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!
Frankenstein is a really great read because the story that “We all know” is drastically different from the book.
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.
Well, Dracula in some form.
And i hope that i finally manage to read Dr. Sleep by Stephen King, because The Shining is one of my favourite books by him.
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.
Lovecraft is awesome if you want some short stories. Call of Cthulhu, Colour out of Space, and Rats in the Walls area my personal favorites.
The Colour Out of Space is my favorite Lovecraft! I definitely need to reread some of his stuff; it’s been a while.
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”.
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.
A Head Full of Ghosts has been on my list for a while; I need to get around to reading it!
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!
The Bloody Chamber has also been on my list forever! I like fairy-tale reinterpretations; I might have to finally pick up a copy for this month!
Not a spooky, but almost every October I reread A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny - https://bookwyrm.social/book/38827/s/a-night-in-the-lonesome-october
Sounds interesting!
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.”
The King in Yellow is one that I see referenced a lot but haven’t read yet!
Ah, I just posted about this in [email protected] (I forgot what this community was called). My Halloween history:
- 2023: Perfectly Preventable Deaths by Deirdre Sullivan
- 2022: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- 2021: Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
- 2020: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- 2019: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
- 2018: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders & Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- 2017: Carrie by Stephen King
- 2016: Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- 2015: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
- 2014: The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft
- 2012: The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft
- 2009: Dracula by Bram Stoker
- 2008: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
