Christine
This had great atmosphere - Klein manages to evoke that Dunwich feeling in modern (yes I'm old) New Jersey, deftly setting up the natural surroundings as ominous and creepy crawly.
It also shows both deep knowledge of weird fiction, and a playful attitude in making use of references. Taking a summer to read creepy stories in a primitive building in the wild - what could go wrong? (I strongly recommend listening to the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast analysis, with guest Ken Hite - he understands all the nuance of Klein's use of uncanny literature, as well as taking the listener multiple layers deep in the “unreliable narrator” question.)
Overall, this is a must-read for fans of Lovecraft, Gothic tales, or weird literature in general.
This remains a wonderful story. The opening is the strongest - super creepy journey through the Carpathian mountains and subsequent guest visit (which morphs into imprisonment in a very unsettling way) at Castle Dracula.
After that the story can drag at times, due to far too much phonetic dialect, too many iterations of Lucy coming back from the brink of death, and rising action toward the climax that sometimes feels like reading the time tables for trains & ships. Still, even in audio form when one can't skim these passages, the investment is well worth it.
The full cast Audible recording is delightful, and it's nice to get an extra helping of Tim Curry towards the end, as Van Helsing writes a lengthy account of his journey with Mina. Alan Cumming is great as well, and the actor reading Harker is also really strong.
A really excellent book for anyone who needs to make charts and graphs on a regular basis. Even if “dataviz” isn't really what you do, this has amazing advice on how charts work and how to communicate and present effectively.
The writing is less formal than you might expect for this subject. It's very engaging and down-to-earth. And each chapter ends with a summary that steps you through the actions they've taught you about - this makes the book an invaluable reference. It's going to live in my laptop case so I always have it nearby when I need a reminder to talk and sketch first, or to assess what can be removed from a chart to improve it.
I enjoyed this so much and found it so valuable, I'm now looking for a similar book on PowerPoint presentations - something you see used poorly all the time, but for which really great skill can seem elusive.
Aaaaahhhh, when is the next book coming out?! I need to know what happens next!
Really interesting premise - I love that the “incident” is allowed to stay ill-defined. A big part of the creep factor is that no one even knows what happened.
And speaking of creep factor, this does creepy so well. The concepts are eerie, and the art is amazingly macabre. It all ties together to create an amazing mood. This is an excellent contribution to weird fiction, all around.
A fun and quick-paced thriller. Makes good use of the setting to evoke claustrophobic dread and paranoia. The mystery is actually pretty simple to figure out, but a couple elements made this stand out in my mind.
First, the story winds up discussing mental illness in an effective and sympathetic way. It's significant to the plot but avoids being overly simplistic or tropey.
Second, I found the climax took a refreshing turn. I literally thought to myself, “oh, in these last few pages we'll see the obligatory XYZ happen,” and the author subverts that expectation.
In some ways this was clunky and obvious, but it had enough originality and skillful storytelling, along with a sympathetic and relatable hero, so that I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Wow. WOW!
I did not intend to read this book all in one sitting today. I was amazed at how instantly engaging this was. Have I really not read any Wells before? I guess not, because his visionary genius and captivating storytelling would have made an impression. Sadly I think the execrable 2002 movie put me off the idea of this story; little did I know how much it disrespected its source material!
I found this required no adjustment for the time in which it was written. The language is straightforward and the story fresh. The introductory lesson in space-time dimensions drew me in right away, and on reflection is amazing for its anticipation of relativity. It's a lean story that doesn't overstay its welcome, and maintained my thirst to know what would happen next.
Finally, the latter portion treads boldly into cosmic horror, presaging Lovecraft's vision of a universe indifferent to humanity. It's downright chilling, and fantastically imaginative and bold.
Looks like I have some catching up to do with Wells's other fiction!
This is a great anthology for anyone interested in both some damn fine entertainment and the historical development of Lovecraftian fiction. It kicks off with the famous “The Call of Cthulhu” by the man himself, and wends its way through Lovecraft collaborators and contemporaries, all the way to modern authors like Stephen King and Brian Lumley, finishing off with a hyper-futuristic tale, “Discovery of the Ghooric Zone.”
Favorites for me were:
“Notebook Found in a Deserted House,” by Robert Bloch
“The Salem Horror,” by Henry Kuttner
“Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner
“Jerusalem's Lot,” by Stephen King
Also of note:
“The Black Stone” shows how hard-core eldritch Robert E. Howard could be. He's known for Conan the Barbarian, but he was part of the Lovecraft Circle, and this story shows that he was inclined to handle some implications of Lovecraft's cults in a much less oblique and squeamish way. One moment is truly not for the faint of heart.
“My Boat,” by Joanna Russ. This was Lovecraftian, but not really part of the Mythos - it instead links to the dream cycle stories. This made me seek out more of Russ's work. I really enjoyed the way she melded magical realism and frank social commentary, all in a humorous-but-poignant frame tale.
“Discovery of the Ghooric Zone,” by Richard A. Lupoff. What did I just read? I don't think this was terribly good, but it had the charm of being very original. It was a nice balance to start the collection with the classic 1920s search through scholarly papers, and end here, a thousand years in the future and voyaging beyond the orbit of Pluto.
I grabbed this entirely out-of-season because I wanted a good audio book, and Bronson Pinchot does a lovely job bringing this to life.
This doesn't rate five stars for me because something about Bradbury's “good old days” schtick grates a little. It goes without saying that there are no female characters or people of color. But I'm pretty sure that accurately reflects Bradbury's subjective experience as a boy in 1920s Waukegan, Illinois, so I get it. Also, the gushing description of Pipkin as the apotheosis of boyhood came off a little strange to me.
But never mind all that - overall, this is a wonderfully evocative tale that artfully meshes the ambivalent nature of our harvest/death festivals with the weird zone between being a carefree child and learning hard grownup truths about mortality.
It can be deliciously Halloween-creepy - the old house, the enigmatic Moundshroud, the titular tree with its magical jack–o'–lanterns. But it is sometimes also seriously creepy, as the group travels through time witnessing stylized representations of historical festivals of the dead, and a ghostly Pipkin is repeatedly embodied and lost in them. (And let me tell you, Pinchot uses some well-placed whispers and wails to reinforce the shivers perfectly.) Then, thinly layered on top is a serious meditation about death and learning to live with the knowledge of death.
And throughout, Bradbury's poetic use of language supports the tone, while making each passage a pleasure of its own, apart from the advancement of the plot.
Definitely recommended for reading with your older kids and highly suitable as Halloween fare or for reading around a campfire!
This was cute - I would give it 3.5 stars.
For a romantic farcical comedy, it was really good. I guess the genre isn't totally my thing, but this was pretty fun. Sometimes it seemed too silly for the emotional heft it occasionally tried to bring, or vice versa - too randomly emotional for the overall effervescent tone. But overall I liked Samantha and got invested in her learning how to have a life and maybe still use her brain.
I did feel like the ending left things quite open - it seemed like once the romantic subplot was resolved, the author dusted her hands and let us speculate on the rest. I might have liked more exploration on where Samantha landed with her career.
Still, a good palate-cleanser after some heavy duty reading. Now back to Lovecraftian fiction for a while. :) ~^(;,;)^~
Lewis is so clever, intelligent, and insightful - it makes me sad that he was beholden to irrational beliefs that inspired him to ignore the logical conclusions of his inquiries, and sometimes even to advocate for truly monstrous ideas.
The good:
Screwtape's observations are keenest when they touch on human nature and the pleasure or misery it can bring to oneself and others. The passive-aggressiveness that can reside in “selflessness,” the danger of assuming that romantic infatuation alone can sustain a long-term relationship, and the paradoxical human need for both novelty and familiarity - these are examples of the most thought-provoking and useful passages.
The bad:
By writing from the satirical point of view of a demon, Lewis certainly brings some humor to the tale. But this also allows him to dodge the Problem of Evil and other logical gaps. From the demons' vantage, Yahweh is understandably inscrutable. But if one steps back, it's pretty disturbing how much the “loving” deity likes to mess with the heads of its followers.
In fact, I found it really shocking that Lewis, who seems genuinely interested in morality and benevolence, explicitly venerates infant death as one of the greatest goods on Earth.
And of course, he's completely a product of his time. His language is unrelentingly sexist, and his ideas don't contradict that theme.
He sometimes seems less philosophically reflective than butthurt that trendy people consider him passe. In the later “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” he goes full Grumpy Old Man, decrying kids these days. His rant dovetails perfectly with today's “everyone getting a trophy is ruining civilization” complaints. Except that his objections go far beyond soccer trophies. He literally argues against free universal education, worrying that the “dunces” are dragging down the properly intelligent (i.e. rich enough for private school) students.
The upshot:
All in all this was worth reading because Lewis is so influential, and he does offer some very clever insights into human foibles. But it was neither as entertaining nor as intelligent as I would have expected.
This was a lovely story. It starts out simply amusing and engaging, and then gets ya right in the feels later on, but with enough bristly, rough-edged Ove to balance it out and prevent it from going maudlin.
I guess the basic plot is pretty familiar and tropy (crusty, rigid person reluctantly opens their heart due to wacky acquaintances), but it's executed so beautifully, and has a substantial (even dark) emotional core that keeps it from being merely silly or saccharine.
I listened to the audio book and the performance was great - very well matched with the subject matter.
I usually avoid stories that will make me cry, but this one is totally worth the tears, and doesn't leave you on a down note at all.
Wow, this was amazing. And rough - really emotionally hard, because she is so good at evoking empathy in morally gray situations. Scratch that - Butler is so good at taking situations we tend to think of as morally black and white and evoking empathy to force the reader into the uncomfortable position of realizing their grayness.
I thought “Bloodchild” was a magnificent story, I was touched and shocked and completely drawn in to “Speech Sounds.” But by the time I was partway through “Amnesty,” I had to take a break to collect myself. It's a very brutal story - and I say that with admiration. Incredibly inventive and skillful, just dealing with harrowing subject matter.
I'm glad I forged on and finished though! It's easy to see how Butler became a preeminent name in science fiction - she has an astonishing ability to imagine novel situations and poignantly explore the real human issues they give rise to.
I bought this book through Malaprop's Bookstore's “blind date with a book” promotion - a shelf full of books wrapped in plain brown wrappers, with descriptive blurbs written by staff, and a price. You buy without knowing exactly what you're getting.The descriptions for this book were:SublimeDeliciously DarkSurrealCalamitousEerieSouthern GothicTerrifying & BeautifulFlannery O'Connor meets H.P. LovecraftIt didn't quite hit for me the way it did for the writer of those terms, but I agree that it's dark, Southern Gothic, surreal, and eerie. Unfortunately it's rather dreary as well, and with no character arc for Dancy (it's a set of interconnected short stories), her exhaustion, hopelessness, and doubts about her mission were more wearing than intriguing. The storytelling sets out to remove all suspense from Dancy's confrontations with monsters - this is a story about her suffering through a treadmill of horrifying and violent experiences and wishing for relief, not about her being a Buffy-style action hero.I did find the depiction of angels compelling, and I can't deny that I consistently wanted to know what happened next. Maybe it's the lack of a real conclusion to the overall story that has left me feeling this didn't quite work for me.I would definitely recommend [b:In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers 491190 In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers Caitlín R. Kiernan https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1229050277s/491190.jpg 2223424], the stand-alone version of the opening tale, as a weird and grotesque southern gothic story. If you take to the baroque poetry of Kiernan's language and you desperately want to know more about Dancy, this collection would be a good next step.
I would call this 3.5 stars. Cute and droll, but lacking any emotional heft or complexity that might have made it truly memorable. I chuckled sometimes, I appreciated the homages to Buffy, but I found myself wishing for more coherent connections between the characters, and a deeper investment in someone's point of view.
The audiobook reading was on par with the story. Mostly capable, and some decent voices, with a pleasant default voice and appealing-if-misplaced English accent. But the narrator stumbles all too often, punching emphasis in the wrong place or misconstruing American slang.
I truly enjoyed the adventures of Bill Door, and Pratchett has some lovely sentiments about the human condition. But I always feel like he's amusing himself far more than he's amusing me, and the wizards' plot grew tiresome. Still, the other side of the story deserves 4 stars on its own, and Mrs. Cake & Ludmilla are well worth getting to know.
The hook for this book is its spot-on mimicry of IKEA catalogs and its setting in an satirically IKEA-like store. But the story is actually well-written and engaging. I think it would be particularly affecting for readers who have had to rely on retail work for survival.
This was a lot of fun, though it does get pretty dark and verges on a kind of “Saw” vibe at times later in the story. I don't usually go in for that type of torture/sadism horror, but it wasn't overwhelming and was set into a larger scary story in a way that worked fine for me.
It's worth noting that there is an audiobook of this, and while it can't quite achieve the charm of the physical book, with its blueprint-style product illustrations and occasional store document images, it does employ Bronson Pinchot as a special narrator who comes in, accompanied by sparkling harp riffs, to read the silly product names and gushing catalog descriptions that open each chapter.
Five stars for crafting intense interest and presence with a character who never appears. Also, I think if I hadn't seen the movie this would have been a compelling page-turner.
But the narrator wears on one after a while, and I felt like this would have been better if shorter.
Actually, I would have been more interested if I'd read the background information on the author before reading the novel. More analysis and reflection on my part about her polar depiction of What a Woman Should Be would have lent a lot of texture to the read.
2018 update: still yes to all of the below. Although the last paragraph is a pretty weird, ambivalent way to end the story, everything that leads up to it is masterful. Wentworth>Darcy 4EVA.
**I avoid sappy romance, but my heart would skip a beat when Captain Wentworth betrayed a possible remnant of affection for Anne.I'm a liberal, egalitarian, modern American woman, but somehow I can sympathize with Austen's shock at “unsuitable” marriages below one's station (never mind *gasp premarital sex!).
I'm probably more like sister Mary than I'd like to admit, but I can laugh at her hypochondria and negativity.
I'm naturally sarcastic and impatient with stupidity and . . . well, yeah, there I'm in perfect alignment with Jane.
I can never decide if Persuasion or Pride & Prejudice is my favorite Austen novel. Her wit is so sharp, and her characters so delightful, she's always a joy to read. This story of love, rejection, grief, and second chances is amusing, thrilling, and heart-warming.
This time around, I listened to Juliet Stevenson's reading, and she does an amazing job of bringing the story to life. I look forward to revisiting Persuasion again and again.
Having read [b:Kindred 60931 Kindred Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1339423248s/60931.jpg 1049657] and [b:Bloodchild and Other Stories 60930 Bloodchild and Other Stories Octavia E. Butler https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428806161s/60930.jpg 1188455], I can see that Butler has some favorite themes - slavery, captivity, collaboration, survival, identity, rape, sex, procreation, civilization. She plays with these concepts as usual, leaving the reader little refuge in black and white morality. I only wish the characters in this story felt a little more three-dimensional. The captors have an inscrutability that's quite logical within the story, but even they felt more fleshed-out than many of the humans. This is the first failure I've seen from Butler - she seems barely able to imagine a human reaction beyond Lilith's sympathetic (but oh-so-serious) stoicism, or its foil, violent anger. Rather than being told the characteristics of the new humans through literal dossiers, I would have liked to discover their personalities through their reactions and relationships. Surely some people would have coped through dark humor and sarcasm (Eddie Dean, this story needs you!), total denial, breaking down, lashing out verbally, isolating themselves, fearing to be alone, obsessively planning escape, obsequious cooperation with the captors, and so on. But all we really see is the smart, calm people who all echo Lilith, and the angry rabble-rousers who lead or follow in pointless violence.I feel like I'm dwelling too much on the negative - I think it's just because I've seen this author do better with similar material. This definitely deserves four stars, and was a totally gripping read. It made me grateful for a 3-hour plane ride because I got to keep reading! Lilith is smart and sympathetic, but she's flawed and unsure sometimes, and she's a fully realized character. Sometimes her relationships with Oankali brought me to tears. Even when their motives are utterly alien, these folk can win our hearts - and that is as good a summation of the story's themes as I can give.
What a remarkable book! Even though it sometimes depicts terrible suffering, and raises serious questions about human morality, it never comes across as despairing. The story is so compelling, and Dana such a marvelous, fleshed-out character, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.
At times I was cheering Dana on, impressed by her grit and courage, while other times I wanted to shake her and save her from her own decisions. I think Butler very deliberately crafted the narrative so the line between the two reactions will vary for different readers. This is reflective of the overarching questions: How much can a person put up with? When does understandable self-preservation cross into unforgivable collaboration? How does privilege skew our moral judgments?
But again, all of this weighty philosophy springs naturally from an amazing, thrilling, harrowing adventure tale. The book never bogs down but maintains tension beautifully, until coming to a fitting conclusion.
Butler's bibliography is going on my Must Read list - not only does she tell a fabulous story, but she transcends the time she was writing in, delivering a story that is fresh and relevant more than 35 years later.
A wonderful book for people who want to figure out how to be happy and fulfilled, but who don't go in for navel-gazing or “spirituality” as such.
The casual, snarky tone and detailed personal examples make the counter-intuitive lessons easier to grasp. You may not be interested in puzzling out Zen koans, but Manson makes it easy to understand how craving positive experiences is itself a negative experience, while acknowledging negative experiences is itself a positive experience. Or how problems are the source of happiness (you just have to choose the right problems). Or how rejection is an essential part of accepting a positive experience.
He also does a pretty good job of dismantling cultural misconceptions about self esteem, relationships, and boundaries. I didn't find his opinions to be gospel truth on every front, but generally speaking he hits the nail on the head.
I felt like the opening of the book was the strongest part, with the profundity and usefulness diminishing toward the end. But that may be because I've never tended to have the problems he talks about toward the end of the book.