When I was but a youth, I steeped myself daily in the grotesque imaginings of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, reading a tale each October evening as the dying light lengthened across Boston’s crooked streets. With half-closed eyes, I could all but believe the mists and crumbling stones about me were those same accursed vistas of New England that his pen evoked with dreadful authority. Last year, I revived that eldritch ritual. Though I now dwell in the sun-bleached expanse of Southern California, where October knows nothing of frost-bitten wind or the spectral rustle of autumn leaves, the chill of Lovecraft’s prose still seeped into my bones, as if borne on some unhallowed wind from beyond the gulfs of space.
Yet I miscalculated, for the man’s corpus of weird tales is far vaster than a single mortal month. Thus, I continue now, with “The Hound,” a blasphemous chronicle first loosed upon the world in the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales. In it, two solitary ghouls of men fashion a charnel museum from desecrated graves, until at last they unearth in Holland a skeleton clutching a jade amulet of dreadful provenance. This relic, linked to the unhallowed Necronomicon, summons the baying of an unearthly hound whose pursuit knows neither distance nor sanctuary. Blood and madness follow, St. John torn asunder, thieves annihilated, the narrator himself driven to seek the release of death from horrors no sane man may endure.
Within this tale lies the first dread naming of the Necronomicon, that profane tome whispered of in forbidden circles. Lovecraft had hinted before at its accursed author, Abdul Alhazred, in “The Nameless City,” yet here the blighted book itself first takes form in his mythos, a scripture of cosmic despair that would bind together his works, and the works of those kindred spirits who likewise dared to peer into gulfs best left untraveled.
Not the most potent of Lovecraft’s dread imaginings, yet possessed of sufficient eldritch savor to quicken anew my October rite of unholy reading.
I wasn’t a fan of Gil Kane’s artwork when I was a boy. I preferred George Pérez and John Byrne’s stuff instead. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate Kane’s work more and more. Blackmark just hit my mailbox, and I’m excited to read it!
I read Arctic Dreams after coming across this quote:
“No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
— Barry Lopez
About twenty years back, I dipped my toes into eBooks, mostly out of curiosity. Reading on my old Handspring Visor, and later my iPhone, felt downright futuristic at the time. But as my eyes got a little older and middle age set in, I found myself leaning on eBooks more and more. The ability to bump up the font size and dim or brighten the screen just right? A lifesaver.
At first, I stuck with my phone and tablet, but after a while, I realized that staring into a screen blasting light into my eyeballs wasn’t the coziest way to enjoy a long read. That’s when I picked up a used Kindle with e-ink, and let me tell you, I never looked back. A few years later, I upgraded to a Kindle Paperwhite, which has been my trusty sidekick ever since.
Now, I do like to tinker, so I tried other gadgets too. I gave the Moaan InkPalm Plus a shot because it was small enough to tuck in a pocket and cheap compared to the pricey BOOX Palma. But the slow refresh rate and the fact I couldn’t highlight passages meant it gathered more dust than it deserved. Most recently, I picked up the Kobo Clara Colour. I’m not thrilled that I only own the license to read my eBooks and not the book itself, but once Amazon locked down their platform so I can no longer download my eBooks and transfer them to whatever device I chose, I soured on them, so the Clara Colour seems the way to go. It’s smaller than my Paperwhite, which is nice, and I appreciate that Kobo lets me upload different file types. Still, the recessed screen and smaller book catalog have kept it from overtaking my Paperwhite.
So here’s where I stand: Paperwhite on top, Kobo Clara a close second, InkPalm just hanging around for quick toss-in-the-bag moments. If Apple ever decides to make an e-ink reader, I’d be first in line, though I bet it’d cost a small fortune. Maybe I should get a BOOX Palma after all?
What about you? What’s your go-to eBook device, and what makes it your favorite?
I woke up from a dream with the “Hokey Pokey” rattling in my head. Huh.
