Drusilla ,'Conversations with Dead People'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Horror books I think everyone should read, in no particular order: Dracula, The Haunting of Hill House, Salem's Lot, Threshhold, World War Z, Heart-Shaped Box, Lost Souls ...
So here's my problem. There's a lot of stuff that most people would put on a list of horror novels that wouldn't occur to me because I don't find it that scary. Hell, I don't find Dracula or Lost Souls scary, but I know that they're fantastic horror novels.
Jilli, would you like to start us off?
Post-war? Man oh man, now I have to look up publication dates. Argh!
And I'm also dithering about should I say Threshold or Silk, both by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Because they're both terrifying (Caitlin is fantastic at writing CREEPY AS FUCK and unsettling stories), but Silk is slightly more terrifying to me, personally, as spiders are a running theme/image/THING in that book.
I can go wrangle up Neil Gaiman's endorsement of Lud-in-the-Mist if that would help. I know some other Buffistas have read it - maybe Anne?
Not yet, alas. It has been sitting in the TBR pile for a while, now.
Also, this is making me want to re-read a bunch of books that I know terrify me and keep me awake. I think I'll start with Salem's Lot, because then I can do a write-up of it for the Nocturnal House section of GCS.
So here's my problem. There's a lot of stuff that most people would put on a list of horror novels that wouldn't occur to me because I don't find it that scary. Hell, I don't find Dracula or Lost Souls scary, but I know that they're fantastic horror novels.
Some horror is more disquieting than scary, I think.
If it helps your horror list, Something Wicked This Way Comes came out in '62. Is that a horror novel to you?
Heart-Shaped Box was fantastic. Fairly timeless, too. I also adored his short stories in Twentieth Century Ghosts.
I remember you talking about Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jilli. I haven't tried her yet.
Right now I'm stuck trying to figure out which Stephen King I would put on the list. I loved Salem's Lot but it wasn't his scariest or best, for me.
If it helps your horror list, Something Wicked This Way Comes came out in '62. Is that a horror novel to you?
Strangely, no. I mean, I get that it should be, and probably is to a lot of people. But for me, it's not.
I remember you talking about Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jilli. I haven't tried her yet.
She bristles at the "horror writer" label, and says she's a dark fantasist. Which, fine, whatever makes her happy. I just think that she writes some of the most unsettling, creepy, terrifying fiction I've ever read.
dark fantasist
I have Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners, which I haven't read yet, and I think she's a dark fantasist. Or a fantasist at any rate, if not dark. The line can be pretty blurry -- more than a few of the stories in Joe Hill's book were not strictly horror.
Clive Barker also sits on the dark fantasist bench a lot.