Eggp > Recent Status Updates

74. Michal Ajvaz - The End of the Garden, 2 stars. Man defends lizard, man defends girl, lizard drags man around.
75. Karen Joy Fowler - The Dark, 4 stars. Little boy disappears, plague follows?
76. Kathe Koja - Angels in Love, 3 stars. Woman is turned on by her neighbor's sex noises.
77. Haruki Murakami - The Ice Man, 4 stars. Woman marries unsuitable man against her family's wishes.

70. Ben Okri - Worlds That Flourish, 3 stars. Man in empty village is very late for meeting.
71. Elizabeth Hand - The Boy in the Tree, 3 stars. Empathy science experiment has unexpected results.
72. Joyce Carol Oates - Family, 3 stars. Rotating cast of relatives survives any way it can.
73. Poppy Z. Brite - His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood, 3 stars. Two dedicated goths meet the real deal.

Wiki: "They would use the notarikon, the gematria, the temurah, treating the disks like the Torah, and therefore would require as much time as had passed since the writing of the Sefer Yesirah."

Wiki: "I looked to the right, where velocipedes with huge art-nouveau wheels and draisiennes with their flat, scooterlike bars evoked gentlemen in stovepipe hats, knights of progress pedaling through the Bois de Boulogne."

64. Octavia Butler - Bloodchild, 5 stars. [2016]
65. Clive Barker - In the Hills, the Cities, 3 stars. [2017]
67. Garry Kilworth - Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands, 4 stars. Recycling unwanted body parts into pets.
69. Harlan Ellison - The Function of Dream Sleep, 3 stars. Grieving man wakes up unexpectedly.

60. Joanna Russ - The Little Dirty Girl, 3 stars. Woman befriends child while recovering from back injury.
61. M. John Harrison - The New Rays, 2 stars. Sick woman undergoes experimental medical treatment.
62. Premendra Mitra - The Discovery of Telenapota, 2 stars. Fisherman meets sad pretty girl in the middle of nowhere.
63. F. Paul Wilson - Soft, 4 stars. Father/daughter seem to be only ones left after epidemic.

Wiki: "...starting at the bottom and working its way up – sort of like a Horatio Alger success story."

Wiki: "She is fond of Otto, he’s a favourite of hers; also she feels sorry for him because he had a fight with his wife that morning, before he left on this ill-starred expedition, which may account for his recklessness."

53. Jamaica Kincaid - My Mother, 1 star. Author's serious mommy issues.
55. Bob Leman - Window, 3 stars. Crackpot opens portal onto happy family scene.
56. Ramsey Campbell - The Brood, 3 stars. Neighbor is concerned about stray animals old lady takes in.
58. William Gibson/John Shirley - The Belonging Kind, 4 stars. [2015]
59. M. John Harrison - Egnaro, 2 stars. Imaginary land or unsuccessful conspiracy to hide it.

48. Daphne Du Maurier - Don't Look Now, 5 stars. [2016]
49. Robert Aickman - The Hospice, 5 stars. [2013]
50. Dennis Etchison - It Only Comes Out at Night, 4 stars. Exhausted driver makes a rest stop.
51. James Tiptree, Jr. - The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Terrible Things to Rats, 3 stars. Scientist can't stand the cruelty of animal experimentation, then trips balls.

43. Mervyn Peake - Same Time, Same Place, 3 stars. Stroppy young man meets fascinating lady at a restaurant.
45. Mercè Rodoreda - The Salamander, 2 stars. Homewrecker escapes punishment, can't take a hint.
46. Claude Seignolle - The Ghoulbird, 2 stars. Fascinated visitor interacts with exotic animals.
47. Gahan Wilson - The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be, 3 stars. Boozy picnic at the beach attracts uninvited guests.

39. Augusto Monterroso - Mister Taylor, 2 stars. Americans can't get enough exotic imports.
40. Julio Cortázar - Axolotl, 3 stars. [2017]
41. William Sansom - A Woman Seldom Found, 4 stars. Lonely tourist is invited home by a beautiful foreign woman.
42. Charles Beaumont - The Howling Man, 3 stars. Ill American whoring his way through Europe is tended to at a monastery.

35. Margaret St. Clair - The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles, 4 stars. Overenthusiastic salesman commits a dreadful faux pas.
36. Robert Bloch - The Hungry House, 4 stars. Married couple move into creepy old house without mirrors.
37. Amos Tutuola - The Complete Gentleman, 1 star. Lady follows hunky guy home, regrets it.
38. Jerome Bixby - It's a Good Life, 4 stars. Little boy wishes away the things he doesn't like.

Wiki: "The senior gnole is a little like a Jerusalem artichoke made of India rubber, and he has small red eyes which are faceted in the same way that gemstones are."

31. William Sansom - The Long Sheet, 2 stars. Prisoners approach an impossible task in different ways.
32. Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph, 3 stars. [2013]
33. Olympe Bhêly-Quénum - A Child in the Bush of Ghosts, 2 stars. Spoiled boy runs off without telling anyone where he's going.
34. Shirley Jackson - The Summer People, 5 stars. Old vacationing couple break their routine by staying another month.

27. Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost, 3 stars. Nervous man sees something black on his commute.
28. Leonora Carrington - White Rabbits, 4 stars. Woman fulfills neighbor's odd request.
29. Donald Wollheim - Mimic, 4 stars. Cloaked neighbor was quiet and kept to himself.
30. Ray Bradbury - The Crowd, 4 stars. Man recovering from car accident sees the same faces in every crowd.

Wiki: "There is a painting by Asher Brown Durand called “Kindred Spirits,” which is often reproduced in books when the subject turns to the American landscape in the nineteenth century."

Word: "What need is there for all the cumulus of dull, surrounding clay – the slow white hinterland that weighs behind it as it swivels among the doughy, circumscribing wodges like a marble of raddled ice?"

1. a bulky mass or chunk : lump, wad

Wiki: "The humans generally try the swans. The last lot we had were the Children of Lir. However, I suppose we’re all anseriformes together."

Wiki: "If Miss Cavell had been an ant, they would have had to write on her statue: SMELL IS NOT ENOUGH."

23. Hagiwara Sakutarō - The Town of Cats, 2 stars. Dude loves to wander around tripping balls.
24. Hugh Walpole - The Tarn, 3 stars. Bitter resentful man has a (much loathed) visitor.
25. Bruno Schulz - Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, 2 stars. Son visits dead father in sleepy village.
26. Robert Barbour Johnson - Far Below, 4 stars. People work underground to keep subway tunnels safe from beasties.

19. Margaret Irwin - The Book, 2 stars. Man finds overlooked occult book in bookcase.
20. Jean Ray - The Mainz Psalter, 3 stars. Sailors take a voyage to unknown seas.
21. Jean Ray - The Shadowy Street, 4 stars. Invisible beasties attack, invisible street is looted.
22. Clark Ashton Smith - Genius Loci, 3 stars. Writer worries about painter's obsession with sinister pond.

Wiki: "There were beautiful Pearsons engravings, cut in half by order of Customs..."

Biblebots: "we are isaactown, it read solemnly. genesis 6:7."

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

14. Francis Stevens - Unseen—Unfeared, 2 stars. Ignorant man sees evil everywhere.
15. Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony, 3 stars. Visitor attends local execution.
16. Stefan Grabinski - The White Wyrak, 4 stars. Chimney sweeper recalls hazardous job.
17. H.F. Arnold - The Night Wire, 3 stars. Story of a town covered in mysterious fog.
18. H.P. Lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror, 3 stars. Family meddles with elder gods.

Wiki: "On Lammas Night, 1924, Dr Houghton of Aylesbury was hastily summoned by Wilbur Whateley, who had lashed his one remaining horse through the darkness and telephoned from Osborn’s in the village."

Lammas > Lughnasadh

10. Rabindranath Tagore - The Hungry Stones, 2 stars. Palace is haunted by horny unavailable ghost maiden(s).
11. Luigi Ugolini - The Vegetable Man, 2 stars. Traveling botanist is injured by his new discovery.
12. A. Merritt - The People of the Pit, 2 stars. Would-be explorers help escapee from their intended destination.
13. Ryunosuke Akutagawa - The Hell Screen, 4 stars. Overconfident painter gets his comeuppance.

06. Lord Dunsany - How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles, 4 stars. Burglar trains a promising apprentice.
07. Gustav Meyrink - The Man in the Bottle, 2 stars. Masquerade ball's evening entertainment is revealed.
08. Georg Heym - The Dissection, 2 stars. Doctors root around in dead guy.
09. Hanns Heinz Ewers - The Spider, 3 stars. Medical student investigates identical and unlikely suicides.

01. Alfred Kubin - The Other Side [excerpt], 2 stars. World is decaying and overrun with wild beasts.
02. F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull, 4 stars. Old sailor inherits house and noisy ghost.
03. Algernon Blackwood - The Willows, 5 stars. [2013]
04. Saki - Sredni Vashtar, 4 stars. Orphaned boy's guardian takes great pleasure in making him miserable.
05. M.R. James - Casting the Runes, 5 stars. [2016]

Wiki: "In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet."