Dev’s Comments (group member since Sep 09, 2017)

Dev’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

haha well it depends on whether i like it or not. i mean i'm sure i will bc it's seanan but this year i have not been reading all that much

no i doubt i will be able to start until sunday

ok looks like i just read one more so

★★★★☆ “The Hell Screen,” 1918, Ryunosuke Akutagawa

this one i really liked although i wasn't wild about how (view spoiler)[his daughter was killed to punish him, but i guess he died to so ...whatever. it was written over 100 years ago so i guess not that bad all things considered (hide spoiler)]. the language seemed a bit stilted at first which i assume is due to the translation but i got into it more as it went along.

i think i've read a few more since i posted but didn't do a review bc i wasnt sure if you guys were still going lol i'll try to post something tonight.

i don't remember the specifics of the plot on this one but i do remember being very ??????? about it. agree that i hope the new one is slightly less covenant-y lol. also the new thread is up for whenever

@Mods can we get a thread for for 2/26?

ok i guess i should go request a thread for the new one. i'll ask for it for next wednesday but we can get to whenever

so you guys are about to start book 8 right? we totally don't need to start the new book as soon as it is released but i want to make sure i'm up to date on where we are lol if you're on book 8 i assume we'll be doing the new one sometime towards the end of next week?

and another one

★★★★☆ “The People of the Pit,” 1918, A. Merritt

actually really enjoyed this one so i'll give it my 2nd 4 star rating of the book. i think i mostly like the slightly longer ones because there is a bit more meat to them and it really has time to get an atmosphere going. this one i definitely think had a good mix of weird and creepy and also reminded me of a couple episodes of the magnus archives so i'm wondering if the writer maybe read this at some point since he reads a lot of old horror stuff.

did another one today

★★★☆☆ “The Vegetable Man,” 1917, Luigi Ugolini

this one was a bit short but i just like the idea of it and i thought it was very readable. kind of reminded me of an early version of swamp thing lol

finally did another one of these

★★★☆☆ “The Hungry Stones,” 1916, Rabindranath Tagore

i thought this one had a lot of really good imagery but it seemed like maybe there should have been more to it. i guess it did reference arabian nights a few times so maybe it was supposed to feel like a part of something larger, but i don't think the intro said there was a longer book or anything. still, it's nice to get a perspective that isn't european in this anthology.

sooo i'm thinking i might just not reread the antimony books right now. i'm just reading a lot less now than i was last year and i also don't really want to i think because i've read them so much more recently. but i'll hang around and then whenever you guys are done we can read the new one

sorry cathy i still haven't started. i am just not feeling it right now but i'll try to do it sometime soon :(

hey guys, i know we're rarely on time for these anymore but i will probably start it tomorrow or wednesday lol

lol that is one that i liked well enough at the time but now can't remember a damn thing about but yeah no idea what a gnole is. maybe he could have filled us in if it was longer -_-;

i know that it's not really feasible here because this is such a long book with so many stories written over a long period of time but i do really love an anthology where everything is a fairly uniform length. i always get a bit tetchy when i read one story that is 10k and then the next one is only 2k or something. idk why but for some reason it really throws me off. really i think about 4-8k is the perfect length for a short story for me.

yeah with casting the runes i was like ...should i try to read it again? and then i just decided that i didn't actually care lol but i was amazed how much i remembered nothing from it

haha yeah a lot of these were not very memorable just from the title. i mean screaming skull, man in the bottle, dissection, and the willows are memorable but just because they are such literal titles for what happens in the stories. and sredni vashtar because it's so baffling to me. but yeah the other ones i'm just like um which one was that again??

i definitely would not want to read the rest of the other side, although i guess it might make the whole thing make more sense. idk it just seemed like one of those things where they pile weird thing on top of weird thing and then MAYBE it makes some amount of sense at the end but i just generally don't like things like that. like i'm good with weird but there still need to be ...rules. or a point or something

I think I'll try this one. I'm going to backdate to the beginning of the year because I just like to have yearly challenges actually match up with the calendar year.

[and a reminder to me here that i can't use short books or GNs]

[A] an award winner
► Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
[B] a book with a brown cover
► The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe by Joseph Fink
[C] a classic novel
► Vondel's Lucifer by Joost van den Vondel
[D] a debut novel
► Prisoner of Ice and Snow by Ruth Lauren
[E] an enormous book (600+ pages)
► Ten Arrows of Iron by Sam Sykes
[F] a book you got for free
► The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung
[G] a guilty pleasure
► Enemies like You by Annika Martin
[H] a book with a happy ending
► Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
[I] a book with ice cream on the cover
► Death or Ice Cream by Gareth P. Jones
[J] any book published in July
► Dakota Bell and the Wastes of Time by Brian Olsen
[K] author's name starts with K (first or last)
► Warriors, Witches, Women: Mythology's Fiercest Females by Kate Hodges
[L] a book you borrowed from the library
► The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket
[M] a memoir
► The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara
[N] a new release (2020)
► Jamis Bachman, Ghost Hunter by Jen Jensen
[O] a book that is # 1 in a series
► Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
[P] a book that has a pink object on the cover
► The Thornthwaite Betrayal by Gareth P. Jones
[Q] a book with queen in the title
► Queen of Coin and Whispers by Helen Corcoran
[R] a book recommended to you
► The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
[S] a character who plays sports
► Foul Is Fair by Hannah Capin
[T] written by two authors
► The Buying of Lot 37 by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
[U] an ugly cover (open to interpretation)
► Silent Pantheon by Eric Nierstedt
[more 'good idea, subpar execution' but I rarely think a cover is outright ugly so]
[V] a book set somewhere you always wanted to visit [Los Angeles]
► The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer
[W] with a witch or wizard as a character
► Witches of Ash and Ruin by E. Latimer
[X] an author who has an "x" in their name
► The Whites of Their Eyes: A Collection of Queer Horror by Xen
[Y] young adult bestseller
► The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee
[Z] a book with zero in the page count [320p]
► The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

finally read the last january story today! i actually really liked this one and decided to give it my first 4 star rating of the book

★★★★☆ “The Spider,” 1915, Hanns Heinz Ewers

(view spoiler)[i guess it was still pretty straight forward once the woman across the street was revealed but i think it was still well written and definitely had more of a modern tone. also heck yeah supernatural female murderers lol. this reminded me a lot of the screaming skull story from earlier actually but i think the stream of conscious narration style was much better done in this one and it actually built suspense instead of just 'what is this dude going on about' (hide spoiler)]

i did two today and hope to do the last one for this month tomorrow. these were both incredibly short but i did like them in spite of that

★★★☆☆ “The Man in the Bottle,” 1912, Gustav Meyrink

i really wish this one was longer because i love stuff with marionettes and also the (view spoiler)[thing with the performers dying in front of the audience reminded me a bit of the prestige movie (hide spoiler)] definitely has a good atmosphere but sooo sooo short

★★★☆☆ “The Dissection,” 1913, Georg Heym

this one is definitely more of a prose-poem like it says in the introduction paragraph but again i think it had some really good imagery and interesting ideas

the next story is a bit longer so i'm hoping it will be good lol