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| 1250830753
| 9781250830753
| 1250830753
| 3.87
| 108,238
| Jul 12, 2022
| Jul 12, 2022
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really liked it
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”Was there enough disinfectant in the world to cleanse the House of Usher?� ”The dead may walk, but I will not walk among them.� This atmospheric retell ”Was there enough disinfectant in the world to cleanse the House of Usher?� ”The dead may walk, but I will not walk among them.� This atmospheric retelling of Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher contains all of the gloomy dread of the original, but actually manages to ratchet up the creepiness. Who knew that fungi could be so utterly alien, or that hares could radiate such menace? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 14, 2025
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Mar 14, 2025
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Mar 14, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0374607133
| 9780374607135
| 0374607133
| 3.74
| 5,681
| Oct 01, 2024
| Oct 01, 2024
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really liked it
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”Everyone believes in haunted houses. Ghosts are a function of the movement of time. Places become marked by the things that have happened to them, th
”Everyone believes in haunted houses. Ghosts are a function of the movement of time. Places become marked by the things that have happened to them, the things they’ve done.� ”I can’t tell the difference between grief and ghosts; both seize the body and take what they will.� Ghosts have been part of the human story since we started telling stories. The first ghost in literature literally appears in our earliest surviving written story (Gilgamesh, 10th century BCE). Ghost symbolize and substitute for the mysterious fears and horrors that accost our lived experience � they allow us to experience them at a remove. Author Rivers Solomon has upended the traditional ghost and haunted house story by moving the actual horrors of lived trauma to the foreground and building her story around that. While their ghost is always present as an ambiguous mystery, the horror in their story is powered by the mundane � racism, childhood abuse, dysfunctional and estranged family, and the personal brokenness that these things can affect. This is harsh. It is raw. It is horrifying. It is effective. But be warned, if you are highly sensitive to these issues, this book could be too much for you. Solomon is an effective prose stylist. Their story is well written and flows easily despite its emotionally difficult subject matter. And I highly recommend the audiobook version of the book � narrator Gabby Bean’s� performance is simply brilliant. One final note � a trigger warning of sorts. If you are part of the MAGA snowflake crowd who gets hysterical and finds your panties all in a twist over the terrifying bugbear you call “Woke,� maybe take a pass on this one. Solomon has loaded their book so full of such things that even a committed Leftist might find it a bit much. (The difference being that the Leftist will still enjoy the outstandingly written story, while the MAGA snowflake may be irrevocably traumatized.) ...more |
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1
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 28, 2025
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Feb 21, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0586212922
| 9780586212929
| 0586212922
| 3.90
| 674
| 1991
| 1992
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liked it
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Our Father, who art in the Forest Horned One is Thy name. This collection is for those who have already walked the dark, labyrinthine paths of that bit Our Father, who art in the Forest Horned One is Thy name. This collection is for those who have already walked the dark, labyrinthine paths of that bit of primeval forest known as Ryhope Wood. If you have not yet discovered that dark and eerie bit of Jungian, sentient real estate through reading the first book in this series, Mythago Wood, you may find yourself lost in these tales. It’s primarily the title story (which is also the longest) that puts this short story collection into the Mythago Wood series. Several of the other tales seem to be set in or near the Wood far in the past, and fit thematically, expanding and deepening the mystery of Ryhope. The weakest stories in the collection are those with the least discernible connection to Ryhope or the Mythagos. Bone Forest This novella, a direct prequel to Mythago Wood, follows George Huxley (the deceased father from the first book) as he pursues his dark obsession with Ryhope Wood. His terrifying and horrific encounter in the wood with a female mythago shaman puts his wife, his collaborator Wynne-Jones, and his young son Steven all in grave peril from his own ghostly doppelgänger, and threatens the fabric of his reality. This tale feels more like psychological horror than fantasy, and complicates the already labyrinthine story-line of the series. 4 ⭐️ Thorn A medieval mason has been recruited by the Green Man to carve his image in a secret place in the new church that’s being constructed in the village, thereby claiming the shrine as his own no matter what rites are publicly celebrated there. The mason works at night and in secret, fearing that, if discovered, he may end up in the gibbet that hangs just outside Thorn’s shadowy forest. But, to his great peril, the mason doesn’t understand the nature of the bargain he’s made, and has misjudged the attitudes of his friends and neighbors. 4 ⭐️ The Shapechanger This story emphasizes the time distortion of Ryhope Wood. Set in about the eighth century, an ancient shaman, known only as the Wolfhead, has been summoned to exorcise a demon who is haunting a Saxon village. Together with his ten year old apprentice, Inkmaker, he discovers that the demon-haunting has taken the form of a distressed child who is conjuring mythagos from a book of legends. Wolfhead recognizes a name he encountered centuries past � a Roman-Briton, yet the child is conjuring legends not yet written in Wolfhead’s time. The time inversion, the tormented future child, the mysterious Wolfhead and his excellently developed young apprentices, Inkmaker, all combine for a dark and eerie tale that deepens the lore of Ryhope Wood. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Boy Who Jumped the Rapids The young son of a village chieftain is an outcast and pariah because he is not effected by the powerful illusion magics of the forest like everyone else. And an outsider, a warrior from across the sea, is making the villagers uneasy as he builds a mysterious shrine outside the village. Their parallel stories both deepen the mystery and confusion of the inexplicable wood, without making much sense. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Time of the Tree Human landscape? Body as world? Man gone mad? You are not really intended to understand what is going on in this story. It is Holdstock taking his qualities of impenetrableness and inexplicably to the extreme. 1 1/2 ⭐️ Magic Man The old, one-eyed cave painter in a prehistoric hunting tribe serves as a kind of shaman, as his paintings in the sacred cave predict the next day’s hunt, drawing in the beast the hunters will slay. The chief hunter hates the old artist, denies his art has any power, and threatens his life. The painter/shaman uses his art to attempt to subvert his powerful opponent, but his plan is foiled by his enthusiastic, young apprentice. As is typical of Holdstock’s stories, this one doesn’t end well for anyone. 4 ⭐️ Scarrowfell Folk horror � as the village excitingly prepares for the celebration of Lord’s Eve, young Ginny has been disturbed by nightmares. But as the day itself arrives, Ginny seems to be caught in a living nightmare. Creepy and atmospheric. 3 ⭐️ The Time Beyond Age While this science fiction tale appears to have some tangential, thematic link to the rest of the collection, it still struck a harsh note for me after all the previous stories were variations of dark fantasy and folk horror. 2 ⭐️ ...more |
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1
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Mar 04, 2025
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Mar 10, 2025
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Feb 05, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1668075083
| 9781668075081
| 1668075083
| 4.31
| 1,911
| Mar 18, 2025
| Mar 18, 2025
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 2025
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not set
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Dec 02, 2024
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Hardcover
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| B07MDLBK6T
| 3.40
| 3,203
| Feb 07, 2019
| Feb 07, 2019
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liked it
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I finished listening to The Complete Ghost Stories Collection of M.R. James on Devil’s Night. Today, Halloween, I read this tribute, The Conception of
I finished listening to The Complete Ghost Stories Collection of M.R. James on Devil’s Night. Today, Halloween, I read this tribute, The Conception of Terror: Tales Inspired by M.R. James, Volume 1, while James� original tales are still fresh in my imagination. This Audible Original recording contains four of James� ghost stories, altered, modernized, and adapted as full cast audio plays. Casting the Runes: The original story is one of James� best � a top shelf offering. This adaptation by Stephen Gallagher actually kicks the terror and emotion up a notch. In the original, the loathsome Anton Karswell proved his power with an offstage death brought about by his black magic. The reader had no connection to that death, which therefore had limited emotional impact. In this adaptation, Karswell’s magic inflicts a death that the reader feels, which leaves the remaining story not simply a suspenseful race to survive, but a seeking out of righteous revenge. 4 1/2 ⭐️ Lost Hearts: Adapted by A.K. Benedict. The original tale was one of James� weaker efforts, in my opinion � strained credulity a bit that no one guessed what was going on with the disappearing kids. The adaptation improves on the original by adding a Rosemary’s Baby style twist that partially addresses the problem of suspension of disbelief. It also fills out the character of the child protagonist, and adds on a far darker ending. The changes made it a marginally better story. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Treasure of Abbot Thomas: Adapted by Jonathan Barnes. Once again, the James original of this story was not among my favorites. The adaptation has put the chapel and the well where the treasure is hid into an active boy’s academy. Rather than being a centuries old clergyman, Abbot-Thomas was a strangely charismatic past instructor at the school who dies of old age as the tale commences. The story is brought right up to date by complicating the plot with a massive pederasty scandal. Problem is, I simply don’t buy in to the thin motivations for the principle characters to do what they do, which ruined my suspension of disbelief. As with the rest of these tales, the ending is a harsher shade of dark. 2 1/2 ⭐️ A View from a Hill: Adapted by Mark Morris Comedian. The original protagonist is replaced by a couple on holiday recovering from the shock of losing a child. Their relationship is not holding up well under the strain of their grief, and neither of them are sympathetic. (Let me expand on that � both of them are bloody awful annoying and are the reason this is the least successful of these adaptations.) A central idea of the original tale � the old binoculars built by a long deceased evil alchemist � is eliminated, although the couple does view things no longer there from an ordinary pair. Like the rest, this adaptation adds a far more horrific ending than the original. 2 ⭐️ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 31, 2024
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Oct 31, 2024
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Oct 31, 2024
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Audible Audio
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| 1473379156
| 9781473379152
| B01ARWXYGC
| 3.85
| 721
| 1904
| Jan 18, 2016
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it was amazing
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If I were editing a collection of the one hundred greatest ghost stories of all time, The Mezzotint would be in it. The same if it was a collection of
If I were editing a collection of the one hundred greatest ghost stories of all time, The Mezzotint would be in it. The same if it was a collection of the ten greatest ghost stories. Ditto if it collected just the five best. You get the idea. The Mezzotint is an ideal example of everything that a ghost story should be. It does it with style and leaves lingering chills. The story has a simple plot. The curator of a university art museum receives a mezzotint from an art dealer. Initially, he feels that its price was too high, for though it is skillfully done, it depicts a nondescript nighttime scene of a house without even any figure. But as he and colleagues continue to observe it, the curator reconsiders its uniqueness and value. Impossibly, its scene changes as night falls. It depicts a moonrise where once there was no moon. Then a partially concealed figure appears at the very edge of the print. The next night the figure can be seen crouched and menacingly crawling toward the house in full view. The mezzotint does not change by day, but each night a new change depicts a sinister scenario playing out. Now the figure is gone, but a house window, originally closed stands open. Just describing the eerie and unexplainable process happening on the print creates a menacing sense of dread and doom. The tale’s ending is seeming anti-climax. It reveals discovered history of the mezzotint’s artisan and his personal tragedy, and the eventual fate of the work � hanging in a gallery and never again displaying the changes that played out the chilling drama the curator observed over several nights. Yet even this just serves to center the uncanny and disturbing events played out within the mezzotint’s frame, and leaves the reader with tingling, long lasting, and long remembered fear-flesh. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Oct 29, 2024
not set
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Oct 29, 2024
not set
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Oct 29, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B00JVCHFFQ
| 4.14
| 4,556
| Feb 1975
| Apr 29, 2014
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liked it
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This is a clever story collection, but falls well short of the “greatest collection� that many Ellison fans label it. In too many of these tales Ellis
This is a clever story collection, but falls well short of the “greatest collection� that many Ellison fans label it. In too many of these tales Ellison tripped over his own cleverness, and they come across as more pretentious than profound. One of the collection’s most praised stories is built around an ugly lie that became an urban myth and Ellison’s nasty, cynical story helped to amplify and perpetuate the lie. There are several excellent stories here, (though a couple of my favorites were already published in earlier collections) and the book’s concept of examining the passing of old gods and establishing of new ones is boldly creative and was a significant influence on other writers. I think I just came to this collection too late in my life. Many of the concepts examined here could well have been mind blowing, even life changing if I first read this book as a teen or a young man. Yet through the alchemy of living, ideas that would have been mind blowing forty years ago have become little more than truisms at this life stage. Forward: Oblations at Alien Alters: The author presents some dramatic words on the collection’s theme � Gods. ”There is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service to the letter. When belief in a god dies, the god dies.� 3 ⭐️ The Whimper of Whipped Dogs: I absolutely despise this story. It is an obscenely violent, ugly, nihilistic, and cynical take on life in the city, riffing off the infamous (and inaccurate) myth of the Kitty Genovese murder. The story is an aggressively brutal assault on the reader � horror delivered with a maniacal grudge. Sure it’s well written, but Ellison was a bloody bastard to write it. ”When the new god comes to the Big Apple, its Kyrie Eleison turns out to be a prayer Kitty Genovese simply couldn’t sing. But thirty-eight others knew the tune.� 1 ⭐️ Along the Scenic Route: Along freeways of the future, aggressive driving and road rage has been officially systematized into a legally controlled highway dueling protocol, and cars are equipped with lethal weapons and defense systems. A family man out for a scenic drive with his wife allows his bad temper to bait him into an official road duel with a hot shot young blood. Insecure egos and toxic masculinity collide in this lethal thrill ride of a story. ”In the world of the freeway there was no place for a walking man.� 4 1/2 ⭐️ On the Downhill Side: New Orleans! Ghosts! Unicorns? A story of the follies of love, and redemption beyond the grave. Unfortunately, it all comes out as a cold, tasteless gumbo, pretentiousness masquerading as profundity. ”There’s a little book they sell, a guide to manners and dining in New Orleans. I’ve looked � nowhere in the book do they indicate the proper responses to a ghost.� 2 ⭐️ O Ye of Little Faith: Cynical asshole protagonist with commitment issues fights with girlfriend after her abortion, punches an old, Mexican fortune teller, and then has to fight a Minotaur? Actually, the story leads with minotaur fight and fills the rest in later. Interesting fusing of realistic relationship story with trippy doom in the land of forgotten gods. ”In a land without a name, his name was Niven, but it was no more important a name than Apollo, or Vishnu, or Baal, for it was not a name that men believed in, only the name of a man who had not believed.� 3 ⭐️ Scartaris, June 28th (note: this story was not part of the original collection, and is included as an untitled stealth track with the story above.) We meet him first in Alabama being lynched for assassinating a KKK goon, and afterwards resurrecting. Next he’s in Beloit in a working man’s bar buying a drink for his little brother who has no big brother, and encouraging him in an unorthodox way. We meet him again on an international flight baiting a pompous minister about gods and what happens to them when their worshippers are gone, and bringing the peace of release to another family. He has encounters in Greece and Zurich, conversing and transforming. He is lonely, because his people and his home are long gone. Poets don’t even write of it, he says, but once he mentioned his home to Plato who penned a couple lines about it. This story unfolds slowly into something quietly magnificent. 4 1/2 ⭐️ Neon: A man in Times Square fears he is going mad because the signs are trying to communicate with him. Something is trying to woo and seduce him through neon signage. A strange tale that didn’t quite work for me. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Basilisk: A soldier is horribly wounded and captured in Vietnam. His captors torture him forcing him to reveal all the information he has. But he is touched by the god of war, who transforms the broken soldier into a weapon � a weapon that not only destroys his sadistic captors, but continues to work on the mindless patriots who see him as a traitor and torment him when he is sent home. Mars is an awesomely wicked god. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Face of Helene Bournouw: She could make or break the men who desired her with a smile,or a word. She crushed and controlled millionaire industry titans, brilliant artists, highly connected priests by granting or withholding her charms. But who controls Helene Bournouw? (I feel that this story owes a large debt to Fritz Leiber’s tale The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.) Richard Strike the only one of the Broadway columnist with a valid claim to literacy once referred to her as “The most memorable succubus he had ever encountered.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitide 38*54� N, Longitude 78* 00� W: Larry Talbot cannot gain the release of death until he finds his lost soul. His best friend Victor, a brilliant scientist, agrees to assist. With Victor’s expertise and a map obtained from a man named Demeter, Larry seeks for his soul on a (blessedly) moonless inner journey. This story is sadly hypnotic, with fine writing and low-key, clever inclusions of MGM classic monsters. ”That’s not cosmic irony, Larry. That’s slapstick.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ Rock God: This tale was originally published as a comic book story. It begins with a ritual at Stonehenge by the ancient Wessex people to raise the god of rock, Dis, for his once a century manifestation. It tells how the god announced his long sleep, as he created seven rock manifestations of himself around the world, including the Blarney Stone, the Stone of Scone, and the Kaaba, holy Black Stone of Mecca, that contained his essence. The great Soul Mote Dis created finally came to rest in the corner stone of a boondoggle of a NYC skyscraper. And there, Dis stirred. ”Dis was not a god of promise.� ”Above the city the bulk of Dis rose, enormous.� 4 ⭐️ Bleeding Stones: Activated by smog, the gargoyles of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral come to horrifying life and reek vengeful, chaotic slaughter. Ellison was able to present raw and obscene violence as humorous slapstick. ”Come to life after a hundred years is the race that will inherit the Earth...The gargoyle throws back its head and the stone fangs catch the sunlight...The inheritors rise from their crouched position, their shapes black and firm edged against the gray and deadly sky. Then, like the fighting kites of Brazil, they dive into the crowd and begin the ritual slaughter.� 4 ⭐️ Ernest and the Machine God: We start with the manipulative woman who always wins, always gets her way. Then on to a murder, an accident, a weird service station staffed by useless slack jaws, an idiot savant youth with mechanical magic, and a seduction that angers the gods. A bunch of elements clanging about in this story, and it feels like some of them are just extra parts that don’t fit. It reads as a better story than it actually is. ”God is mad. The god of music is mad. The time god is punctual, but he is mad. And the machine god is mad. He has made the bomb and the pill, and the missile, and the acid, and the electric chair and the laser and embalming fluid in his own image.� 3 ⭐️ Delusions for a Dragon Slayer: A kind of Walter Mitty afterlife tale. A nonentity drudge of a man is killed in a ridiculous urban freak accident, and immediately wakens as a bronzed warrior hero in an afterlife something like a John Norman Gor novel, the afterlife created by his dreams. But can he prove himself worthy of those dreams? ”This was reality, and only reality for a man whose existence had been, not quite bad, merely insufficient, tenable, but hardly enriching. For a man who had lived a life of not quite enough this was all there ever could be of goodness and brilliance and light.� 3 ⭐️ Corpse: A second rate professor, a mediocrity, a bore, a religious man (as he mentions repeatedly)as a goof at an intolerable dinner party devised a theory of automobiles with sentience, society, and a grudge. He comes to find his fickle fancy more potent than he could imagine. 3 ⭐️ Shattered Like a Glass Goblin: Lovecraftian horror story or a screed against the excesses of the youth drug culture, this is a horrific tale. Rudy was discharged from the army and came to reclaim his former fiancée from the Hill � a house full of druggie, free love, freeloading kids. But the Hill claimed Rudy. When the full horror show is revealed, Ellison played on the ambiguity of whether what Rudy is experiencing is traditional horror or the hallucinations of a really bad trip, with the uncertainty amplifying the horror. 4 ⭐️ Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes: A Vegas looser at the end of his rope puts his last silver dollar in an antique slot machine. The machine is possessed by a dead prostitute, and pays off for him, beyond all possible odds, over, and over. But the uncanny blue eyes that he keeps seeing come up trouble him, and she haunts his dreams. And he forgot to ask, what’s in it for her? ”If there’s a buck in it there’s rhythm and the onomatopoeia is Maggie Maggie Maggie.� 4 ⭐️ Paingod: The god of pain throughout all the worlds becomes curious about his work, and he incarnates to learn what pain does to creatures. The story reads as if it’s trying to impart a profound truth, yet it’s message is commonplace to anyone who managed to survive to midlife. It struck me as more maudlin than profound. 3 ⭐️ At the Mouse Circus: A clever tale, loaded with cultural references, of a man enticed from childhood to chase the American Dream and finding only a surreal Nightmare. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Place With No Name: So, there’s this junky pimp who commits a murder, then makes a deal with some floating gnome man to escape, and finds his consciousness merged with Harry Timmons, an obsessed and feverish jungle explorer searching for the forbidden Place with No Name. And, oh yeah, there’s Prometheus, chained there. Ellison questions the nature of identity. And justice. And mercy. He really makes you work for it. Is it worth it? 2 1/2 ⭐️ Deathbird: A story predicated on the Gnostic idea of God as Demiurge, malevolent and mad. Our hero is tasked with releasing the beloved from the misery of existence � first a loved dog companion, later his dying mother, and finally the Earth itself. There are also tests administered throughout. Clever. Poignant. Powerful. The snake was the good guy, and since God wrote the PR release, old Snake simply got a lot of bad press. ”I know,� he said. And she died. And he cried. And that was the extent of the poetry in it. 5 ⭐️ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 18, 2024
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Oct 22, 2024
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Oct 18, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 1497616743
| 9781497616745
| 1497616743
| 3.60
| 2,342
| Feb 1977
| Apr 01, 2014
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really liked it
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”Why shouldn’t a modern city have its special ghosts, like castles and graveyards and big old manor houses once had?� ”What was the whole literature of ”Why shouldn’t a modern city have its special ghosts, like castles and graveyards and big old manor houses once had?� ”What was the whole literature of supernatural horror but an essay to make death itself exciting? � wonder and strangeness to life’s very end.� Our Lady of Darkness is a scary novel for erudite readers. A careful reader will detect influences from both H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. You may also notice a nod to noir. The book’s title is borrowed from Thomas de Quincey’s creation, Mater Tenebrarum. Several significant writers figure into the book’s plot and backstory. A journal, believed to have been that of the writer Clark Ashton Smith, is an important prop to the plot. A delve into secret history connects the unfortunate suicides of the three brightest lights of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, and George Sterling, to the same sinister influence that is haunting the book’s protagonist in 1970s San Francisco. Dashiell Hammett makes a brief cameo in this complicated secret history as well. A plethora of other writers are name checked by the protagonist, including Wilde, Celine, Sade, Yeats, Machen, and Montague. Leiber even name checks himself, referencing his story A Bit of the Dark Wold. This unique novel will be best appreciated by committed bibliophiles with a particular partiality toward genre and outsider literature. The book’s plot revolves around Franz Westen, a recovering alcoholic and aging writer of weird tales. He’s captivated by an odd, old book about Megapolisomancy � an obscure occult pseudoscience that posits that large cities collect and concentrate evil energies that can then be harnessed to work dark magics. The book’s long dead, sinister author had been connected to many of San Francisco’s leading literati in the early decades of the 20th century, including Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, and the acquaintance terminated tragically. Franz begins to fear that the power of this odd man has reached beyond the grave to threaten him as well. Leiber tells his tale in short, staccato chapters that contrast with the slow burn of his build up. He created an intriguing cast of characters, and the conversations between them are one of the book’s strengths. Much of the tale is revealed as stories told within the story, a devise that mostly works well, but does bog down in spots. Leiber leisurely builds up tension, then ambushes his reader with effective jump scares, including the books short, sharp climax. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 19, 2024
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Feb 09, 2025
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Oct 18, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 195321519X
| 9781953215192
| B09HQG5689
| 3.25
| 53
| unknown
| Oct 03, 2021
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really liked it
|
It blazed � great God!…But the vast shapes we saw In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe. H.P. Lovecraft is not a name usually associated with It blazed � great God!…But the vast shapes we saw In that mad flash have seared our lives with awe. H.P. Lovecraft is not a name usually associated with poetry. Cosmic horror, Eldritch terror, gibbering madness, and tentacles (lots of tentacles) � these are the things we connect with Lovecraft and the unique brand of horror fiction that he created. But Lovecraft did fancy himself a poet, and wrote more than a few poems. Like his fiction, these were truly weird poems, poetry of eldritch terror. Much of what he wrote was awful; sing-song rhymes, and poems derivative of Poe. Some of his prose poems, like Nyarlathotep actually worked well, but most of his rhymed efforts are to poetry what long-time residents of Lovecraft’s town of Innsmouth are to humanity. And that is why this volume is so surprising. A cycle of thirty-six sonnets tell a tale of a scholar of antiquities who reads and steals a book full of occult wisdom and forbidden knowledge, and the terrifying consequences that follow. The tropes of the tale are familiar to any Lovecraft fan, but the medium of its delivery � the cycle of sonnets � makes it unique. These poems work effectively to create that creepy, unsettling atmosphere that was the hallmark of Lovecraft’s best work. As poetry, the sonnets are closer to competence than to brilliance, but, perhaps because Lovecraft was observing the traditional rules of sonnet composition, the poetry is truly effective in magnifying the atmosphere of dread and terror that Lovecraft created so well. The medium of the sonnets amplify his usual affect, making this book of eldritch poetry a unique artifact of horror literature. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 15, 2024
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Oct 15, 2024
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Oct 15, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 0345302311
| 9780345302311
| 0345302311
| 4.08
| 3,644
| Jun 1920
| Feb 1971
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really liked it
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The Doom That Came to Sarnath is the companion volume to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Together these volumes collect Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle tal
The Doom That Came to Sarnath is the companion volume to The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Together these volumes collect Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle tales. These are older stories, prose poems, many actually inspired by Lovecraft’s dreams, and several bearing the stamp of Lord Dunsany’s influence. Some of Lovecraft’s significant, recurring characters first appear in these stories, including Nyarlathotep and Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab. Filling out the Dream Cycle tales are some Lovecraft curiosities including a SciFi story set on the planet Venus and a tale Lovecraft ghostwrote for Harry Houdini. The Other Gods: In his pride, Barzai the Wise scaled the mountain Hatheg-Kla to gaze upon the long absent gods of earth, believing himself their equal. He did not count on finding the Other Gods. ”The Other Gods! The Other Gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the evil gods of Earth! Look away! Go back! Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses!� 4 ⭐️ The Tree: An atmospheric period piece of Ancient Greece, short and slight. An unnatural olive tree, growing from the tomb of a dead sculptor, becomes the doom of another sculptor, his old friend. ”Amidst such stupendous ruin only chaos dwelt.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Doom That Came To Sarnath: A story obviously influenced by Lord Dunsany. An interesting, personal observation about this tale � Lovecraft writes that Doom was proclaimed on Sarnath after it destroyed Ib and made off with their idol of Bakrag, and indeed, it seems that doom was terrifyingly performed on the thousandth anniversary of Ib’s destruction. But in between Sarnath prospered and ruled for a thousand years, which certainly seems to take the edge off of Bakrag’s long delayed revenge. ”Thus of the very ancient city of Ib was nothing spared save the sea-green stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Bokrug, the water lizard. This the young warriors took back with them to Sarnath as a symbol of conquest over the Old Gods and beings of Ib. But on the night after it was set up in the temple a terrible thing must have happened. For weird lights were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the idol gone, and the high priest, Taran-Ish, lying dead as from some fear unspeakable. And before he died, Taran-Ish had scrolled upon the alter of chrysolite with coarse, shaky strokes the sign of Doom.� ”And a thousand years of riches and delight passed over Sarnath, the wonder of the world, and pride of all mankind.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Tomb: Jervas Dudley, the original goth kid, develops an unhealthy obsession with the Hyde family tomb and nearby abandoned, burned mansion � an obsession leading to madness or worse. ”I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would someday force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me.� ”Henceforward, I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal.� 4 ⭐️ Polaris: In this short, early work (1918) the narrator can’t distinguish his dreams from reality, as he dreams of a city under siege and his failure to protect it. ”But still the pole star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane, watching eye, which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing, save that it once had a message to convey.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ Beyond the Walls of Sleep: A fascinating story idea, but the execution of that idea failed to capture me. An unnamed intern in a mental hospital secretly experiments with a criminally insane patient, a mad, hillbilly murderer, to prove that his dreams exists in a wholly separate realm where he is a being of light. ”From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and incorporeal life, a far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking.� 3 ⭐️ Memory: Asked the genie to the daemon, beside the River Than, “who raised the stones of this ruin?� Said the daemon (called Memory) to the genie, “Only because it rhymes with the river do I remember � it was man.� A short short, really just a quick word landscape. ”Rank is the herbage on each slope where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ What the Moon Brings: A prose poem fragment, taken from a dream. Disturbingly creepy. ”I hate the moon, I am afraid of it. For when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.� ”The waters had ebbed very low showing much of the vast reef whose rim I had seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black, basalt crown of a shocking icon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the dim moonlight, and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I shrieked and shrieked, lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the slinking away of that learning and treacherous yellow moon.� 4 ⭐️ Nyarlathotep: In this prose poem Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, is a kind of avatar of the alien Other Gods, a harbinger of doom that is fast approaching mankind and all their works. He holds the masses fascinated with his dark power as he travels from city to city, despite, or perhaps because of the terror and confusion which his unholy presence spreads. ”He…gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered, and where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished.� 5 ⭐️ Ex Oblivione: A prose poem perhaps inspired by Lovecraft’s reading of Arthur Schopenhauer, expressing a longing for oblivion as superior to existence. ”As the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and dream pushed me through I knew that all sights and glories were at an end. For in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and inlimitable space. So happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the demon life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.� 3 ⭐️ The Cats of Ulthar: The dark and mysterious tale of how it came that Ulthar passed its law that no one may kill a cat. ”For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Egypt, and the bearer of tale from forgotten cities. He is the kin of the jungles lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language, but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she has forgotten.� 4 ⭐️ Hypnos: A sculptor, dedicated to “art, philosophy, and madness,� explores, together with his mysterious friend, indescribable worlds and unutterable knowledge through strange drugs and dreams travel, with grandiose ideas of total domination. They penetrate too deeply into these realms to their peril, and come to shun sleep and dream as something deadly. But sleep will come, and with it dissolution. 4 ⭐️ Nathicana: Lovecraft, referring to this prose poem in a letter to a friend, saying it was “a parody on those stylistic excesses which really have no basic meaning.� ”But vortex on vortex of madness beclouded my laboring vision, my damnable, reddening vision that built a new world for my seeing, a new world of redness and darkness, a horrible coma called living.� 2 ⭐️ From Beyond: An ominous mad scientist story. When the protagonist’s friend makes a machine that eliminates the barriers between worlds, the consequences are catastrophic. ”Remember, we’re dealing with a hideous world in which we are practically helpless. Keep still!� ”Indescribable shapes, both alive and otherwise, were mixed in disgusting disarray, and close to every known thing were whole worlds of alien, unknown entities.� ”You see them! You see them! You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life!� ”My pets are not pretty, for they come out of places where aesthetic standards are very different.� 3 ⭐️ The Festival: An atmospheric tale of an ancient unclean and unholy festival secretly observed in underground vaults in quaint New England. ”It was the Yuletide that men call Christmas, though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Nameless City: In this early tale (1921) the nameless narrator discovers an ancient buried city in the Arabian Peninsula, a city older than mankind, built by a reptile race. This is considered the first of Lovecraft’s mythos stories, and contains the first mention of Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab. ”Afar I saw it, protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the deluge, this great grandmother of the eldest pyramid, and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had dared to see.� ”There is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive, but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by granddams in the tents of sheiks so that all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why.� ”That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even Death may die.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Quest of Iranon: Iranon sings and dances in the dire city of Teloth (which values only toil and scoffs at song), singing of his lost city of Aira, a beautiful place where he had been Prince. Driven out of harsh Teloth, he quests in vain for Aira, remaining ever young as his companions age and die. Then one day his wandering brings him to startling knowledge of himself and his lost city. ”That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world.� 4 ⭐️ The Crawling Chaos: A collaboration with Winifred V. Jackson (Lovecraft wrote the story but the idea originated in her dream) this tale describes an opium induced dream/nightmare that swings wildly between ethereal bliss and apocalyptic destruction. 4 ⭐️ The Walls of Eryx: (written with Kenneth J. Sterling) A SciFi story of Earth prospectors who mine the planet Venus for crystals that produce electrical power. A native race of lizard men revere the crystals and hinder the mining effort. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Imprisoned with the Pharaohs: This was a commissioned story, ghostwritten for Harry Houdini. A stage magician’s travels to Africa and is kidnapped by an Arab tour guide after a midnight fist fight on top of a pyramid, is bound and imprisoned, and effects a unique escape from an unholy nightmare. ”Then the dream faces took on human resemblances, and I saw my guide in the robes of a king with the sneer of the sphinx on his features…It was of these, of Khafre and his consort and his strange armies of the hybrid dead that I dreamed.� 2 ⭐️ ...more |
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1504083822
| 9781504083829
| B0BRGVFM5Y
| 3.84
| 4,539
| Oct 01, 1927
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really liked it
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”I decided long ago that one must paint terror, as well as beauty, from life, so I did some exploring in places I have reason to know terror lives.� ”A ”I decided long ago that one must paint terror, as well as beauty, from life, so I did some exploring in places I have reason to know terror lives.� ”And what damnable expressiveness Pickman sometimes gave the sightless faces of this charnel booty.� Richard Upton Pickman was a brilliant artist � according to the narrator the greatest artist in Boston. Descended from a great great grandmother hung as a witch in Salem, it was perhaps understandable that his art focused on the morbidly arcane. His art � brilliantly executed paintings of obscene and grotesque scenes and subjects � inspired such horror that they repelled nearly the entire Boston art community, who cut and shunned him despite his manifest talent. Only Thurber, the story’s narrator, didn’t cut Pickman. A Great War veteran, he described himself as “hard boiled,� and “decently sophisticated.� Pickman’s art fascinated him, so when offered a private tour of Pickman’s studio to view works that no one else had seen, he accepted enthusiastically. But what he saw there, what he learned about Pickman’s models, left him terrified, shaken, and with a permanent phobia of subways and cellars. Pickman’s Model is an excellent example of Lovecraft’s terror inducing talent. It is also one of his most accessible stories � a great place for someone new to the author to begin. This story is in the public domain, and you can find an excellent audio version of it at this link: ...more |
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Kindle Edition
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| 1906263353
| 9781906263355
| 1906263353
| unknown
| 4.10
| 25,061
| Apr 1936
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** ”Furtiveness and secretiveness seemed universal in this hushed city of alienage and death, and I could not escape the sensation of b
**spoiler alert** ”Furtiveness and secretiveness seemed universal in this hushed city of alienage and death, and I could not escape the sensation of being watched from ambush on every hand by sly, staring eyes that never shut.� The only story published in book form during his lifetime, The Shadow Over Innsmouth is a mature work that shows Lovecraft at the very top of his game as an author. The novella is part of his Cthulhu Mythos. He used many of that cycles familiar elements, and made clever and subtle callbacks all the way back to his earliest story, Dagon. Lovecraft displayed considerable storytelling skill in this tale. He opens it telling of massive government raids on the town of Innsmouth � raids that disappeared prodigious numbers of people, dynamited much of the town, and torpedo a reef offshore. He then leads us through the chilling events that led up to these dire consequences, as our protagonist, a curious, naïve student who decided to add the shunned and forsaken fishing town of Innsmouth to his tour of New England, relates his harrowing and deadly experiences there. What is striking about this telling is that, despite the fact that we know from the story’s opening that the protagonist must escape, Lovecraft still managed to make his ordeal terrorizing, to build tension and suspense as if we didn’t know ahead of time that he escapes. The scene of our young protagonist fleeing as he is systematically hunted through the night by hoards of half human obscenities is as terrifying as anything I’ve read, yet all along I knew he had to escape. Yet it is in the tale’s coda that Lovecraft displayed that he had become a true genius of terror. After the narrator had escaped his midnight peril, after the government acted to destroy this eldritch threat to humanity, Lovecraft delivers a devastating twist which renews the terror with something as simple as information acquired in a library. Absolutely brilliant! ...more |
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Audiobook
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| 0575099356
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| 0575099356
| 4.09
| 952
| Jul 21, 2011
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really liked it
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Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre is a necessary collection for Lovecraft fans. The companion volume to Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction
Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre is a necessary collection for Lovecraft fans. The companion volume to Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction, it collects his early tales, his poetry, and several stories of varied quality that were early collaborations with others. The early stories include his juvenilia, the first of which he wrote at just fourteen years old. His poetry is odd and often awful, but the best of it achieves that eerie, eldritch quality that is the signature of all things Lovecraftian. (His prose poems are generally better than his attempts at rhyme, though his sonnet cycle, Fungi from Yuggoth is surprisingly effective.) Though there are some excellent stories in this collection, it’s not a book I’d recommend to those new to Lovecraft. All his major Cosmic Mythos stories, those he is best known for, are in the companion volume, Necronomicon. And the strong material in this book coexists with lesser, inferior entries that are included more for completion and to show the progression of Lovecraft as a writer. If you’re a fan, this book should be in your library. If you are looking for an introduction to this author, start somewhere else. The History of the Necronomicon: a pseudo serious history tracing the origins of the Necronomicon, from its composition in the seventh century by Abdul Alhazred, through its various Greek and Latin translations, noting it suppressions and bannings through the ages, and present location of known existent texts. 4 ⭐️ The Alchemist: A very early Lovecraft story of revenge and generational curses. 3 ⭐️ The Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson: Lovecraft playing with his antiquarian interest. 3 ⭐️ The Beast in the Cave: (Lovecraft juvenilia written when he was just 14) Lost in a cavern, his torch gone out, the protagonist battles an unseen beast in the darkness. 2 ⭐️ The Poe-et’s Nightmare: An early poem (1916) where Lovecraft earliest displays his cosmicism. Aside from this curiosity the poem has nothing else to recommend it. 1 1/2 ⭐️ Memory: Asked the genie to the daemon, beside the River Than, “who raised the stones of this ruin?� Said the daemon (called Memory) to the genie, “Only because it rhymes with the river do I remember � it was man.� A short short, really just a quick word landscape. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Despair: A poem that apes the poetic style of Poe, but does it fairly well. 3 ⭐️ The Picture in the House: Seeking shelter from an approaching storm, a bicyclist enters what he take to be an old, abandoned house. It has an evil feel, which increases when he discovers that it is occupied by an unnaturally ancient Yankee who has an unhealthy fixation on a gruesome print of a cannibal’s butcher shop. 3 ⭐️ Beyond the Wall of Sleep: An unnamed intern in a mental hospital experiments with a criminally insane patient, a mad, hillbilly murderer, to prove that his dreams exists in a wholly separate realm where he is a being of light. 3 ⭐️ Psychopompos � A Tale in Rhyme: a gothic tale of pre-revolutionary France, evil lords, and shapeshifters told in verse. 2 ⭐️ The White Ship: a mystical White Ship which appears only when the moon is full picks up a hereditary lighthouse keep and sails him through lands of Dream. ”For Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.� 3 ⭐️ The House: Short and creepy poem. 3 ⭐️ The Nightmare Lake: Another attempt to ape Poe’s style, not a success, unless you’re a fan of sing-song rhyme. 2 ⭐️ Poetry and the Gods: (written with Anna Helen Crofts) ”As she read on, her surroundings gradually faded, and soon, there lay about her only the mists of Dream, the purple, star-strewn mists beyond time, where only gods and dreamers walk.� 3 ⭐️ Nyarlathotep: In this prose poem, Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, is a kind of avatar, of the alien Other Gods, a harbinger of doom that is fast approaching mankind and all their works. He holds the masses fascinated with his dark power as he travels from city to city, despite, or perhaps because of the terror and confusion which his unholy presence spreads. ”He…gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered, and where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished.� 5 ⭐️ Polaris: In this short, early work (1918) the narrator can’t distinguish his dreams from reality, as he dreams of a city under siege and his failure to protect it. (Suspected at being autobiographical, expressing Lovecraft’s frustration at being unable fight in World War I.) ”But still the pole star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane, watching eye, which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing, save that it once had a message to convey.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Street: In addition to being virulently racist, Lovecraft was also anti-immigrant and anti-labor, and this little parable (inspired by his horror of the Boston Police Strike of 1919) was his expression of that backwards bile. Unfortunately, Lovecraft fit right in to a “basket of deplorables.� 1 ⭐️ Ex Onlivione: A prose poem perhaps inspired by Lovecraft’s reading of Arthur Schopenhauer, expressing a longing for oblivion as superior to existence. ”So happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the demon life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.� 3 ⭐️ Arthur Jermyn: A tale of hereditary, generational madness, springing traced back a century and a half to an African explorations of the progenitor of the Jermyn house, and the mysterious marriage he made there. Unfortunately, this is a story where the author’s reprehensible racism is clearly evident, particularly his frantic horror at the idea of miscegenation. ”Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Crawling Chaos: A collaboration with Winifred V. Jackson (Lovecraft wrote the story but the idea originated in her dream) this tale describes an opium induced dream/nightmare that swings wildly between ethereal bliss and apocalyptic destruction. 4 ⭐️ The Terrible Old Man: Notable as the first Lovecraft tale to make use of his New England setting � the ancient fellow of the title, ”so old that no one can remember when he was young, and so taciturn that few know his real name,� was rumored to be an old sea captain, pays with Spanish silver for his food, and oddly talks to bottles on his shelves. The locals fear and shun him, but three outsiders determine he would make an easy mark to rob. They were…mistaken. 4 ⭐️ The Tree: An atmospheric period piece of Ancient Greece, short and slight. An unnatural olive tree, growing from the tomb of a dead sculptor, becomes the doom of another sculptor, his old friend. 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Tomb: Jervas Dudley, the original goth kid, develops an unhealthy obsession with the Hyde family tomb and nearby abandoned, burned mansion � an obsession leading to madness or worse. ”Henceforward, I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal.� 4 ⭐️ Celephais: Part of Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle. Kurnanes, the dreamer, (his Earthly name is forgotten) dreamed the great city of Cemephais, and eventually became trapped there permanently becoming its king, while his mortal body dies. King Kurnanes and his city Celephais feature prominently in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath as well. 4 ⭐️ Hypnos: A sculptor, dedicated to “art, philosophy, and madness,� explores, together with his mysterious friend, indescribable worlds and unutterable knowledge through strange drugs and dreams travel, with grandiose ideas of total domination. They penetrate too deeply into these realms to their peril, and come to shun sleep and dream as something deadly. But sleep will come, and with it dissolution. 4 ⭐️ What the Moon Brings: A prose poem fragment, taken from a dream. Disturbingly creepy. ”And when I saw that the reef was but the black, basalt crown of a shocking icon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the dim moonlight, and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I shrieked and shrieked, lest the hidden face rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the slinking away of that learning and treacherous yellow moon.� 4 ⭐️ The Horror at Martin’s Beach: A 50 foot long sea creature with forelegs, six toed feet, and a single eye is killed by sailors. Marine biologist determine that this unknown specimen is but a juvenile. The sea captain who captured it tours with the grotesque specimen, until its mother emerges to reek hypnotic retribution. 3 ⭐️ The Festival: An atmospheric tale of an ancient unclean and unholy festival secretly observed in underground vaults in quaint New England. ”It was the Yuletide that men call Christmas, though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Temple: A manuscript, sealed in a bottle and cast into the sea, chronicles the curious madness that afflicted a German U-boat crew, leading to the deaths of its crew and its sinking to sea bottom. Manuscript was written by the boat’s captain (a grossly stereotyped Prussian officer), its last survivor. The story climaxes in the discovery of a sunken city and its central temple on sea bottom. ”What I have seen cannot be true, and I know that this madness of my own will at most lead only to suffocation when my air is gone. The light in the temple is a sheer delusion, and I shall die calmly, like a German, in the black and forgotten depths. This demoniac laughter which I hear as I write comes only from my own, weakening brain.� 2 ⭐️ Halloween in a Suburb: Just another subpar poem. 2 ⭐️ The Moon-Bog: A wealthy American reclaims his ancestor castle in Ireland to restore it. But when he ignores the warnings and superstitious dread of the locals and goes ahead with his project to drain the bog on the property said to hide ancient ruins he invites an eerie doom. ”Yet still there came that monotonous piping from afar, wild, weird airs that made me think of some dance of fauns…it would not let me sleep.� ”And upward along that pallid path my fevered fancy pictured a thin shadow, slowly writhing, a vague, contorted shadow struggling as if drawn by unseen demons. Crazed as I was, I saw in that awful shadow a monstrous resemblance, a nauseous, unbelievable caricature, a blasphemous effigy of him who had been Dennis Barry.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ He: Lovecraft here played with autobiography, � the young narrator, so disgusted and traumatized by NYC that he sees it as a repellent, dead thing, is a mirror of Lovecraft during his brief, traumatic residence there. It’s a truly weird tale, where the strange factor keeps amping up as the narrator follows a creepy guide who shows him secrets of the city, its colonial past and alien future. After that all hell breaks lose. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Festival: Rhyming poetry was not Lovecraft’s strength, but this one is a tick better than some of his others. And may’st thou to such deeds be an abbot and priest, Singing cannibal greeds at each devil-wrought feast, and to all the credulous world showing dimly the sign of the Beast. 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Green Meadow: An fantastic, indestructible notebook is discovered in a meteor newly fallen to earth. Written in Classical Greek, the story it tells is as implausible and dream-like as was its form of delivery. 3 ⭐️ Nathicana: Lovecraft, referring to this prose poem in a letter to a friend, saying it was “a parody on those stylistic excesses which really have no basic meaning. 2 ⭐️ The Black Bottles: This story of unholy ministers, ancient sexton sorcerer, and souls in bottles is a fun and creepy spook-tale. ”I’m not sure that my uncle is dead, but I am very sure that he is not alive upon this earth. There is no doubt that the old sexton buried him once, but he is not in that grave now.� ”His sermons had become weird and grotesque, redolent with sinister things which the ignorant people of Daalbergen did not understand. He transported them back over ages of fear and superstition to regions of hideous, unseen spirits, and peopled their fancy with night-haunting ghouls.� 4 ⭐️ The Last Test: A fanatical doctor, dedicated to science and research, studies to overcome Black Fever. This one just didn’t capture me at all, possibly because it was overlong. It just dragged on and on. 2 ⭐️ The Wood: ”Thus down the years, till on one purple night a drunken minstrel in his careless verse spoke the vile words that should not see the light, and stirred the shadows of an ancient curse.� 3 ⭐️ The Ancient Track: Around was fog, ahead the spray of star streams in the Milky Way. There was no hand to hold me back That night I found the Ancient track. 3 ⭐️ The Electric Executioner: A curious tale of an inventor of an electric execution machine gone mad with old Aztec mysteries. ”I realized, as no one else has yet realized, how imperative it is to remove everybody from the Earth before Quetzalcoatl comes back, and realized also that it must be done eloquently.� 4 ⭐️ Fungi from Yuggoth: A cycle of 36 sonnets, an unholy stew of grotesques, nightmares, and antiquities. This isn’t brilliant poetry, but it is oddly effective in conveying Lovecraft’s macabre flare. 1 The Book ~ 2 Pursuit ~ 3 The Key ~ 4 Recognition ~ 5 Homecoming ~ 6 The Lamp ~ 7 Zaman’s Hill ~ 8 The Port ~ 9 The Courtyard ~ 10 The Pigeon-Flyers ~ 11 The Well ~ 12 The Howler ~ 13 Hesperia ~ 14 Star-winds ~ 15 Antarktos ~ 16 The Window ~ 17 A Memory 18 The Gardens of Yin ~ 19 The Bells ~ 20 Night-Gaunts ~ 21 Nyarlathotep ~ 22 Azathoth 23 Mirage ~ 24 The Canal ~ 25 St. Toads ~ 26 The Familiars ~ 27 The Elder Pharos ~ 28 Expectancy ~ 29 Nostalgia ~ 30 Background ~ 31 The Dweller ~ 32 Alienation ~ 33 Harbour Whistles ~ 34 Recapture ~ 35 Evening Star ~ 36 Continuity 4 ⭐️ The Trap: A fascinating story of a schoolboy who is drawn into his master’s antique mirror. The follow tale tells how the master (our narrator) discovered this, came to communicate with the boy within the mirror-world, learned of its history and creation, and attempted rescue of the boy. 4 ⭐️ The Other Gods: In his pride, Barzai the Wise scaled the mountain Hatheg-Kla to gaze upon the long absent gods of earth, believing himself their equal. He did not count on finding the Other Gods. ”The Other Gods! The Other Gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the evil gods of Earth! Look away! Go back! Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses!� 4 ⭐️ The Quest of Iranon: Iranon sings and dances in the dire city of Teloth (which values only toil and scoffs at song), singing of his lost city of Aira, a beautiful place where he had been Prince. Driven out of harsh Teloth, he quests in vain for Aira, remaining ever young as his companions age and die. Then one day his wandering brings him to startling knowledge of himself and his lost city. ”That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world.� 4 ⭐️ The Challenge from Beyond: (This tale was a unique experiment in round-Robin writing. The story was written in sections by Lovecraft and authors Frank Belknap Long, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, and Abraham Merritt) George Campbell, while vacationing in the Canadian woods, discovers an ancient cube which propels him on a disorienting bodiless journey across cosmic distance, where his consciousness inhabits the body of a huge, worm-like creature. A cosmic tale of superior races who explore the cosmos through mind transference with lesser species on far flung worlds. 4 ⭐️ In a Sequestered Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk’d: Lonely and sad, a spectre glides along Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell; No common glance discerns him, tho� his song Peals down thro� time with a mysterious spell: Only the few whose sorcery’s secret know Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe. 4 ⭐️ Ibid: A parody biography of Ibidus, which chiefly traces the post-life travels of his skull � from King Autharis, to Charlemagne, on to William the Conqueror, seized by Cromwell’s soldier, then carried to New England, and lost in a game of chance, and so on and on, until eventually it was lost down a prairie-dog burrow. ”His remains were…exhumed and ridiculed by the Lombard Duke of Spoleto, who took his skull to King Autharis for use as a wassail-bowl.� 4 ⭐️ Azathoth: (Fragment) This dream fragment has the feel of Lord Dunsany’s influence about it. ”Opiate oceans poured there, lighten by suns that the eye may never behold, and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea nymphs of unrememnnerable deeps.� 3 ⭐️ The Descendant: (Fragment) ”Perhaps he held within his own half explored brain that cryptic link which would awaken him to elder and future lives in forgotten dimensions which would bind him to the stars, and to the infinities and eternities beyond them.� 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Book: (Fragment) ”Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it. But this book was very old, indeed. No printing press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk had traced these ominous Latin phrases in awesome antiquity.� 3 ⭐️ The Evil Clergyman: (Fragment) This was a dream Lovecraft had and wrote up in a letter to his friend. It was published after his death. The menacing image of the clergyman burning his magic books and preparing to hang himself, and the transformation in the mirror at the end might have made a good story. 3 ⭐️ The Very Old Folk: Another tale of a vivid and detailed dream of Roman times. A bit overdone. Yrs in Gothic supremacy � C � IVLIVS � VERVS � MAXIMINVS The Thing in the Moonlight: (Fragment) taken from a letter to a friend. ”I was aware that I only dreamed, but the very awareness was not pleasant. Since that fearful night I have prayed only for awakening. It has not come. Instead I have found myself an inhabitant of this terrible dream world.� 4 ⭐️ The Transition of Juan Romero: This was a sort of writing exercise that Lovecraft tossed off in a day. He never allowed it to be published and never showed it to anyone until very near the end of his life. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Supernatural Horror In Literature: Here Lovecraft penned a lengthy, illuminating essay on his own line of work and its history. ”The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.� ”The phenomenon of dreaming likewise helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world, and in general, all the conditions of savage dawn life so strongly conduced towards a feeling of the supernatural that we need not wonder at the thoroughness with which man’s very hereditary essence has become saturated with religion and superstition.� ”Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot, but the creation of a given sensation.� 4 ⭐️ I ...more |
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Sep 25, 2024
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Sep 21, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0593545877
| 9780593545874
| B0BPWW3DLP
| 3.59
| 27,951
| Sep 19, 2023
| Sep 19, 2023
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liked it
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Black Sheep continues my early-onset Spooky Season reading. This book was a slam dunk choice for me after reading its synopsis � ”left home at 18 and
Black Sheep continues my early-onset Spooky Season reading. This book was a slam dunk choice for me after reading its synopsis � ”left home at 18 and never looked back�, ”staunchly religious community she grew up in�, ”forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith� � I mean, damn, that’s MY story! As a proud black sheep myself, I was eager to read a horror novel built around that premise. But just as I disappointed my parents, Black Sheep disappointed me. It was written well enough, and the dysfunction of family built around fanatically committed religious community even hit a few right notes, but this book and I had issues. I just didn’t jell with the protagonist. An affectation of cynical remoteness was her only defense, and once that was pierced she was incredibly weak (and none too smart, either). My expectation of someone strong enough to break away from the fanatical cult they were raised in and strike out on their own at the tender age of 18 is that they would be stronger and more resourceful than the protagonist was. Maybe it’s just me, since, as that was essentially my own story, I took it personally. I had other issues. The story felt derivative. Not derivative in its specifics, but in its bones, its concept. In many important ways it felt like a rip off of a certain disgraced Polish director’s famous horror film. And then there was the twist. Not the first twist that came early on � no, that one was done well and worked. But that second twist � the big, plot altering twist � that one came too soon to work well. Had it come closer to the book’s climax it could have worked for me, but coming close to the midway point it not only lost power, but actually subverted the protagonist one strong point � the clear minded rationality that gave her the impetus to leave her toxic faith and family in the first place. Black Sheep wasn’t a bad book. It was a quick read, and had its moments. It just didn’t deliver what I was expecting. Your mileage may vary � 2 1/2 stars rounded up. ...more |
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Sep 07, 2024
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Sep 07, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 1801101299
| 9781801101295
| 1801101299
| 3.45
| 1,565
| 1400
| Mar 01, 2022
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liked it
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As a Spooky Season read this retold medieval ghost story is a almost a complete bust. There’s no chills, no scares. The protagonist has the least frig
As a Spooky Season read this retold medieval ghost story is a almost a complete bust. There’s no chills, no scares. The protagonist has the least frightening moniker in the annals of ghost tales � Snowball the Taylor. Jones did do a nice bit of gruesome description on the demon dog and goat that are manifestations of the encountered spirit, and of the ghostly king, but that’s about as close as this tale gets to being remotely scary. What is interesting about this short read is the cynical portrayal of the churchmen in the tale, who are all cast in a most unflattering light. Considering that the original story was written by a monk, this gives some valuable insight on how corruption in the church was viewed at the time. The most intriguing detail of this story is revealed in Dan Jones’s introduction. The original Latin manuscript of this monkish penned ghost tale was originally uncovered by none other than the great English ghost story writer M.R. James. ...more |
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Sep 18, 2024
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Aug 16, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 0722154763
| 9780722154762
| 0722154763
| 4.12
| 251
| 1947
| 1977
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really liked it
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Night’s Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first published book (1947), and it was an impressive debut. Its original publisher was Arkham House, appropri
Night’s Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first published book (1947), and it was an impressive debut. Its original publisher was Arkham House, appropriate, as several of these tales show a distinctive Lovecraftian influence (though in service to Leiber’s own clear style). Leiber excelled at bringing weird, Cosmic Horror into the gritty urban landscapes of mid century, post war America. Most of the tales in this collection are of that ilk, but also included are two early sword and sorcery tales of Leiber’s heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I’ve posted this review under the 1977 Sphere Books edition, the edition I read my first two times through it. The cover art (monster tentacles emerging from a street grate) nicely illustrates the tone of the majority of these tales. But this time through I read the 1978 Berkley Books edition (with Fafhrd and Gray Mouser cover art). It contains two additional tales not in any of the earlier editions, and you definitely want these extra stories, so be cognizant of which edition you pick up. The Sunken Lands: An excellent Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tale. As the hero companions sail a sloop across sea, Fafhrd is drawn into a chain of mysterious events that find him with a ship of Northmen, then delving into the towers of ancient Simorgya, a sunken land mysteriously re-emerged from the depths. Good exciting adventure with a decidedly creepy, Lovecraftian edge. 5 ⭐️ Adept’s Gambit: In this novella length tale, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are cursed —when they try to be intimate, their paramours turn into either a huge sow or a slimy snail. Their complex quest to lift the curse leads them first to the Gossiper of the Gods, Ningauble, then through many lands to collect necessary items, and finally to an accursed lost city and a mist wreathed castle to battle a strange, hermaphrodite-like adept. Humor, adventure, and eldritch magic mingle in this tale but it is much too long. ”Material related to them has, on the whole, been scanted by annalists, since they were heroes too disreputable for classic myth, too cryptically independent ever to let themselves be tied to a folk, too shifty and improbable in their adventuring to please the historians, too often involved with a riff-raft of dubious demons, unfrocked sorcerers, and discredited deities � a veritable underworld of the supernatural.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Man Who Never Grew Young: A truly odd tale about time running backwards. It presents an uncanny, disconcerting description of the life cycle running backwards, beginning with disinterment from the grave, then aging backwards from sickly old age to youth. Civilizations role backwards and disappear in their beginnings. Eventually the pyramids come down, block by block, and mankind retreats completely from civilization. The story hints that a final, catastrophic war may have set the reverse time in motion. This one is haunting. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Smoke Ghost: A brilliant, terrifying capturing of the grimy ghost of the benighted 20th century. ”Unconsciously it came to symbolize� certain disagreeable aspects of the frustrated, frightened century in which he lived, the jangled century of hate and heavy industry and total war.� ”Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like?…A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the jerky tension of the high-pressured metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns.� 5 ⭐️ The Automatic Pistol: A chilling little tale about small time gin runners (Inky, Glasses, No Nose), obsession, murder, revenge, and a haunted gun. 4 ⭐️ The Inheritance: A claustrophobic urban tale of a man alone and lonely in a strange city, staying in the rented room of his recently deceased uncle, a retired policeman he had never met. After discover some clippings about some gruesome, unsolved murders, he has an uneasy sleep full of ominous nightmares triggered by what he found in his uncle’s room. 3 ⭐️ The Hill and the Hole: A surveyor finds a troubling anomaly when his instruments indicate a pit where his eyes show him a hill. He’s determined that there’s a problem with his instrument, despite being warned against danger at that spot, and discovering that a previous surveyor had mysteriously died there. Classic tale of a man of science rejecting alternative possibilities to his detriment. Shades of M.R. James. 3 ⭐️ The Dreams of Albert Moreland: This is the story that sticks with me from my first reading of this book over thirty years ago. It has elements of Leiber’s alienated in the city motif, combined with distinct Lovecraftian elements. On the eve of World War II, an unambitious chess genius who ekes out a living playing chess in an arcade spends his nights in disturbing dreams of playing a far more complex game with disturbing, alien pieces, in a vast and distant place, and with Cosmos shattering stakes. The game continues in his dreams, night after night, and he is beginning to fear he is losing. 5 ⭐️ The Hound: Leiber’s cityscapes are bleak, grimy, and alienating. His mid twentieth century urban werewolf is a unique, terrifying beast that personifies his unforgiving urban environment. ”The supernatural beings of a modern city? Sure, they’d be different from the ghosts of yesterday. Each culture creates its own ghosts. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and pretty soon there were little gray shapes gliding around at night to talk with the gargoyles. Same thing ought to happen to us, with our skyscrapers and factories…Our culture suddenly spawns a horde of demons…They’re unique. They fit in. You wouldn’t find the same kind any other time or place.� 3 1/2 ⭐️ Diary in the Snow: A would be writer isolates himself in a friend’s remote mountain cabin to work on his book of SciFi horror. But as blizzards isolate him even further, strange lights, markings in the snow and frost, and disturbing dreams and sleepwalkings begin to blend eerily with his bursts of inspiration in creating the cold, cosmic monsters of the story he’s working on. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Girl with the Hungry Eyes: A chilling tale, told by a photographer, about America’s advertising It Girl and the dark secret behind her hungry eyes. ”But the Girl isn’t like any of the others. She’s unnatural. She’s morbid. She’s unholy. Oh it’s 1948, is it, and the sort of thing I’m hinting at went out with witchcraft? But you see I’m not altogether sure myself what I’m hinting at, beyond a certain point. There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.� 4 ⭐️ A Bit of the Dark World: Friends spending a weekend in a cliff side cabin outside of LA first lament the absence of the supernatural in the modern world, then ponder its possibilities, and finally encounter its as terrifyingly ineffable. Cosmic horror at its finest. ”Then the mood darkened and the beings fell apart into a trillion trillion trillion lonely motes locked off forever from each other, sending only bleak meaninglessness in the cosmos around them, their eyes fixed foreword only on universal death. Simultaneously each dimensional star seemed to become for me the vast sun it was, beating incandescently on the platform where my body stood and on the house behind it and being led in it and on my body too, aging them all to dust in one coruscatingly blinding instant.� 4 1/2 ⭐️ ...more |
Notes are private!
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3
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Sep 27, 2024
Dec 07, 2016
not set
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Oct 10, 2024
Dec 17, 2016
Oct 13, 1990
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Aug 13, 2024
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0199568847
| 9780199568840
| 0199568847
| 3.99
| 552
| Oct 13, 2011
| Dec 01, 2011
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it was amazing
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I have saved the very best for the climax of my Spooky Season reading � The Complete Ghost Stories Collection of M.R. James. James is the all-time gra
I have saved the very best for the climax of my Spooky Season reading � The Complete Ghost Stories Collection of M.R. James. James is the all-time grandmaster of the ghost story with an immediately recognizable style. His tales have a distinctive, Edwardian Englishness, with a dry wit, an understated sense of dread and foreboding, and a cast of characters straight out of Upstairs, Downstairs. Old cathedrals, rectories, and churchyards, ancient estates, private libraries, as well as eccentric and sometimes corrupted churchmen and stuffy academics are common tropes in his uncanny and quietly disturbing tales. Very often his stories are framed as men telling each other ghost stories they have experienced or heard tell of over port and cigars, or scholars coming upon records of strange and unsettling events from the distant past. The very proper and restrained Englishness of the tale’s tellers serves to amplify the uncanny eeriness of these stories. I listened to this collection on audiobook with narration by Jonathan Keeble. His voice and intonation set the perfect mood for these particular stories, and adds additional value to the reading experience. I highly recommend experiencing the book in this way. Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book: James� earliest known horror story. Eerie and atmospheric tale of an Englishman touring a French cathedral, who afterwards purchases an unusual manuscript from the haunted, old sacristan. the manuscript contains a horrifying illustration of a demon, who later manifests to the Englishman’s detriment. 4 ⭐️ Lost Hearts: A child murdering sorcerer is foiled by the vengeful ghosts of his victims before he can complete his final, ritual sacrifice. 3 ⭐️ The Mezzotint: An old print is haunted. From night to night the scene changes � moonrise, a menacing figure creeping closer to house each night, etc. Some terrible event is either being forecast or replayed on it. Maximum creepiness. This is among the greatest ghost stories ever written. 5 ⭐️ The Ash-tree: A tale of a condemned witch and her curse on her accuser that spanned three generations, and took two lives. A huge, looming Ash tree (and what is found in it) provides the atmosphere of haunting menace. 4 ⭐️ Number 13: A guest in a Danish hotel, staying in room 12, is haunted by a mysterious, phantom room 13 that only appears at night. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Count Magnus: An author of travelogues becomes obsessed with the history and the mausoleum of a three centuries dead Swedish count of dark reputation. It doesn’t end well. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad: A young Cambridge professor on a golfing holiday finds an odd, old whistle while exploring the ruins of a Templar’s church. From the moment he discovers it, odd occurrence happen, culminating with a terrifying nighttime encounter in his hotel room. An eerie, unsettling tale, with an uncannily disturbing haunt. 4 1/2 ⭐️ The Treasure of Abbot Thomas: A medieval scholar finds clues leading him to the treasure hidden by a disgrace abbot. He descends into an ancient well to find it, but the treasure has a guardian� 2 1/2 ⭐️ A School Story: A man relates a story from years before when he was a student. A Latin teacher received a couple of mysterious, unexplainable messages from his student’s Latin exercises that disturbed him. Later, he and another student observe a man-like apparition outside the teacher’s quarters, and the next morning the teacher was gone. Years later a gruesome discovery deepened the mystery. 5 ⭐️ The Rose Garden: Clearing ground for a rose garden stirs up long buried dread and nightmares of forgotten events. Hints and snatches of the original event and some eerie elements of renewed haunting make an oppressive atmosphere. 3 ⭐️ The Tractate Middoth: Ghost in the stacks of a library. An old book containing a secret will. An old, eccentric and disagreeable parson, twenty years dead, playing out a nasty game with his heirs from beyond the grave. This one is fun. 4 1/2 ⭐️ Casting the Runes: A despicable, vengeful man seeks revenge for a bad review that kept his work on Alchemy from being published. The revenge that he seeks is magical in nature, and murderous. And he had successfully accomplished this already on another. He may be an atrocious writer, but apparently is an excellent sorcerer. The reviewer learns of his peril and desperately attempts to avoid his doom. 4 ⭐️ The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral: something sinister is happening at the cathedral. The old Archdeacon died mysteriously, and his replacement experienced malevolent haunting that seems connected to the grotesque carvings in the stalls. 3 ⭐️ Martin’s Close: The story consists of a discovered report of an infamous murder trial from 1684. The trial was of a wealthy squire accused of murdering a homely, simpleminded girl. The presiding judge was known as “The Bloody Judge, and a haunting by the murdered girl was entered in the evidence. 3 ⭐️ Mr. Humphrys and His Inheritance: This tale, of a man learning the strange history of the maze and temple in the garden of the property he inherited is too long and dull, with far too little reward for preserving to the end. James may have been aiming at a foreboding, mysterious story that never completely reveals its dark secret, but the style didn’t work for me. 2 ⭐️ The Residence of Whitminister: A complex tale, told from multiple viewpoints and in two time periods, a century apart. Part one tells of two teen boys, one of whom is sinisterly creepy, who dabble in the occult, and both come to early ends. Part two occurs a century later, with the new residences of Whitminister experiencing various haunting visions, dreams, and insect infestations seeming connected to the history of the dead boys. A particularly effective though ambiguous ending. ”A withered heart makes an ugly, thin ghost.� 4 1/2 ⭐️ The Diary of Mr. Poynter: A loose sample of ancient fabric is found in the pages of an 18th century diary. Taken with the pattern, James Denton has the pattern of the fabric reproduced for his room’s curtains. This invokes a terrifying, hairy haunting. The clue to the haunting is found on pasted pages of the diary in which the fabric was found. 3 1/2 ⭐️ An Episode of Cathedral History: A renovation in the cathedral reveals an anonymous, medieval tomb, and unleashes something decidedly unholy, eerie, and lethal. This one could be considered a vampire tale. 4 ⭐️ The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance: A Christmas ghost tale, a murder mystery and an epistolary story. The narrator’s description of his Christmas Eve Punch and Judy nightmare is eerily terrifying. The story is a slow-reveal horror that resolves while leaving most details still shrouded in mystery at tale’s end. Masterfully done. 5 ⭐️ Two Doctors: This is a frankly baffling tale of mystery, mischief, and misdirection. While you may be able to piece together some of the details to get a vague idea of what happened to Doctor Quinn, and what role Doctor Abell played in his fate, nothing is certain, and several details, including the final one about the robbing of a noble family’s mausoleum provide only added menace and mystery without providing any illumination. This story very much depends upon ambiguity and uncertainty to build its dread, and may not be to all tastes. 4 ⭐️ An Evening’s Entertainment: An old granny tells a gruesome tale to explain why the children shouldn’t pick berries along a certain lane. 3 ⭐️ A Warning to the Curious: A grimly oppressive tale of an antiquarian name of Paxton who, while visiting a sea-side town in East Anglia, disturbs the last of the legendary three, buried crowns of East Anglia, which legend say protect the country from invasion. But the crown has a ghostly guardian, and Paxton feels its oppressive presence, and feels doomed. Two men he meets at the hotel (one of whom is the narrator, hear his fantastic tale and agree to help him return the crown. But some ghosts don’t forgive. 4 ⭐️ A View from a Hill: A pair of strange spy glasses that show scenes that are no longer there. The nasty, deceased watchmaker/alchemist who made them, and a haunted gallows hill. 3 1/2 ⭐️ A Neighbor’s Landmark: ”That which walks in Betton Wood/Knows why it walks or why it cries.� These oblique lines, found in a letter in an old library the narrator is cataloguing, stir his curiosity and send him searching for more clues about what appears to be a local haunting. The narrator has a single, unnerving encounter with the presence, which when combined with the fruits of his research makes for a disturbingly chilly little ghost story. 4 ⭐️ The Uncommon Prayer-Book: Despite the fascinating subject matter of rare, outlawed prayer books printed during Cromwell’s rule, and the vengeful ghost still cursing Cromwell’s memory from beyond the grave, this isn’t a particularly good story. It’s far too wordy, takes a long time coming to its point, doesn’t present the ghost until the very end, and that without James� usual talent of building up atmosphere and dread. 2 1/2 ⭐️ The Haunted Dolls� House: This story was commissioned as a small book by Queen Mary, wife of George V, for her own famous doll’s house (still on display in Windsor Castle). The haunting consists of a night time transformation where the house appears to become real, and a scene of murder and retribution is played out in it. This story is related to James� tale The Mezzotint in theme and action, but is inferior in that it fails to excite the same chilling dread as did that earlier tale. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Wailing Well: This tale starts out as a kind of boy’s tale, featuring two young scouts that are a sort of Goofus and Gallant, one an example of excellence and the other a rude troublemaker. Upon learning from an old shepherd that the forbidden area on their map is dangerously haunted, Stanley Judkins, the troublesome boy, determines that he will defy the prohibition and enter the area. This is the point where the story moves away from being an amusing boy’s tale and becomes one of James� grimmest and most gruesome tales with a horrifying ending. 3 1/2 ⭐️ There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard: Despite the title and set-up that allude to the unfinished story of “sprites and goblins� from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, this slight, short story resembles the type of juvenile ghost story told by boys round camp fires. 2 1/2 ⭐️ Rats: A story where the scary thing confronts directly instead of being sidled around and come at by hints and allusions. A curious-natured guest staying at an inn near the coast examines some of the other inn rooms and discovers a room with only a bed, and in it� ”Under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred. That it was someone, and not something was certain, because the shape of a head was unmistakable on the bolster, and yet it was all covered, and no one lies with covered head but a dead person, and this was not dead, not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered.� Many of James� tales would stop there, hinting at dark things without making them explicit, but this tale goes on. The guest examines the room again before taking his leave of the inn, and discovers� 4 ⭐️ After Dark in the Playing Fields: On Mid-Summer’s Eve our narrator converses with a cranky, cockney owl who is fed up being annoyed by fairies. Short and kinda silly, with an ominous coda. ”I do not like a crowd after dark…I see such curious faces, and the people to whom they belong flit about so oddly…and looking close into your face as if they were searching for someone, who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him. Where do they come from? Why some I think out of the water, and some out of the ground…I am sure it is best to take no notice of them, and not to touch them.� 3 ⭐️ The Experiment: A supposedly wealthy man dies, but his widow and stepson can find no trace of his treasure. In the dead man’s papers is a “recipe� for making the recently dead speak, but it warns of possible dire consequences for so doing. Nevertheless, the stepson conducts the experiment and mother and son must endure the consequences. 2 ⭐️ The Malice of Inanimate Objects: A ghost story for a modern age. ”Do not these facts, if facts they are, bare out my suggestion that there is something not inanimate about the malice of inanimate objects? Do they not further suggest that when this malice begins to show itself we should be very particular to examine, and if possible rectify any obliquities in our recent conduct? 3 ⭐️ A Vignette: James� final and shortest piece. It is a return to the vague dread that he mastered so well in many stories. A story of boyhood, with some possible autobiographical elements. ”There is something horrifying in the sight of a face looking at one out of a frame as this did, more particularly if its gaze is unmistakably fixed upon you.� 5 ⭐️ The Fenstanton Witch: A posthumously published story, first appearing in 1990. In the early 18th century, two university fellows attempt to use black magic at the grave of a recently killed accused witch for material gain. It doesn’t end well. 3 1/2 ⭐️ Appendix: M.R. James� notes on writing his ghost stories. ”I wrote these stories at long intervals, and most of them were read to patient friends, usually at the season of Christmas.� ”The stories themselves do not make any exalted claim. If any of them succeed in making their readers feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours my purpose in writing them will have been obtained.� ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 25, 2024
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Oct 30, 2024
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May 30, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1668037718
| 9781668037713
| 1668037718
| 4.23
| 64,895
| May 21, 2024
| May 21, 2024
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really liked it
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Stephen King is an old guy now, in his late seventies. And this collection is an old man’s book of tales. It takes its time. It meanders. Many of the
Stephen King is an old guy now, in his late seventies. And this collection is an old man’s book of tales. It takes its time. It meanders. Many of the protagonist and some of the villains in these stories are also old men. He writes them well, and why not? They say, “write what you know.� Rate this collection 3.5 stars, rounded up on the strength of its two novellas. Two Talented Bastids: ”The daydreams of men and women of a certain age are always sad, I think, because they run so counter to the plain vanilla futures we have to look forward to.� This is a long story, heavy on King’s Mainer characters and atmosphere. Two salt of the earth Maine guys, friends from the same nowhere hick town, in mid life suddenly blossom into outstanding, famous novelist and artist respectively. The novelist’s son explores the mystery of this coincidence after the death of his aged father, and makes a startling discovery. It doesn’t matter what it is though � it could have been anything. Because what the story is really about is aging, and dreams, and handling life’s disappointments. 3 ⭐️ The Fifth Step: This one sneaks up on you. It moves along like a human interest story, kinda slow, an AA member telling his story to a stranger to fulfill the fifth step of the program. Then out of nowhere, BAM! Chilling ending. 4 ⭐️ Willie the Weirdo: Details aside, this story about a kid whose dying grandfather lives with him is the same concept as a story King did all the way back in his 1980s collection, Skeleton Crew, (Gramma), but not as scary. Recycled. Inferior. Disappointing. 1 ⭐️ Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream: This novella length story is the throbbing heart of this collection. It begins with a nightmare from which nice guy Danny Coughlin wakes screaming. That too vivid vision proceeds to turn his life into a bad dream. King takes his time building the tension as Coughlin is hounded for a murder he did not commit. Danny is a great, sympathetic character, the type of decent but flawed Everyman that King does so well, and the duo of the obsessed cop and his conflicted partner determined to nail him are developed in fascinating ways as well. King does his best work with novella length stories, and here he proves that once again. 4 1/2 ⭐️ Finn: A hard luck guy is mistakenly kidnapped by a mysterious nefarious operation that mistakes his identity. Finn’s situation devolves as he’s tortured for information he can’t know, and his captor seems to be going bonkers. The ending is interesting and redeemed an otherwise meh story a little bit. 3 ⭐️ On Slide Inn Road: As this story unfolded I was struck by how much like Flannery O’Conner’s A Good Man is Hard to Find it was. As I read on it became clear that this story was a homage, and King was putting his own, unique mark on it. Best of all, he acknowledged O’Conner at the end of the tale. 4 ⭐️ Red Screen: Cop interviews a wife killer who calmly claims his wife had been replaced with alien, and that he’s discovered this is happening to many. Short, predictable, but well done. 3 ⭐️ The Turbulence Expert: A frequent flyer with a unique job helping keep planes in the not so friendly skies. 3 ⭐️ Laurie: Old man and new pup � a grieving widower is given a pup to care for and keep him company, and dog and master share a grim adventure. King has a way with dog stories. 3 ⭐️ Rattlesnake: Another novella length story, this one the much anticipated sequel to Cujo. It starts out turtle slow, but builds into a darkly creepy haunting tale. Vic Trenton retreats to Florida to grieve the death of his wife, but meets a woman still mourning her long dead toddlers, and inherits her ghosts. One of the few stories here that lives up to the collection’s title. 4 ⭐️ The Dreamers: ”All I can say to you is beware of dreams. They’re dangerous. I found out.� In each of his collections that I’ve read, King has at least one Lovecraftian style story that hints at unspeakable horrors beyond our world and understanding. In this one, a young Vietnam vet, emotionally deadened by the war, takes a job with a self proclaimed gentleman scientist who is attempting to acquire evidence of what lies beyond the veil of sleep. This one is dark. 3 1/2 ⭐️ The Answer Man: The story of a life, from young manhood until the end, with its ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies. The enigmatic, prophetic Answer Man adds color, but is really just a hook to hang one man’s lifetime on. Bittersweet, like most of our lives. 3 1/2 ⭐️ ...more |
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May 16, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 166251705X
| 9781662517051
| B0CF3LKZDQ
| 3.71
| 24,197
| Sep 26, 2023
| Sep 26, 2023
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liked it
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This Grady Hendrix short story is part of the Creature Feature series. The idea here is better than the execution � the boogie man is real, and seems
This Grady Hendrix short story is part of the Creature Feature series. The idea here is better than the execution � the boogie man is real, and seems to be inherited through certain family lines, he will snatch and eat you if you don’t follow the rules, and because that monstrous idea cannot be accepted, someone has to take the fall and pay the price to the penal system. That’s a great, fresh take on the old standard trope. There were a couple of problems with the execution. The reveal of the monster came too close to the beginning of the story, and Hendrix let us get a direct look at it (or at least it’s appendages). I suspect he did this because he wanted to focus the real horror on how the young protagonist is swallowed up in an impersonal justice system, or the doubt in his mind that perhaps he’s insane and truly guilty after all. But the horror of the actual monster reveal felt rushed, and the rest didn’t deliver enough punch. Three stars for a great idea with potential. I think it needed more space than the short story format afforded, and would like to see this one expanded into a novel. ...more |
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Jan 26, 2024
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Jan 26, 2024
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Jan 26, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| B089FTG8MS
| 3.77
| 1,600
| Jun 17, 2020
| Jun 17, 2020
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really liked it
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”Did you listen to his stories?� “Fairy tales.� “Now I know you didn’t listen. He was telling horror stories to seven-year olds.� “Fairy tales are horror ”Did you listen to his stories?� “Fairy tales.� “Now I know you didn’t listen. He was telling horror stories to seven-year olds.� “Fairy tales are horror stories.� There’s much to unpack in this short story. And it’s all contained within a deceptively low-key, mundane tale that gradually goes sideways until we’ve completely lost our footing and are adrift in the twilight zone. The story opens with some of the real traumas that life serves up � a too early death, the real life horrors of the affects of mental illness, passive aggressive disfunction between adult children and parents, disturbing childhood memories stirred up. While none of these things are far outside normal experience, the author skillfully weaves them together to set an uneasy mood that feels unsettling, putting us in a place where falling off the cliff into the absolutely uncanny takes us by surprise. The best horror plays on common doubts and fears. What is more common than questioning identity? Who am I really? How did I get here? Is any of this mess even real? Those secret thoughts we have when lying awake, removed from all distractions, body tired but brain going furiously that challenge the very core of our identity � that’s what is in play here. When the bottom suddenly drops out of the protagonist’s self identity it is a smack right at those suppressed secret thoughts in us all. This is horror well done. ...more |
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Nov 16, 2023
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| 3.87
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really liked it
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Mar 14, 2025
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Mar 14, 2025
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| 3.74
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really liked it
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Mar 28, 2025
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Feb 21, 2025
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| 3.90
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Mar 10, 2025
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Feb 05, 2025
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not set
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Dec 02, 2024
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Oct 31, 2024
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Oct 31, 2024
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| 3.85
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it was amazing
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Oct 29, 2024
not set
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Oct 29, 2024
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| 4.14
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liked it
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Oct 22, 2024
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Oct 18, 2024
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| 3.60
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really liked it
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Feb 09, 2025
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Oct 18, 2024
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| 3.25
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really liked it
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Oct 15, 2024
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Oct 15, 2024
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| 4.08
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really liked it
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Oct 09, 2024
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Oct 05, 2024
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| 3.84
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really liked it
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Oct 18, 2024
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Oct 05, 2024
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| 4.10
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it was amazing
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Sep 26, 2024
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Sep 25, 2024
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| 4.09
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really liked it
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Oct 14, 2024
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Sep 21, 2024
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| 3.59
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liked it
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Sep 09, 2024
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Sep 07, 2024
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| 3.45
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liked it
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Sep 18, 2024
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Aug 16, 2024
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| 4.12
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really liked it
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Oct 10, 2024
Dec 17, 2016
Oct 13, 1990
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Aug 13, 2024
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| 3.99
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it was amazing
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Oct 30, 2024
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May 30, 2024
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| 4.23
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really liked it
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Jun 03, 2024
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May 16, 2024
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| 3.71
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Jan 26, 2024
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Jan 26, 2024
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| 3.77
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really liked it
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Nov 17, 2023
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Nov 16, 2023
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