The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A collection of short stories written by the American horror writer between 1917 and 1935.  If I had looked through the first couple of stories in the shop, I probably wouldn't have bought this book.  They were rather cliched and flat, nowhere near as interesting as Borges or as scary as de Maupassant.  However, the later stories were a bit better.  I most enjoyed the Rats in the Walls and the longish Shadow over Innsmouth.  The stories were probably weird when they were written but now they just seem like the plots of bad movies.

The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges

Another collection of short stories, this time written when the author was in old age.  These are just as fascinating and deal with the same kind of ideas as those in Labyrinths, which he wrote when he was young.  I particularly liked A Weary Man's Utopia, The Book of Sand and Blue Tigers.

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

A collection of translated short stories, essays and (very) short parables by one of the leading Latin American writers.  The essays and parables I found hard to read and uninteresting.  It looks as if they were just included as padding, or else for reasons of completeness. However, the short stories are marvellous, almost little nightmares; some (eg: The Immortal, and The Circular Ruins) have the atmosphere of paintings by Beksinski, others are steeped in cabbalism, and arcane philosophy and theology.  The Library of Babel and The Lottery in Babylon remind me of Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker in their  scale, but what took Stapledon 250 pages to do, Borges does just as effectively in less than 10.  I am also sure that Umberto Eco must have been influenced by Borges cabbalistic stories when he came to write Foucault's Pendulum.

On the whole, Borges gives the distinct impression of having spent too much time in dusty old libraries, but I am glad that he did, and I will certainly be keeping my eyes open for any more of his short stories.

Update on Sat 2005-09-10 by Tristram Brelstaff

Would-be purchasers should be aware that Penguin Classics has also  published 'Fictions' which  appears  to contain  the same material as 'Labyrinths' without the essays and parables.

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

A newly married couple, both radio journalists, are taking their honeymoon on a cruise liner.  One evening they see five red meteors crash into the sea.  It is the start of an alien invasion of the Earth in which the invaders colonize the deep sea trenches and then start to move upwards onto the land.  An exciting, apocalyptic tale set in a post-war world in which governments are stupid and short-sighted.  Contains one or two quite contemporary themes, but is dated in parts.  The aliens remain unseen and inexplicable throughout which makes them really threatening.  A good bed-time read, and well worth the £1.49 I paid for it at the local Oxfam bookshop.

Update on Sat 2005-07-16 by Tristram Brelstaff

It so happens that BBC Radio 7 are in the middle of broadcasting a reading of this book in 16 half-hour episodes.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Casaubon, an Italian history graduate, gets a job with a publisher of occult books.  There he helps his two colleagues, Jacopo Belbo and Diotallevi, in assessing submitted manuscripts about the Knights Templar, an order of monk crusaders that were supressed in 1344, but about which conspiracy theories have grown that say they survived as a secret society and control history.  Casaubon and Belbo meet an array of 'occultist' would-be authors, each with their own mad theory.  Madness is piled upon madness; conspiracy theory upon conspiracy theory. Then, for their amusement, Casaubon and Belbo start to invent the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories: it links the Templars, Francis Bacon, the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons,  Napoleon Bonaparte, Tsar Nicholas, Adolph Hitler, and has at its heart is a great secret concerning 'underground currents'.  But Casaubon and Belbo are sucked into the madness when the occultists start to believe in their theory and want to know the secret.

This a really biting satire of occultists, occultist thinking and occult publishing.  It is also rather cleverly written and very  funny in parts.