Welcome to Litsy!

I‘m glad we chose this for the first #HitchToScreen buddy read. This book has such a haunting atmosphere & I love her writing style. Mary is the main character but the moors themselves are a character & I love the gothic vibes. I‘m really looking forward to watching the movie. I‘ll be working on getting the reading schedule organized for the next year. I hope everyone is enjoying it so far! 5⭐️

#Hitchcock
#classics
#buddyread

It's that time of year!

I recently read Rear Window and it got me thinking. I‘m a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock‘s movies and I‘m wondering if anyone would be interested in doing a buddy read with me going through all of the source material that was the inspiration for his movies. I‘ve only read a handful so far (Rebecca is a masterpiece!) but would love to read more. Let me know if you‘re interested!

#AlfredHitchcock
#Hitchcock
#buddyread

One of my fave Hitchcock movies is Rear Window (1954) so I decided it was high time to read the short story the film is based on. It‘s only 49 pages and the Grace Kelly & Thelma Ritter characters are nowhere to be seen, but it was very suspenseful and had me on the edge of my seat! Well worth the quick read. 5⭐️ #classics #Hitchcock #novella #suspense #thriller #RearWindow 🎞️🍿🎥

Wrapped up my visit to the monster museum this morning with a look at the Ray Bradbury wing (“Homecoming”). This was a fun collection with several solid stories and many zany twists on classic ideas. Favorites: “Shadow, Shadow on the Wall,” by Theodore Sturgeon, and “Slime,” by Joseph Payne Brennan. I also enjoyed looking up more about the authors, because they had some unique bios. If you can find a copy I would recommend a visit to this museum.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow in this story, “The Wheelbarrow Boy,” by Richard Parker, in which a teacher turns his student into a wheelbarrow as punishment for not doing his work properly. It‘s a short one, amusing, but with an ending that didn‘t age well. I can‘t find much about the author other than he was a UK children‘s author known for the Escape the Zoo series. Some of his sci-fi sounds interesting, especially The Hendon Fungus.

“The Desrick on Yandro,” by Manly Wade Wellman is the strangest but also most culturally interesting story in this collection so far. Narrated by John the Balladeer, apparently a recurring character in Wellman‘s stories, this is the tale of a long-vanished mountain in North Carolina and the witch who lives there. The grandson of the lover who jilted her hears John sing about Yandro, which is his last name. ⬇️

I don‘t think I‘ve ever read such an odd character description:
“His buckskin hair was combed across his head to baffle folks he wasn‘t getting bald. His round pink face wasn‘t soft, and his big smiling teeth reminded you he had a skull under the meat. His pale eyes, like two gravel bits, made me recollect I needed a haircut and a shoe shine.”

In this wing of the museum, we see the werewolf cub… “The Young One” by Jerome Bixby had a nice twist. Young Johnny befriends the new neighbor, Bela from Hungary. All the neighborhood animals are scared of Bela and he has a strict curfew of 7:00 the night of the full moon. Tensions rise when Johnny plays a prank on Bela, taking him to the local caves at night and pretending to get lost. Will they stay out too late, and what will happen if they do?

Just finished “Doomsday Deferred” by Will F. Jenkins. This was a curious story about a lepidopterist tasked by a wealthy benefactor to find a rare butterfly in Brazil. There, he encounters a family scared for their life and in need of a herd of cattle ASAP. It‘s an intriguing premise involving the horrors of nature. ⬇️