I think it's fair to say I'm not the biggest fan of Lovecraft. I think there's a couple of his short stories that I actually liked, but mostly I find his work to be overwritten and not disturbing in the slightest. This is, however, his most famous work, and I've been meaning to read it, with as open a mind as I possibly can, for some time. It's a good thing I didn't know in advance that it was heavily influenced by Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, though, because that book was absolutely dreadful and would have only have put me off reading further. H.P., alongside your other problems, if this is any indication you have trashy taste in books. Yes, you do.

So. I got hold of At the Mountains of Madness and it was going so well. For about the first third I was seriously considering giving it four stars, because the journey to Antarctica, that hideous mystery of what happened to the rest of the team, and the sense of incipient menace was actually well done. And, while we're giving praise where it's due, the final third wasn't bad, and neither were the penguins, although I do think they were criminally underused. But that central third... that long, tedious history of previous life in Antarctica? Bored. I was bored. It's dullsville, I'm sorry. I don't know why the life and verve of the first person narration died when it came to The Relating of the Unending Murals, but it did. It's honestly taken me several days to get through this novella because I kept getting bogged down in the middle bit. I don't say it sent me to sleep every time, but it came pretty close. Interesting idea, great beginning, but the historical worldbuilding killed it for me, it really did.

Poor old penguins.