Quote Quoting Daniel Davis (view post)
The Ruins is one of the worst books I've ever finished (I still don't know why I kept with it). 200 pages could be ripped out without any impact what so ever; it is an extremely padded short story, at best.
The stuff at the beginning could've gone faster, for sure, but I thought the last two hundred pages were compelling in a dreadful, inexorable way. It reminded me of some of Clive Barker's stuff, in how the narrative barely outraces the deepening pit in my stomach.

Today I picked up The King in Yellow, the short story collection published in the 1850s that served as a launching pad for much of the Lovecraftian mythos, and Adrift on the Haunted Seas, the Best Short Stories of William Hope Hodgeson, another early author of the weird.
Cool. I've read a lot of Lovecraft, a fair amount of Howard and M. R. James, and a bit of Dunsany and Machen. You'll have to post your thoughts.

My horror streak continues now with cinema and The Spiral Staircase.