2020 October Time Reads: Black Cat, Carmilla & Rosemary's Baby

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Classic Theme Reads for October

Your choices are:
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe (24 pages)
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (108 pages)
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin (308 pages)

Just let us know what your reading along with your comments under this thread.

"Camilla has a Black Cat that Rosemary and Guy are cat watching for! lol"

Which one or all are you reading??

[Trisha]

It has to be the Black Cat first - just don’t tell my cat!

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

I will be reading The Black Cat.

I read Rosemary's Baby in high school when it was first published. It is a strange and creepy book.

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Trisha wrote: "It has to be the Black Cat first - just don’t tell my cat!"

Hahahaha!


I too plan on reading Black Cat which goes well with my fur baby Luna who is black as well :)

[Bernard]

After reading The Black Cat, you may look at your pets differently. But I will risk it !

[Jean]

I'm going to read The Black Cat and Carmilla.

[Gilbert]

Reading The Black Cat And Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. This includes the following tales:The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar; The Imp of the Perverse; THE BLACK CAT; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Premature Burial; The Oblong Box; MS Found in a Bottle; A Descent into the Maelstrom; and, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

[Jazzy]

I have listened to the audiobook of The Black Cat today and the narrator is a right bastard! If you love animals, I don't recommend this book.

[Kathy]

I listened to the Black Cat. It was gruesome. Poe writes some creepy stuff.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Maybe I'll pass on that one then and read The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft instead. You can tell that he likes cats.

[Kathy]

That story is in my collection of Lovecraft, Rosemarie. I think I'll try that one.

[Trisha]

Kathy wrote: "I listened to the Black Cat. It was gruesome. Poe writes some creepy stuff."

Thanks for the warning - I’ll read something else instead!

[Jazzy]

Rosemarie wrote: "Maybe I'll pass on that one then and read The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft instead. You can tell that he likes cats."

oh yes, he loves cats, and that was a much better story!

[Jean]

I'm in the minority, I enjoyed it.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

That's good to hear, Jean.

[Jazzy]

As a university student, I had a lovely black cat once and my neighbour killed him with a hammer. Perhaps that coloured my interpretation of the story.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

That is so sad, Jazzy. 😿

[Jazzy]

Yes it was absolutely heart-wrenching

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Jean wrote: "I'm in the minority, I enjoyed it."

Im glad you did. I still plan on reading this one.

[Kathy]

I'm glad I read The Black Cat, and I appreciate how Poe creates "mad" characters. It was a bit hard to listen to since I love my Kitty!

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Kathy it sound like the feelings I had when I read Cujo by Stephen King.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

I will just have to reread The Black Cat since there are such mixed opinions.

[Jazzy]

The end was clever for the time but has now become cliched, it is the cruelty I was uncomfortable with.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

I have just finished reading The Black Cat and the narrator got just what he deserved.

[Kathy]

So true, Rosemarie!

[Gilbert]

I finished the short stories in this collection of Poe's. The Black Cat seems to have some resemblance to The TellTale Heart and the Cask of Amontillado, the rest serving up a good degree of horror for the season. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, after 50 pages is a bore and so I'm moving on.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Wise decision, Gilbert. The book is very disjointed and fragmented but it does have some very gory descriptive writing. Poe is much better at short stories--and poetry!

[Gilbert]

As a result of which, I am moving on to The Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories also by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a collection of 14 of his short stories

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Poor Pluto! I think the second cat was Karma...
I think he literally lost his mind.

Reading this one now
One Summer Night by Ambrose Bierce

[Jean]

I scratched Carmilla. This may be for another time.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

I like Ambrose Pierce's short stories, Lesle.

[Bernard]

Jean wrote: "I scratched Carmilla. This may be for another time."

I found the book just too long. The film version, "The vampire lovers", is much better.

[Bernard]

Rosemarie wrote: "I like Ambrose Pierce's short stories, Lesle."

I learned that his nickname was Bitter Bierce. A clever bit of alliteration, but I do not find him bitter, he just had a clear eyed view of human behaviour.

[Gilbert]

One of the stories in the Poe collection The Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories is "The Masque of the Red Death".
I strongly urge any and all to read this. Then put this story in context of the world today. Be prepared to be....

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Great suggestion!

[Jean]

Bernard wrote: "Jean wrote: "I scratched Carmilla. This may be for another time."

I found the book just too long. The film version, "The vampire lovers", is much better."

I'll see if I can find the film version. Thanks!

[John_Dishwasher]

I thought Carmilla was good in parts and awful in others. I was more impressed with it after the GR blurb told me that it influenced Bram Stoker’s version. Maybe Le Fanu’s tale was rougher because he was breaking new ground, in a way. Anyway, I kept trying to pin down some theme driving it and couldn’t. Then I realized that many vampire stories, including Le Fanu’s, share this basic theme: Evil is not neutral. It comes looking for you. And sometimes it is sexy.

[Jess]

I've just started Rosemary's Baby, Looking forward to a spooky read!

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Jess wrote: "I've just started Rosemary's Baby, Looking forward to a spooky read!"

Best wishes during your spoky read Jess!

[John_Dishwasher]

The Black Cat is sadistic and unpleasant. Jazzy's right that it's not for animal lovers. And Kathy's word gruesome definitely applies. It was cool though how Poe took the idea of the black cat as a symbol of evil and fleshed it out.

[Georgina]

I'd read The Black Cat before and it's not from. I really enjoyed Carmilla though, I did change editions after starting as the first translation I had was awful. It was a free kindle one and it felt like they'd run it through a computer to do it, the Gutenberg edition was good though.
Is anyone reading Rosemary's Baby?

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

Carmilla was written in English, Georgina. But sometimes the free version is edited.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

I read Rosemary’s Baby in high school when it was first published. I thought it was a very strange book.

[Georgina]

Oh no, that’s me showing my lack of literary knowledge again! I don’t know how they managed to do such a bad job then, there were whole paragraphs that just didn’t make any sense.

[Rosemarie, Northern Roaming Scholar]

That’s too bad but I’m glad you found a good version.

[Gilbert]

Just started Frankensteinby Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

[Shaina]

I read The Black Cat a few months ago and Carmilla this month. I really enjoyed both but preferred Carmilla maybe because I love cats. The only thing that surprised me in Carmilla was the sexual/ erotic aspect (I wasn't expecting it at all).

I think I will save Rosemary's Baby for next year as I have read enough spooky stuff this month.

[Lesle, Appalachain Bibliophile]

Shaina wrote: "I think I will save Rosemary's Baby for next year as I have read enough spooky stuff this month...."

I get that Shaina! Can only handle so much of that myself.

[Bernard]

Does not the spooky stuff end tonight?

[John_Dishwasher]

Georgina wrote: "Oh no, that’s me showing my lack of literary knowledge again! I don’t know how they managed to do such a bad job then, there were whole paragraphs that just didn’t make any sense."

There were a couple of chapters in the middle of Carmilla where the prose was so bad that I found it literally insulting to read. Your attributing that crap to a translator was generous compared to what I was thinking. But the early chapters were digestible and the later ones. How that could happen is a total mystery to me.