Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales

• ✔ The Balloon-Hoax - Wow. That was really boring.
• ✔ Ms. Found in a Bottle - Good suspense, but the ending confused me.
• ✔ A Descent into the Maelstrom - Not too memorable.
• ✔ The Murders in the Rue Morgue - A rather silly Holmes-esque mystery tale.
• ✔ The Purloined Letter - Not bad, but far too wordy.
• ✔ The Black Cat - Deliciously disturbing.
• ✔ The Fall of the House of Usher - Not as interesting as his others, but good atmosphere.
• ✔ The Pit and the Pendulum - A delightful tale of suspense.
• ✔ The Masque of the Red Death - Meh. Weird for no reason and kind of boring.
• ✔ The Cask of Amontillado - I think makes Poe so memorable is his vivid first-person accounts from the point of view of a killer.
• ✔ The Assignation - I couldn't follow this one. What did the drowning child and the art aficionado have to do with one another?
• ✔ The Tell-Tale Heart - Funnier than I'd remembered. One of my all-time favorites.
• ✔ Diddling - A random essay on swindling.
• ✔ The Man That was Used Up - Silly, amusing, but ends a bit too abruptly.
• ✔ Narrative of A. Gordon Pym - Some good bits, but I think I just don't like maritime fiction.

Eight Tales of Terror

• ✔ The Cask of Amontillado - I think makes Poe so memorable is his vivid first-person accounts from the point of view of a killer.
• ✔ Hop-Frog - Um. What is this man's obsession with orangutans?
• ✔ MS. Found in a Bottle - Good suspense, but the ending confused me.
• ✔ Ligeia - Didn't really go anywhere.
• ✔ The Fall of the House of Usher - Not as interesting as his others, but good atmosphere.
• ✔ William Wilson - Brilliant piece of horror.
• ✔ The Masque of the Red Death - Meh. Weird for no reason and kind of boring.
• ✔ The Imp of the Perverse - A strange little story on why we knowingly act not in our own interest - such as lying, procrastinating, drinking, and other things sure to get us into trouble - to explain a confession of murder.

Ten Great Mysteries

• ✔ The Murders in the Rue Morgue - A rather silly Holmes-esque mystery tale.
• ✔ The Purloined Letter - Not bad, but far too wordy.
• ✔ The Tell-Tale Heart - Funnier than I'd remembered. One of my all-time favorites.
• ✔ The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - Enjoyably bizarre.
• ✔ The Pit and the Pendulum - A delightful tale of suspense.
• ✔ A Tale of the Ragged Mountains - Kind of weird. I'm not sure if I liked it or not.
• ✔ A Descent into the Maelstrom - Not too memorable.
• ✔ The Black Cat - Deliciously disturbing.
• ✔ "Thou Art the Man" - Clever but very predictable.
• ✔ Metzengerstein - I'm not sure I entirely understand what happened in this one.

Other

• ✔ The Mystery of Marie Roget - Needlessly complicated and hard to follow. There's a reason Holmes became famous and Dupin did not.
• ✔ The Bells - Fun to read aloud.
• ✔ The Raven - An old favorite. I love the contrast between the subject matter and the singsong cadence.
• ✔ Berenice - Delightfully disturbing.