I know a couple people around here have read this. For those unfamiliar, it’s a novel that was originally published online in annual installments, and it can be found here. Its tone is a mix of horror and comedy, and I personally found it hilarious and more than a bit creepy.
The reason I’m starting a new thread devoted to it is that it has recently been published for reals and I’ve got a signed copy incoming. It was previously published via CafePress hack job, but the physical quality on their books is shit so I didn’t bother then. Apparently a decent bit of minor changes exist between the online manuscript and the final published version, so I’m interested to see how it comes out.
Anyone else read this? Anyone care to read it for free? I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts on it.
Oh, and to preempt that stunningly clever joke someone was no doubt going to make, Self-Reported for VM activity.
Yeah, I read it and enjoyed it. I might even pay for it, I’m not sure. I didn’t enjoy last year’s installment quite as much as the previous ones, so I’m curious to see what he cranks out this time around.
See, recommendations are one of the main reasons I bought it. I find it works a lot better to hand someone a book and say “here, read this” than to give them a URL and say “read the novel-length webpage at this address.”
Was it the illustrations? I thought they were awesome, but I know they turned a lot of folks off.
I’ve read it a few times, once online and a couple in print. It’s the kind of humor that, for me, does well with repetition, and I also think it is legitimately creepy. Not to be too pretentious, but there’s a certain existential dread that it conveys well (worry about free will, about mortality, about how tiny we are compared to the universe, etc). I think it’s definitely worth paying for. And the written version is noticeably better (in my opinion) than the online version.
I was just perusing amazon.ca to update my book list and I noticed the John Dies at The End book going for… $374. Yeah, that’s a normal unsigned copy. I hadn’t finished reading the story so I decided to go back to the website, down! Well at least the story is no longer there, not unexpected considering the book. After looking at his site a bit more apparently there will be a second run coming out 2009. You know, just in case any of you had let JDATE drop off their radar and hadn’t actually read it or wanted to read it again.
Whats odd is that all the other amazon sellers seem to have taken that price as the actual price, Wong says on his webpage that the pricing is a mistake they haven’t bothered to fix because there are no actual units to be bought. On the Canadian site one person has even priced a used book at $370!
Looking at ebay though the sellers have stayed sane, though I wonder if people are actually buying it at the amazon prices. Looking at the boxed set of Farscape season 1 I don’t doubt they are.
I saw this advertised on a website from one of the links in the Rimbo comics thread.
The title alone had me laughing pretty good.
I added it to my amazon cart and then promptly forgot about it.
I went back a month or so later to order something and when I opened my cart it said “Notice, the price of John Dies At the End has gone up in price from $17.95 to $126.” Cough, sputter, choke.
“Remove from cart.”
I figured it had gone out of print or something and again forgot about it.
Then about a week later I’m in a Borders and as I’m walking past a section of books headed towards the checkout I see “John Dies At the End”.
I stop, add this to the books I’m already carrying and buy it on the spot.
It was an interesting read.
And I’m glad I didn’t have to pay $126 for it either.
I just don’t get scared by horror stories. Economic treatises? Spiders? Those scare me. Horror stories? With the exception of “A Shadow over Innsmouth,” not much at all. That said, I found most of this pretty gripping.
I will say that both Acid’s book and Andrew Mayer’sbooks kick the snot out of it, and those are both first-time efforts as well (and fellow QT3 denizens to boot). (ESPECIALLY Acid’s book. Blown away.)
But one thing that disappointed me (big-time spoiler; do NOT view if you haven’t read it already)…
A friend sent me a copy and–in spite of being devoid of any theme or authorial POV–I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s an incredibly well put-together cheeseburger.
I wrote that off seeing as “David Wong” is a senior editor at cracked.com.
I’ve been following this since it was free online, some of my favorite parts were excised from the book. I even have an old Cafe Press version that had a bad binding problem.
I’m looking forward to the movie but the books actually moved away from wild and crazy with each new version and every other thing that guy writes is sooooooo depressing.
The movie is going to be shown for the first time at Sundance Jan 24th
