No sooner had I written about why readers shouldn’t write off the classics any more than selectors (be they librarians, educators, booksellers, or whoever) should write off popular or genre fiction, than another reason to check them out came my way via reviewer Colleen Wanglund. An article from the excellent science fiction website iO9 shared the incredible, horrifying illustrations that appeared in Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Thinking back, it seems like the first volume of Poe’s short stories that I encountered had at least some of these illustrations in them. What a compelling way to seize a reader, to get pulled into the story before ever encountering the possibly frustrating tone, style, pace, and vocabulary of books written a hundred years ago. Yes, it IS worth it to try the real thing, to have it in your hands. Even if you just choose to find it for the pictures.