Forrest > Recent Status Updates

"A Few Hypotheses Concerning My Previous Reincarnations" is exactly what it purports to be, which is a baffling thing for any reader. Suffice it to say that the "S" word (-uicide) figures prominently in the narrative as the author tries to piece together his past life. It's a whimsical and tragic examination of identity and the twisted roads one can go down when reflecting on the self.

While reading Prisms of the Oneiroi, I am using a Winterthur Poison Book Project bookmark. The irony of reading "The Temple Consumes the Rose," which features a green book by Sar Peladan, is not lost on me. I might also be tempted to consume such a book, if I was to be rewarded the visions of Latoure, even if it cost me my life. Such is the price of true art. A moving occult tale.

For the first time ever, I physically own all of the books in my TBR list. It helps that my list is only 21 books long. Still, it feels good to have what I want and not be hungering all the time for more. Of course, with Christmas around the corner, my kids are bound to buy me a book or two. But I'm ramping down on buying and ramping up on reading and re-reading old favorites in 2025.

Was able to secure a signed copy of Quentin Crisp's I Reign in Hell. Apparently, they are selling out fast. Very much looking forward to that read. Crisp's writing is . . . well . . . crisp!

"Simulations" takes the narrator from kingship to poverty to being a renegade and, finally, to nothing but a "child's hallucination". Manganelli, like Beckett in his famous trilogy, breaks down the character to the point of less than nothing, a mere figment of imagination. The last paragraph is a masterful paradigm shift from the observer to the observed; an existentialist epiphany.

"Corfdrager" examines one of my favorite enigmatic pieces of art, Bruegel's "The Beekeepers and the Birdnester" as a catalyst for the narrator's encounter with his family's past and his own inheritance via a seemingly academic investigation. One wonders, by the end, if the academics aren't the most horrific aspect of the story. The dive into apiary lore is more sinister and more irresistible than one might imagine.

"A King" may be an existentialist shudder from the whispering of death or it may be a eulogy to solipsism itself. But why not both? In any case it is as bold and majestic as the titlliberally.

I absolutely see why Calvino praised Manganelli's work and why Atlas published this book. The first 50-ish pages alone are worth the price of entry. Far more, if you ask me.

NTS: quote p. 54-55 libreally.

Manganelli's essay "Literature as Deception" flatters the writer's vanity, crowning him buffoon, but in the sense of The Fool in the tarot. The foolishness is freedom and the buffoonery wisdom. The writer is, in essence, the trickster god of words and semantics. I wholeheartedly agree with his assesment. At least I flatter myself thusly.

Ligotti has nothing on Locker when it comes to existential dread on a cosmic scale. This was the sort of suffocating fear of the universe that Lovecraft strove for, but Locker has found. "The Dreaming Plateau" is horror of a different order of magnitude, made all the more impactful by the elision of the most purple prose. The poetic heart is intact, but without un-necessary frills, with terrifying clarity.

My lunchtime reading walks have become decidedly colder. Trying to figure out how I'm going to read with mittens on over the next few months.

I've been waiting to read this one for a while. So glad that Martin signed this copy for me!

Aha! There are the vampires! Just as I suspected!

As much a morality tale as an adventure tale, "Legacy from Sorn Fen," by Andre Norton is told in a register one step down from Dunsany's high flights. This suits the story more, with a grit that will appeal to most gaming tables. The biggest takeaway is to be careful what you wish for. Anyone who has been playing D&D long enough realizes the potential pitfalls of fulfilled desires. "Is that what you really want?"

I have heard A. Merritt's "The People of the Pit" as a great exemplar of pulp weird fiction. That may be true, but the telling of the tale felt off to me. The mimicry of Lovecraft's prose wore thin, and the high vocabulary of a character that clearly wouldn't use it was also a hindrance, throwing me out of my willing suspension of disbelief. So, it might be iconic, but it isn't particularly good.

"The Fortress Unconquerable, Save for Sacnoth" is everything you'd expect from Lord Dunsany. I have to admit that his penchant for hyperbole in all of his stories is simultaneously endearing and annoying. But he wrote in a epic mythological register, so it's to be expected. Still a great story, especially if you haven't read Dunsany before. Plenty of inspiration here for dungeoneers old and young, though!

Someone here is a vampire, I'm fairly certain. Probably Dionysios.

I will run out of words before I can explain how absolutely marvelous C.L. Moore's "Black God's Kiss" is. Jirel of Joiry is so well-realized in this one story that I immediately ran off to find more of Moore's work. She is a complex character who encounters turns of emotion and morality that reflect an inner reality absent in most Sword and Sorcery. And Moore's Hell is truly a Hell; terrible, yet beautiful.

Cloudsley's letter had me laughing out loud, something I don't often do while reading. "I loved that horse," indeed! Tristram Shandy meets Bertie Wooster meets a . This is a comedy of manners that would make Shakespeare proud.