Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Why did the local rural library acquire the English-language The Scarlet Letter (affiliate link) in 1959? The book is in surprisingly good condition considering its age, so it probably hasn't been borrowed much.

I had not read this classic of world literature, although I refer to it in one of my stories. So it was about time I read it.

What is The Scarlet Letter about? Hester Prynne is a fallen woman who, as punishment for her crime, has to wear a red letter A embroidered on her clothes for the rest of her life. She refuses to reveal who she committed adultery with.

I thought I would be able to get by with a little since the book was so small, but the pages were full of text and the English was not the easiest. There were too many (landscape) descriptions for my taste, and I skipped most of the text.

All in all, a book that was too fine for me. But I'm not the only one, many modern readers don't know how to appreciate this level of word art.

 

 

Ana Huang: King of Wrath

Ana Huang is one of the cult writers of our time. I had never heard of her before I saw an article about her visit to Finland by chance, her fans were excited.

It was difficult to get her books from the library, especially since she writes series and you should start reading from the first part.

King of Wrath (affiliate link) is about a forced marriage. Dante is a billionaire who is forced into an engagement with Vivian. This is the classic from enemies to lovers story.

For some reason, I didn't progress reading this book as quickly as I expected. That doesn't say anything about the book being bad, it's about me.

 

 

Anxiety-provoking reading experiences

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I started watching the horror anthology series Creepshow on Viaplay, and the second episode was already unsettling to me because of its subject matter. In that episode, a girl had a dollhouse, and in her absence, its inhabitants began to move to different places on their own.

Then I started thinking about my memorable unsettling reading experiences.

They all seem to have something in common, namely something evil that keeps getting closer.

 

Stephen King's The Sun Dog (from the collection Four Past Midnight)

A boy receives a Polaroid camera as a gift. In every picture he takes, a dog appears. At first, just as a small dot in the background, but it gets closer and more threatening as it goes. What happens when the menacing dog crosses the line between photographs and reality?

 

 

 

The Moving Finger by Stephen King (from the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes)

A man notices a finger in the opening of the bathroom sink. An epic battle ensues between him and the surprisingly long finger.

I had no idea that this story was reportedly made into an episode of the TV series Monsters.

I think it was while I was reading this collection of short stories that a scary thing happened to me. When I returned to my room after being away, I thought the book was in a different place than where I had left it. It scared me.

 

The Road Virus Heads North by Stephen King (from the collection Everything's Eventual)

A man buys a painting from a yard sale. The artist of the painting was said to have been mentally disturbed and killed himself. As the man travels home, the painting changes to reflect the place he has just been. And people start dying in those places. When the man gets home, the road virus also arrives...

There are of course many other disturbing reading experiences, but these were the first ones that came to mind without thinking.

 

Book Review: The Gwendy Trilogy by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar

There are other worlds than these. 

The Gwendy Trilogy (affiliate link) is a collection of three short stories by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar.

In the first, Gwendy's Button Box, Gwendy comes into possession of a mysterious box as a child. It contains a power that could destroy the entire world.

In the second part, written by Chizmar alone, Gwendy is a young, successful politician when the box returns to her life.

The real jackpot for King fans, however, is the final part of the trilogy, Gwendy's Final Task. It is full of references to other works by King, such as It, Pennywise, and The Dark Tower.

I always hate it when covid is included in fictional works, especially knowing King's stance on corona vaccinations. Fortunately, there was no forced vaccination in this collection.