Content tagged with “horror” under “My Library”

“This is an anthology of every work of narrative fiction H.P. Lovecraft wrote, in order. (I say ‘narrative fiction’ because he apparently wrote a bunch of poetry that isn’t in this book.) I had always wondered about Lovecraft. I was familiar with ‘Call of Cthulhu,’ the role-playing game. Then a few…”

“First, this is not a standalone novel. It’s part one of three, and it ends completely unfinished. Second, I bought this because of Barack Obama. Seriously – I saw it on the shelf of a book and gaming store in Stockholm, and it had a praise quote from Obama on the cover. I thought, ‘Has a president…”

“So, here’s the thing – if you know the secret, there’s not much point reading the book. And everyone knows the secret by now – ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has become a common idiom. But back when this was published in Victorian England, no one knew the twist, and it was probably a hell of a surprise in the…”

“My neighbor bought me this for my 50th birthday as a joke. Just to spite him, I read it. It’s about what you would expect. It was written in 1962 and it shows. Lots of ‘fellows’ and ‘chums’ and ‘nifty.’ Also, lots of exclamation points and adverbs. No one just ‘runs,’ they always ‘run quickly!’…”

“This was a later book in the series, but was written as a prequel. I read it first, before any of the other books. It’s…okay, I guess? Clearly, it’s exposition. Lewis is trying to clean up a bunch of details and set the stage for what comes next. I sort of knew that going in, so I read it in that…”

“Honestly, I didn’t love it, which I know is heretical, but it was very episodic – just random episodes kind of strung together with very little unifying plot. This is likely due to the fact that it’s a kid’s book, but, still, I just couldn’t get into it. Also, I wasn’t in love with his writing…”

“Great novel. Does not read like it was written 121 years ago. Genuinely terrifying in parts. Suffers a bit in the middle as the characters run around London, and I got a little confused as to what they were doing. It turns into a bit of a detective story. I got the main gist of what was going on,…”