'Hell Bound'
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."
"Where The Red Fern Grows" was THE most upsetting book I read before age 12, and I was reading all KINDS of crazy stuff with sex, violence, death and monsters.
OMG, NO KIDDING.
BUCKETS. BUCKETS OF WEEPING TEARS.
Our grade 3 teacher read it aloud to the class. The class pretty much excused themselves en masse to go weep uncontrollably in the bathroom.
Was My Friend Flicka traumatic? I seem to remember something upsetting. I never read Red Fern or Tarabathia or the others. We got oodles of Beverly Cleary books.
I'm not sure I'd count it as traumatizing, but in grade school I checked out a record from the public library of Basil Rathbone reading stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe. One was the Tell-Tale Heart in it's entirety (there was also an abridged Fall of the House of Usher - the rest were poems, I believe, but BR reading The Bells was impressive). That definitely made an impression, which I followed up by reading a lot more Poe. Nothing quite matches the first time I read The Black Cat. That one disturbed the hell out of me - even more than Tell-Tale or The Cask...
I was reading Stephen King not long after that, partly because there was a family-friend connection and also because I was a horror fan. Nothing much squicks me reading-wise after all that, I must say. The Shining scared the shit out of me but i still consider it one my favorite novels, which is probably why I have resisted reading Dr. Sleep up to this point. Don't want to taint something I have fond memories of.
I haven't recovered from "The Little Matchgirl" yet.
The Yellow Wallpaper gave me nightmares.
Don't want to taint something I have fond memories of.
Right? I'm not sure I'm ready for how grim Danny might be now, either.
That definitely made an impression, which I followed up by reading a lot more Poe. Nothing quite matches the first time I read The Black Cat. That one disturbed the hell out of me - even more than Tell-Tale or The Cask...
Ever been to the Edgar Allen Poe house in Philadelphia? When I was there some twenty-some-odd years ago, the tour guide talked about how Poe found inspiration all around him. Then took us into the basement and showed us a niche of some kind in the wall that could easily be bricked up...
Frank, I've got some of Basil Rathbone's horror recordings if you want to revisit your past.
Are there two, cause I thought Baltimore had the Poe House? Leading to the Wire moment of cornerboys being asked where the Poe house is and saying "Man, look around!"
I can't speak definitively about Baltimore's Poe house, but I think there is more than one and I do know that Poe did live in Baltimore. I think Philadelphia was earlier in his career.