Everyone pour one out for the Gore-Met tonight. The Rue Morgue columnist has passed away. Rue Morgue is something of a bible around these parts, and I was a devotee of the Gore-Met's (real name, Andrew Bailees) column. Although the explicitness of many of the movies he covered kept me from watching them, I often found myself seeing films in a new light after reading his opinions on them. He truly appreciated and loved the genre and will be greatly missed.
Book Review: The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories
I have been hearing rave reviews of Valancourt's collections for a long time, but only now got around to picking one up. I am well pleased with my experience and plan to dive into the other collections soon. The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, edited by Tara Moore, is the perfect book to get you into that spooky Christmas spirit. The collection starts off with Sir Walter Scott's "The Tapestried Chamber." I love Scott's work - Ivanhoe is one of my very favorite novels. His story here about an army general visiting his old friend's haunted estate turned out to be one of my favorites in the book. It also had one of the collection's few legitimately creepy (by modern standards) scenes. Another favorite was the second tale, Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story." Gaskell is an incredible writer who I've always meant to read more of, and this story of a vengeful ghostly child was both tragic and haunting. John B
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