Sara's reading log

I am a book hoarder and reader. My main genre is SF, but I also love magic realism, fantasy and general fiction. Favorite authors are Iain M. Banks, Ursula K. LeGuin, Haruki Murakami, José Saramago, Isaac Asimov, Ben Aaronovitch and more. My rating system is based on five stars. I rate books based on my expectations and what a books aims to be. This means that the brilliant 'Fahrenheit 451' gets five stars because I thought it would be good, people said it was good, and it was good, but 'A Closed and Common Orbit' also gets five stars because in its series, in its style, I really enjoyed it and was not disappointed.

Het gefluister in de duisternis by H. P. Lovecraft

  • Started on: 2011-12-16
  • Finished on: 2011-12-19
  • Read in: Dutch
  • Rating: ****-
  • Genre(s): Horror

This is the first story collection of Lovecraft that I have read, I am ashamed to say. While I recognize and know of Cthulhu, I have never read a story by Lovecraft about this mythology (I did read one by Neil Gaiman). This collection contained two, The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. They, and the other stories were all very good.
The stories, from the early twentieth-century show their age a bit. This is mostly because other writers later on have used the same tricks so often that I think for a modern writer most surprises can be seen coming from a mile away. The shocking reveal in the last sentence isn’t that horrific or shocking anymore. However, because the stories take place in the time in which they were written, there are no crazy predictions that turned out to be false (unless you count Pluto being a planet ;)).
A very good collection, and I cannot wait to read more Lovecraft stories. Four out of five stars.

  • Started on: 2011-12-16
  • Finished on: 2011-12-19
  • Read in: Dutch
  • Rating: ****-
  • Genre(s): Horror

This is the first story collection of Lovecraft that I have read, I am ashamed to say. While I recognize and know of Cthulhu, I have never read a story by Lovecraft about this mythology (I did read one by Neil Gaiman). This collection contained two, The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. They, and the other stories were all very good.
The stories, from the early twentieth-century show their age a bit. This is mostly because other writers later on have used the same tricks so often that I think for a modern writer most surprises can be seen coming from a mile away. The shocking reveal in the last sentence isn’t that horrific or shocking anymore. However, because the stories take place in the time in which they were written, there are no crazy predictions that turned out to be false (unless you count Pluto being a planet ;)).
A very good collection, and I cannot wait to read more Lovecraft stories. Four out of five stars.