Hi all. I’m looking to explore contemporary lit fic but I really don’t know where to start.
Currently I mainly read horror (usually slower literary horror and weird or Gothic stuff more than gore/extreme/slashers), New Weird, a fair few literary classics, and some SSF and mystery now and then. Some of my favourite books are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Laird Barron’s The Imago Sequence, and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
So stuff with a dark edge and some speculative elements is welcome, but I’m staying open minded and I’ll try basically anything as long as it’s interesting.
Also, if anyone can recommend some magazines or other sorts of regular publications, I’d like to hear about those too. Both for short fiction and recommendations/reviews.
Cheers, A.
I’m not sure whether these entirely fit the brief, but I have similar tastes to you, and I enjoyed all of these.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan
Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejide
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
The Seven 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler
I loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke! Also if you want to stretch your genre comfort, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy is just wonderful. I return to it every few years.
Cheers! I’ll take a look.
Anything by Jeff Vandermeer. Maybe Margaret Atwood too but I’ve only read Oryx and Crake (which was great but not sure how much it fits here). Tender is the Flesh is really good and pretty dark. Blindness by José Saramago. If you’re looking for something really weird then House of Leaves (but warning, it’s not exactly a normal story and you should get the physical book).
If you are into horror, you may enjoy The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. Just be warned that we are still awaiting the final, overdue volume.
‘snow crash’ by neal stephenson
Thanks
