Blurb:
Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. They are told by the people who have answered an ad headlined "Artists' Retreat: Abandon your life for three months". They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But "here" turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world, and where heat and power and food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell, and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

Mailing order for bookring:

disneyfreaksam, UK
vexter, Slovenia
shnedwards, UK
itpdx, US

On its way to disneyfreaksam to start the ring. Enjoy, if that's the right word!

Thank you very much. I will get this read and passed on xx

Really enjoyed this book and I was quite apprehensive going into it as Fight Club was the most disturbing book I have ever read. This book has a lot of dark humour through it, very dark humour.

I will get it sent off in the next couple of days

Enjoy xx

The book is here, thank you disneyfreaksam! Now that I look at your username, the package sure makes sense. ;)
Of course, as these things go, the book came right when I started another BookCrossing book, so I won't be able to read it as fast. But I promise not to keep it for too long!

I don't like not finishing books, but I finally gave up. I don't like horrors and I get squicked out easily. I got through "Guts" with my teeth clenched and squirming just a little, and I valiantly fought on for several stories, but in the end, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book. The story of people in the "writers' retreat" and the gradual worsening of their situation was actually harder to read than any of the short stories. I just couldn't do it.

I liked other books by Palahniuk so I was a little sad that I didn't enjoy this one. But I think that's simply another proof of how good a writer he is. He set out to make us uncomfortable, and he sure succeeded at it.

I sent the book on today. Shnedwards, thank you anyway for sharing this. I'm still glad that I got the chance to read at least a part of the book. :)

It's here! Thank you for sending it back to me vexter! I'll get round to reading this soonish.

Oog. Finished, and quite glad about it. "Guts" didn't make me faint, it was just gross. I can cope quite happily with gross. And there's plenty of gross in this. Lots to make you laugh, too.

Apart from "Speaking Bitterness", which I had to skip, I didn't find the stories as a whole all that disturbing, just little bits of them here and there: a sentence or an image or an idea. It seems Chuck has worked hard to think up something to disturb everyone. A little too hard, perhaps. I've read, and attempted to read, books which are subtler and much, much darker than this.

I'm not sure what to think of Chuck Palahniuk after reading this. I liked Choke, the only other book of his I've read, a lot. I don't know whether I'll bother with Fight Club, the film of which I liked right up until the stupid twist at the end.

Will send this on to itpdx once i have an address.

On its way to itpdx by surface mail.

Received at Portland, OR. Boy that was fast surface mail!

I have read Palahniuk before. I should have known. And just to make sure, the edition I have, has a blurb on the cover--"By turns, nauseating, darkly funny and brutally graphic". But I kept making the mistake of trying to read this while eating lunch. Not a good idea. What can you say--Palahniuk has a twisted mind and I can't turn away. We get treated to descriptions of death from burns, from ruptured intestines and more. We get a blow by blow description of a body decaying. And with it descriptions of humanity dying and decaying. The is horror with a capital H. And the stories will haunt me.

I am sending this to hoserlauren for the Keep It Going In Reverse Wish List Relay.

Received today as a RABCK. Thanks so much!!

A group of wannabe writers respond to an ad in a paper to go on a writers retreat for three months. The goal is to be separated from society so that each person can write their story. The result is the group descending in to madness, interspersed with poems about each person and their story. The stories themselves are pretty disturbing.

I'm not usually a fan of short stories and didn't realize this book was short stories. However all of these short stories were glued together with narrative about the retreat. Since each person's story was spliced in to the narrative, there was nothing that connected the narrative to the story so you were changing pace every 25 pages or so.

There are few real names being used in this book. Instead, characters are identified by nicknames, such as Miss Sneezy and Director Denial. Interestingly enough, I found that this made it more difficult to keep the characters straight. I couldn't remember whose story had already been presented.

This was my first Palahniuk book and overall, I didn't enjoy it too much. I've got a few others of his so I'll try those. Hopefully they are novels rather than short stories.

To the finder of this book: I hope you enjoy reading this book. Please keep it or set it free when you're done. If the book is of no interest to you, please release it into the wild for someone else to find and enjoy. I hope you will make a journal entry so its journey can be tracked and to let me know the book has been found. You can remain anonymous if you wish, but if you join BookCrossing, you are in for a great experience.

Thanks, HoserLauren!

I read another copy of this book and took the one you left at Harbord House pub to use in my Little Free Library of Twinbrook (#7720) here at my home in Rockville, Maryland. I hope it finds a new reader quickly!

This is what I then wrote about this book after I finished that other copy...

An odd assortment of people is taken to a secret area where they write poems and short stories. Is this collection of stories (joined together by a novel) ever weird! It is a great idea in which Palahniuk gets to toss out to his readers many ideas woven into his unique brand of story-telling. The collection turns into a grossly entertaining read. My favorites were:

“Foot Work” is the hilarious story of Mother Nature, a woman into new age philosophies and practices. She learns reflexology from “Lentil”, a woman now named Angelique whom she had known previously. These two performs “foot jobs” for wealthy clients, but are being manipulated by Russian mafioso (behind their handler Lenny). At first their work was for bi bucks, but later it was to knock off people. Angelique is murdered, and Mother Nature calls her parents and tells them not to get massaged by anyone they don’t know! :-)

“Swan Song” is an eye-opening story showing how the media is hard pressed into sensationalizing news. A freelance writer (the Earl of Slander) is almost out of work from having presented a negative opinion about a movie. Dr. Kenneth Wilcox D.V.M., former child star of Danny-Next-Door and the Earl of Slander’s dog’s veterinarian, is now settled into a boring, middle-class existence. With the use of alcohol and drugs, The Earl of Slander sets up a false child porn addiction scene and follows that with the made-to-look-like suicide of his dog’s vet. Following this, The Earl of Slander writes a slanderous, but Pulitzer Prize-winning, article about Dr. Wilcox . This, of course, cannot be refuted because of the vet’s death. The Earl of Slander knows about what the public wants to read and complies.

There are so many stories here that some simply get lost in the numbers. Some of them are very disturbing (a la “Speaking Bitterness” in which a woman’s group examines another person of uncertain gender trying to prove that the woman is really a man and that all of her “parts” are fake. This book was called a “train wreck” by another reviewer. I agree with that choice of words. Bizarre and horrifying, but fascinating and attention-getting.

After finishing all the stories, I’ve come to realize that Palahniuk’s reason for creating this book is to try to shock his readership. He has compiled a long list of very creative stories to see which ones affects his readers most adversely. He seems to brag about this in the concluding chapter. My response to the book as a whole is that, even though I really enjoy his writing style, this particular book tried to cram too much inside. The cast of characters was too long and the profusion of short stories was to extensive. By the end of the book, I just wanted to finish it, and could barely remember all of what I read or keep the characters straight.

I'm releasing this book for the following BookCrossing challenge:

***The August 2017 One Word Title Challenge hosted by booklady331.

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Hello and welcome to BookCrossing ... where we make the whole world a library!

Now that you've "caught" this book, it is yours to do with as you like. Read it, keep it, or give it away. It's your choice!

I'd love if you'd enter a note here on BookCrossing about this book -- where you found it, how you like it, and/or where you release it. If you join BookCrossing (free and fun), kindly list me, SqueakyChu , or any other journaler on this thread as your referring person. Thank you so much.

Enjoy the book!