Rob Atkinson > Recent Status Updates

Genuinely chilling and unsettling stories, the perfect read for the Halloween season! I'd expected more hackneyed tropes...or that Lovecraft's plot devices and stylistic flourishes might now seem trite through their great influence on and emulation by later horror writers...but I've been carried along effortlessly and the stories still have the ability to shock, and evoke a sense of the uncanny.

Having enjoyed "The Borgias" on DVD, I'm curious to investigate the real story behind the drama. I expect the Showtime period drama takes as many liberties with the facts as "The Tudors" did, but expect the simple truth must be just as juicy and fascinating...

Marvelous historical fiction, on a par with Robert Graves. Just one thing about this edition bugs me: why did the designer use David's "Oath of the Horatii" to illustrate the cover? The legend is Roman and has nothing to do with the story or its setting. All the more egregious as the very same artist painted "The Death of Socrates", which would have been perfectly apt.

Reading this novel by a favorite author for the second time, as it's partly set in the waning days of the Roman Empire, when the last pagans/philosophers in the Classical tradition were under siege by Christian orthodoxy -- apropos to "The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason", a history of the period I've just finished. I read it last just after its release, about 20 years ago.

Reading this novel by a favorite author for the second time, as it's partly set in the waning days of the Roman Empire, when the last pagans/philosophers in the Classical tradition were under siege by Christian orthodoxy -- apropos to "The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason", a history of the period I've just finished. I read it last just after its release, about a decade ago.

It's become apparent to me that the author uses [sic] to highlight premises in any quotation with which he does not agree, a usage I've never encountered before, and one that is rather off putting. The sources speak for themselves, and he clearly expounds his own view in the text. It's an obtrusive and annoying practice.

Still not an easy read, but interesting on the foundations of Church dogma, and the tortured logic and apocryphal sources that were drawn upon to create it (In such instances as the perpetual virginity of Mary, for example).
The author has an aggravating habit of inserting '[sic]' in quotations he cites, where there is no apparent misspelling or malapropism, which I've found baffling. The notes don't elucidate.

Pretty heavy sledding. Starts out like a Philosophy 101 textbook and then segues into a history of the early church.

Great chapters on the Tweed Ring and their crimes, early in the book...which evidently was written in the midst of the scandal. The accounts are as fresh as today's newspaper, flavored with righteous indignation and with biographical sketches of all the principals of the Tweed ring.

First impression: this book could have used some tighter editing. More than once Hughes repeats himself, saying essentially the same thing in the same words within several pages, which is a bit tiresome. He also errs factually, putting Justinian's reign in the 5th, rather than the 6th, century. That said, his Prologue does capture the sense of wonder that one's first exposure to the grandeur of Rome elicits.

Stoker's "Dracula" is a great read...gripping and really macabre, with flashes of unexpected humor.