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sarahf1984

Sarah's Library

I read pretty much anything, from fantasy (City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett) to romance (Bared to You by Sylvia Day) to classics (Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad).  The only genres I don't read are self-help and comic books/graphic novels.

Currently reading

The Last Honeytrap
Louise Lee
Progress: 100/346 pages
Complete Works of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare

Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror by S.T. Joshi

Black Wings [jhc] - Edited by S. T. Joshi

30/8 - 200 pages in and I've read about 8 of the stories.  So far while none of them have truly horrified me (in fact last night, after reading 4 or 5 of the stories I dreamed about a dessert buffet table where I searched for and found scones with jam and cream), they were differently weird and a bit spooky.  The monsters (where applicable) were well described, I could imagine them without difficulty despite the fact that most of them were not humanoid.  So far my favourite has been "The Broadsword" by Laird Barron, which was about evil, psychotic aliens hiding in the boiler room of an old apartment building.  I found this the most memorable story because of the creepy idea of these psychotic beings whispering to the tenants through the venting system in each apartment.  I've never lived in a multiple occupant building, but can imagine being able to hear other tenants through the vents and then one day, suddenly hearing someone talking about eating someones brains versus sweatbreads (thymus or pancreas).  I've never been much of a fan of short stories because I've always felt that there's not enough time to fully develop the story, (let alone the characters) or give a rounded out ending, but they are very easy to read.  As I'm reading I feel like I'm speeding along because each short story is only 10 or so pages long, so there's no slow parts (in my opinion), and if I find any in the upcoming stories I imagine they won't be very long, as each author doesn't have enough pages to waste on unnecessary writing.

5/9 - Now finished.  I originally rated this as 4 stars and now that I'm finished it's still the right rating.  I found some of the stories went over my head a bit because they were focused on Lovecraft and some of his characters (I think that's who they were), especially Richard Upton Pickman.  So I didn't understand the references to any Lovecrafts characters or his life.  Prior to reading this I knew the name but that was it, I didn't even know that he wrote a strange combination of sci-fi/horror/fantasy.  In the first part of my review I said that my favourite story was "The Broadsword" by Laird Barron, that's now my second favourite after "Lesser Demons" by Norman Partridge, the 3rd last story in the book.  This one was about a dystopian post zombie-esque apocalyptic world where suddenly, out of nowhere a wide range of demons appeared on the planet.  The demons would eat people and then spit the person's blood back out at anyone else hanging around.  A few hours later anyone who got spat on is infected by the blood and becomes a zombie-esque psycho.  They file down their teeth to points and dig up dead bodies for dinner.  Another quite good one was An Eldritch Matter by Adam Niswander.  It was very short but very interesting, about a guy who morphed into an octopus.  Another review that I read asked the question "Is it a good book for people who have never read Lovecraft before?"  I would say that some of the stories are easy to follow, while the ones more focused on Lovecraft characters are a bit difficult to understand.  It was like watching an episode of a tv show half way through the second season, you have no idea who the characters are or how they relate to eachother, which leaves you feeling unsatisfied with the plot.