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Journal Entry 1 by choclaholic from San Antonio, Texas USA on Wednesday, August 17, 2005
 2005/47
I first became aware of Koji Suzuki after I saw the first Ring movie. It was because I was so baffled by some of the story elements, that I looked to the end credits to see it if was adapted from a book, so that I could read the original to clear up my confusion. I was happily surprised to find Ring the book, and it's sequels Loop and (the soon to be released) Spiral, because though the movie versions weren't very good, the books were excellent and are among my favorite ficitonal works.
So when I heard about this new movie Dark Water, inspired by yet another Suzuki book, I become very excited to read it. Before reading the book, though, I saw the American movie, followed by the Japanese movie, which I thought were both pretty good. Too bad this time around, the book didn't live up to the expectations set by the quality of the movies.
This is a book of short stories, that I'm hesitant to even classify as Horror. Some of them have that Twilight Zone kind of edge; but I think only the direction and music of a movie could turn them into actual horror, the way the did with the title story Dark Water. All the stories do have a common water them going on, whether it's a water tank, the sea, or an underground lake. I'm not sure that if I understood Japanese and/or Buddhist culture and mythology better that I might have appreciated the stories more(?).
In the first story, a mother is haunted by a little girl drowned in her apartment building's water tank. The next story is that of an abusive fisherman who drowns at sea. Another deals with a couple of MLM recruits encountering a strange force upon their yacht in the bay. My favorite story is about a "ghost" ship with a malevolent monster seeking to destroy the human life aboard her. The last story is about a couple of spelunkers getting trapped in a cave with an underground lake.
I still will seek out Suzuki's full novels, as they have a fascinating science angle to them, but I think I'll steer clear of any more short stories he might write.
This is ready to go on to Cindy Frag from the San Antonio Reader's Circle yahoo group.
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Journal Entry 2 by choclaholic from San Antonio, Texas USA on Saturday, August 27, 2005
Gave this to ankouleskie in the Reader's Circle, to read for our October book discussion.
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Journal Entry 4 by 33shadow from Hewitt, Texas USA on Friday, October 28, 2005
I'm not a huge fan of horror and unsettling subjects, but I dutifully read it for the book club. I must say I liked the last few short stories much better than the first! And I liked the Prologue and Epilogue, and how they tied in with one of the short stories. Very interesting.
I'll be returning it to either choclaholic or saldragski for the Reader's Circle book club.
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Journal Entry 5 by Flyinfox from San Antonio, Texas USA on Saturday, March 25, 2006
Picked up from Choclaholic. Seems interesting although she was not too happy with this book. I thought I would get the nouvo Japanese lit a try.
Flyinfox
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Journal Entry 6 by  AnonymousFinder on Saturday, April 07, 2007
I found the book on an outdoor table at SeaWorld San Antonio in November 2006.
It was convenient to chance upon it at the time since the book is made up of a series of short stories and I had opportunity to read it during the lulls of my family's three-day weekend vacation. However, I tended to be consistently disappointed with the ending of many of the stories...so I eventually gave up reading it.
It has been a few months now since I stopped reading it and here I am finally posting to this site. I will place it somewhere soon for the next person to find!
- Geoffrey
CAUGHT IN SAN ANTONIO TEXAS USA
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Journal Entry 7 by AnonymousFinder at Houston, Texas USA on Tuesday, October 11, 2011
I picked up the book in a used bookstore in Houston. The short stories are well written but the title could just have well been "Dark Stories" instead of Dark Water. In mid October 2011, the book will be travelling to Rome, Italy to be placed in the library of a cruise ship. Bon voyage.
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Dark Water
