Stook's Book List
Submitted by stooky on Sun, 10/10/2004 - 05:40
Tags:
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- **A disturbing bit of psychological horror that consistantly made me wonder: Why did they cast Matt Damon as Ripley? Highsmith has a conversational style that's both easy to read and constantly fascinating. (A-)
Tales Of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft
- **HP was a master of the unquantified unknown, the horrible thing that lurks just out of sight. His best stories are full of dread and horrifying things beyond human immagination. His worst can be dreadfully boring as he tends to repeat himself...a lot. Both of these qualifications can be found in this book. (B)
Brimstone by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
- **Brimstone is a perambulating hunk of readable malarkey, Full of impossibly complex plot twists involving enough sex, violence and outlandish leaps in logic to keep the average pulp lover impressed and enthused. Brimstone was so fun I zipped through 500 pages in 10 hours, savouring every last unbelievable detail. (A)
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
HPL - I've read nearly all his works, but it's been ages since I read any. I don't know the contents of the book you've listed, but I'd be interested to know which ones you liked best.
Ditto.
My favourites, which I read in 1974/75, were:
The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward
At The Mountains Of Madness (includes: At The Mountains Of Madness / The Dreams In The Witch House / The Statement of Randolph Carter / The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath / The Silver Key / Through The Gates of The Silver Key).
I'll definately read those you've recommended. Thanks.
T'ho
:?)
The contents of The Tales Of HP Lovecraft are:
The Outsider; The Music Of Erich Zann; The Rats In The Walls; The Shunned House; The Call Of Cthulhu; The Color Out of Space; The Dunwich Horror; At The Mountains Of Madness; The Shadow Over Innsmouth; The Shadow Out Of Time.
This would constitute the entirety of my HP reading. Several things irritated me about his style 1)He tends to start every story exactly the same way, beginning with a first person protagonist telling the reader "He isn't sure whether this was all a dream...and he would write this down to warn anyone who would listen." 2) he has a rather stilted style like a syllibus, then turns around and relays great ammounts of miniscule detail of the environment of the character. As if story were a secondary to the location in them.
My favorites would have to be:
The Music Of Erich Zann in which our protagonist wanders in and out of an alternate dimension in which he rents an apartment. He is taken by the strange playing of his neighbor above him and seeks to understand it. It's a spooky bit of nonsense that's actually quite mesmerizing.
The Shunned House is a horrific short story that's probably the most chilling in the book. A young scientist decides to uncover the truth a house that seems to suck the life out of its tenants.
The Call Of Cthulhu in which a young man uncovers a hideous story of in the memoirs of his grandfather. The ending is an incredible piece of grand guignol.
At The Mountains Of Madness in a which a scientist recounts with horror the events of a epedition to the Antarctic. The longest story in the book and also the most gruesomely marvellous. It's got a few slow spots...BUT...this story is a wopper of mammoth proportions.
The stories I liked were The Outsider, The Colour Out Of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth & The Shadow Out Of Time. All admirable horror stories that suffer from Lovecraft's reiterations of themes that sometimes become monotonous.
What was OK were The Rats In The Walls & The Shadow Out Of Time The first of which has an excellent ending and the second has an excellent beginning. The other halves being somewhat boring and long-winded.
Over-all I'd say Lovecraft was a very interesting author and I'd enjoy reading a lot more if I can get my hands on them. Lovecraft seems to be able to visualize the improbable and impossible with a skill very few horror writers can even come close to. I noticed too that a lot of movies rip off his ideas as well as quite a few horror writers.
What I'd like to see made into a movie would be At The Mountains Of Madness...it would be incredible.
T'ho
:?)
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply so extensively.
I have seven volumes of HPL's works:
1. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS and Other Tales Of Terror (Contains 6 longish stories.)
2. THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, HPL's only stand-alone novel
3. DAGON and Other Macabre Tales (In addition to 14 short stories, this volume contains a lengthy essay by HPL, "Supernatural Horror in Literature", and a chronological listing of all HPL's stories.)
4. THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK and Other Tales of Terror (This contains 10 stories, 6 of which are also in your book.)
5. THE LURKING FEAR and Other Stories (13 stories.)
6. THE TOMB and Other Tales (8 stories, and, for completists, this volume also offers 5 'early tales' and 4 'fragments'.)
7. THE SHUTTERED ROOM and Other Tales of Horror (These 10 stories were written with or completed by August Derleth.)
My favorite HPL stories are The Rats in the Walls (****1/2), The Shunned House (****), The Temple (***1/2), The Moon-Bog (***1/2), The Strange High House in the Mist (***1/2), The Shadow Over Innesmouth (***1/2), At the Mountains of Madness (***1/2), The Dreams in the Witch-House (***1/2), and In the Walls of Eryx (***1/2).
All the rest I gave *** or less.
If you want to know which HPL stories have already been filmed, just look him up at IMDb.
I'll order Dagon through the library, as it contains short stories and I've pooped my eyes out this last week.
As for the movies, I've seen most of them, which as I read the original stories were crappy revisions and simplifications of the original stories. The one that came closest, strangely enough, was From Beyond a ghoulish low-budget horror whose restrictions of budget obviously detracted from a literal translation.
What exactly do you enjoy about HPL's writing? As you seem to be an avid fan I'd like to know.
T'ho
:?)
I wouldn't call myself an avid fan of HPL, he just happens to be one of the few horror writers that caught my fancy during my ravenous reading years (now passed, as far as fiction goes). Actually I think Clark Ashton Smith, whose books were re-issued with HPL's, is a more entertaining writer. I'm not a big horror or fantasy fan; science fiction, preferably hard sf, is what I was always most into. But, to answer your question, what I liked about HPL was that he was different from any other writer I'd ever read. Uncompromising and bold in his ideas; no great stylist; but he was clearly obsessed with his peculiar vision of a supernatural that owed little or nothing to the Christian tradition. His supernatural is as close to being secular as any I've ever come across. When he does introduce Christian tropes, they are clearly very much part of the mundane world.
He certainly does have a distinctive style that can be rather dry. I see you liked the two stories best that I disliked the most. I enjoyed the fact that he'd build a universe based on something totally altered from the basic perspective. Sometimes I get the feeling that he wasn't too fond of humanity.
:?)
No, I liked *one* story best that you disliked, namely The Rats in the Walls - you mis-stook that one, but you'll eventually see the light. We both liked The Shunned House, so it must be a classic :-D