Tara ,'Storyteller'
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."
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.
Clive Barker also sits on the dark fantasist bench a lot.
Clive! Again, an author who should be listed somewhere in a "Best Horror" list, but personally, none of his work ever scared me.
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.
My favorite Stephen King is The Stand but it definitely isn't scariest. I'm not sure which his scariest is! Hmm.
Peter Straub?
Whitley Streiber? (Did anybody read The Hunger? He also wrote The Howling, so he's got as much claim to being King of 70s Horror as anybody, unless you concede the whole decade to Anne Rice for Interview With a Vampire.)
I'm not sure which his scariest is!
The first half of It?
The Stand isn't really a horror novel, in my mind.
Peter Straub's Floating Dragon scared the shit out of me.