Current and Recent Books

[sahgwa]

Hi all!  I thought it would be fun and educational to share which books we are currently reading, have recently finished, and maybe a sentence or two synopsis, and what we thought of them.  Then we can learn what we are all into, and get some recommendations.

I will start


CURRENTLY
I am reading:

The Selected Letters of HP Lovecraft Vol 3 
Very erudite and shows what Ecclesiastes said is true , there is nothing new under the sun. In our pitifully short human life spans we repeat repeat repeat the sins and idiocies of the past. 



I Just Finished

The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron

Here is a great horror writer at the beginning of his career.  This book harkens back to Thomas Ligotti, HP Lovecraft, and other masters of gnawing eldritch and terrifying cosmic horror.  Highly reccomended!

[babushka]

The pocket Lavater, or, The science of physiognomy: to which is added, an inquiry into the analogy existing between brute and human physiognomy, from the Italian of Porta : embellished with 44 copperplate heads
https://archive.org/details/2561008R.nlm...1/mode/2up

[Moon68]

I'm about a quarter of the way through re-reading "The Wolves of Calla".

[quintessentone]

I am thumbing through a poetry book given to me as a Christmas present.

"The poetry of Charles Baudelaire"

"Mist and Rain - context Summary
Published in 1860, Les Fleurs Du Mal
Published in Les Fleurs du Mal (1860), "Mist and Rain" encapsulates Baudelaire’s attraction to melancholic, nature-driven beauty. The speaker praises autumnal and wintry fogs that shroud heart and mind, finding in dreary seasons a fitting cloak for a sorrowful, elevated soul. The poem links depressive reverie with spiritual freedom and hints at escape through nocturnal intimacy or oblivion. It exemplifies Baudelaire’s recurrent mingling of gloom, the sublime, and erotic consolation."


"O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes drenched with mud,
Seasons that lull to sleep! I love you, I praise you
For enfolding my heart and mind thus
In a misty shroud and a filmy tomb.

On that vast plain where the cold south wind plays,
Where in the long, dark nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul spreads wide its raven wings
More easily than in the warm springtide.

Nothing is sweeter to a gloomy heart
On which the hoar-frost has long been falling,
Than the permanent aspect of your pale shadows,

O wan seasons, queens of our clime
- Unless it be to deaden suffering, side by side
In a casual bed, on a moonless night.


Translated by - William Aggeler"