On Reading Horror, Especially HP Lovecraft #MondaysBookishMusings

Sometimes I wish we didn't categorize books. For the longest time I refused, almost viscerally, to read Horror. Fear, gore, unsavory hideous characters is what I thought. Then, while participating in a reading challenge of New England authors, I forced myself to read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by the (in my mind) notorious, …

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The Christmas Banquet, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)

Who is this impassive man? We seem to know him well, here in our city, and know nothing of him but what is credible and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton–perhaps that may solve the riddle! This …

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