The Age Old Story....

2 Oct 2019

I wonder sometimes what stories age well and which don't. Do readers still love the stories they loved years ago or were they just important for that point in their lives? Do they even remember them?

So, what's the oldest story in your favorites list? When was it published? Would you still favorite it today (or did you favorite it recently)?

3 Oct 2019

I honestly don't remember any of the old stories that I've read over the last 10 years on Lush and Literotica. None of them are up to the standards of the classics like Grapes of Wrath, To Kill A Mockingbird and Sherlock Holmes. They're fun to read but no lasting impressions.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

Herbert Spencer

1 Feb 2020

Quote by Katherine
I wonder sometimes what stories age well and which don't. Do readers still love the stories they loved years ago or were they just important for that point in their lives? Do they even remember them?

So, what's the oldest story in your favorites list? When was it published? Would you still favorite it today (or did you favorite it recently)?

I was here on Lush ten-or-so years ago, but am sorry to say I cannot remember one single story from back then.

But your question, Katherine, got me thinking about how reading tastes change over time. I have this one experience to offer.

In my late teens, I worked my way through most of Colin Wilson's books. But it was one of his novels, The Philosopher's Stone, that really got my adolescent intellectual juices flowing. I remember boring my friends to death about it in the village pub one Saturday night in autumn of 1972. My soon wife to be and I had driven to Keele University to see friends of ours who had just started their degree course there ( I was too thick for uni). Poor them!

I re-read it a couple of years ago. Oh, dear!

Unfortunately, a bit like his personality, Mister Wilson's prose is a little wooden, which I could have lived as l found the premise and plot engaging. Unfortunately, long passages of the book are just excuses for him to lecture the poor reader on his philosophical beliefs. And I do concur with many of his points, it's just that I feel fiction is perhaps not the best vehicle in which to express them in such a lecturing manner.

Perhaps it would have been better if he'd kept the philosophy to his nonfiction titles.

Mmm. I've just had a look at it again via the Amazon "Look inside" facility (can't be arsed trying to find my copy among all my books, tirple deep on my shelves) and it made me want to give it another shot.

When I re-read it, perhaps naively I'd expected to get the same intensity I'd experienced as a teenager,

Writing about it here has rekindled my interest. Might give it another go. It does have quite a Lovecratian theme.

1 Feb 2020

Can we assume you mean the favorites one would admit to saving? ;)

There are about a dozen 'first favorites' before the first I'd mention in public without blushing: Gift of the Geisha (Coco & Milik) and Fiction (avrgblkgrl).

Something to think about and revisit in another few years...

1 Feb 2020

i don't even remember a lot of my stories. i read my story list and go, oh, i wrote that? what is it about? i don't remember it. that said, there is one story here, by Dancing Doll - https://www.lushstories.com/stories/taboo/the-sex-rehab-diaries-rachels.aspx - that she kind of wrote for me, and that i revisit a couple of times a year to get off on (not going to lie about that).

You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.

2 Feb 2020

Quote by LucaByDesign

It does have quite a Lovecratian theme.

As did The Mind Parasites. I read Wilson during a heavy Mythos phase in my reading life (undergrad). Enjoyed them but agree with your comments. In the end he's not good enough to be a favorite and not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure. Among Lovecraftian writers, Ramsey Campbell and T.E.D. Klein have stuck with me the most.

As for stories here, I don't remember a lot of them. Scanning through my story history, no titles prior to about 2017 really twig memories. And since then, I've mostly only been reading comp entries and stories from people I know I like so naturally there's some in there that stand out.

3 Feb 2020

Quote by seeker4

As did The Mind Parasites. I read Wilson during a heavy Mythos phase in my reading life (undergrad). Enjoyed them but agree with your comments. In the end he's not good enough to be a favorite and not bad enough to be a guilty pleasure. Among Lovecraftian writers, Ramsey Campbell and T.E.D. Klein have stuck with me the most.

As for stories here, I don't remember a lot of them. Scanning through my story history, no titles prior to about 2017 really twig memories. And since then, I've mostly only been reading comp entries and stories from people I know I like so naturally there's some in there that stand out.

Yeah, I read The Mind Parasites too. It didn't make an impression in the same way The Philosopher's Stone did.

I remember Wilson saying that he'd written those two particular novels in response to a letter August Derleth had sent him (May have been in the preface of one of them). In it, Derleth had chided Wilson over a remark he'd made in his book The Strength To Dream. I cannot now recall what Wilson was supposed to have said. Something about Lovecraft being a poor stylist. Derleth had challenged Wilson to come up with something better. The two books mentioned were the result.

Poor stylist or not, I know whose book I'd be taking with me to a desert island.

But as a nonfiction writer Wilson is king. I can think of few other authors that can match his ability to make a subject interesting. One reviewer stated, "Wilson could make a telephone directory enjoyable". He did have a knack of disgesting concepts and then regurgitating them so even a ten-year-old could understand — sometimes to the point of glibness.

These days he's mainly remembered for his titles on the supernatural, but those are only one facet of his output — but probably the only one that made him any money.

Did you ever play the role-playing game, Call of Cthulu? Many a happy wasted evening in my youth. Throw the twenty-sided dice an watch your sanity plummet.

3 Feb 2020

Quote by LucaByDesign

Did you ever play the role-playing game, Call of Cthulu? Many a happy wasted evening in my youth. Throw the twenty-sided dice an watch your sanity plummet.

Yep. Was never a "go-to" the way D&D was for my group but definitely got played. I got into Lovecraft fairly young and have an Arkham House set of HPL from the eighties on my shelves still. I've never really written a true Mythos story myself though a story I've got up over on the sister site comes close. It was originally meant to be the start of my own horror-dark fantasy "mythos" but this was the only story that got into the wild.

28 Feb 2020

Quote by LucaByDesign

Did you ever play the role-playing game, Call of Cthulu? Many a happy wasted evening in my youth. Throw the twenty-sided dice an watch your sanity plummet.

We played a few sessions but it never stuck with us. We mainly played AD&D and Rolemaster. And Paranoia for something completely different.

Looks like we're in for a nasty spell of wether.

Gracie Goes To Hollywood's - True

The Night They Tried to Close RUMPLATIONS Bar (with JamesLlewellyn)

28 Feb 2020

Quote by GraceW

We played a few sessions but it never stuck with us. We mainly played AD&D and Rolemaster. And Paranoia for something completely different.

I think a person had to have loved H. P. Lovecraft for it to have found a place in your heart. I bet a good many horror writers started of by writing their own scenarios for the game

I remember you saying you were one hot dungeon master, back in the day.

And thanks for the Georgie Fame video, Grace. Great stuff.

28 Feb 2020

Quote by Katherine
I wonder sometimes what stories age well and which don't. Do readers still love the stories they loved years ago or were they just important for that point in their lives? Do they even remember them?

So, what's the oldest story in your favorites list? When was it published? Would you still favorite it today (or did you favorite it recently)?

I joined Lush in 2014 and then swiftly left. I can't remember any stories I used to read and I didn't favourite anything as I was a lurker for a while so I don't know what Lush was like 'back then'. When I returned in 2016 the first ever story I favourited was a Stormdog story.

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/hardcore/big-dicks-trucking-service-inc.aspx

5 Apr 2020

The first one in my Favourites is Departures by browncoffee. I know why I put it there, but I read the story again just to be sure. It would earn its place for lots of reasons: readable (compulsively so), deeply sensual and technically gifted the way it shifts in time flawlessly. But I favourited it because there were a couple of descriptions that made me wish I'd written them. Still do.

The stories on my Favourites list are there for similar reasons. I admired them, wanted to re-read them frequently and wanted to learn from them. I don't think that sort of thing ages.

Are you sure?