Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ok I don't get the chance to read much, at least not anything of worth since I don't get a lot of time to just sit and read. So when I do get a chance I like to be sure it'll be something I'll enjoy.

Recently on the reccomendation of a friend I branched out from true Science Fiction into what is considered the Horror genre. Specifically H.P. Lovecraft.

I have immensely enjoyed almost all of what I've read of Lovecrafts so far. My favorites to date are The Dunnwich Horror and The Strange Case of Charled Dexter Ward, which I just finished. I have enjoyed, not only the new genre, but also being taken back to a time and a place that is far different from the one I live in. As with all authors Lovecraft writes from the perspecitve of his own society and gives a glimps of what life was like in the early 1900's. He is a bit wordy, that's true, but I enjoy his style of writing and so find that the wordyness doesn't get in the way of the story. In fact as specifically in the Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the seeming endless physical descriptions turn out to be important to the plot.

I did find that the Call of Cthulhu did not live up to my expectations. Probably this is due to everything I'd heard about Cthulhu before I actually read the story.

I think that I shall go back and re-read both The Call of Cthulhu and At The Mountains of Madness a bit later and see if I don't get more out of them when I have more time to devote to reading them.

Last night, after a brief break from reading, I read THE HAUNTER IN THE DARK, this was the story that Lovecraft wrote as part of his rivalry with Robert Bloch I believe. First let me say: I LOVED IT!!! I hadn't read any Lovecraft for a while and it was wonderful, I truly like his style. I love the errie way the tension builds, even though you know from the start that the protagonist dies, since the opening scene is of his death, its the masterful way you are led through the time leading up to his death that is so wonderful. The ability to create a world and mood that one can completely and comfortably immerse oneself into, with no blaring flaws in consistancy and logic is a delight to read. And the subject matter is something that gives the mind something to work on for a while, to ponder.

My Sweet Faboo got me the other two BPRD graphic novels and I really enjoyed them. It's kind of like the X-Men met Lovecraft. Fun all the way around.

I also read, right before bed last night I might add, THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE by H.P. Lovecraft. Boy did I have some bizzare dreams myself last night. But what a great story! It was very freaky and I thought the way the tension built and the hints that were given were amazing. Not good 'right before bed' reading though.

Ugh, Brown Jenkin was just...horrible

it wasn't that though, it was the unnatural angles that had my dreams doing weird things, and that dark sense of foreboding. I kept waking up but I was so tired I didn't care if something icky was going to eat me. I figured it'd serve them right since I had a sinus infection and it'd probably jump species and turn into a huge species killing plague amongst their kind.

I just got a new Lovecraft book and re-read The Statement of Randolph Carter *shivers* It's so well done and it was the first of Lovecrafts stories I ever read. It's an excellent stepping stone into the eldritch and cyclopean world he writes about.

Hey Sappy, the guild seems to be moving a little faster now (could be because we have like, 120 members) so I'm going to sticky this for you.

THE SHUNNED HOUSE by H. P. Lovecraft. His take on the tradditional vampire story, and by tradditional I don't mean the Anne Rice vampire types, I mean the old vampire of ledgend. All I can say is that this story ended far too soon. It was amazing and, of course, chilling.

Speaking of ledgend, I AM LEDGEND by Richard Mattheson is incredible. I was more than dissappointed that it was a novella and not a full length novel. It's the story of the last normal human being on Earth. A strange virus has transformed everyone into Vampires. Again not your Anne Rice vampire but also not the tradditional vampire that Lovecraft wrote about. In fact I believe it was this story that paved the way for the modern take on vampires. This is the one that revolutionized the genera.

Yes the underlying philosophy is pretty much the same for all of his stories, but I do not find that any of them fall in to a 'formula' of getting from begining to end. In fact I find them all quite entertaining. Unlike some fantasy series that linger too long and grow boring because the idea ran out about four books ago, Lovecraft manages to keep his ideas interesting and different.

One of the things that I like about his works is the underlying mythos he created that kind of ties them all together. He created a universe and set all of his stories within this universe. Also, not all of his characters end up insane or dead. Try THE DREAM QUEST OF ANCIENT KADESH.

Awww....look at the little knitted Cthulhu.

I went through a phase where I read everything by Dean Koontz I could get my hands on. My favorite is THE DOOR TO DECEMBER followed closely by his classic WATCHERS.

After a while though I noticed that his stories all began to fall into a pattern and then I stopped reading him quite so rabidly.

THE DOOR TO DECEMBER is incredible though, although it was very difficult for me to read about a little girl being so abused and worse by her own father. Still the character development, one of Koontz's strengths was fantastic and the pseudo-science trappings were delightful.

Hmmm...there are a couple of others of his that are coming to mind: PHANTOMS, yes that one was execllent too. PHANTOMS excelled at suspense and again characters that were so well done, plus this is one of the few novels that brings in a government agency to get something done yet manages not to get bogged down in a political morass. Koontz just mentions that it's a government agency and then gets to the imoportant plot developments without meaningless beurocracy.

I can't remember the other one right off the top of my head but I'm sure it'll come to me.