Recent Reading

Genius book. The Swords and The Same Dog only grow more frightening to me over time. It's a shame you didn't think much of the chilling Meeting Mr. Millar. Pages from a Young Girl's Journal is my least favourite of the book, but it's still fine. Cold Hand in Mine and Sub Rosa are Aickman's finest solo collections and rank up there with M. R. James' Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Thomas Ligotti's Teatro Grottesco and Ramsey Campbell's Demons by Daylight.

[Jeff Matthews]

Has anyone read Sam Gafford’s Whitechapel?

[miguel1984]

I took a break from Lone Wolf and Cub and reread V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

It is one of Moore's best-known works, but it is kinda underrated when compared to something like Watchmen, even though it includes some of his most powerful writing.

[Professor Angell.]

Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984

I took a break from Lone Wolf and Cub and reread V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. It is one of Moore's best-known works, but it is kinda underrated when compared to something like Watchmen, even though it includes some of his most powerful writing.

I'd argue "From Hell" is Moore at his best, but "V for Vendetta" is a very close second

[miguel1984]

Quote Originally Posted by Professor Angell.

Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984 I took a break from Lone Wolf and Cub and reread V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. It is one of Moore's best-known works, but it is kinda underrated when compared to something like Watchmen, even though it includes some of his most powerful writing. I'd argue "From Hell" is Moore at his best, but "V for Vendetta" is a very close second

We agree on that one. From Hell was the comic that made me stupidly realize that comics are also literature, after years of looking down on them. Now they are my favorite medium of artistic expression.

[xylokopos]

Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984

Quote Originally Posted by Professor Angell. Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984 I took a break from Lone Wolf and Cub and reread V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. It is one of Moore's best-known works, but it is kinda underrated when compared to something like Watchmen, even though it includes some of his most powerful writing. I'd argue "From Hell" is Moore at his best, but "V for Vendetta" is a very close second We agree on that one. From Hell was the comic that made me stupidly realize that comics are also literature, after years of looking down on them. Now they are my favorite medium of artistic expression.

I also read V for Vendetta recently and was very impressed. It has been in the back of my mind to read more of Moore's work ever since I read Watchmen more than twenty years ago, but I never seemed to get around to it. He manages to combine seriousness and moral urgency and utter hilarity. That sequence in the cabaret in V for Vendetta, where the showgirl performs this song about being aroused by blond youths marching [ " I like the boots, da-da-dada"...] had me laughing my head off.

Also recently read:

Pressfield, Killing Rommel and
Mathias Énard, L'alcool et la nostalgie

I am taking a break from Ligottiana, horror, and speculative fiction.

[miguel1984]

Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984

Quote Originally Posted by Professor Angell. Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984 I took a break from Lone Wolf and Cub and reread V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. It is one of Moore's best-known works, but it is kinda underrated when compared to something like Watchmen, even though it includes some of his most powerful writing. I'd argue "From Hell" is Moore at his best, but "V for Vendetta" is a very close second We agree on that one. From Hell was the comic that made me stupidly realize that comics are also literature, after years of looking down on them. Now they are my favorite medium of artistic expression.

Here is another anecdote about my experience with From Hell:

I first became aware of it by reading a review of the film when it premiered in Argentina in 2002; I was 17 years old. It was given a three-star rating, which seems about right, though I loved it when I watched it in the movie theater.

The review said it was a toned down version of the comic, which featured a graphic scene of Jack the Ripper cutting a woman's tit off. My initial reaction was: "Holy ####, comics actually show stuff like that?"

That was the moment when I decided to check the comic out, but it took me a few years until I finally read it; actually, it was the first comic I read as an adult, Watchmen being the second one.

Until then, I thought comics were only about childish superhero crap, with the exception of Asterix and Obelix and Tintin, which I enjoyed during my childhood; I do still love Tintin. I had heard about Alan Moore and a possible Watchmen film adaptation before From Hell came under my radar, but I thought it was about a superhero team called Watchmen, so I didn't pay much attention to it at the time.

Luckily for me, I do not have any kind of nostalgic attachment to superhero comics, since I never read them as a child, though there are some pretty good ones, like Marvelman or Watchmen itself, among others.

Spent my birthday reading Robin Hardy's 1978 novelisation of The Wicker Man. Notable deviations from the 1973 film include Lord Summerisle jogging around in trendy American trainers and disguised in a balaclava to stalk Howie in the mainland at the beginning, Howie being an avowed socialist who despises Lord Summerisle for his privilege/title and Howie getting a huge erection watching the underage girls leap through the fire.

[In A Dark Light]

Currently working my way through Jorge Luis Borges' 'Seven Nights' one essay (lecture) at a time.

[Patrick G.P]

Just finished the wonderful Misty Thule by Adolphe Rettè:

Reading Misty Thule feels like being caught in dense fog, being guided slowly into a twilight realm of immense beauty and wonder and losing oneself in strange and wonderful images. The eerily beautiful prose reads like half-forgotten memories, of melancholy dreams and fabulous vistas, and it had an almost hypnotic effect on me. Adolphe Rettè called the book a memoir of a dream, and he perfectly captured the strange ethereal atmosphere of dreaming with these prose poems. It’s not a book, it’s an experience as if the book exists only at the moment when one is reading it and feels otherworldly and almost unreal when it's put away. And much like a dream, the cryptic meaning seems lost after putting it down, but the feeling lingers ever on…

“The wind hums dead songs in the branches; the meadow trembles with wounded birds whimpering. And the Lady of the Night, rising in the sky, takes a malign pleasure in swinging her pale lunar lantern over the shivering pauper.”