As you can see by the rest of the reviews, you will either hate this book or you will love it. In spite of its flaws, this reviewer enjoyed it.
All of the famous Beat authors have a presence here: Jack Kerouac and Neal Casaday being the two main protagonists with William Burroughs jumping in later in the story.
I am hard pressed to call it a parody. I don't think anybody could read the seventh chapter and not say this novel is solidly placed in the arena of horror. I would rather call it a pastiche of Kerouac that takes place in the cosmos of H. P. Lovecraft.
This book just might be your five-star review or you may give up after the first two chapters.
Only one way to find out.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
The Little Girl Who Was Taught by Experience is a ham-fisted morality tale written in 1827 when good little girls were admired for their altruism and docility.
Lucy is a motherless child who, because of her doting father, becomes a little monster, a bad seed, a tiny tyrant.
Her aunt takes Lucy into her home for a year allows Lucy to learn through bad choices the difference between right and wrong.
In the story, Lucy makes a bad decision which ends up with a costly dress destroyed and in the end of the story she comes quite close to killing herself and repents on what might have been her deathbed.
There are reasons you don't see stories for children like this anymore.
Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a prolific short story writer and novelist and had a huge impact on many different authors, one being H. P. Lovecraft himself who heaped praise on the man, especially his story The Willows. Interestingly, Blackwood was a strong critic of Lovecraft’s work (see Mike Ashley’s biography of Blackwood for confirmation).
The Man Whom The Trees Loved is a fantasy novella and this reviewer is hard pressed to call it a horror story. At the most it is more akin to dark fantasy, yet still an interesting read about a woman trying to save her husband’s soul from his enchantment with the forest that borders their home.
Frederick Merrick White (aka Fred M. White) was a prolific British writer who was born in 1859, but oddly enough dropped off the radar and the date of his death is not known. However, in 1930, five of his stories were published which would have put his final works at around 71 years of age. Of course, it is possible these stories were published posthumously.
The Doom of London (1903) is a collection of six, loosely connected short stories all based on the near destruction of Great Britain's major city and does share some common characters. In the first story, a killer smog encompasses the city and in the next story, a severe diphtheria plague kills hundreds of the city’s inhabitants. In the third story, a massive blizzard buries the city The next three stories involve a massive explosion in London’s new underground tube service, the threat of the Thames being polluted with plague bacillus during a massive heat wave and two swindlers manipulating the stock market by making it crash resulting in a panic.
In almost all of the stories, science comes to the rescue though modern readers will roll their eyes at the uses technology is put to in order to save the day.
The book is an interesting, albeit pedestrian harbinger of the modern disaster novel, but it does give an interesting glimpse into a London long gone when the horse and buggy was being replaced by the motor car and the novelty of electricity was a new technology to light the darkest of nights and give birth to an exciting panorama of knowledge and new-fangled machinery.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
As a published writer, I found myself very much enjoying Jeffrey Friedberg’s The Secret Pillars of Writing especially the following:
He has discovered an innovative way of marketing his work, not as an empty advertisement, but as a work that provides good, basic information for beginning writers and a good review for experienced authors.
He has an odd sense of humor that at least appealed to this reviewer.
His advice is basic and solid.
He has a very good bibliography at the end of the work that is priceless.
What I did not like:
In the bibliography he recommends Elmore Leonard’s Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing a book I found to be an unbelievable waste of money. Quite bluntly, Friedberg’s free e-book stands heads and shoulders over Leonard’s. To recommend Leonard after reading The Secret Pillars of Writing is like serving a hamburger grilled to perfection topped with impeccable and fresh condiments only to heartily endorse boiled pasta with some ketchup squirted on it for dessert.
One caveat:
Writing is an art that does have some subjectivity to it and each writer needs to find his own voice. Though I agree with The Secret Pillars of Writing in its basic theory, your actual mileage may vary. There are some rules that writers, after getting some experience under their belt, can afford to break, but it takes real talent.
That is why writing is called an art.
Bottom line: If you want to be a writer. Read this.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
I read Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness years ago and several times, but I am so enamored of the novella that I love revisiting the eon-haunted mountains of Antarctica and reliving the wonder and then the horror of the doomed Professor Lake and the rest of his sub-expedition.
Yet, it is when William Dyer, professor of geology at the Miskatonic University and graduate student Danforth travel on into the Mountains of Madness to solve the mysterious deaths of the Lake expedition, the reader is treated to Lovecraft's full descriptive prowess as an author and travel guide to a weird, alien world that is both hauntingly beautiful and nightmarishly terrifying.
Written in 1931 when Antarctica was still mostly unexplored, At The Mountains of Madness is obviously dated as a work of science fiction, but as work of horror with its slowly growing mood of terror, it still succeeds after eighty decades.
Though the body count is quite high, do not expect the splatterpunk of what passes for modern horror. Lovecraft was a master of the art and knew that horror and awe are close companions and he didn't need the cheap trick of the grossout to reach his goal.
Enjoy a world long gone. It's a quick, but memorable visit.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
I very much enjoy mysteries from the early 1900's usually because of the cultural milieu in which they are birthed. I also enjoy the creativity when the mystery genre was young.
The Green God is not one I enjoyed if nothing more than that the protagonist and narrator, Owen Morgan, is hands down the densest, most stupidest individual I have ever encountered in literature.
Though he ultimately solves the mystery, his absentmindedness is guaranteed to drive the reader to distraction.
For the beginning magician, it is best to warn them that Peerless Prestidigitation is only for magicians who are very advanced in the three "p's" of performance magic: presence, patter, and psychology.
As a retired stage magician who now performs only in parlor settings, I have seen way too many of these books sold that give a wonderful routine and then either reveal the secret as a slight-of-hand move that takes months to perfect or gives the old canard, "vanish the card using your favorite method" when in reality that even if you have a "favorite method" the trick simply does not give you ample opportunity to use it.
My final complaint is that even with what few tricks may actually be useful, or act as seeds for better illusions, without the accompanying illustrations, the book is of very, very little value.
Best to try elsewhere.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
There is no denial that the focus of Turner-Zimmerman's report on girls and young women forced into prostitution in Chicago is racist and prejudicial, but if the reader can overcome the bias to read the underlying story, the horror of forced prostitution is clearly communicated.
That the lost souls whose stories are told in these pages have been dead for over a century makes one sad.
That in spite of the author's best efforts, the forced prostitution of girls and women is still taking place in our "civilized" 21st century is even more horrific.
The Cynic's Rules of Conduct by Chester Field, Jr. is a sarcastic parody of books on etiquette and proper public behavior. Some of the humor is lost on the modern reader because the social norms have so dramatically changed in the century that proceeded its publication, but there is enough wit and humor to keep the reader interested if they have an inkling of the lifestyles and mores of early 20th century England.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
C. Alan Loewen’s book reviews
All of the famous Beat authors have a presence here: Jack Kerouac and Neal Casaday being the two main protagonists with William Burroughs jumping in later in the story.
I am hard pressed to call it a parody. I don't think anybody could read the seventh chapter and not say this novel is solidly placed in the arena of horror. I would rather call it a pastiche of Kerouac that takes place in the cosmos of H. P. Lovecraft.
This book just might be your five-star review or you may give up after the first two chapters.
Only one way to find out.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Lucy is a motherless child who, because of her doting father, becomes a little monster, a bad seed, a tiny tyrant.
Her aunt takes Lucy into her home for a year allows Lucy to learn through bad choices the difference between right and wrong.
In the story, Lucy makes a bad decision which ends up with a costly dress destroyed and in the end of the story she comes quite close to killing herself and repents on what might have been her deathbed.
There are reasons you don't see stories for children like this anymore.
The Man Whom The Trees Loved is a fantasy novella and this reviewer is hard pressed to call it a horror story. At the most it is more akin to dark fantasy, yet still an interesting read about a woman trying to save her husband’s soul from his enchantment with the forest that borders their home.
The Doom of London (1903) is a collection of six, loosely connected short stories all based on the near destruction of Great Britain's major city and does share some common characters. In the first story, a killer smog encompasses the city and in the next story, a severe diphtheria plague kills hundreds of the city’s inhabitants. In the third story, a massive blizzard buries the city The next three stories involve a massive explosion in London’s new underground tube service, the threat of the Thames being polluted with plague bacillus during a massive heat wave and two swindlers manipulating the stock market by making it crash resulting in a panic.
In almost all of the stories, science comes to the rescue though modern readers will roll their eyes at the uses technology is put to in order to save the day.
The book is an interesting, albeit pedestrian harbinger of the modern disaster novel, but it does give an interesting glimpse into a London long gone when the horse and buggy was being replaced by the motor car and the novelty of electricity was a new technology to light the darkest of nights and give birth to an exciting panorama of knowledge and new-fangled machinery.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
He has discovered an innovative way of marketing his work, not as an empty advertisement, but as a work that provides good, basic information for beginning writers and a good review for experienced authors.
He has an odd sense of humor that at least appealed to this reviewer.
His advice is basic and solid.
He has a very good bibliography at the end of the work that is priceless.
What I did not like:
In the bibliography he recommends Elmore Leonard’s Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing a book I found to be an unbelievable waste of money. Quite bluntly, Friedberg’s free e-book stands heads and shoulders over Leonard’s. To recommend Leonard after reading The Secret Pillars of Writing is like serving a hamburger grilled to perfection topped with impeccable and fresh condiments only to heartily endorse boiled pasta with some ketchup squirted on it for dessert.
One caveat:
Writing is an art that does have some subjectivity to it and each writer needs to find his own voice. Though I agree with The Secret Pillars of Writing in its basic theory, your actual mileage may vary. There are some rules that writers, after getting some experience under their belt, can afford to break, but it takes real talent.
That is why writing is called an art.
Bottom line: If you want to be a writer. Read this.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Yet, it is when William Dyer, professor of geology at the Miskatonic University and graduate student Danforth travel on into the Mountains of Madness to solve the mysterious deaths of the Lake expedition, the reader is treated to Lovecraft's full descriptive prowess as an author and travel guide to a weird, alien world that is both hauntingly beautiful and nightmarishly terrifying.
Written in 1931 when Antarctica was still mostly unexplored, At The Mountains of Madness is obviously dated as a work of science fiction, but as work of horror with its slowly growing mood of terror, it still succeeds after eighty decades.
Though the body count is quite high, do not expect the splatterpunk of what passes for modern horror. Lovecraft was a master of the art and knew that horror and awe are close companions and he didn't need the cheap trick of the grossout to reach his goal.
Enjoy a world long gone. It's a quick, but memorable visit.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
The Green God is not one I enjoyed if nothing more than that the protagonist and narrator, Owen Morgan, is hands down the densest, most stupidest individual I have ever encountered in literature.
Though he ultimately solves the mystery, his absentmindedness is guaranteed to drive the reader to distraction.
As a retired stage magician who now performs only in parlor settings, I have seen way too many of these books sold that give a wonderful routine and then either reveal the secret as a slight-of-hand move that takes months to perfect or gives the old canard, "vanish the card using your favorite method" when in reality that even if you have a "favorite method" the trick simply does not give you ample opportunity to use it.
My final complaint is that even with what few tricks may actually be useful, or act as seeds for better illusions, without the accompanying illustrations, the book is of very, very little value.
Best to try elsewhere.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
That the lost souls whose stories are told in these pages have been dead for over a century makes one sad.
That in spite of the author's best efforts, the forced prostitution of girls and women is still taking place in our "civilized" 21st century is even more horrific.
C. Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/