Well, the higher I amplify it the more likely it is to heighten the background noise as well, and the noise reduction can only do so much. I just bumped them all up to above 88db though.msfry wrote: ↑September 28th, 2022, 2:30 pmYour reading was great, as usual, except for the low volume hovering around 87, which makes the quieter sections of it hard to hear on my bluetooth speakers, even at top volume. I only use headphones when I PL in which case I do hear it all clearly, of course. But otherwise, I listen in my car or room bluetooth speakers broadcast into the air. Is there some reason you keep your files consistently below 89?
This was the second time I had read The Willows and going through it again gave me even further appreciation for how expertly crafted it is. It's easy to see why H.P. Lovecraft considered it one of the best stories in all weird fiction, and it's obvious it influenced him a lot. He was all about other worlds and other gods which is central to the idea of this story. Also I gotta say, imagining that dead body at the end with the funnels in its corpse is a pretty horrifying image...As to the story, hmmm. AAA for imagination, suspense, and descriptiveness. The veil between worlds. Different ways to perceive other beings. A living swamp with personality and purpose and . . . . sacrifices. All eerily believable. I was so hoping they would find that steering paddle somewhere in the bushes, man, so they could get away. But no. So will they be the next sacrifices? It will take a lot to surpass the bull scene in New Bodies For Old (as far as sureal stories go), but this one was right up there.
I think they did get away after the end of the story. There are a few times the narrator references things in the past like it's an event he's recounting to someone else, assuming they made it out. After the willow gods were appeased with the peasant sacrifice, it seemed like the weather died down allowing them to go down river without concern. The main reason the rudder paddle was so necessary was because of the stormy conditions and flooding.
