Hobbit’s 10 Halloween Reads
In a recent review, I said that I have a set of books that I like to read, re-read or dip into on an All Hallow’s Eve. I thought that it would be a good idea to pass this information on, for anyone that will find it useful.
- The Classics
Here are the ones that, over the years, I keep coming back to (in no real order).
M. R. James Collected Stories (1904 – 1925.) My all-time favourite. Thirty or so tales of ghostly goings on, strange objects, places and academia. These take some beating and their age adds a certain ancient charm. Like a good alcoholic beverage, no doubt read in a study near an open fire, the stories improve with age.
The Dark Descent, (1987) edited by David G. Hartwell. This is (pun intended) a monster, so large that it was published as three separate books here in the UK, and subtitled The Evolution of Horror. Get the brick sized paperback if you can, at over 1000 pages. A great mixture of over fifty new (at the time of publication) and old, with one of the best examinations of Horror that I’ve ever read. Includes (deep breath) Hawthorne, Poe, LeFanu, Dickens, Bierce, Gilman, Chambers, Wharton, Lovecraft, Faulkner, Leiber, Bloch and Bradbury, M. R. James, Hichens, Blackwood, Onions, and De La Mare. Of the more recent authors it includes Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, Matheson, Phillip K. Dick, Ellison, Oates, Disch, Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, and Clive Barker and three by Stephen King. Reflects the broad nature of horror in all its forms.
Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert Wise. (1944) Thanks to Randy M. who pointed this one out to me years ago and has become a regular ‘dip-into’ favourite. To quote the publisher, “Represented in the anthology are such distinguished spell weavers as Edgar Allen Poe (The Black Cat), Wilkie Collins (A Terribly Strange Bed), Henry James (Sir Edmund Orme), Guy de Maupassant (Was It a Dream?), O. Henry (The Furnished Room), Rudyard Kipling (They), and H.G. Wells (Pollock and the Porroh Man). Included as well are such modern masters as Algernon Blackwood (Ancient Sorceries), Walter de la Mare (Out of the Deep), E.M. Forster (The Celestial Omnibus), Isak Dinesen (The Sailor-Boys Tale), H.P. Lovecraft (The Dunwich Horror), Dorothy L. Sayers (Suspicion), and Ernest Hemingway (The Killers). “ A great variety, not all from expected writers, but all good.
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897.) Still has that gothic charm, for me more so than the other classics (Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, etc). Little else to say on this one, other than if you have seen the many, many movies and television series but not read the novel you have a treat in store with the book.
‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. (1975) A little tough to select just one of Mr. King’s over fifty books, but vampires in a relatively modern New England does it for me. One of Stephen’s work more in the true Horror mode than his more recent output.
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury. As Randy M. has said, the ending’s a tad problematic but for an effective summary of Bradbury’s poetic prose, this is one of his best novels. I must say though that I generally prefer his short stories, and his earliest are probably my favourites from the Weird Tales Try The October Country for those, or if you can get it (very rare and very expensive!) Dark Carnival.
H P Lovecraft’s Complete Stories (various dates, but generally 1930’s and 1940’s.) The master of Cthulhu, this is worth reading if only to see what all the fuss is about. His prose is rather purple and they can be a tad repetitive if read in large quantities, but they do stay with you. One that I keep going back to and dipping into.
Nearly made the list (but I was trying to keep it to ten): Poe Collected, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959).
The Newbies
Here are the books that threaten to be added to the list. They are either new, or have only been read by me in the last couple of years but may well be elevated to the next division, so to speak.
Ghost by Louise Welsh (2015) This is this year’s big read: a hundred stories all of generally great quality (at least so far!) Here are gothic classics, modern masters, Booker Prize-winners, ancient folk tales and stylish noirs, proving that every writer has a skeleton or two in their closet. The all-star cast of authors include: Hilary Mantel, William Faulkner, Kate Atkinson, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Franz Kafka, Ruth Rendell, Edgar Allan Poe, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Dylan Thomas, Bram Stoker, H.P Lovecraft, Lydia Davis, Sir Walter Scott, Annie Proulx, Bram Stoker, Angela Carter and the ubiquitous Stephen King.
The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories by Susan Hill (2015), though individual stories date from 1983 to 2014. A little bit of a cheat this one, as it is a new collection including the now-famous The Woman in Black (1983) but also Dolly, The Man in the Picture, The Small Hand, and Printers Devil Court. The successor to M R James, but written from a modern perspective. Now all in one handy book.
The Vampire Archives (2009) by Otto Penzler. I’m a big fan of Otto’s big book selections, usually with tales from the Pulp Era. They don’t always work for me, but the breadth is so broad that there’s usually many more plusses than minuses – and there’s usually a few nicely obscure ones in there too. This one wins by means of size.
I know there are others, and I’m sure there will be others just as obvious (and ones that people will tell me I should include!). But I hope that this list will have enough in it for you to try and enjoy.
Happy Halloween, y’all!
