Hobbit Towers Halloween resurrected

[Randy M.]

I think a Halloween reading thread is a great one to maintain. Why is it that the Dark Holiday evokes such warm feelings of kinship and, y'know, general coziness.

Two that don't get mentioned. Well, maybe the Zelazny, but not in my presence.

RZ's A Night in the Lonesome October, in which the familiars of famous villains do their bit for preserving the space-time continuum, or similar.

Fun book. I read it last year for Halloween and enjoyed it quite a bit. I wouldn't call it scary, exactly, but I would say it was the kind of horror novel that would be enjoyed by readers who don't normally enjoy horror stories. (I might even give Fright Night as an example of a horror movie for people who don't normally enjoy horror movies.)

Robert Girardi's Madeleine's Ghost, a really effective modern tale with Southern atmosphere. Came out maybe twenty years ago, and nobody's heard of it. Unless someone proves me wrong.

In the TBR pile, I think, along with another novel and a story collection by him. I might have picked this up because you mentioned it before. Can't recall, now.

Oh, movies? Murder by Decree. Holmes, the Ripper, and bad people in high places. A shaky ending, but fabulous atmosphere.

There was a third book. I'll remember it after I post, as is my tradition.

Fun movie. Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson respectively, and, weirdly, directed by the director of Black Christmas, Porky's and A Christmas Story, Bob Clark.

If you ever get chance, track down the movie, A Study in Terror, another Holmes/Ripper movie, also good fun, with John Neville as an effective but rather mellow Holmes.

The book I forgot? (See above.) Lost by Gregory Maguire. Underrated.

I'd forgotten about this one. I'll have to dig it out. Thanks.


Randy M.

[DailyAlice]

We love A study in Terror at our house. Thanks for reminding me. Also am in total agreement with those who recced Dead of Night. That one hokey tale about the golfers--husband hates it--remind me of P. G. Wodehouse. It rips up the mood a bit, but I like a little whimsy with the creeps.

[Hobbit]

The Library of America set arrived today. It is a lovely thing: and for its size, very heavy!

Mark

[fluffy bunny]

Hobbit you should be on commision . As I've hardly read any of the stories in that set, I'll go and pick it up

[Hobbit]

Maj: it might work out cheaper to buy it from the US (or Amazon US) if that helps, even with the not-as-good-as-it used-to-be exchange rate.

The set is $70.

Mine was £30, including the postage, and arrived in about 15 days.

Hope that helps. The Straub introductions are quite interesting and I'm having a lot of fun dipping into the stories (some I know and others I don't!)

As the knowledgable Randy has pointed out, some of the stories picked are not the ones I would automatically choose from the authors I know present. But that's part of the fun here.

Mark

[Papazak]

I had planned on focusing my entertainment around a scary/Halloween theme this year as well!! I love Fall...Halloween..my Birthday is soon haha

What perfect timing on this resurrection of a great thread!!

For books I am currently reading The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

Also, even though I dont know how "scary" it is but, I plan to read The eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Lady in White -- it just misses being great, but certainly manages being entertaining. It's an '80s film with Lukas Haas (I think; there's a couple of the kid actors from then I have a habit of confusing)

Ugh! Just the thought of that movie makes the little girl in me want to run and hide. That song "Have you ever seen a dream walking" haunts me!

For Movies I was hoping to do a Terminator marathon, however Salvation does not come out on DVD until December So I will stick with my usual Dawn of the Dead and The Crow (on devils night)

Also I play alot of video games so I had planned on pulling out my old Silent Hill game because not only is it easy, but still scares me! haha And Bioshock came in the mail recently!! Time to harvest *evil laugh

[Raule]

I just bought the Ellen Daltow anthology, Lovecraft Unbound. Some of my favorite authors have stories in this collection, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Not sure when I'll read, as I usually dip in and out of collections like this at my leisure.

Also read Niffenegger's newest, Her Fearful Symmetry. Not scary or horrific, but very atmospheric, and there's a ghost with a PoV in it. I think unadulterated lovers of her first book The Time Traveler's Wife will have a mixed reaction to it. The plot isn't really all that believable, but she does succeed in doing some interesting things thematically. I enjoyed it for what it was.

[Cranky Hamster]

As mentioned in the October reading thread, I recently finished Joe Schreiber's Death Troopers. I'll give it a lukewarm "okay." It doesn't do anything new with its tropes (zombies in space!!) which was my biggest disappointment. Between staying entirely on well-trodden paths, menacing a cast of mostly cardboard characters with gore rather than psychological terrors (other than the standard one-paragraph zombie psych terrors), simplistic prose and a standard plot that opens from a cool premise but quickly devolves into cliche and contrivance... well, to sum it up, it's a book that is probably fun for a genre novice but does not have much to offer a more jaded reader, IMO. I don't regret the time I spent reading it but I do wish I hadn't paid hardcover prices for it.

[Randy M.]

I just bought the Ellen Daltow anthology, Lovecraft Unbound. Some of my favorite authors have stories in this collection, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Not sure when I'll read, as I usually dip in and out of collections like this at my leisure.[...]

I bought this over the weekend, too. It's changed my reading plans: I think I need to reread some HPL before I dip into it. I've been thinking about doing that anyway, so no time like the present.

By the way, for anyone interested, I see that Orb has reissued Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. It's a novel from the 1940s that posits wives as witches protecting and furthering their husbands careers, in this case, in academia. It's fun. On the cover they announce it as a forerunner of urban fantasy, and I think that's fair. (I'd say it was fair for Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think, too.)


Randy M.

[Mithfânion]

I also ordered and received Lovecraft Unbound, it has a very pleasant feel to it, this Dark Horse release.

I bought some more. One collection due out on the 15th this month is Barbara Roden's Northwest Passages. You can read the title story here:

http://www.northwestpassages.org/free-fiction.php

I also bought Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year vol. 1 which is just out. As some may know, the Year's Best Fantasy and horror anthology is no more, and now Datlow has a yearly horror anthology from Night Shade whereas Jonathan Strahan and Rich Horton do their respective SF & Fantasy anthologies. This volume has Laird Barron & Glen Hirshberg among many others.

And finally I bought Brian Keene's new collection of novellas and short stories, called Unhappy Endings, after some rave reviews.