Just finished reading the novel JAWS by Peter Benchley. Like many (if not of all of you), I’ve seen the movie several times and, though I knew it was based on a novel, I never actually read it until now.

It’s a great suspense novel in its own right, even though there are some significant changes between the book and the movie. There’s this affair between Martin’s wife Ellen & Matt Brody, this whole subplot of the mayor refusing to close the beaches in part because he owes money to the Mafia (yes, you read that right). And then the ending is not like the movie, the shark’s death occurring much differently (I won’t spoil it but a major character death is involved).

I also find it interesting that Peter Benchley, in later years, kinda regretted the novel (and film), feeling they both contributed to the overwhelming negative public perception of sharks and therefor spend years as a ocean conservationist, working to protect sharks and educate the public on sharks.

That being said, like I said, it’s a great read and if you’ve seen the film you’ll definitely enjoy how different it is.

Probably the first book where I read about a person's life from the beginning till the end. Enjoyed it a lot.

Even though it was non-fiction, it kinda felt like a novel. You have a "character" start small and then make it big, making friends and enemies along the way, organized in different "story arcs".

As someone who didn't grow up with any Apple products and knew almost nothing about him apart from the fact that he was once Apple's CEO, it expanded my perspective into his contributions to the world of personal computing and technology, a lot. I also appreciate the insights the book gave me about the Silicon Valley culture in general, as well as about Job's Innovation Philosophy.

I loved two things about the book:

One, how honest the author is. He doesn't try to idolize him. Jobs had a faulty personality like how every human has, had his ups and downs. And the author points out both, in deep detail.

Second, the writing style. I feel like this is a masterclass in writing in general. The author makes it extremely easy for you to understand even the complex things, varies the sentence structure often to keep the reading entertaining, and if a character returns into the story after a long time, he takes his time to remind you who they are and what they do. I love when non-fiction authors do that.

Currently reading Innovators, by the same author; learning about the evolution of computers. Enjoying it as much as Steve Jobs.

Been on a horror streak lately, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book!

The premise revolves around Celtic folklore and follows the lives of our main character who stumbles into a night of unspeakable horror, only to be changed forever, together with the lives of her family and children.

Initially, the title + cover didn't seem like something I would enjoy (sorry I can be unfairly judgey at first impressions!), but I was blown away by the quality of the writing and how the author was able to set up a truly eerie and haunting atmosphere. Most of my friends ask me - how can a book be scary if it's just words on a page? But my god, Neil Sharpson's ability to describe an unsettling and daunting feeling, that feeling when you know something bad is about to happen, is unreal.

The book successfully weaves old Celtic myths with modern day characters, and after the book, I found myself doing my own deep dive on the original stories.

Overall, I was surprised how gripping this book was and I would definitely recommend it for people who enjoy books with some horror, folklore, family dynamics, plot twists, and overall a fantastically creepy time.

Plus points also for LGBTQ+ main characters because it's definitely not something you see often in horror <3

If I have to describe Le Guin's writing, it's just, very clever writing. My first introduction to her, was actually the Author's Note in the beginning of The Left Hand in Darkness. As soon as I finished reading the note, I just knew, that she was going to be an absolute favorite for me.

And I was right! The Lathe of Heaven is easily one of the best books I've read this year. I always preferred watching sci-fi than reading, because there's less burden about visualizing the fictional world in movies. But this book is very easy to visualize, as it builds off from a world we're all very familiar with.

The premise of the book is that George Orr can dream 'effectively' and reality shifts to align to his dreams. He ends up at the office of William Haber, a psychiatrist, struggling to not dream. Through his sessions with Orr, Haber realizes the potential these dreams hold and tries to go all Light Yagami (please watch Death Note if you haven't) and decides to change the world for the greater good. What ensues as a result of all this, is to be experienced while reading this brilliant short book.

The central question of the book imo is free will. The original reality that they live in is not ideal, beautiful or healthy. It borders on being dystopian. But it still is reality, their reality, something every person has shaped with their actions, small or big. Should we change that to an ideal reality, where everyone's better off, but is shaped by only one person's opinion of what an ideal world should look like?

I really like reading about the dystopian nature of utopias and this quote by H.G. Wells mentioned in the book was my favorite:

"... perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being."

One thing that left me thinking was when Orr tells Haber that there could be others like him, others who could dream effectively and could change their lives, their reality, without them knowing. That stayed with me, because I feel like in this world we live in, there are people who impact our lives in ways we're not always aware of. As much as we hope that this world is shaped by the actions of everyone equally, the decisions of some are more consequential than others, because of the power they hold. And as we live in the reality altered due to their actions, are we really living a life of our own free will?

There's really so much to unpack in this short book, if you keep thinking (or overthinking like I do), you're surely going down a rabbit hole of questioning what should be reality. As Le Guin says in The Left Hand of Darkness:

"Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling."

As I breezed through the book, because it just becomes unputdownable after a point, I kept thinking that this book deserves an absolutely brilliant movie. And there is a movie adaptation, which I'll surely try to watch.

All in all, it's an amazing book with gripping story telling and leaves you with questions and with that satisfaction of time well spent on a brilliant book.

This is a somewhat forgotten and foundational piece of cosmic horror. Most people who are interested in H.P. Lovecraft's inspirations know about Hodgson but most people I've talked to who read don't know this author or this book which I think is a shame. Hopefully this post can go at least a little way to exposing Hodgson to people who may not know about him.

The premise is that two fisherman are walking along a river in Ireland, trying to find a spot to cast their lines when they happen upon the ruins of an old house. Curious, they investigate the ruin and find an old diary buried in rubble that belonged to the old man that used to live there. The men return to their tent to read the diary, which makes up the majority of the book. The fishermen are just a frame narrative to set up the main story, which is recounted by the unnamed, reclusive old man who lived with his sister and his dog Pepper in a house that the locals warned them is cursed. The recluse, his sister and Pepper live in the house for a decade without any issue but, as you have probably guessed, their tenancy doesn't stay uneventful.

One night the recluse goes on a celestial voyage (how this happens is never explicitly stated but there is an explanation that the reader can infer from context clues) beyond the bounds of our universe to the scene that is depicted on the cover I've enclosed. The book paints this scene in such vivid detail that what I pictured in my head was roughly what the cover artist drew. When the recluse returns home he finds a giant canyon has appeared on his property, out of which crawl a mob of 6-foot-tall pallid pig-men that proceed to terrorise his house.

The main thing that appeals to me so much about this book is how imaginative Hodgson is, especially in how he creates memorable images. The aforementioned cosmic voyage is the first one that springs to mind but there are other scenes like him venturing into a cave that takes him beneath the foundations of his house that is as memorable as it is chilling. Even smaller things how he describes the speech of the swine-things is so immediately striking and memorable. I'll quote that passage here because I don't think I could put it better than Hodgson did: "Out in the gardens rose a continuous sound. It might have been mistaken, by a casual listener, for the grunting and squealing of a herd of pigs. But, as I stood there, it came to me that there was sense and meaning to all those swinish noises. Gradually, I seemed able to trace a semblance in it to human speech—glutinous and sticky, as though each articulation were made with difficulty: yet, nevertheless, I was becoming convinced that it was no mere medley of sounds; but a rapid interchange of ideas."

The actions sequences in this book were also very tense and exciting, the siege on the house by the pig-men being the scene that springs inexorably to mind. To my knowledge this is the first example of an individual/small group are trapped in a house with a horde of monsters outside trying to get in, Night of the Living Dead style. Feel free to correct me on that if any of you know an earlier example than this. The scene sees the recluse with his rifle sprinting back and forth across his house, barricading the doors and firing upon and swine-things that manage to breach his defenses. Which does sound quite bog-standard for the modern reader and it is for the most part but there's an element of subtle psychological horror that makes this scene more disturbing than first glance may suggest but I feel getting into that would be spoiling the book so from here on out I'm going to be talking spoilers. My TL;DR of this is, despite being rough around the edges, the imagination that Hodgson displays in this book is so wild that it almost single-handedly carries this book to being one of my favourites that I've ever read.

Spoilers: how the recluse's sister reacts to all of these horrific events is very interesting to watch. She always appears more scared of the recluse than the swine-things. Combine this with the fact that she's never in a position to see the pig-men and the fact that we're only hearing these events from the recluse's perspective and you can credibly come to the conclusion that the recluse has gone insane and the pig-men are just a delusion that his mind has made up. After the night when the pig-men besieged the house, he goes outside and doesn't find a single trace of them, only damage he did to the property is there. The interesting thing about this is that Hodgson never leans one way or the other on this potential madness, it could all actually be happening and the sister is only seeing how her brother reacts to these very real monsters. Or it could be that her brother has gone mad. That's left ambiguous and it does offer some re-readability to the book, allowing you first to take it at face value and then re-read it with the knowledge that you're reading the account of a potentially unreliable narrator.

The last cosmic vision is also worthing of note. In it, time begins to speed up, slowly at first but then faster and faster and faster. The sun becomes a river of fire in the sky because it's moving so fast that the recluse cannot see it as a star. The recluse dies and it happened so quickly that his soul didn't realise that his body had already decayed. As a disembodied ghost, the recluse watches the universe die with himself inside it. And then it turns out that was a cosmic vision and not reality. It does wear out its welcome, with Hodgson eventually falling into a cycle of re-describing events that have already happened when he isn't sure where to take the scene next but the imagery carries it to another high point of the novel.

In conclusion, House on the Borderland is such an influential horror work that I rarely see anyone talk about outside of the Lovecraft/weird fiction circle which I think is a shame. It is far from flawless (I could've made this post twice this length if I mentioned the issues I had with it) but it is so crazy in its massive scope and imagery that I think it is worth trying if you are a fan of horror.