TV Series Review: Quirke

Great series. With only 3 episodes, each with 1h20m I really enjoy the atmospheric feeling (1950's in Ireland) with Gabriel Byrne and Michael Gambon and Colin Morgan. He is a pathologist and if the first episode tend to set one tone the second and third episodes changed the tone and the first plotline just dissappear. If, in the beginning we thought that the dissapearances of the babies/killing of women was something to do with his own family the second and third episode turn that to a bigger and more powerful family. 

I really enjoy, as I said the atmospheric/setting, Ireland in 50's, and the filming. Classic television series. No speciall effects needed. Only the master skills of our actors are sufficient. Gabriel Byrne is an excelent actor.  After seeing Miller's Crossing, the Usual Suspects and the late Vikings I really thought he was a great actor - but now I have a deeper respect for the man.

Quirke, is our pathologist with an alchoolic problem and some problematic family. After the first episode we got an interesting backstory and the last episode had one or two curveball, as the americans say, that made me say "wow".

If you enjoy a good old fashioned mystery series with a bit of CSI and Drama then you are going to get a treat. Nevertheless I recommend to anyone.

Challenge: Month of Before the 70's

So, this month is being the year before the seventies but it's getting a little hard reading with all the work I have. Unfortunally I only have finish two books. Let us see if this last few days I can finish more two or three books.

Next month will be the seventies.

What about May? What should it be?

Review: The Mask of Cthulhu by August Derleth

Title The Mask of Cthulhu

Author August Derleth

Year 1958

Stand Alone (Short stories &Novellas)

Pages 204

Reading Time 8 days

Synopsis

Sheer Terror from the Gruesome Lore of Cthulhu

These are tales of horror grown from Mankind's ageless struggle between good and evil, which H.P. Lovecraft formed into his concept of the conflict between the Great Old Ones and the Ancient Ones - Hastur, Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and other ghastly beings of the Cthulhu Mythos. August Derleth absorbed the power of Lovecraft's concept and in these stories captures the very essence of terrifying macabre dread, the palpable horror of cosmic evil perpetually poised to obliterate puny mankind...

Cover illustration: Tim White

Review

Everyone knows who is HP Lovecraft.Every one knows who is Edgar Allan Poe. Don't you? Poe and Lovecraft are the masters of horror. They are what other writers read and judge. I don't think that there aren't any like him. I enjoy reading Ligotti but he is too unknown. It's hard as hell to get a book by him. Of course Stephen King is the one who should sit nowadays at the throne vacant since Lovecraft removed Poe. But even Stephen King doesn't write the same way as Lovecraft. Even Derleth his protegé and most important the creator of Arkham printing company is way out of league of Lovecraft. Maybe Edward Wagner, Bloch or Brian Lumley tried to reach for the stars but they are not Lovecraft. I have yet to read every single story by him but I know a lot about Cthulhu Mythos. 

Derleth changed a lot about what is called today Cthulhu Mythos. Damn, he created the term. Unfortunally he also created the Elder Gods who want to protect humankind. He also gave the Great Old Ones a counterpart of the Eldar Gods going further in the "Seal of R'lyeh" to compare Good and Evil, Christianity and Satanism duality. I don't think Lovecraft ever commented on that. 

They are alien beings. They are incompreensible to us. No-one can discern what are their plans or ambitions. A mind would go blank or suffer a psychic attack if he tried to compreehend Their mind. That's why many of them go insane... isn't it?

Derleth also tried to explain a lot about the Mythos destroying (in my humble opinion) what Lovecraft expected to achieve. There are 6 stories... now look at the plots and characters.

-Every single story is told in the first person point of view;

-In the first story a man inherits a house full of occult books and his curiosity made him realize the full extend of Cthulhu mythos. The same happened in the second story, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth stories;

-It's always male characters. Besides the last story and the second where woman talk on the phone constantly there aren't any woman in it.

-In the first story our main character dies (not the one telling the narrative).

-The Second story our main character goes insane

-The Third disappears (again it's not the one telling the story)

-The Fourth disappears (again it's not the one telling the story)

~The Fifth our main character goes insane

-The Sixth disappears to serve Cthulhu alongside his wife and child

The references of the books are always the same. In each story we get the mention of the same books over and over again

- Necronomicon

- De Vermis Mysteriis

- Cultes de Ghoules

- Unaussprechlichen Kulten

- Book of Eibon

- Pnakotic Manuscripts

- R'lyeh Text

And of course each tale has the most famous phrase by HP Lovecraft

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..."

"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming..."

I would advice to anyone who wants to dwell more on the Cthulhu mythos but only after reading HP Lovecraft stories.

There is also a comic reference that Lovecraft and two other writer friends dissappeared or were killed becasue they knew too much. 7.5/10

Review: The Shining by Stephen King

Title The Shinning

Author Stephen King

Year 1977

Stand Alone or Series First of Two of Shining Series

Pages 683

Reading Time 300 days (started on setpember of 2012 then stopped. Re-started on June and finish on july of 2013)

Synopsis

The Overlook Hotel is more than just a home-away-from-home for the Torrance family. For Jack, Wendy, and their young son, Danny, it is a place where past horrors come to life. And where those gifted with the shining do battle with the darkest evils. Stephen King's classic thriller is one of the most powerfully imagined novels of our time. The Shining

Review

This book is suppossedly the best Stephen King book or at least the one that drove him into stardom. Unfortunally to me it is overrated. Don't get me wrong. It's a excelent book but in the movie we get the feeling of the hotel and of Jack Torrance and Danny. In the book... It longs to get somewhere. Some parts add to understand why Jack acted as he acted and Danny's "Shine" but nevertheless in the end, in my opinion it dragged. This book should had no more than 300/400 pages. 

Is it a scary/horror book? Meh. It's more of a psychological transformation story. 

I won't delve much to it because everyone either saw the movie or read the book.

To get a small synopsis. "See how a hotel with a history of violence and decay helps some wannabe writer to be what his father was but to a greater extent. See how a boy is special and a woman is a dumb lady that sticks side-by-side with a man who clearly is a drunk bastart". Yeah I know, different times.

Undoubtly this book will be one of those books people will read in fifty years as we read gothic novels.

With 3 starts. Would I advice it to you? Yes. May not be my favorite King's book but it's his trademark.

Will I read more of his books? Of course. After all I bought all the books and besides draging in each story he knows how to write and make a plot. I just ask to cut the small talk. 6/10

Review: The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie

Title The Thirteen Problems

Author Agatha Christie

Year 1932

Stand Alone or Series Miss Marple #2 - 13 stories

Pages 218

Reading Time  8 days (August 2012)

Synopsis

The Tuesday Night Club is a venue where locals challenge Miss Marple to solve recent crimes...One Tuesday evening a group gathers at Miss Marple's house and the conversation turns to unsolved crimes! The case of the disappearing bloodstains; the thief who committed his crime twice over; the message on the death-bed of a poisoned man which read 'heap of fish'; the strange case of the invisible will; a spiritualist who warned that 'Blue Geranium' meant death! Now pit your wits against the powers of deduction of the 'Tuesday Night Club'

Review

This was a bit different from Poirot books. First where Poirot is a travalled men who solves the cases based on logic and those little cells he referes; Marple solves her crimes because of similar experiences on her little town that she refers often that she never left.

The stories are small and easily read. Some are easier to understand who the culprit is but others are quite difficult to discover. 

Each tuesday several people join and tell tales of mystery that only them know the finale and each participant must make a guess to solve the mystery. OF course this is where the book fails in my opinion (is some way). Each participant is quite dull that never finds nothing (one of them is even a retired from the Scotland Yard) but that lady that never left that small village discovers each and every crime. 

If Poirot is quite a character (in some ways almost a perfect detective), Miss Parple it's even perfect. That's the reason I couldn't enjoy the book more, or as much as I love Poirot's. I really hope this is the fault of being a short stories collection. 6.5/10

Thoughts XXII: Challenge: March and April

This last month was disastrous in terms of reading. My work is consuming a lot of time. Let us hope that before the idles of March it all be over and my reading pace returns... But March will be a change. I am going to read only books from before the seventies. (With the exception of Thousand Orcs by RA Salvatore that I am trying to finish...

Next month probably I will start reading a series. Either Louis McMaster Bujold saga or Michael Moorcock Eternal Champion tales... I have almost all books in both series... What should I choose?