The Willows, The Wendigo, and Other Horrors: The Best Weird Fiction and Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood: Annotated and Illustrated Tales of ... of Murder, Mystery, Horror, and Haunting)

Some of the best short horror fiction you will ever read. Period.

worthless annotations that kept pulling me out of the stories to check and receive little to no value out of.

After watching the recent film "Annihilation", which I found very thought provoking, I purchased this book of tales by Algernon Blackwood, which had influenced the film's story line. There are other mass market Blackwood paperbacks available but I chose this particular rendition because of the particular short tales in this book. Regrettably, it was a mistake! I have tried several times to read a few of the tales, but reading the stories is such a huge effort that I have put it aside and will likely not attempt to read it again. Why? Because this specific edition is annotated by an M. Grant Kellermeyer, and the annotations are endless, unnecessary, didactic, distracting, and are as prevalent as the punctuation.. except far far more distracting and annoying. That someone-- anyone-- would feel the need to "explain" a word in nearly every other sentence is simply ludicrous. If my comments seem disparaging, then I've succeeded.

Buen libro!

An intelligently curated collection of the great Blackwood's stories, including the most celebrated ones. The edition is well typeset and bound. The self publishing format adds an agreeably eccentric layer of wierdness. Illustrations are amateurish but mainly appropriate. The copious footnotes on every page seek to explain not only every word that might be unfamiliar to a modern american reader but also the meaning of every metaphor and the intent of the author. I can easily imagine the curator as a character in one of the stories!