List of 100 top horror books according to NPR

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Especially for you, Brian!

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/632779...

Discuss?

I've only read 12 and some of them very long ago . . .

[Atlanta]

I could see a whole group created from this list

[Allan]

I count 17 here, but many of those seem recent.

[Robin]

I've read 16, there are some that have been in my read list for a while.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Never heard of the Yellow Wallpaper, so I can't judge

[Atlanta]

It’s actually one of those books the New York public library is featuring on instagram I think.

[Bryan, Village Idiot]

Kateblue wrote: "Especially for you, Brian!

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/632779..."

Nice Kate! Thank you! Looks like I've read 17 of them.

[Allan]

I have this old 10-book anthology of mystery & horror, where one of the books is devoted to J. Sheridan Le Fanu, and much to my delight, contains both "Carmilla" and "Uncle Silas"! There's also a book of Arthur Machen, which is where I first read "The Great God Pan" many years ago. Still one of the creepiest stories I've ever read.

[Robin]

I couldn't remember if I had read The Yellow Wallpaper or not; we did in Freshman English. That brings me up to 17!

[Ed]

I got 18. I win!

[Allan]

lol I read "Carmilla" so now it's 18!

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

:-)

Well, I mostly don't read that much horror, just some authors I like (King and Koontz), but I am glad we are all having such a good time with this list.

I hate gory and creepy, also gross. But suspense is great. Suggestions? Knowing I read King and Koontz?

(I just got a copy of The Yellow Newspaper.)

[Ed]

Suggestions from that list, for suspense but not gore:

The girl with all the gifts. (Maybe a bit of gore, but not much)

The haunting of hill house. (All suspense. Little action.)

Rebecca. (I haven't read it, but have only heard good things about it,)

[Allan]

Daphne Du Maurier.....Rebecca, The Birds

[Atlanta]

I read Rebecca and need to write a 3 sentence review for it.

[Atlanta]

I’ll have to reread the list ,

[Robin]

I would recommend The Handmaid's Tale and Lord of the Flies from this list. Definite thinkers!

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I read Rebecca years ago (like as a teen) and didn't realize it was supposed to be horror.

I saw the movie of the Haunting of Hill House. Eh. I should read the book, I know

I read the Girl with all the Gifts, thought the beginning was the only part that was really good, and didn't love the ending. But it was well written. But I thought the middle was just the same thing over and over. Get chased, run, hide, get chased, run, hide. Rinse, repeat. Thanks for the suggestion, though. Good choice given the parameters I set

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Back to Gutenberg -- I just got a bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. Gotta go read those. Never have. Except started a Princess of Mars once and cannot remember much about it except that the guys got to do all the fun stuff? I think it was one of those? You know, 1920s and 1930s? Girls didn;t get to do much yet.

[Ed]

Kateblue wrote: "started a Princess of Mars once and cannot remember much about it except that the guys got to do all the fun stuff..."

As an antidote to that: Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson is a somewhat funny parody.

[Ed]

Kateblue wrote: "I read Rebecca years ago (like as a teen) and didn't realize it was supposed to be horror...."

Horror as a genre has very fuzzy boundaries, just like SF and Fantasy. I never browser the "horror" shelves in a bookstore, but some of the things I like are sometimes called by that label.

[Allan]

Burroughs.......One of the many books around my parents' house was a very old hardback of "At The Earth's Core", and I found all 7 Pellucidar books in paperback later. Oddly enough, I was never interested in Tarzan and never read any of the John Carter books till earlier this year. It did, however, whet my appetite for Robert E. Howard, which I found even more imaginative and visceral. I still have my 12-book Conan series from the 70's, the ones with the Frazetta cover artwork, and several other books of his short stories.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Wow. Gutenberg has some Robert E. Howard, too. I don't know if there is any Conan. I will go look!

[Allan]

Howard had a lot of good stories outside of Conan. He was from a small town in Texas that has preserved his old house and offers a tour. Kind of hokey I suspect but one of those "giant ball of twine" type of diversions, only for geekier readers.

[Antti]

I've never read any Heinlein juveniles, almost no Heinlein at all, and the reason is that very few of his books were translated in Finnish. When I was a kid, I could naturally only read books in my native language, so the publishers decided for me what I was going to read: if there was no translation of "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", well, I wasn't going to read it.

It was Asimov and Clarke that lured me in. Then I found LeGuin and the rest, as they say, is history. There was no going back.

[Allan]

I'm currently reading The Fireman by Joe Hill. Kind of horror, but it reminds me more of other post-apocalyptic stories. It's pretty good, in a Stephen King bestseller kind of way. Hill certainly has his father's knack of keeping the pages turning. I knocked out a good 250 pages yesterday.

[Bryan, Village Idiot]

Allan wrote: "Hill certainly has his father's knack of keeping the pages turning. "

I don't have any trouble reading King or his son, Hill, but I have trouble with their endings. They are always underwhelming and leave me with the "that's it?" feeling. Except for the Dark Tower, that was one of the books I just couldn't finish. I have Locke & Key by Joe Hill and I've had my eye on NOS4A2.

Have you read those? If so...what did you think of them?

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Allen, I really liked NOS4A2.

I am now questioning my feeling about Stephen King endings. I don't feel that way about them, but then I haven't read them all. Do you have any reason why you feel underwhelmed by them?

With me, it's a whole book, usually. Sometimes I am underwhelmed by a book of his, but it is usually the whole book. That one about cell phones was one of those. Also, I was not that crazy about the new one, The Outsider. I thought it dragged in the middle. The whole thing seemed draggy, actually. Not usually a problem with him. Otherwise, those I have read, I have liked (sort of, to the extent you can like crazy dogs tearing people apart etc . . . )

[Ed]

Bryan wrote: "I have Locke & Key by Joe Hill and I've had my eye on NOS4A2...."

Locke & Key is excellent. Both the story and the art work really well, and the story doesn't drag on and on for years the way it could have done.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I'm listening to Sleeping Beauties in the car.

The trouble with it is, I'm listening to it in the car. I am no longer traveling for work, so it is taking FOREVER to get through.

So far, I highly recommend it.

[Allan]

The Fireman was the first book by Hill I have read. I just finished it and felt the ending satisfying and effective, if somewhat unrealistic. But I guess it's kind of silly to say that when people in the book are spontaneously combusting. Although most of the King books I have read were early in his career, I've never had a huge beef with his endings, except for Gerald's Game. That one just changed the whole tone of the book and spoiled it for me, kind of like the ending of the movie No Country for Old Men. As I've said before, endings where "there's a big explosion and everybody dies" are cliche and taking the easy way out. King's got his share of those, but when I read them, they weren't perhaps as cliche to me. The Fireman's ending is not one of those. I will read NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box at some point. I'm intrigued enough to check out more.