I listened to this story on a record in high school as an actor read it in a creepy voice and I screamed when he described the heart beating under the floorboards. I wasn't the only one either. Fantastic story.

I am honestly speechless. All of Edger Allan Poe's writing is descriptive and suspenseful. The way he writes madness and terror is something that made me feel uneasy and on edge for all of his short stories. He definitely was great at writing poems as well!

Poe, the master of prose, a writer with a traumatized childhood, obsessed to kill all his sassy female characters in his short stories.

As a non-native English speaker, I found Poe's use of the language quite challenging - he really liked his sentences to be as wordy and convoluted as they could.

With regard to the stories themselves, they are pretty good overall, and a few of them are masterpieces of the horror genre. The only one I didn't care about was MS. Found in a Bottle, quite dull and uneventful.

If I have to choose just one favourite, I'll go with The Masque of the Red Death, but closely followed by The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum.

---

-MS. Found in a Bottle: 2/5
-Berenice: 4/5
-Morella: 3/5
-Ligeia: 3/5
-The Fall of the House of Usher: 5/5
-William Wilson: 3/5
-A Descent into the Maelstrom: 4/5
-Eleonora: 3/5
-The Oval Portrait: 3/5
-The Masque of the Red Death: 5/5
-The Pit and the Pendulum: 5/5
-The Black Cat: 5/5
-The Tell-Tale Heart: 5/5
-The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar: 4/5
-The Cask of Amontillado: 5/5

Even though this is one of Poe's shortest stories, it is nevertheless a profound and, at times, ambiguous investigation of a man's paranoia. The story gains its intensity by the manner in which it portrays how the narrator stalks his victim — as though he were a beast of prey; yet, at the same time, elevated by human intelligence to a higher level of human endeavor, Poe's "murderer" is created into a type of grotesque anomaly. In a sense, the narrator is worse than a beast; only a human being could so completely terrorize his victim before finally killing it, as, for example, the narrator deliberately terrorizes the old man before killing him. And as noted in the introduction to this section, this story shows the narrator's attempt to rationalize his irrational behavior. I loved it!

Perfection.
I listened to the audiobook for this one and it made the experience so much more intense. Listen to it here


If you're looking for a creepy read, give this one a go!

I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.I heard many things in hell.


دوم.. دوم.. دوم
أهي دقات طبول الحرب أم نبضات بشري مسكين..؟

دوم.. دوم.. دوم
قوية ..جحيمية..مرعبة

دوم.. دوم.. دوم
لا تفارق عقل المجانين في دنيا العقلاء

دوم.. دوم.. دوم
ستسمعها طوال القراءة
وسترتعد كلما طرق أحدهم لأي سبب بجوارك

دوم.. دوم.. دوم
هي جحيم بو.. وبطله.. وجحيمك أنت أيضا طالما تقرأ
!


::::::::::

القلب الواشي هي أول قصة أدرسها في حياتي على الإطلاق
كنت في عامي الأول بالكلية حينما تعرفت للمرة الأولى على ‏هذا الإسم
إدجار آلان بو

ومن يومها صار إدمانا لا أريد له علاجا ولا دواء

::::::::::

بو سحرني من السطر الأول
فتنني قدرته العجيبة على ابتداع مواقف كابوسية كلها جدة ‏وتفرد
استخدامه للغة كان غريبا
لم أكن قد قرأت بالإنجليزية وقتها الكثير
فلم أدرسها بتمعن قبل الجامعة

وبرغم تجربتي القاصرة وقتها
إلا أنني لفتني أسلوب بو في صياغة العبارة بشدة

بهرت كل شيء
اللغة وتقطيع العبارة وطريق السرد وقدرة بو المبهرة‏
على التوغل في أنفس بشرية شيطانية بهذه الطريقة‏

توحدت تماما مع هذا الفتى الغريب
رأيت عين العجوز المغشاه بالماء الأزرق
شهقت وأنا أراها واضحة متجلية تنظر إلي
حينما سقط عليها شعاع الضوء الوحيد

واستمتعت جدا وجدا بالنهاية التي ابتدعها بو

::::::::::

القلب الواشي كانت البداية
بداية تعرفي إلى قاص وشاعر عشقته للنخاع

ذلك الذي أصر على اقتحام عالمي الساكن ‏
بكوابيسه التي لا تنتهي
وشعره الأرق من الرقة

“Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

-----------

عن عوالم بو كنت أتحدث

Some of the stories and poems were really interesting and unique, but others just bored me completely. Overall I think it's a book worth reading, but it definitely isn't a quick read.

5 buenos cuentos de Poe, muy buenas ilustraciones y linda edición de Pictus

Bettie's Books

You might think you’re Marilyn Manson gothic…



But are you Edgar Allan Poe gothic. I don’t think so!


I'm going with 5 STARS for this compilation.
Edgar Allan Poe has influenced so many writers along with culture that it's hard not to give him all the stars.

He's a master of the topics of greed, lust and power. You can’t get more dark, twisted and deep than this cat.
Not even six feet deep in a cozy coffin deep.

So glad to finally read most of his stories and poems. A few short stories were a bit long winded and took some time to get through. I still enjoyed the dark madness of Poe’s mind as I read along.

My favorites and in no particular order were…

The Valley of Unrest

The Black Cat (damn homeboy)

The Masque of the Red Death
**Side note: The short story is referenced in the book The Terror so it was a sentimental favorite of mine.

The Raven

A Valentine (you sly dog Edgar)

The Pit and the Pendulum

And of course one of the most famous, The Tell-Tale Heart.
Just as amazing as the last time that I read this short story!
In fact, this was a better reading experience while being older. Huh, not sure what that means?!

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜★

[3.5]

☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜★


n  INTRODUCTION:n
So, first of all, I didn't read *this* edition, so I just chose one that had aprox. the amount of pages that I read in my edition. Now, I really want to talk about each tale and rate it by its own, because I have a lot of mixed opinions about this...


n  1. The Black Cat (★★★★) n
I really liked this one, because even though I read it many years ago I was still so freaking scared. Now, I have to say that I am literally scared of *everything*, and I really liked this tale. This tale is about vengeance and karma, and I'm really here for men getting what they deserve. Just reading this tale I got THE chills, and I reaaaally loved this one.

n  2. The Murders in the Rue Morgue (★★) n
So, I was really curious to see Poe in thriller, but this was... meh. The ending was kinda unreal and I was bored the 85% of the time. Poe, please go back to horror, is what you do best.

n  3. The Raven (★★★.5) n
I liked this. I don't have any strong opinions on this one, but I really loved Poe's prose here.

n  4. The Premature Burial (★★★★★) n
Wow. I had heard a lot about this tale but actually reading it scared the shit out of me. Now I discovered a new fear, so thank you Poe. This tale talks about a men who has a disease that makes him sleep for weeks or even months without signs of life, so he is literally BURIED ALIVE AND WAKES UP IN A COFFIN. WTF POE, WTF.

n  5. The Masque of the Red Death (★★★★★) n
I- just wow. I had never read something like this. This was just so amazing that I'm still astonished. Everyting in this tale made absolute sense and it was almost beautiful to read. I really felt everything that Poe wrote here and it easily became one of my favorite tales of all time.

n  6. The Tell-Tale Heart (★★★★★) n
This is one of my all-time favorite tales. This is so well-crafted and thought-out that I'm just astonished every time I read it. I just cannot describe how much I love this, in a creepy way because I'm so freaking scared every time I read it.

n  7. The Pit and the Pendulum (★) n
I was just confused all the time. Hated this.

n  8. Ligeia (★★.5) n
I was confused. I was lost. I just didn't enjoy this one.

n  9. The Barrel Of Amontillado (★★★★) n
I was so freaking scared the entire time but I actually enjoyed beeing inside the mind of a creepy guy. It felt like a "refresh" between these *horrible* tales.

n  10. The Stollen Letter (★) n
I just forgot I was reading when I noticed this was another Dupin tale. It was boring and just frustrating.