because I have a lot of genuine and powerful feelings about this weirdass horror-comedy outsider art, and I've run out of Tumblr fandom for it
I keep meaning to read, but then not having the wherewithal to find the book/read the book. Maybe this will give me a push.
AAAA I LOVE THIS BOOK??? I listened to the audio book at the beginning of this summer, and honestly it was one of the things that kept me going. I got to listen to more of it as I went about my day and it gave me something to look forward to. I keep meaning to get a copy of the sequel, but I will admit, I love this book to pieces.
I love this book and the sequel. I'd love to see another sequel. For those who haven't read it, here's the quote that got me to read it
What's funny is I actually had seen the movie first, was like 'well that's ok' and then forgot about it for a while. And then my boyfriend Kel picked up the book and was reading it, and sending me quotes like he usually does when reading a thing. And I was like 'holy shit I need a copy of this Right Now'. So I used some of my itunes credit to buy the audio book. Honestly I think still one of my favorite things, now Tempted to relisten to it
The movie's decent for the first two thirds and then it's like they realized they had half the book left to cover and only 45 minutes of run time.
I have the sequel but haven't read it. This book fucked me up - it hits both my sense of humour and some of my primal fears in quick succession.
After reading Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (overall a letdown but it had its moments), I was once again impressed by David Wong's consistent refusal to aestheticize evil. He doesn't give it a scrap of glamor or elan. The blind idiot god at the heart of the multiverse talks like a 12-year-old on Xbox Live. Evil is always stupid, petty, ugly, puerile, and cruel. Hell is an unmoderated comments section. I'm not sure I agree with this portrayal completely, but it's really striking and I haven't seen it a lot.
i really like the portrayal, even if it doesn't feel completely accurate... it's. nice almost? to see something that isn't just aesthetic let the blind idiot god at the heart of the multiverse be a fucking shit talking 12 year old on xbox live why not. something about it really appeals to me! i also recently got a physical copy of john dies at the end... mmm i am so happy
More thoughts: The way Dave's self-loathing is handled is really deft, because the story makes it clear it's part of his unreliability as a narrator. "John and Amy are both good and kind people whose boots I'm not fit to lick, but for some reason they both love me deeply and would die for me... Obviously this is because Amy is a naive idealist and John is a deluded stoner, not because of any good qualities I might have as a friend and partner."
i kind of lost track of the plot of john dies at the end halfway through and never finished it, but i was riveted by the sequel with all the spiders. that was cool as shit, even if the plot was also a little wonky. but i adored futuristic violence. it was pretty unrealistic in terms of how much abuse a human body can take and keep going, but also really fun in terms of how the girl just explicitly refused to bow to misogynistic expectations of the bad guys, that her pain would be sexy, that their violence would put her in her 'proper place' as a plaything. i love that she just kept clawing and shoving and tricking her way through every confrontation with every creep. and i love her mom.
Yeah, the original JDatE reads like somebody's NaNoWriMo (I think it started as a serial, actually, unplanned, and was edited/revised together later, which would explain it). TBiFoS was more coherent plot-wise
i haven't had a chance to read the sequel yet but god hearing people talk about it makes it sound really good cries
Aaaa this book. I have like three different copies of at least two different versions of this book. Bought the first one when they were selling it self-published, then lost it and bought another, only I think they'd edited it by then, then I found the first one, then it came out in hardback for-realsies published and I had to buy that. The official-release hardback had more thematic followthrough and tighter plotting than the self-pub & online drafts. It was interesting to watch the development. I also read the online draft of what would eventually become This Book is Full of Spiders, and wow did that end up going somewhere different. Maybe more coherent, and I think more meaningful, but there were a couple things I was disappointed didn't make the final cut. ... I can't remember, was the falling buffalo one of them? Seems to me that would've been a difficult fit with the final draft, tonally.
