re: Horror Fiction reading list: rate/recommend/discourage

I just finished Frankenstein, and I enjoyed it very much. However, even though recognized for centuries as a horror classic, I wouldn’t even really consider it horror by today’s standards. I won’t give anything away to those who intend to read it, but I tend to view it more as a fable, if that makes any sense to those who have read it.

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Yes! I could not recommend Night Shift and Skeleton Crew more highly.

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Yeah, these are my favorite stuff by King.

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Swan Song by Robert McCammon. I'm reading it right now for the first time in probably 20 years. Damn it's an unbelievable book that holds up after all these years.

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McCammon wrote a very good vampire book called They Thirst many years ago, but let it fall out of print because he didn't think it was up to snuff. I heartily disagree. He changed his mind and put it on Amazon. I recently re-read it and it holds up. It's just $3 bucks on Kindle so you can't beat the price point. We describe fun, entertaining movies that aren't Oscar-serious as "popcorn flicks". I'd almost describe They Thirst as a popcorn vampire book. It's good stuff. The standard tropes are there but they're well done. Lots of surprises too.

Joe Hill is Steven King’s son. I’ve read two books by him this year which were excellent.

Full Throttle a book of short stories

A Heart Shaped Box which is a great ghost story with two very cool characters who you don’t necessarily like at the beginning of the book but really like by the end.

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Thanks I’ll look for it.

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I ordered it from World of Books dot com a few days ago for $5 and change. There are several used books sites out there, but this one has been really good with price and service. They have free shipping on any order $15+.

King Sorrow by Joe Hill

One of the best books I’ve read in years. I like it more than most of his Dad’s books, and I love Stephen King.

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Weaveworld by Clive Barker (or start with some of his Books of Blood short stories)

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I read Barker’s The Damnation Game about 25 years ago and loved it. I have The Hellbound Heart on my list. I’ve also read some of Books of Blood, but I forget which volumes. It was a long time ago.

What might be more horrifying is the volcanic eruption that caused weather changes around the globe, and had the Shelleys indoors on their vacation to Switzerland in 1816.

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Tambora’s catastrophic eruption began on April 5, 1815, with small tremors and pyroclastic flows. A shattering blast blew the mountain apart on the evening of April 10. The blast, pyroclastic flows, and tsunamis that followed killed at least 10,000 islanders and destroyed the homes of 35,000 more. Before its eruption Mount Tambora was about 4,300 metres (14,000 feet) high. After the eruption ended, a caldera spanning some 6 km (3.7 miles) across remained.

Many volcanologists regard the Mount Tambora eruption as the largest and most-destructive volcanic event in recorded history, expelling as much as 150 cubic km (roughly 36 cubic miles) of ash, pumice and other rock, and aerosols—including an estimated 60 megatons of sulfur—into the atmosphere. As that material mixed with atmospheric gases, it prevented substantial amounts of sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface, eventually reducing the average global temperature by as much as 3 °C (5.4 °F).

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In 1816, parts of the world as far away as western Europe and eastern North America experienced sporadic periods of heavy snow and killing frost through June, July, and August. Such cold weather events led to crop failures and starvation in those regions, and the year 1816 was called the “year without a summer.”

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Starting 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill tomorrow.

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Finished this last night. A few of the stories were excellent (The Cape, Voluntary Committal), a few seemed rehashed from other ideas. Enjoyable read, but I was hoping for a little more.