Bobby Luke > Recent Status Updates

These knights cause themselves so many self inflicted wounds by constantly insisting to fight each other because of pride, even when they are in the middle of fighting bad guys! Then after they fight they realize that they are actually friends and regret fighting each other. Just have some self control you idiots and don’t let pride dictate everything you do. 🤦‍♂️

Also, Sir Kay is an idiot and should stop running his mouth. Every time he tries to mock someone he is wrong. Doesn’t listen to any of the other knights that call him out for it either. Really hoping someone (or multiple someone’s) shut his dang mouth at some point here.

The concept of “courtly love” is so unfamiliar, confusing and silly to me. Knight professes his love to a lady he can’t have, typically a queen who is already married. Spends his whole life doing acts of bravery and service for her. In the few instances where a knight weds an available, unmarried lady - it is considered a scandalous, unfaithful betrayal to his “lady” that he couldn’t be with anyway. Dumb

Trying to blast out a few books here on New Year’s Eve to meet my reading goal. 🤣😅

Book #2 of the Time Magazine 100 Greatest Fantasy Books of All time, let’s go!!

“If I were Alma, and Korihor came attacking me about the love and existence of God, there is a lot I could point out to him to prove my belief, but I think I would just take him to the beach-or toss him an orange.”

Always excited for Chronicles of Narnia references!

Haha - Dr. Who Reference!!

“Intolerance has been the greatest hindrance to progress in every period of time; yet under the sable cloak of perverted zeal for religion, nations, while boasting of their civilization, and professed ministers of the Gospel of Christ, have stained the pages of the world’s history with the record of such unholy deeds of persecution as to make the heavens weep.”

I am so excited!!

“The Haunter in the Dark” - Pretty good way to end this collection. Short, scary, and interesting.

“The Shadow out of Time” - It was interesting, but overly long for what happens and what is revealed. The ending was gripping, but ultimately didn’t pay off as much as I would have liked.

“The Tree on the Hill” - Short, doesn’t reveal very much. Interesting, but pales in comparison to the other stories that came before it, especially the fantastic ones that I have just previously read.

“Out of the Aeons” - Great story, but found myself frustrated that all of the cultists that attempted things in the museum were foreigners. Giving HPL a bit of the benefit of the doubt in that these stories were written in a different time, and he has bordered on racism in some of the other tales, but this one felt much more blatant and outright. I also wish they would have tried giving it the true scroll.

“The Thing on the Doorstep” - Very scary. Also glad that this collection had us read The Shadow Over Innsmouth prior to this, helped immensely to understand what was going on and how it was connected to the larger mythos. I did find myself wishing there was more at the end of the story - lot of things left up in the air.

“The Horror in the Museum” - A bit more classical horror, centered around a Lovecraftian entity. Rhan-Tegoth was scary! Interestingly, this story came out the same year that “Mystery of the Wax Museum” hit theaters (1933), making it one of the two earliest “wax museum” horror stories (at least according to the bit of digging that I have done).

“The Man of Stone” - Fun little story (as fun as Lovecraftian horror gets anyway), I enjoyed it - especially that the one character gets revenge in the end.

“The Dreams in the Witch House” - For some reason the title alone of this one had me scared, though it didn’t turn out near as scary as where my imagination had taken me. The character of Brown Jenkins was a little weird to me, but I did enjoy the story tying the Cthulhu Mythos to witchcraft from the 1600s, and also that there was an obvious effect of the crucifix on the evil characters.

“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” - Really liked this one. A lot more fast paced than the previous story, especially in the later chapters which were very exciting. Also a good twist at the end (that had kind of been spoiled for me thanks to the internet - but was still good!)

“At the Mountains of Madness” - Ended well, and I enjoyed all of the history and detail of Lovecraft’s world that the story gives us. That being said - this story drug out unnecessarily (narrator just needed to get to the point instead of constantly telling us how bad what he was going to tell us was)and because of that thus far it is my least favorite of the stories.

“The Mound” - like a spooky version of the lost city of El Dorado, with a little Pocahontas mixed in. Was a nice change of pace.

“The Whisperer in Darkness” - Really interesting. Felt more science fiction at times than horror- though there was plenty of horror as well. As is typical with a lot of these stories, he left a lot to the imagination of the reader - which somehow makes it scarier. What dark secrets was the narrator holding back? What actually happened? What we think happened is what I expected - but we will never know!

“The Dunwich Horror” - really liked this one. Academics fighting evil reminded me a little of Dracula. Really liked the setup and progression. Was nice to read something a little longer.

“The colour out of space” - Very scary story - one that I think has inspired a lot of other works - the ones that immediately came to mind were a lot of Stephen King’s work - and also Stranger Things.

“History of the necronomicon” - He made it sound so much like a real historical text that I had to actually google it to see if it was or not

“Curse of Yig” - Scary snakes, classic horror

“Faith is the secret of ambition, the soul of heroism, and the motive power of effort”

The Call of Cthulhu - This is the big one! The most famous short story by Lovecraft (at least in my mind) - and it was fun. Written sort of like a mystery that the author is piecing together. Descriptions of Cthulhu’s city match those of the city encountered in “Dagon”, so I can see the connection there and why it was included in this collection.

“The Nameless City” - Longest story thus far, was fun to read.
“Azatoth” - Very short, and seemingly with a happy ending. (Unless I am missing something)
“The Hound” - Very macabre, and one where you were rooting for the creature, as you kind of feel like these individuals led to their own destruction.

“Nyarltathotep” - Intro says this is a prose poem (which explains the hard to follow text) and that he wrote half asleep based on a dream that he had- that also shows. It’s only 2 pages long - but I had to re-read some of the paragraphs to understand (maybe) what was being conveyed - it was very weird in the way that only dreams can be.

“Dagon” - Dark, creepy, well written and easy to get interested in. Also very short. I am so excited to read the rest of these stories!

Next book reading to the kiddos! They must have liked mossflower so much that they wanted more!