my umpteenth blog

I have a really passive aggressive desire to post only about quilting and other..."domestic" hobbies that take up my time from now on, but for now I will resist.

I spent my lunch break today reading Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". It's October (I thought I'd let you know just in case that fact has escaped your notice for the last 26 days), so I wanted something slightly Halloweeny, and what says "Halloween!" more than H.P. Lovecraft? Nothing.

Anyways, I just started and had only gotten through 4 pages over the last few days, but after today I am COMPLETELY HOOKED. It was quite a trial to tear myself away and go back to cataloging. Have you ever read it? Or any Lovecraft? You probably should, he basically invented the horror genre. But he wrote horror as it should be, not trying to substitute gore for horror. I think true horror should focus more on suspense, on the terror of the unknown, than on known, conventional villains (like any slasher story). I. Can't. Take. Slasher films.

I don't really have anything intelligent to say about any of this. Mostly just, if you haven't read any Lovecraft, you probably should (especially if you're looking to read something scary that will still let you sleep at night). Once you do, you'll start seeing references to him all over the place. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies (well, anything from anyone about Batman really- for some reason Lovecraft pops up a lot), Guillermo Del Toro references Lovecraft all the time, I feel like anything involving a protagonist turning to old musty archives for answers to their deepening fear is a reference to Lovecraft (I don't know where that meme started if not with him). If I paid more attention to things, I could go on longer. But I don't, so I won't.