Justin Howe's Blog, page 16

BWBC 19: Wishes and Regrets

Three stories this week. No apologies. We’re all living in this world, and the past few days have been decades. If you’re out protesting you have my admiration. Please donate to what causes you can.

All three stories are “classics” in that they’ve filtered into the culture in some way, and at least one of them is one of those stories so ubiquitous you already know it without even having to read it. They’re the kind of stories a friend or colleague will reference and you’ll nod your head l...

BWBC 18: Hearn Manuel

A thousand apologies!

I missed posting last week and I have no excuse. In fact, I’m a bit ahead with the reading, so much so that this week might have two posts. We’ll see how ambitious I get. But today’s post will be on the stories “Of a Promise Kept” by Lafcadio Hearn and “The Wizard Postponed” by Juan Manuel.

They aren’t dazzlers and are on the shorter end of stories, but they’re all right. I’m getting the feel for Manguel’s rhythm and how he’s putting together this mix-tape of an anthology....

BWBC 17: Pushkin!

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This weeks story is a gem.

It has ghosts, gamblers, tragic love affairs, and hints of black magic. All that in a short story set against the backdrop of 19th century Russian high society.

The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin

Hermann is a young soldier from a poor German family. He is obsessed with improving his station, but lack of prospects, money, and connections. He regularly joins his friends at gambling halls, but he never gambles, because he knows he doesnt have the money to risk....

BWBC 16: Allegorical Realism and Fantasy

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And were back!

Two stories today: Italo Calvinos novella The Argentine Ant and John Colliers Lady on the Grey. They could not be more different from each other.

The Argentine Ant by Italo Calvino

In a lot of ways this story is a straight realist story about a young couple that moves to a new town and have their hopes of finding an easy life there all dashed by the ants that infest the village. As the couple is increasingly tormented they seek help from their neighbors, all of who have...

BW BC 15: In This the Year of Our Lord Entropy

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Among the many unsettling things this year of our lord entropy 2020 has revealed, one that snuck up on me is how much all those weird, surrealistic Eastern European writers from the 1930s are starting to make sense. Case in point, Bruno Schulz.

I know I read Schulz back in university and thought him weird, but his full eeriness never quite strike me until I read this story of his Fathers Last Escape in Black Water. Its nothing particular or prescient. Its simply the fact that as weird as...

BW BC 14: Lady Into Fox

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David Garnetts Lady into Fox is a short novella from 1922 about a woman who turns into a fox and the problems this causes for her husband.

In its day Lady Into Fox was highly regarded, winning awards and earning praise from the likes of Virginia Wolfe, Joseph Conrad, and HG Wells. Its one of those English fantasy stories from the early 20th century, the same era that gave us Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. But, despite a reprint in 2004, its...

Thousand Year Old Vampire: Thoughts and Impressions

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Ive done a couple of play-throughs now of the game Thousand Year Old Vampire and thought Id put my impressions down here.

This isnt quite a review, just thoughts and reactions, and Im dividing it into two posts, this one with my impressions, and another post with the write-ups of the stories the game created. That one screams of Let me tell you all about my D&D character and no one who doesnt want that needs to experience that.

A tl;dr review would  Thousand Year Old Vampire is good. Is it a...

Thousand Year Old Vampire: A Tale of Two Vampires

Read this post for my overall thoughts on Thousand Year Old Vampire.

Continue reading here to learn all about the much checkered careers of Waldemar the Wolf and Antonio the Alchemist.

When I played I used two word documents. One was a character sheet. The other was a timeline where I recorded the events of their lives. I also had a few wikipedia pages open dealing with whatever epoch and area my vampires found themselves. For most of it I stuck to Italy starting in the Roman era and going...

BW BC 13: And Now the Strangeness Starts

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Hello, welcome back, Im glad you could make it.

Three more stories this week: one a flash-length excerpt from a longer story, the other two your standard slightly shorter than average short stories. Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen gives us our flash length story, an excerpt from Peter and Rosa. After that is a bit of decadent literature from Junichiro Tanizaki called Tattoo, and a humorous story from Flann OBrien called John Duffys Brother.

From Peter and Rosa by Isak Dinesen

Did you know that...

BW BC 12: Days of Future Present

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And were back with three short stories this week. The first one was my favorite of the bunch.

Split Second Daphne Du Maurier

Mrs. Ellis is a fussy widow. She likes everything to be in its proper place and stresses a lot about her adolescent daughter whos away at school. While taking a post-lunch stroll, a delivery van narrowly misses Mrs. Ellis, and things turn strange after that. As she attempts to make sense of the new world she finds herself in, we, the readers, get a deep dive into a...