{"id":3451,"date":"2022-04-08T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/?p=3451"},"modified":"2022-04-08T00:11:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T05:11:46","slug":"blog-a-little-something-about-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/?p=3451","title":{"rendered":"[BLOG] A Little Something About Fiction&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I promised myself that I was going to try and get through more books this year. I&#8217;ve digested so many movies, I honestly find myself not watching many lately, and the ones I do watch tend to be old schlocky sci-fi movies with people making fun of them underneath. MST3k and Rifftrax really have warped my brain that way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I promised I was going to read more, and I gave myself the allowance of audiobooks. I realized that I had a couple Audible credits just hanging out that I hadn&#8217;t touched from years ago, so I reinstated my account and between physical titles and audiotitles, I&#8217;m actually not doing so bad with a half-dozen or so books read this year.\u00a0 On that note, audiobooks get the same treatment that movies I don&#8217;t have interest in &#8211; I listen to them at 1.25x because most readers are just too slow and I get distracted way too easily.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s some books that I&#8217;ve braindumped in one form or another, and what I&#8217;ve thought of them.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll warn you &#8211; they&#8217;re mostly not great&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-3452 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"118\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837.jpg 265w, https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 118px) 100vw, 118px\" \/>CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD<\/strong> &#8211; Read mostly because of the cover and the title, this is a young adult book in the Christopher Pike, RL Stein variety where a bunch of kids deal with the craziness going on around them. It isn&#8217;t great, but it definitely will remind you of some late 90&#8217;s slasher films you&#8217;ve seen.\u00a0 If you want something fluffy to inject into your brain, you could go a lot worse than &#8216;Clown&#8217; &#8230; hell, you could go with&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>FANTASTICLAND <\/strong>&#8211; Let&#8217;s start with the fact that the elevator pitch of this book is great. &#8216;What if we did the Warriors, but at Disney?&#8217; and the first half of the book is trying to convince you that this premise is occurring. In the style of World War Z tales from people that surrounded the incident, Fantasticland is a damned mess that, the longer you scrutinize, the less sense it makes&#8230; oh, and why does an amusement park turn into a post-apocalyptic wasteland (without an apocalypse).. because these damn kids turn to monsters without their phones, by gum.\u00a0 Blech.<\/p>\n<p><b><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-3453 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"184\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466.jpg 315w, https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 122px) 100vw, 122px\" \/>THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT<\/b> <strong>GROUP <\/strong>&#8211; I really enjoy Grady Hendrix. His stories take a simple premise and go crazy with it. &#8216;HORRORSTOR&#8217; is &#8216;What if you had a haunted Ikea&#8217;. &#8216;SOLD OUR SOUL&#8217; is &#8216;What if a band\u00a0<em>did<\/em> sell their souls for rock &amp; roll?&#8217;.\u00a0 And FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP is.. well, just what the title tells you. What if the horror we digested in the 70s and 80s weren&#8217;t fiction, but fictionalized historical accounts of actual events.\u00a0 What would Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, and Sidney Prescott be like in group therapy? It&#8217;s fun, tells a great story, and Hendrix has a love of his source material.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE TROOP<\/strong> &#8211; Finally, ok.. if you want to be skeeved the hell out. If you want a novel that will turn your stomach, feel big and creepy and icky, and completely satisfying from top to bottom? I give to you Nick Cutter&#8217;s The Troop which, elevator pitch version is: &#8216;Stand By Me&#8217; but &#8216;OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING?&#8217; &#8230;A troop of boy scouts are on a private island for an overnight trip, but they run into some problems.\u00a0 I know that says nothing, really, but you really should just dive in blind and be grossed out like it wants you to be.<\/p>\n<p>Hatton, do you read anything other than horror?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I go through phases&#8230; as I&#8217;m currently reading Christopher &#8216;Eragon&#8217; Paolini&#8217;s new scifi book &#8216;To Sleep In A Sea of Stars&#8217; ..and it&#8217;s ok.. I&#8217;ll let you know some other time how it turned out, but I&#8217;m pushing to get to the end if that helps.<\/p>\n<p>So what have you been reading? You know where to tell us&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I promised myself that I was going to try and get through more books this year. I&#8217;ve digested so many movies, I honestly find myself not watching many lately, and the ones I do watch tend to be old schlocky sci-fi movies with people making fun of them underneath. MST3k and Rifftrax really have warped my brain that way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I promised I was going to read more, and I gave myself the allowance of audiobooks. I realized that I had a couple Audible credits just hanging out that I hadn&#8217;t touched from years ago, so I reinstated my account and between physical titles and audiotitles, I&#8217;m actually not doing so bad with a half-dozen or so books read this year.\u00a0 On that note, audiobooks get the same treatment that movies I don&#8217;t have interest in &#8211; I listen to them at 1.25x because most readers are just too slow and I get distracted way too easily.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s some books that I&#8217;ve braindumped in one form or another, and what I&#8217;ve thought of them.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll warn you &#8211; they&#8217;re mostly not great&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-3452 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"118\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837.jpg 265w, https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/58444837-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 118px) 100vw, 118px\" \/>CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD<\/strong> &#8211; Read mostly because of the cover and the title, this is a young adult book in the Christopher Pike, RL Stein variety where a bunch of kids deal with the craziness going on around them. It isn&#8217;t great, but it definitely will remind you of some late 90&#8217;s slasher films you&#8217;ve seen.\u00a0 If you want something fluffy to inject into your brain, you could go a lot worse than &#8216;Clown&#8217; &#8230; hell, you could go with&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>FANTASTICLAND <\/strong>&#8211; Let&#8217;s start with the fact that the elevator pitch of this book is great. &#8216;What if we did the Warriors, but at Disney?&#8217; and the first half of the book is trying to convince you that this premise is occurring. In the style of World War Z tales from people that surrounded the incident, Fantasticland is a damned mess that, the longer you scrutinize, the less sense it makes&#8230; oh, and why does an amusement park turn into a post-apocalyptic wasteland (without an apocalypse).. because these damn kids turn to monsters without their phones, by gum.\u00a0 Blech.<\/p>\n<p><b><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-3453 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"184\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466.jpg 315w, https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/17571466-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 122px) 100vw, 122px\" \/>THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT<\/b> <strong>GROUP <\/strong>&#8211; I really enjoy Grady Hendrix. His stories take a simple premise and go crazy with it. &#8216;HORRORSTOR&#8217; is &#8216;What if you had a haunted Ikea&#8217;. &#8216;SOLD OUR SOUL&#8217; is &#8216;What if a band\u00a0<em>did<\/em> sell their souls for rock &amp; roll?&#8217;.\u00a0 And FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP is.. well, just what the title tells you. What if the horror we digested in the 70s and 80s weren&#8217;t fiction, but fictionalized historical accounts of actual events.\u00a0 What would Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, and Sidney Prescott be like in group therapy? It&#8217;s fun, tells a great story, and Hendrix has a love of his source material.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE TROOP<\/strong> &#8211; Finally, ok.. if you want to be skeeved the hell out. If you want a novel that will turn your stomach, feel big and creepy and icky, and completely satisfying from top to bottom? I give to you Nick Cutter&#8217;s The Troop which, elevator pitch version is: &#8216;Stand By Me&#8217; but &#8216;OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING?&#8217; &#8230;A troop of boy scouts are on a private island for an overnight trip, but they run into some problems.\u00a0 I know that says nothing, really, but you really should just dive in blind and be grossed out like it wants you to be.<\/p>\n<p>Hatton, do you read anything other than horror?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I go through phases&#8230; as I&#8217;m currently reading Christopher &#8216;Eragon&#8217; Paolini&#8217;s new scifi book &#8216;To Sleep In A Sea of Stars&#8217; ..and it&#8217;s ok.. I&#8217;ll let you know some other time how it turned out, but I&#8217;m pushing to get to the end if that helps.<\/p>\n<p>So what have you been reading? You know where to tell us&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[215],"tags":[234,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3454,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions\/3454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethingcast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}