Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

Hey All,
I found threads going back about ten years that list TLO users' favourite Ligotti stories. I did a bunch of math and it seems that if there were to be a tome of Ligotti's Greatest Hits (as voted by us) it would look like this:

The Medusa
Dr Voke and Mr Veech
Gas Station Carnivals
The Night School
Dr Locrian's Asylum
Teatro Grottesco
Drink to me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes
Nethescurial
The Tsalal
Purity
The Troubles of Dr Thoss
The Bungalow House
The Frolic
The Red Tower
The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
The Last Feast of Harlequin

It would be about 550 pages.
It looks like it would be quite a book, if a little similar to The Shadow at the Bottom of the World. I'd buy two. You TLO people have good taste.

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

I'm loving this idea.

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

I would add "The Shadow, The Darkness" to that list.

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

I would add The Shadow, The Darkness, too, but the TLO gang has spoken and they disagree with us.
The Bungalow House was the clear winner and The Clown Puppet missed inclusion by one vote.
If I combined the votes for the various parts of In Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land it would have been included. Lots of people brought up A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing and His Shadow Shall Rise to a Higher House. Maybe we should add that one?

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

IAFT, IAFL also belongs, if were to ask a guy like me. And for the record, not that it matters, most of my favorite Ligotti pieces weren't on that list to begin with, but alas, we all have different preferences. Nothing against the list, per se, just an observation. I think in some ways a difference for me has to do with the fact that I have read all of Tom's work many times over, so my favorites have morphed and evolved over the years. Also, I consider The Library of Byzantium to right up there as well, for whatever it's worth. ;)

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

Ok, this raises a big new question.
I've read and reread all of his stories a bunch of times, too, and I agree that a Ligotti aficionado might find his greatest hits to also be his "simplest" hits.
Here's the Question: Do I add In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land to the greatest hits, or do we start a new book consisting of "Ligotti's Underappreciated Gems" as chosen by hardcore Ligotti connoisseurs?
I prefer the latter and would like to submit the following:
Sideshow and Other Stories
The Small People
The Nightmare Network
The Prodigy of Dreams
I'm sure Miss Plarr, Mrs Rinaldi, Master Rignolo and Severini all have their fans out there. Will they speak up?

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

Severini is one of my absolute favorites. I have lived on the Equator for the last 8 years - most of the time it feels like living 52 centimeters away from the Sun - and though I appreciate Ligotti's morbid autumnal ruminations and his notion that winter is the visible locus of the divine, for me it is festering jungles and suffocating marshlands that stand as proxies for that black river and empty divinity. There is something both beckoning and terrifying about ruins in the jungle and I have spent long years searching for it in many places.

The nightmare of the organism - the obscene symbiosis of tree and pillar, the works of man rotting back into nature, nature further rotting back into the primordial, all under a scorching sun that steals the breath from your lungs.

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

Sounds like there's a book begging to be written down there at the equator. And it looks you're the one who's been tapped to write it. I expect big things from you; you clearly have the verbal tools. And storytelling can be learned, so No Excuses!

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

It may not be a short story, but I don't think any 'Best of Ligotti' volume would be complete without including 'This Degenerate Little Town'.

Re: Ligotti's Greatest Hits
 

Has he even written a bad story?