via FoxyTunes
Being out of college means I now have more time for fun reading! For those interested, here's the current rundown:
Finished:
- The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allen Poe. Of which there are three: The first, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," being amazing and a classic. The second, "The Murder of Maire Roget," having dulled with age (ripped from the headlines of the time, Law and Order Style). The third, "The Purloined Letter," more subdued, but equally cool. For added interest, imagine Jeremy Brett saying all of Dupin's dialog in the Sherlock voice.
- The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales by HP Lovecraft. Varying in their quality, but all sufficiently creepy. More on that to come.
- Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Once again proves that, no matter what it may be, if it's authored by Gaiman I should buy it on principle, because I've never been disappointed by him so far.
- Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Maurice LeBlanc. Neat, fun, and clever stories, though the Lupin/Holmes crossover could have benefited from a smarter Holmes. Definitely worth a read.
- Roman Blood by Steven Saylor. How could I have MISSED this? Roman History plus detective mystery (calling him Gordianus the Finder, I SEE WHAT YOU DID, THAR). Lurid, well researched and gripping. I kept imagining a slightly younger David Bamber as Cicero, Michael Gambon in Eddie Temple mode as Sulla, and, weirdly enough, Daniel Craig as Gordianus.
Currently Reading (from "still warm from my hot little hands," to "gathering dust on my bookshelf"):
- Elric, Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock. Volume 1 of the collected Elric stories, and the first I've read of him. I can see why the character of Elric was a hit with moody teens back in the '60's (and today), and I appreciate that Moorcock paired him with a foil in the early stories. Speaking of imagining actors who look nothing like the way the characters are described, Nathon Fillion as Moonglum, anyone? And after his turn as Prince Nuada, you KNOW Luke Goss would be the perfect Elric.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. Fascinating stuff, but sadly in the "if there were no other books to read" category. I'll have to bring it with me on a vacation sometime.
- Sahara by Clive Cussler. Maybe if it wasn't too pedestrian an adventure, or maybe if his writing had more meat and less sparkle, I don't know.
- Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. How can it be so neat and yet so hard to get through (I'm looking at you too, Return to Neveryon)?
Up Next:
- The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories by Robert Chambers. I've been going on a "seminal works" kick (cf. Poe's Dupin Tales), and this naturally followed from Lovecraft.
- Chronicles of the Lensman, Vol 1 by E.E. "Doc" Smith. Once again, seminal work, but this time of the "Space Opera" genre (think Star Wars).
- The Evidence of the Sword by Rafael Sabatini. A collection of short story mysteries by the king of the swashbuckler novel. I can't wait!
- The First Swords by Fred Saberhagen. Alright, so I've already read most of this series, but I got the first trilogy in a shiny new compilation and want to re-read them.
- The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. I enjoyed The Gunslinger and eventually want to see if the rest of the Dark Tower series is as good.
And now, for your entertainment, Condensed Lovecraft. Spoiler Alert! You have been warned:
- Dagon: Man gets thrown overboard, later witnesses the sea evaporate. After traveling along the drying sea floor, goes over a hill and witnesses a giant man-fish-thing worshipping a grotesque statue. Escapes, goes mad, writes an account, commits suicide.
- The Statement of Randolf Carter: Hi, my name's Randolf Carter. You probably won't believe me, but I followed a friend of mine to this evil looking cemetery where he disappeared into a crypt and never came out again. Oh, and I heard a big evil voice.
- Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermayne and his Family: The great grandfather who started this whole mess found a village of missing-link ape-men in Africa, married its princess and started a line of children who all were rather queer and had ape-like tendencies. Arthur Jermayne, the last in the line, finds this out and commits suicide.
- Celephaïs: Man attempts to return to a dreamlike town he believes he came from through lots of drugs and daydreaming. He returns by following his visions and diving into the final portal. The next day a drugged up hobo is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Surprise!
- Nyarlathotep: Man hears about this Egyptian looking dude called Nyarlathotep, who has been going around giving shows where he shows people "the truth," but pretty much everyone comes away from them stark raving mad. He goes to see a demonstration and, of course, loses his mind.
- The Picture in the House: A young man stops for shelter from a storm in an early American New England house. He notices creepy scary cult books in the study. Having seen a well thumbed page depicting cannibalism, he meets with the resident of the house who admits to committing cannibalism due to the influence of the book, and just before the young man can go mad from seeing blood dripping from the ceiling, the house falls in.
- The Outsider: This guy is completely alone in a giant castle which appears to be in an endless forest. Fed up with being alone, he climbs to the top of the highest tower, which, in actuality, is in the basement of a church. After wandering outside, he happens upon a party, and when he approaches the people all go mad with horror and flee. He sees an ungodly monster, but realizes that it's just a MIRROR, OMG.
- Herbert West - Reanimator: Herbert West tries to reanimate somthing. He fails. He tries again, it almost works. He tries again, it sorta works. He tries again, it is very close to working. He almost tries again, but he gets ambushed by his previous efforts and is torn limb from limb.
- The Hound: Two men, for reasons unknown, dabble in every single dark, occult thing you could imagine. Then they steal the wrong bauble from the wrong corpse and get hunted by a demon hound. The first one gets killed by it, and the second one commits suicide before being killed.
- The Rats in the Walls: A man buys and fixes up his ancestral home in Briton, even though the locals know something he doesn't. Haunted by the sound of thousands of rats in the walls, he and his friend (and eventually the police), follow the sounds to a dead, underground city where a secret cult, founded by his ancestors, did dark deeds and raised humans (who were bred a few steps back down the evolutionary ladder) for sacrifice. The party gets separated, the lights go out, the rats close in, and the man goes mad.
- The Festival: A man returns to his ancestral home in New England in time for "The Festival," in which the inhabitants of the town (who, it turns out, aren't at all human), worship some dark monstrosity in a cave. The man gets out, gets knocked out, and finds himself in a more normal version of the town he was just in.
- He: Young, disillusioned poet living in the city meets with a mysterious man who shows him older parts of the city. Turns out the man is incredibly old and has inherited crazy-mystic-time-altering-Indian powers from the native Americans his ancestors double crossed. The poet flubs up and the Indian spirits get in, bent on revenge. The poet escapes and never sees the man or his house again.
- Cool Air: A young man meets a genteel doctor who lives on the floor above him in a tenement and who always has an abundance of cooling units in his room. The two become friends and help each other, until the cooling begins to break down. The man finds the doctor has turned into a puddle, and that he'd been keeping himself alive through will-power and refrigeration and had been clinically dead for EIGHTEEN YEARS, OMG.
- The Call of Cthulhu: A young man pieces together a puzzle involving simultaneous dreams on a certain day, a weird statue, an account of an interrupted "voodoo" ritual, and a story of a sailor and shipmates who encountered a city in the waves and woke a sleeping cosmic horror. Turns out the statue was an image of that horror, the ritual was part of a cult worshiping that horror, the dreams were the preparatory call of that horror, and had the sailor not run over the horror with his boat (but didn't kill it), this demon-god CTHULHU would have made the world mad and devoured us all. Close call, eh?
- The Color Out of Space: A strange meteorite lands in a rural town and contains a color that no science can identify. Things seem to thrive on the farm that it lands on, but slowly the life gets leeched out of everything, the inhabitants go mad, and the police arrive just in time to see a giant, amorphous thing that can only be that color rocket back into space. BUT NOT ALL OF IT LEFT.
- The Whisperer in the Darkness: Strange creatures are seen after a large flood in the mountainous regions of New England. The narrator and one other man (who lives in the mountains) investigate to find that the creatures are sentient and just want to live in peace (but could wipe us out if they wanted). However, they're giving the other man a hard time, and eventually correspondence between him and the narrator reach a fever pitch. All of a sudden, the tone and information of his letters change, oddly, and he invites the narrator back to his house, where he explains the wonders of what he has learned from these creatures. He still acts odd, and when things really start to get weird, the narrator decides to escape, but finds that he can't find his host, but stumbles on HIS FACE AND HANDS ONLY, OMG.
- The Shadow Over Innsmouth: A college student, traveling through New England, decides to visit the port town of Innsmouth. Most of the people there are all rather odd, looking partly fishy. He learns from the soused, "mad" old timer that the head of the town made a pact with some fish people who lived near the reef in the bay: in exchange for plenty of fish (and some otherworldly baubles) the townsfolk would sacrifice children and interbreed with the fish folk, which is why everyone looks so odd. The jig having been turned in an upward direction, the student makes a thrilling escape through the half-breed infested town and witnesses a summoned horror that causes him to black out. Once home, he does some genealogical research and finds that he's been related to the half-breed fish people all along! As he ages he gets fishy-looking too and eventually wants to head back to Innsmouth.
- The Haunter in the Dark: An artist investigates an evil looking church shunned by the townspeople and finds some nameless horror living in the attic of the steeple. Having awoken it by fiddling with an otherworldly crystal in the bell-tower, he retreats to find that the creature can only move in the dark. The townsfolk keep a candlelight vigil outside the church once they hear the re-awakened horror moving around in there, but a large storm knocks out all the power and all the light the people set up. The monster flies across town and kills the artist.
Enough, More Later.
- James
P.S. I get to keep my job! Yay!
