Anyone else have some spooky reads lined up for October? My bookclub is reading Frankenstein this month, which will be a nice change of pace from the usual fare. I’ve got Tender is the Flesh, Rouge, and Black Sheep lined up. I will probably get to The Haunting of Hill House as well, which I’m really excited to read! I just finished up Vampires of El Norte, which definitely needed more vampires!
I hadn’t thought about it, but it sounds like a fun idea, so I’ve checked out The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, a horror classic that’s been on my to-read list for a while: “a collection of spine-tingling horror stories that are woven together by a fictional play called The King in Yellow.”
It’s kinda spooky-adjacent, but I really want to reread The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter before the month is up. I really love her interpretations of old fairy tales, plus the title story is a riff on Bluebeard and it’s just chef’s kiss.
Shelley Jackson is also so so good. Her other big one, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is really well paced and full of surprises. It’s also really weirdly sweet!
100 per cent agree with this! The book is so knotty and interesting, there’s all these ways you can read into it that the popular understanding, and all the media, just do not engage with.
I never really read horror. I did enjoy A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay when I read it. If you want very quick reads, the Level 26 trilogy, while far from being amazing, is a nice distraction.
Some of my friends are doing the Dracula Daily newsletter this year, where it emails you the chapters as they happen in real time. Pretty cool idea and they’ve really enjoyed it!
I liked Dr. Sleep more than I thought I was going to! I thought it worked as a follow up to The Shining, but still had a lot of original stuff going on, too.
The last few years I’ve been reading a bunch of Lovecraft’s earlier influences. Some of that has been very good. (Chambers, Blackwood, Machen, etc.) But the absolute standout has been Dunsany. If you like HPL’s “Dream Quest” material, check out Dunsany’s “Time and The Gods” and “Wonder Tales”.
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