ugly in his looks, the movie makes him out to have a sort of "primitive" look that is anyhow still quite attractive. It's not the actor's fault, that's not my point.

The movie lacks the seven years Grenouille spends in his cave, which, interestingly, are crucial to his development.

His murders are made into something somewhat erotic or with a sensual or romantic drive. While there is erotism in murder - beauty comes from terror, and such is true, because I know it is; and while there is perversion in the book, in the movie it feels like it was portrayed as a love story gone wrong, because "Grenouille is just a guy he doesn't know how to cope and how to behave" (see point n.1).

To summarize: the book does not romanticize any part of itself. Onward.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

The wasp factory - Iain Banks.

In the middle regarding the triggering level, but probably the most controversial book out of the three because of the representation of the characters' situations, and because of how hidden the meaning behind it might be. Note: the trans experience is NOT the point of the book, because:

It is forced;

It is a tool used to explain the critique the book brings forth.

I encourage you to read the essay below: Devolving gender in Iain Bank's "The wasp factory".

And also this one:

Other stuff :P I find the narration a bit dense, not too fluent, in some points, but past the beginning it got better for me. Know this: the wasp factory made me feel depraved as I read it, whether I was horrified or laughing at the deaths.

Bye

[joshcockroft2]

The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 

6.2.2023

I first read this at least 13 years ago (maybe longer). It left a big impression and was one of those books that gave the kind of reading high that you chase. It held up to my memory, and even still managed to surprise. 

[not-the-cheese]

one sentence summaries of every TMA episode

(1-60 i'll add more soon)

part 2 up!

world's most effective anti-smoking PSA

man DOES NOT open coffin. everyone claps.

woman is judgemental towards neighbor even though she has hobbies that are just as weird.

book makes multiple people fall off chair.

man finds bag of teeth and decides he absolutely needs to fuck around and find out.

worm sti.

there was a SCARY MAN in the WAR.

fuck this tree

well at least ted bundy was a great father :)

i'm like 55% sure vampires are real and i'm willing to take those odds

bitches be dying. you're next.

we kill this man because he made the soda too warm.

sorry ur husband's dead. maybe get some help.

Unbox with me ! (GONE WRONG)

hah i'm safe from this one because i have decided to Never Go Into a Cave Ever.

man is so annoying about this spider that even his cat can't be bothered

man's bully finds a book about a Bone Turner and subsequently begins turning people's bones.

this guy sucks at DIY home improvement

aw maybe this priest didn't do anything THAT bad!

oh fuck nevermind

THE SKY ATE MY SON.

the worms stole my identity. i haven't left the house in days.

man beats german children at game of bravery and wins a coin (he later loses this coin)

my ex boyfriend gets casted in the muppets and dies

sorry mom, i've abandoned jesus for a new religion : jesus in the dark.

tall squiggly and HANDsome

old man arm wrestles demon through door knob

the buzzfeed unsolved guys finally catch a ghost but it's their sound tech

immortality but at what cost

working at the big meat factory was so traumatizing it made me vegetarian

i go to america and get almost killed by a furry

well if you love that wasp nest so much why don't you MARRY it (and then she did)

antisocial boat crew bands together to exclude one guy from a midnight party. he dies from the rejection.

bone apple teeth

remember when that norwegian guy threw a tantrum about us not digging a hole? turns out we were right to not dig that hole.

babe come over my parents have taken ill and passed away

man fucks around and it costs him everything

HOMOPHOBIC CHINESE VASE

oh god oh fuck the worms are here

thank you for participating in worms! please rate your wormsperience from 1 to 10.

the wormsperience has left me deeply scarred. i'm going to get lost in a tunnel about it.

🎸music makes me loose control🎸

spooky stories to tell at the next police slumber party

child threatens to run away and join the circus one too many times, and now the circus has come to cash in.

these mosquitoes are mad sus

man frequents local barnes and noble and then dies(?) after liking a book too much.

realtor gets eaten by the backrooms twice. it's a terrible shame.

both me and this weird goth dude have an unsatisfying italy vacation

guy who turns people's bones gets a new job where he continues to turn people's bones.

man who should never be allowed to build prisons builds a prison.

Something Big Is In The Water.

what if u heard me about 15 feet behind you fumbling around and calling out ur name 😳 (and we were both prison guards)

i'm going to be honest i didn't retain anything from this episode except that this guy has the silliest old man voice ever

everybody hates the tax man, including these creepy taxidermy animals

hmmgh. ant house.

so turns out being only 55% sure that vampires are real in my career as a vampire hunter has had some consequences.

the only thing keeping you company in space is your abandonment issues

🎶 the snack that smiles back 🎶 (my husband!)

maybe the real treasure was the house siblings we encased in spider web along the way.

your dead brother wrote books about ancient myths and WHAT

Part 2

[thebooksareeverywhere]

Review: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Storygraph | Bookshop.org Frank – no ordinary sixteen-year-old – lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank’s mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent…

[scotianostra]

On February 16th 1954 the writer Iain Banks was born in Dunfermline, Fife

Banks was a son of a professional ice skater and an Admiralty officer. He spent his early years in North Queensferry and later moved to Gourock because of his father’s work requirement. He received his early education from Gourock and Greenock High Schools and at the young age of eleven, he decided to pursue a career in writing. He penned his first novel, titled The Hungarian Lift-Jet, in his adolescence. He was then enrolled at the University of Stirling where he studied English, philosophy and psychology. During his freshman year, he wrote his second novel, TTR.

Subsequent to attaining his bachelor degree, Banks worked a succession of jobs that allowed him some free time to write. The assortment of employments supported him financially throughout his twenties. He even managed to travel through Europe, North America and Scandinavia during which he was employed as an analyzer for IBM, a technician and a costing clerk in a London law firm. At the age of thirty he finally had his big break as he published his debut novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984, henceforth he embraced full-time writing. It is considered to be one of the most inspiring teenage novels. The instant success of the book restored his confidence as a writer and that’s when he took up science fiction writing.

In 1987, he published his first sci-fi novel, Consider Phlebas which is a space opera. The title is inspired by one of the lines in T.S Eliot’s classic poem, The Waste Land. The novel is set in a fictional interstellar anarchist-socialist utopian society, named the Culture. The focus of the book is the ongoing war between Culture and Idiran Empire which the author manifests through the microcosm conflicts. The protagonist, Bora Horza Gobuchul, unlike other stereotypical heroes is portrayed as a morally ambiguous individual, who appeals to the readers. Additionally, the grand scenery and use of variety of literary devices add up to the extremely well reception of the book. Its sequel, The Player of Games, came out the very next year which paved way for other seven volumes in The Culture series.

Besides the Culture series, Banks wrote several stand-alone novels. Some of them were adapted for television, radio and theatre. BBC television adapted his novel, The Crow Road (1992), and BBC Radio 4 broadcasted Espedair Street. The literary influences on his works include Isaac Asimov, Dan Simmons, Arthur C. Clarke, and M. John Harrison. He was featured in a television documentary, The Strange Worlds of Iain Banks South Bank Show, which discussed his literary writings. In 2003, he published a non-fiction book, Raw Spirit, which is a travelogue of Scotland. Banks last novel, titled The Quarry, appeared posthumously. He also penned a collection of poetry but could not publish it in his lifetime. It is expected to be released in 2015. He was awarded multitude of titles and accolades in honour of his contribution to literature. Some of these accolades include British Science Fiction Association Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, Locus Poll Award, Prometheus Award and Hugo Award.

Iain Banks was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the gallbladder and died at the age of 59 in the summer of 2013.

[duckprintspress]

Duck Prints Press Rec List Contributors’ Favorite Reads of 2024

As we approach the end of 2024, we wanted to take a moment and ask our usual crew of rec list contributors a simple, yet very difficult to answer, question: what was your one (1) favorite book of 2024? We didn’t require queerness for this list, and we didn’t dictate when books needed to have been published – we just wanted to know what people read that they loved! This is the resulting list.

@crack--attack favorite: Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1) by Michael Crichton

Shea Sullivan's favorite: Greywaren (Dreamer Trilogy, #3) by Maggie Stiefvater

@unforth favorite: The Imperial Uncle by Da Feng Gua Guo

@faerytaleonfire favorite: These Burning Stars (The Kindom Trilogy, #1) by Bethany Jacobs

@wmb-salticidae favorite: Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

@hullosweetpea favorite: Really Cute People by Markus Harwood-Jones

@not-gwaenchanha favorite: The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

@fpwoper favorite: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

YF Ollwell's favorite: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

@hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon favorite: Rosemary and Rue (October Daye, #1) by Seanan McGuire

@deathbycoldopen favorite: Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) by Tamsyn Muir

@thechaoscryptid favorite: Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell

@ramblingandpie favorite: Babel by R.F. Kuang

@shamwowxl favorite: We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds

@lpetersonwrites favorite: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

S. J. Ralston's favorite: Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

@Shadaras favorite: Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace

@tryslora favorite: Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1) by T.J. Klune

Anonymous's favorite: The Charioteer by Mary Renault

@dei2dei favorite: The Viking Way by Neil Price

What was YOUR one (1) favorite read of 2024?

Did you know? We keep a list of all the books we recommend on Goodreads, sorted into shelves reflecting different representation!

Did you know? Our Bookshop.org storefront can be your affiliate there – and we add all in-print queer books we recommend to lists on our storefront! You can find our publications there as well.

Did you know? All our backers on Patreon can join our Discord server and become contributors to these rec lists!