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ksmithI actually read a new book. Started it, finished it, and everything. I should probably be ashamed to admit this on this list, but all my reading last year was either research or rereads of old favorites. Sometimes I didn't even read the whole book, but just favorite sections. Just didn't have the mind to try anything new, I guess.
Anyway, Hell House by Richard Matheson. I would read a few sections, then finish up with a section or two of Pterry's Guards! Guards!, an old favorite to cleanse my mind before I went to sleep. Kind of like mental sorbet.
I have read short stories by Matheson and liked them, and he is acknowledged as a horror master. Not sure Hell House was his best work. I found the writing clunky. He displayed some writing tics that got under my skin, such as overuse of adverbs. Is "startledly" really a word? I felt as though there was a sheet of glass separating me from the characters. I didn't care about any of them, and by about the 2/3 point, was reading just to see how Matheson explained matters.
I won't rehash the plot. The book was written in 1970, but to me it felt as though it had been written in the 50s despite the sometimes graphic descriptions of the de Sade-like things that went on in the house and the effect that the psychic aftershocks had on the characters. To me, it held the promise of nastiness, yet didn't really deliver. It needed a good rewrite.
Guards! Guards! was as ever it was.
Anyway, Hell House by Richard Matheson. I would read a few sections, then finish up with a section or two of Pterry's Guards! Guards!, an old favorite to cleanse my mind before I went to sleep. Kind of like mental sorbet.
I have read short stories by Matheson and liked them, and he is acknowledged as a horror master. Not sure Hell House was his best work. I found the writing clunky. He displayed some writing tics that got under my skin, such as overuse of adverbs. Is "startledly" really a word? I felt as though there was a sheet of glass separating me from the characters. I didn't care about any of them, and by about the 2/3 point, was reading just to see how Matheson explained matters.
I won't rehash the plot. The book was written in 1970, but to me it felt as though it had been written in the 50s despite the sometimes graphic descriptions of the de Sade-like things that went on in the house and the effect that the psychic aftershocks had on the characters. To me, it held the promise of nastiness, yet didn't really deliver. It needed a good rewrite.
Guards! Guards! was as ever it was.
