Who’s got something appropriate for the season on their table?
I’m reading H. P. Lovecraft for the first time ever! I read a couple of early stories, and then skipped straight to the Cthulhu stuff. (I have here the “Library of America” edition.) Question: was that dumb movie The reanimator ripped off from the Lovecraft story? Obviously I never realized that before, having never read it.
Today I picked up one of Jan Brunvand’s UL collections off the Halloween shelf at the library. Those are always fun, though I read every single one years ago.
The Priest of Blood, a vampire novel by Doug Clegg, came in today’s mail. I’m trying really hard to like the new horror writers, and Clegg’s probably the best of them.
Usually I re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes for Halloween, but somebody borrowed it.
Not quite traditional spooky stories, but I just picked up George Saunders “Civil War Land in Bad Repair”, “Pastoralia” and “The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil”
Genetic Mutations, Human Zoos, people torn apart and made monster-like by greed and want.
Spooky for other reasons than ghosts, but nobody writes about an American Dystopia like Saunders does. Alternatingly funny and heartbreaking.
I pulled out The Annotated Frankenstein and The Annotated Dracula several days ago, and have been glancing over them. While I was waiting for Trick-or-Treaters last night, I poppede the 1970 film Count Dracula in the VCR and read through The Frankenstein Omnibus (ed. Peter Haining). It has two of Mary Shelley’s short stories, and excerpt from P. Webb’s fascinating but forgotten 1820s science fiction novel “The Mummy”, and lots of other random goodies.
dangermom, once you’ve read Lovecraft, I recommend S.T. Joshi’s Annotated Lovecraft. There are two volumes published by (I think) Del Rey, but I also have an annotated “Shadow Over Innsmouth” by him published by some small press. Interesting insights, although I don’t always agree with them.
As for Re-Animator, that was supposed to be based on his series of short stories "Herbert West – Reanimator’ (Which is in the Haining book, interestingly). Even Lovecraft wasn’t fond of this series. Lovecraft has never fared very well in the cinema, and this is no exception. They went for outrageous, unsubtle, gory, and some erotic – traits you won’t find in Lovecraft’s writing. And they almost totally jettisoned his story.
:o 