Assorted Reviews #5

[alaterdate]

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Didn't think I was going to like this one because it's so old (1895), thought it was going to be as dry as the paper I was reading it on, but it was an exciting adventure! I didn't care too much about the moralizing or theories on human nature with this one—didn't particularly agree or disagree with them. I did like that future human descendants had "degraded" and weren't hyper intelligent mono-culture (and/or hivemind) bald freaks. Also my god—I loved Weena.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. First of all, this book gets a little leeway for being slow because it's old. Second, I did find it incredibly boring at times because I've already seen SO MANY movies based on it.
It has the Turn of the Screw thing where it makes you wonder how much was supernatural (if any) and how much was the main character's mental issues. Though I don't really like this sort of plot I might like to annotate my own copy of this novel sometime.
I really liked Eleanor and I like the reading of her as a repressed lesbian, and I like that she died.. The end scene really gets you screaming. There were some excellent lines of prose in this book!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I liked this story much better than Hill House. It was fun how I went from feeling sorry for Merricat to realizing she had more power than I assumed. I liked her. I also liked the unravelling of the day the Blackwoods died and even though the truth becomes obvious before it's explicitly revealed the added certainty of it throws the reader back to the beginning of the book and going "ah, what a terrible girl," loved it.