The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft

It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman--madder than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that horror--that thing on the doorstep.

-"The Thing on the Doorstep," from The Dunwich Horror and Others 

November is the hardest month for me to update the blog, since I'm trying to conserve all my word power for NaNoWriMo. This year I'm pretty far behind, but that's all the more reason that I feel like I shouldn't have time to update here. But my book is inspired by the work of one H.P. Lovecraft, and The Dunwich Horror and Others is too great of a book to go so long neglected.

My mom sent me The Dunwich Horror for All Hallows Read, which was quite the fun surprise. Although I'm sure it would be absorbing any time of year, it was a particularly good fit for October, of course. I'm sure it goes without saying, but Lovecraft was just a master of horror.

I had only read one story of his prior to starting this book, which happened to be the first story in this collection, "In the Vault." It's marvelously creepy stuff, and interestingly one of the few stories in this book that does not deal with Lovecraft's mythology. Oh yes, the crazy, awesome Cthulhu* mythology.

It turns out I love the mythology angle, which I guess shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Things just get bananas in these stories.  I mean, the end of "The Rats in the Walls"? Whoa. The end of "The Thing on the Doorstep"? Whoa. Lovecraft doesn't do twist endings, but he does have the habit of offering one last piece of information right at the end of the story, and that information is usually crazy. That's why "In the Vault" made such an impression on me when I first read it, years ago.**

Prior to reading this entire book, in fact, I would have named "In the Vault" as the scariest story I'd ever read, simple as it is--but now it has some stiff competition. Definitely looking forward to reading some more Lovecraft in the future. For now, I'll just happily rip him off for NaNoWriMo. Not sure exactly what's going to happen, except there's something lurking at my character's house. Something very, very old, living somewhere very, very deep.

Up next: Finally caught up on blog entries! Currently reading The Complaints by Ian Rankin.

*How cool is it that spell check recognizes Cthulhu? Very cool, my friends.

**Oddly enough, I just checked the book's table of contents to make sure I was capitalizing the title correctly, and the story's not in the table of contents, it's just there. Creeeeepy.