From Hell book review

I'm planning to read a good portion of Alan Moore comics. I got to From Hell this week. My review:

A most unnecessary book. It is the only book I've read where I found the appendix more interesting than the book itself.

The best line is

“The one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.”

It's no "opium of the people" schtick from Marx - which describes religion nearly perfectly - but it's up there.

I learned what a twopenny hangover was. However, having just read this, it appears I already learnt that decades ago when I read Down and Out in Paris and London, while on a George Orwell back catalogue read and had merely forgotten. The joys of old age - you can forget and learn something you forgot you'd already learnt. I remember thinking, when I was young, "gee, wouldn't it be great if I forgot the plot of Star Wars? I could then watch it for the first time."

A funny snippet from the appendix that also happened to explain something I thought was a bizarre inclusion:

Although the weights removed from Druitt's pockets were described as "stones" by the policeman who was summoned after watermen had pulled the decomposing body form the river, I have chosen to suggest this was deliberate blurring of the evidence. I have no reason for supposing this to be the truth, and indeed only brought the bricks into the scene so that I would have another opportunity to say malignant and unfounded things about the Freemasons.

I also learnt that the Golden Dawn aren't just a bunch of Greek fascists.

I don't have particularly negative things to say about this book. It is simply a book that never needed to be written. The world has enough books that have a fascination with violence against women.