What are you reading? - 2019, and beyond.

[plethon]

I'm finally getting around to reading The King in Yellow. I started last night by reading "The Repairer of Reputations" and I already feel somewhat disturbed.

Also, I am listening to the audiobook of The Night Land and enjoying it. There should be an odd74 style supplement for this important work!

EDIT: I'm not exaggerating about the genuine feeling of unease when reading the first King in Yellow story. It reminds me of when I was first reading Lovecraft as a teenager. The otherworldly sense of something between the lines that you can't even pin down to a particular phrase, the feeling that you may actually be interacting with something from another dimension while reading it.

[stevemitchell]

The Cthulhu Heresy and Other Lovecraftian Sins by Peter Rawlik. A good collection of Lovecraftian tales, with some original points of view (for example, retelling the events of “The Rats in the Walls” from the standpoint of Delapore’s cat).

Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner. A sword-and-sorcery version of Yojimbo (or A Fistful of Dollars, depending on your cinematic frame of reference). The immortal swordsman Kane is playing two kingdoms against each other—but an evil cosmic entity is playing Kane!

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft. The first volume in Penguin’s three-book set of HPL’s stories, introduced and extensively annotated by S. T. Joshi. This (the set) is my go-to collection for Lovecraft. Highly recommended.

The Secret Ceremonies edited by Peter Valentine. A major collection of scholarly articles on the life and writing of Arthur Machen. For the most part, well selected and well done, although I would have dropped the long entry on Machen and King Arthur—too much of the latter, not enough of the former.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft. The second volume in Penguin’s three-book set of HPL’s stories. Fewer stories this time, as the book includes his two short novels, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and At the Mountains of Madness. While I think most Lovecraft fans would rate the latter as the best of his longer works, I have to confess to a preference for the former. But by Dagon, you should read them both! (Several times, as I have.)

Sons of Ringo by Fred Blosser. An informal survey of the Spaghetti Western films. Very enjoyable if you like that film category, and I do.

Waco by Jeff Guinn. A detailed account of the Branch Davidians, not just the controversial siege of their compound near Waco by the ATF and FBI, but also the development of their belief system going back to the 1930s. Very interesting and informative.

The King Over the Water by Desmond Stewart. A history of the Jacobites—the followers of the deposed King James II of England—and their various attempts to regain the throne, most notably the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. I’m an American, so I really don’t have a dog in this fight, but for what it’s worth, I think the Stuarts had a good claim to make. At least with Mary and Anne, following James, the crown stayed in the Stuart family; but with the Hanoverians, it passed into the hands of usurpers. Rather odious usurpers, at that.

The Seven Men of Spandau by Jack Fishman. At the end of World War II, some of the top Nazis committed suicide—Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering. Several more were tried and then executed at Nuremberg—Keitel, Jodl, Ribbentrop, and others. But seven were sentenced to prison at Spandau, with terms ranging from 10 years (Doenitz) to life (Hess). This book provides a detailed account of the seven Spandau prisoners, including an assessment of their remorse (if any) for their participation in the crimes of the Third Reich.

Green Tea and Other Weird Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. From Oxford University Press, an excellent one-volume “best of” collection of Le Fanu’s tales, introduced and extensively annotated by Aaron Worth. I have one quibble: “The Room in the Dragon Volant,” although an excellent story that reminded me of Wilkie Collins’s tightly plotted suspense fiction, has no supernatural element. Considering that it weighs in at 100 pages, I would have omitted it in favor of three or four more of Le Fanu’s ghostly tales—say, “Dickon the Devil,” “Squire Toby’s Will,” “Sir Dominick’s Bargain,” etc.

[stevemitchell]

Jesus: A New Vision by Whitley Strieber. Depending on your personal beliefs, Jesus may have been the Son of God; a divinely inspired teacher; a social revolutionary; a solar myth; the fictional creation of Flavius Josephus; a mystical experience arising from the use of hallucinogenic drugs; an alien; a vampire; a time-traveler; or even the spawn of Yog-Sothoth. Strieber weighs in (mostly) in favor of Jesus as a divinely inspired teacher, with access to some kind of secret occult lore, although Strieber never really identifies this. He also goes down the rabbit hole by dragging in the Shroud of Turin. There’s food for thought here, but it’s not likely to change anyone’s deeply held beliefs about Jesus.

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. The best of Hodgson’s four novels, in my opinion. Part horror story, as the unspeakable Swine-Things besiege the narrator’s isolated mansion in Ireland; and part cosmic vision, as the narrator takes time out from the siege to go on an astral voyage to the end of time and space.

The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard. The true story behind the television series Black Sails and Our Flag Means Death. There really was a short-lived pirate nation in the Bahamas, rising in defiance of the colonial empires of England, France, and Spain. It didn’t last too long (among other things, the pirates had a lousy work ethic, and they were not very well organized), but in the few years of its existence, it managed to raise some major hell. So, go pirates, and abajo con los imperialistas!

Richard III by Desmond Seward. For a king who only ruled for two years, Richard III sure has gotten some extensive press over the centuries, mostly bad. Mr. Seward goes a long way out of his way to reinforce the Tudor propaganda picture of Richard as a crazed, slavering, murdering tyrant. And that could well be a correct interpretation of Richard. But I tend to think that Richard was a hard man living in dangerous times, who acted swiftly and decisively when he felt he was threatened—although that does not excuse his (probable, but unproven) murder of the Princes in the Tower. Anyway, consider this a counterpoint to Paul Murray Kendall’s almost saintly portrayal of Richard (Charles Ross’s biography falls somewhere in the middle here).

The Colonial Wars, 1689-1762 by Howard H. Peckham. France and England (mostly, but Spain shows up occasionally) at war in North America, from King William’s War to the French and Indian War. A good overview of the American colonial military experience

The Reformation by Peter Marshall. An entry in Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series. This covers the political and theological origins of the Reformation, its division into at least two main streams (Lutheran and Calvinist), and the attempts at a Catholic Counter-Reformation. Concise but informative.

Depraved Halloween by Bryan Smith. Jessica Sloane, the main recurring character in the Depraved series, manages to get kidnapped by yet another bunch of hillbilly cannibals and sadists. (For all she’s supposed to be a top Black Ops agent and assassin, she sure does get kidnapped a lot.) Lots of folks die gruesomely before it’s all over, plus there are a few actual supernatural entities at work, including an obvious stand-in for my old pal Pumpkinhead.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend by Edgar Wagenknecht. Part biography, part literary criticism—an excellent attempt at portraying Poe as a living, breathing human being and not just as a remote and legend-shrouded icon.

The Napoleonic Wars by Mike Rapport. Another Oxford Very Short Introduction. This covers not only the Napoleonic Wars, but the Wars of the French Revolution that preceded them.

Majestic by Whitley Strieber. Mr. Strieber once more. This is his attempted reconstruction, in fictional form, of the supposed UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and what came after. A good story, and a prelude, of sorts, to his later novels The Grays, The Hybrids, and 2012. (Full disclosure: I think a craft of advanced, although not necessarily extraterrestrial, design did crash at Roswell, but the ”bodies” part of the Roswell story was added at a later date.)

[Punkrabbitt]

I finished Stephen King's Fairy Tale. I think the first half was better than the second half, and the third quarter really dragged. I'm still pondering it. There were a lot of references to other horror works in it. It was good.

[tdenmark]

Nov 23, 2024 23:17:46 GMT -6 Punkrabbitt said:

I finished Stephen King's Fairy Tale. I think the first half was better than the second half, and the third quarter really dragged. I'm still pondering it. There were a lot of references to other horror works in it. It was good.

I wanted to like it, just couldn't get into it. I don't know what's happened, I use to devour Stephen King books, now I can barely get through them. Has my taste changed that much, or are his books not what they used to be?