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I thought a checklist of all the literature we have read so far as group reads might prove useful.

For those who have read many of the books from any of the given years, I invite you to make general comments posts about the entries in any given year below. We can discuss them as a whole, debate merits of the choices, stuff like that here in this topic. You'll see some of mine, like that, for example.

For individual works listed, if you want to read them now, discuss them anew, or whatever, you can always go to our group's "Discussions" pages, find the book listed, click on the "view activity" link, and add your comment to the end. In this group, discussions of books never dies. I never close off a book discussion. I plan to revisit that Robert Chambers book from 2019 I never finished reading and add a comment when I do. Won't original posters to that topic who have moved on and may no longer be members of our group be surprised when they get a notification!

2019
March The Challenge from Beyond by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, and Frank Belknap Long
April Pines by Blake Crouch
May The New Weird edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer
May Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny
June The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III
June Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
July Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich
July The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
August The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
August Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
September Blackwood: A Gotheim Fantasy Tale by Clyde Davis
September Cold Hand in Mine: Strange Stories by Robert Aickman
October The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco
October The Debutante and Other Stories by Leonora Carrington
November THE COMPLETE HAUNTINGS by Vernon Lee
December Falling Over by James Everington

2020
January The Other Side of the Mountain by Michel Bernanos
February I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist
March The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
April Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
May From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
May Into Bones like Oil by Kaaron Warren
June Velocities by Kathe Koja
July Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
August A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben
September Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
December The Red Brain: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos edited by S.T. Joshi

2021
Tales of Horror by H.P. Lovecraft Collection of 27 Lovecraft stories the group read (one per month) from 2021-2023.
January The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria
February Witch House by Evangeline Walton
March Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
April Night & Demons by David Drake
May The Horror in Clay by Thom Brannan A member of our group I am in contact with.
June Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales by David Case
July House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
August The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini by Reggie Oliver
September The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen
November The Wingspan of Severed Hands by Joanna Koch
December Providence Compendium by Alan Moore

2022
January Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
February The Wendigo and Four Weird Tales by Algernon Blackwood
March Zod Wallop by William Browning Spencer
April The Women of Weird Tales edited by Melanie R. Anderson
June Web by John Wyndham
July The Book of Cthulhu edited by Ross E. Lockhart
September Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling
October This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
November The Prisoner Of Carcosa & More Tales Of The Bizarre by Mark McLaughlin
December Roads by Seabury Quinn

2023

January This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us by Edgar Cantero
February How the West Was Weird edited by Russ Anderson Jr.
March The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
April The Beetle by Richard Marsh
May Women of the Wood by A. Merritt
June Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia
July The Coming of Crow by Joel Jenkins
August The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
September Fungi edited by Orrin Grey
November Chocky by John Wyndham
December Wales and the art of fine dying by Tone Wasbak Melbye

2024

June 2023 - December 2024 The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death by H.P. Lovecraft
January Kraken by China Miéville
January The Book of Iod by Henry Kuttner
February Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
March Hyperborea by Clark Ashton Smith
March The Changeling by Victor LaValle
April The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabiński
May Lin Carter's Simrana Cycle by Lin Carter
Spring The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher
June Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
July Dead Letters: An Anthology of the Undelivered, the Missing & the Returned edited by Conrad Williams
August No One Came For Me by Mary Hollow
Summer The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror edited by Justin Everett
September The Damned Thing, Deluxe Edition: Weird and Ghostly Tales by Ambrose Bierce
October The Weird Tales of William Hope Hodgson by William Hope Hodgson
November Zothique: The Final Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith
December The Wendigo and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood

2025

2026

2027

2028

2029

2020

Looking over the choices from 2020, I see we went two months in 2020 with no group reads. 2020 was the year of the covid pandemic, a year that was not my happiest, though I didn't get covid until January 2021. I think I got burnt out near the end of that year and took a break.

This is the only year, I bet, where I read every single one of the eleven group reads entire and without fail. It was a great year in terms of our selections in my opinion. While I did not rate any of the works five stars, I did rate six, more than half, four stars.

I think I remember From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury the fondest. I've always been a fan of those 1960s TV shows The Munsters and The Addams Family, and this entry ties into that world beautifully. There were so many highly original ideas and concepts in those loosely collected stories to make that strange fix-up novel. My second favorite would have to be The Red Brain: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Joshi collected some great stories here. I'm surprised I gave Velocities by Kathe Koja four stars. I don't remember liking it that much.

I didn't rate any of the entries one star but two got my two-star. The Kafka work certainly did. I consider Kafka to be distinctly over-rated. The titular story was truly a slog, one conceit stretched out way too long. I am a bit surprised to see I rated A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben at two stars. I had to think back hard and now I remember there were some promising ideas in the short novel Laben just couldn't pull off. I remember being impressed with Laben's writing nevertheless and always meaning to return to her to read some other perhaps better written work.

What a useful thread!!! Thank you SO MUCH, Dan!

2021

This best thing for me from this year was the reading of the Lovecraft stories. It's not that they were all wonderful. I rated more of them 2 and 3 stars than I did 4 or 5 stars. But I had always been meaning to read Lovecraft's best, and finally here were his 27 best, as judged by an editor, collected in publication order, ready for me to read.

It was a weak year in terms of entries, in my opinion, maybe our weakest. Four of them got my two-star rating, meaning not recommended. When all was said and done, those did next to nothing for me. To be fair, none were so bad they got my one-star, meaning they weren't awful, and may have had features others could better appreciate.

I started but failed to complete three of the books, not because they were bad; I just ran out of time. I didn't even start two of the entries. I hope to have a chance to revisit these missing five at some point. The David Drake collection in particular was outstanding as far as I got. He is such a dense, intellectual writer, I need all my faculties and powers of concentration to get through his stories. I read one of the short stories in this collection a few months ago, but I'm still barely halfway through the entire book. One day I'll finish, rate, and review it. Sadly, the author died the year after I started my reading. We probably have no more David Drake weird fiction to look forward to.

I did give one of the eleven entries--October was skipped this year--five stars: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. What an achievement this novel truly is! Funny though; I've not yet felt the need to read the sequels.

The only other entry of the year to get my four-star or better was Fengriffen & Other Gothic Tales. Strange to say, not a single one of these stories can I now remember. Also, if you were to have stated the name David Case to me just yesterday, I'd have said, "Never heard of him."

That means of the books I finished, only the last two above would I personally be able to recommend.

In 2021, two books were quite amazing - Annihilation (which, to be fair, I did not read with the group but rather a year prior) and what became one of my most favorite books ever, *The House of Leaves! *
Since I am a lot easier to please, I also loved the Lovecraftian
fan fic graphic novel - I think it might have been my FIRST graphic novel ever! - by Moore, and got quite amused by the Cardinal Vittorini stories, although remember none. What I do remember though very vividly is that "severed hands" piece which I did not even like as much as some others, but it just burned itself into my brain, which really should count for something. All I remember from Fengriffin are terrified virgins runninng about the forest. It might have been my first with a gothic novel of this kind :)

2022

Of these twelve books (February contained two) I only read six, but what a great batch overall! The two I gave five stars to was Wyndham's Web, a very pleasant surprise--I'd thought I'd already read Wyndham's best novels--and the Christmas story, Roads by Seabury Quinn--another surprise because Quinn has always been considered second tier in the Weird Tales stable of writers. You couldn't prove that to me by this story.

There were strong four-star works here too. The Prisoner of Carcosa & More Tales of the Bizarre was light but fun. I'd meant to keep a closer eye on McLaughlin after reading this, but haven't. Melanie Anderson did a great job of picking some strong short stories by the best women authors who wrote for Weird Tales.

I started most of the others but haven't finished them yet. I most regret not finishing the Ligotti collection. His stuff was as intellectual and heady reading as David Drake's. Ligotti's book was at 4.5 stars when I just had to put the collection down to return to later due to be similarly overwhelmed.

The only serious disappointment for me was "The Wendigo." It soured me on Algernon Blackwood entirely as a writer for years. I've revised my opinion of Blackwood since then. He's written other stuff that's pretty interesting. But I still think this story is way over-rated, and I can't figure out why. Recommending it to anyone could well guarantee that person reads this and only this Blackwood story, unhappy for the experience.

Two books I don't remember touching are The Call of Cthulhu. I can't imagine why. That looks like it would be right up my alley. I also had and still have no interest in This Thing Between Us. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio was interesting reading for twenty or so of the short stories. I can't really imagine anyone reading every one of these to complete the book any more than I can imagine someone reading every one of the 1001 Arabian Tales. You read a dozen, you've read them all.

2023

This was a good reading year for me. I read ten of the eleven selections. My ratings were all over the place for them.

Let's start with the bad. The only full entry on our group's bookshelf to get my one-star rating was Lord Dunsany's Elfland. And I nominated it! I fully expected to like it, but it was awful, just egregiously, unreadably awful. No. I could not possibly finish it.

The two-star book was for me This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us. I simply found it too whimsical and silly. Others with more toleration for nonsense would get more from it.

I did not read Katzenjammer. It looked juvenile judging by the reviews. Good for our younger members maybe.

Six of the reads rated three stars from me, meaning I liked them, but they didn't rock my world or anything.

The two I liked the most was (four stars) How the West Was Weird. This was my introduction to the sub-genre of weird western, and it's a good one. It made me very interested in reading more, which I did later that year with Jenkins' Crow stories. Those were okay, three stars, but not as strong as this anthology.

My five-star book this year was Chocky. It was our second group read by John Wyndham and the second by him I gave five stars. He has such an amazing imagination! This work had weird elements to it, but strictly speaking is probably just science fiction. I don't think I nominated it, but I didn't reject the nomination either. It was such a treat!

2024

This was our busiest year yet, seventeen works counting all the Lovecraft stories we read that year as one. I only read seven of the works (including the Lovecraft) to completion. I started nine others and hope to one day complete eight of those. Most of the works I read more than half of them. I should be able to finish the other halves some time. Only one, The Dead Letters anthology, did I have no interest in and therefore not start.

I had not realized this until looking back over all the works, but this was an awesome year. Fourteen of the seventeen, when and if I rate and review them, will have at least three stars from me, most receiving four stars.

My favorite read of the year was Hyperborea by Clark Ashton Smith. It was the only read to get my five-star rating. It's odd how much stronger I consider the stories in this collection to his more highly regarded Zothique, which when I finish it will probably get my three-star. Hyperborea needs a modern collection like Zothique just had in the worst way. When it finally gets one, maybe we as a group can revisit this collection as we did Zothique this year.

I was surprised at first that I rated Simrana four stars. Then I remembered Lin Carter's stories weren't the only ones in the anthology. Lin Carter's were five stars for the most part. The others dragged the average down. The Lin Carter part of this anthology was the highlight of the year for me.

2019

Favorite: The Challenge from Beyond by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, and Frank Belknap Long.

Least Favorite: The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco. Epic fail!

Must Unexpected but Worthwhile: Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich. Has Boskovich written anything since? I hope so; this novella showed so much potential!

Most Challenging to Read: The New Weird edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer. Dense, but really provides an understanding of New Weird.

Most not weird fiction: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman This is classical, mainstream fiction; good, but in no way weird.

Not really weird fiction honorable mentions (hey, it was year one; I was still learning what weird fiction was): Pines by Blake Crouch (SF), Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny (fantasy), The Haunted Vagina by Carlton Mellick III (bizarro), The Debutante and Other Stories by Leonora Carrington (surreal), The Complete Hauntings by Vernon Lee (Gothic horror). These are all weird-adjacent, all worthwhile; I have no regrets they grace our bookshelf.

Recommendation: If you haven't read that first entry, you owe it to yourself to give this landmark collaboration a chance. It's a lot of fun and really showcases the styles of the contributors in an interesting, revealing way.