What are you reading?

[General Ceel]

The Horror in the Burying-Ground by H.P. Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/VLXFiacYaRU?si=u3_rV0RA-pL5aXfw

"The Horror in the Burying-Ground is the 6th and final (released) collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. It first appeared in the May 1937 edition of 'Weird Tales' just months after Lovecraft's early death, although it may have been written much earlier.

In the 1880's, tragedy comes to the backwoods town of Stillwater. The local drunk, Tom Sprague goes first, leaving behind his attractive and isolated sister Sophie. After accidentally jabbing himself with his proprietary embalming fluid, the town undertaker, Henry Thorndike, goes next. But Johnny Dow, the local idiot, knows something that we don't. Stillwater is cursed."

[General Ceel]

The Slaying of the Monster by H.P Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/XkafN0zPNjI?si=yYeRhIi9cKyTuRQe

[General Ceel]

The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast by H.P Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/alJ6AUdsZnA?si=03xF4K6-x97Jdc27

[General Ceel]

The Tree On The Hill by: HP Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/JUdJWDmfOc0?si=VyOVvthhwjDzEx23

"The Tree on the Hill" is a short story written by horror author H. P. Lovecraft and his correspondent Duane W. Rimel. It was written in 1934 and published in 1940 in Polaris.

The story is written from a first-person perspective. It depicts the narrator exploring the outskirts of a city called Hampden and finding a special tree atop an unusual hill. From the hill, the man witnesses the Bitterroot Mountains, a seemingly impossible feat of geography. The tree makes him daydream about a temple or tomb in a land with three red suns. The temple was half-violet, half-blue. Some shadows attract the narrator inside, where he sees three flaming eyes watching him from the darkness. He awakens later in a different location, with his clothing torn and dirty.

With his camera, the narrator takes multiple pictures of the tree and shows them to his friend Theunis. Later, they examine each photograph and notice three shadows projected by the tree, indicating that there were three suns causing them, as seen in the narrator's dream.

Theunis tells a story about a shadow or dark force which was repelled by an Egyptian priest, Ka-Nefer, during the Year of the Black Goat. He used a peculiar amber gem to divert the dark entity. Afterwards, Theunis uses a camera obscura, and a similar gem in his possession, to examine the photos taken earlier. Suddenly, something in the photo renders him unconscious. Upon awakening, Theunis instructs the narrator to burn the pictures and lock up the gem. He does as instructed, but glances at a drawing in the photograph made by Theunis. The narrator recoils in horror at the sight of a clawed hand, with tendrils, reaching for a spot in the grass where he received his vision.

Theunis mentions that his story takes place during the Year of the Black Goat, probably a reference to Lovecraft's invented deity Shub-Niggurath. Theunis recurs in Rimel's story "The Jewels of Charlotte" (Unusual Stories, May-June 1935), which may also have been revised by Lovecraft."

[General Ceel]

The Battle that Ended the Century by: H.P. Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/y2oKaDxZTmU?si=7d4NarJFsX7n5pBL

"Originally privately circulated amongst the Lovecraft Circle, this comedy short story is a plethora of in-jokes and references to the members of the circle under their nicknames, alter egos or other humorous names. H. P. Lovecraft wrote most of it, with additions and a Glossary of Names at the end of the short work provided by R. H. Barlow."

"On the eve of the year 2001 a vast crowd of interested spectators were present amidst the romantic ruins of Cohen’s Garage, on the former site of New York, to witness a fistic encounter between two renowned champions of the strange-story firmament—Two-Gun Bob, the Terror of the Plains, and Knockout Bernie, the Wild Wolf of West Shokan. [The Wolf was fresh from his correspondence course in physical training, sold to him by Mr. Arthur Leeds.] Before the battle the auguries were determined by the venerated Thibetan Lama Bill Lum Li, who evoked the primal serpent-god of Valusia and found unmistakable signs of victory for both sides. Cream-puffs were inattentively vended by Wladislaw Brenryk—the partakers being treated by the official surgeons, Drs. D. H. Killer and M. Gin Brewery."

[General Ceel]

Till A' the Seas by: H.P. Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/wGWFzC0Pyd4?si=_GqE08Gwu8IgB8hN

"Till A' the Seas" is a post-apocalyptic short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow. The title is a reference to the poem "A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns.

[General Ceel]

The Challenge From Beyond, by HP Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/cQm6WX5DhUo?si=EWce45TdLXkVqwkV

"The Challenge from Beyond" is a 1935 horror short story written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, and Abraham Merritt. It was published in Fantasy Magazine and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos."

A man camping in Canada finds a strange cube and finds his consciousness whisked away to a distance galaxy. Read the story, watch the video and find out what happens next!

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The Disinterment by HP Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/C_Q55Atwddw?si=UYoSwNuhrEpx2eKP

"The Disinterment is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft and Duane W. Rimel, although Rimel later disavowed the collaboration.

"The Disinterment" was first published in the January 1937 edition of pulp magazine Weird Tales. It has since been reissued many times, and has been translated into both Portuguese and German.

The story tells of a leprosy sufferer, who, instead of living with the debilitating condition, opts for death and resurrection at the hands of a witch doctor.

The sufferer contracts the disease whilst nursing his brother, also a leper, in the Philippines. Since leprosy, if discovered, would condemn the man to a lifetime of exile in a leper colony in appalling conditions, he embarks on a wild plan to conceal his condition and find an exotic "cure" with the help of his longtime friend who is a doctor of medicine and also an occultist. The story becomes a kind of reversal of Herbert West--Reanimator, told from the point of view of the victim, rather than the doctor..."

[General Ceel]

In The Walls of Eryx by H.P. Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/Yv5yTF6KS1M?si=73RuF5lvdfJnipUf

"In the Walls of Eryx" is a short story by American writers H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth J. Sterling, written in January 1936 and first published in Weird Tales magazine in October 1939. It is a science fiction story involving space exploration in the near future.

The story, written in first-person narrative, depicts the life and death of a prospector on the planet Venus who, while working for a mining company, becomes trapped in an invisible maze.

[General Ceel]

The Night Ocean by H.P. Lovecraft
https://youtu.be/UHclzwGmXfA?si=gwXwKU8_L5EDZmJT

"The Night Ocean by R. H. Barlow with H. P. Lovecraft is a short story first published in The Californian vol. 4, no. 3 (Winter 1936)."

After pouring his soul into painting a mural for a contest, an artist seeks solitude and healing at a remote seaside cottage. Strange occurrences and a growing feeling of dread of the ocean and its mysteries slowly encroach to dominate his consciousness.

"The Night Ocean" is subtle and nuanced, and encapsulates the existential dread of Lovecraft's flavor of cosmic horror, but where it differs from many of his other tales, in how it embraces a "less is more" aesthetic. The masters of horror know that sometimes its what you don't see that scares you the most.

"The Night Ocean" is the final story in the collection "Medusa's Coil and Others," and so brings to close this second phase of "Let's Talk, H.P. Lovecraft," a journey I first embarked upon in 2018. The show is going on a second extended hiatus, but I promise to return again one day to finish what I started. There are a still a few more Lovecraft stories I have not reviewed out there lurking in the darkness, along with his poetry and other writings. And beyond that lies the entirety of the "Cthulhu Mythos" stories written by other authors.

Thank you for joining me on the journey... so far.

"Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England."

VOLUMES USED
- Medusa's Coil and Others
-The Crawling Chaos and Others
-The Ancient Track
-The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (Chartwell Books)

#hplovecraft #lovecraft #lovecraftian #shortstory #literature #education

[Danster]

I need to crack on with The Hobbit that I'm reading my son, it's been slow going.

I'm also reading the Harry Potter series to my 7 year old daughter, we started ages ago and are currently about a third of the way through Book 5, The Order of the Phoenix.

Selfishly, I'm more interested in The Hobbit, as I've never actually read Tolkien and want to get cracking at LOTR, but need to read The Hobbit first.

I'll be honest, the reason our progress is slow is that it hasn't really gripped us in the way other books have as of yet. We're just shy of half way through, but unlike with Harry Potter, or Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, or even Willard Price books, my boy isn't pestering me to read to him with The Hobbit. I'm hoping as it progresses and starts to get more lively he'll get hooked. I'm also anticipating LOTR being much more exciting that The Hobbit.