
A Short Stay In Hell
Book
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be...
Religion Philosophy Afterlife Hell Mormon Novella

The Burning Soul
Book
Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. ...

The Answers Are In The Forest (The Answers Series Book One)
Book
New town. New house. Unexplainable occurrences. It didn’t take me long to figure out that...
horror mystery Young Adult YA The Answers Are In The Forest The Answers Series

The Virtues - Season 1
TV Season
`The Virtues' is an emotionally charged drama that teeters on the edge of total self-destruction....

Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The Sound of My Voice in Books
Jul 29, 2023
Book
The Sound of My Voice
By Ron Butlin
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Morris Magellan has a house in the suburbs, nice wife and kids. But Morris is also a chronic alcoholic, heading fast towards self-destruction. Morris is not hoping to meet Ms. Right and acquire the two kids that will straighten everything out. He already has all this and it hasn't kept him off the bottle. Ron Butlin's tale of one man's inner turmoil is haunting, harrowing, yet strangely uplifting; a masterpiece from a neglected Scottish writer.
A glimpse into the mind of an alcoholic and how he sees the effects of his actions on his family. A different book to what I’m used to and I did find myself liking it.

Acanthea Grimscythe (300 KP) rated The Haunting of Hill House in Books
May 16, 2018
One of the largest determining factors for me when I'm listening to an audio book is the quality of the narration, and in this case I highly suggest the version narrated by David Warner over Bernadette Dunne. Warner's voice is far gentler on the ears and his heavy English lends an utterly unique feeling to the story. I only listened to a sample of Dunne's version and found it very painful on my ears. Warner's reading is published by Phoenix, whereas Dunne's is from Blackstone Audio. Considering that I use audiobooks in order to help me relax along the hour long commute to and from work, the quality of the recording is vital to whether or not I am capable of stomaching the book (and for this reason, I nearly dropped House).
The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1959 by Viking, six years before Shirley Jackson's death. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson" target="new">The book itself is lauded as a classic example of haunted house fiction, earning praise from my all time favorite author, Stephen King.</a> It is a story in which four individuals take up summer residence in the famed Hill House, where they embark upon an unexpectedly brief journey to learn more about the supernatural - and perhaps even about their own selves. Each character is riddled with their own flaws and, to my great surprise, are not filled with the incessantly needy yearning for romance that is so common in other books.
I can also admit that none of the characters are particularly likable. The character that I find most tolerable is Eleanor Vance, our star for this read who clearly suffers from mental illness. Given the time in which the book takes place, it is almost heartbreaking how little others are able to pick up regarding her mental state and, when they finally do, the disdain they treat her with is extremely painful to watch. My least favorite of the cast is Mrs. Montague and her planchette. Mrs. Montague seems rather incapable of caring about anyone other than herself and goes to great lengths to undermine her husband. Her short fuse makes her utterly unbearable and, were I to cross paths with her, I can't promise that I wouldn't want to throttle her.
As far as the haunting of the manse itself goes, there's very little to it. While Jackson's prose is meticulous and gorgeous to behold, at no point did I feel any sense of unease. Much of what is meant to be unsettling is not supernatural in origin, but derived from the interactions of the characters. In a way, the reader is simply a passenger along for the ride in Eleanor's descent into madness, and it is from this that unease can be felt than by anything ethereal.
I enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House and I find it to be a pleasant read (or in this case, listen), but it is not among my favorites when it comes to horror. I felt no real need to keep going and none of the edge-of-your-seat anxiety that horror fans like myself thrive on. It is certainly a beautiful book and Hill House has a hauntingly sad past, but other than that I did not find the story to be overly impressive. While some of this could be attributed to the fact that I had seen the movie in the past, I don't really feel that is the case - especially since I seem to be in agreement with several other readers.

The Happy Medium: Life Lessons from the Other Side
Book
The world-famous medium and star of Lifetime Movie Network's #1 rated show The Haunting Of ...tells...

Book Divas (227 KP) rated A Fierce and Subtle Poison in Books
Dec 12, 2017 (Updated Dec 12, 2017)
{I received an ARC from Algonquin Young Readers. I made no guarantee of a favorable review and the opinions expressed here are unbiased and my own.}

Sean Farrell (9 KP) rated 20th Century Ghosts in Books
Mar 15, 2018
