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sfgale

sfgale

Ghost Story

Ghost Story - Peter Straub I decided to finally read this after seeing it on almost every best of list I came across. Had to be an amazing read right? Nope. Started off very well with a man travelling around with a little girl who just seemed to be resigned to whatever was going to happen to her even though there was a marked air of something sinister beneath the surface. Then we cut to a little group of men who seem to get together regularly to tell stories, but again there's clearly something more to it. I'll never(probably) know what that something is because one by one they proceed to tell the most tedious stories you can imagine. I'm afraid I just don't have the inclination if I had the patience to wade through this kind of tedium any more. There are just too many books I want to read to waste time like that.

It's a shame that the author allowed the narrative to slow to a crawl after the first chapter because it really started very well. And it still amazed me that this is nearly always high on any horror best of list. I truly can't see why that would be the case even given the great start and a pretty good sinister, creepy undertone to the story. Just took too long to begin for my liking, and what I mean by that is, I feel the story really should have moved along a good bit further by the point I gave in, after all, I was heading for the 20% mark.

Disappointing, writing itself drew me in, but simply took too long to go anywhere and I just wasn't invested enough in the story by the time I decided to quit to attempt to continue in the hope it gets better.