What Should I Buy? What Should I Avoid?

Content Warning: Eww! Ick! Probably an R

DL Hegel said:

anthologies are always good place to start. Because if you like a writer you can go get their books. I've read a lot of Anne Rice, she is very good with historical details but has weak ancient egyptian myth. plus side if you like brooding vamps she is your go to girl. I like Nancy Holden also she has done alot of books including ones in the Buffy and Angel series. She clubs out strong images and neat plots. Some juv. writers are good. Some folks like Laurell K. Hamilton. My all time favorite horror novel was The Stand but not so much light reading.

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I love YA. But mostly, I love YA about pathetic teens who drink too much or cut themselves or kill themselves or accidentally kill someone or whatever. I should try some YA horror, because it would be a refreshing change from the doom and gloom of the YA I usually end up reading.

JeanneTGC said:

NO! NOT...

MIMES!

*runs screaming*

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In one of my fantasy novels, I got so desperate for an unusual opponent that I ended up inventing what I called "evil mime mages." White-faced mages in black robes who attacked without a sound -- in packs. They had sharp teeth, and IIRC their bite could turn you into one of them.

I'm not sure if the encounter will survive the rewrite now that I've changed parts of the basic plot. That might be for the best. The world may not be ready for evil mime mages...

Will Lavender said:

Most frightening novel I've ever read: Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby.

I used to read horror exclusively. For about a decade, I read everything I could get my hands on. At one point I had read the entire horror section of the small bookstore near where I grew up.

But then something happened.

King left the genre, the splatterpunks upped the ante, teenagers began to rule the cineplex, and the art was slowly sucked out of the form. I've read a few authors in this thread, but have never really found a horror author I can really say has restored the art and the life to the genre.

I've recommended it before, but Justin Evans's A Good and Happy Child is a very good literary horror novel that freaked the piss out of me.

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I think sometimes a field can improve when it's not too popular, because writers get to experiment more. Unfortunately they also get to experiment with living off beans & franks for years. Still, I know there's controversy about whether horror was helped by the years its writers had to publish in the small press, or whether it was hurt by it.

I survived reading horror in the late 1970s, so even some splatterpunk can't phase me too much. Even before splatterpunk, there were some weird books out there with violence (and sex) that often got shoved into the book, as if an editor said "Put something gross here." For example, I remember one novel (paperback original but by one of the better publishers) about a young priest who was obviously (to those who read the prologue) the Devil's child. I don't remember it being too gross most of the time. But in one scene somewhere in the middle, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw a horrible creature's face. Then an enormous monstrous penis thrust up -- out of the drain of his sink or something (I swear, I'm not making this up), and he started playing with it. Then it was all over, and he didn't remember it. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky.


It really had nothing to do with the story, and I could never figure out why it was there except to be an Obligatory Gross Moment with Sex. (OGMS?) In my mind, it hurt the book rather than helping it. There were other books like this, but this one stands out for its stupidity. It's the sort of moment that would make you want to read some splatterpunk to cleanse your palate -- at least in the better stories, I generally got the sense that the ick moments meant something other than a gross-out, and even when they didn't, at least they were honest about the ick factor. And their ick moments didn't make me think "Why the heck is that there?"

If that makes any sense.

JeanneTGC said:

This begs the question -- what was the title and who was the author? Not that I'm going to rush out to find it just to verify this scene or anything...

At least, not immediately.

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Uhm, it had a priest on the cover. I think he was blond.

Ah! Found it! It was "In the Name of the Father" by John Zodrow. No relation to the Daniel Day Lewis movie. Here is a Google cache page with the description.

HeronW said:

I enjoy anything by Matheson, didn't he do Legend of Hell House? Anything by Robert Bloch is classic too. I like Lovecraft as well.

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Robert Bloch had the heart of a little child. He kept it in a jar on his desk.

zahra said:

I've just had a whole load of horror books delivered, and I'm so excited, I can hardly breathe. Some of them were recommended on this thread, and some of them came up when researching books on this thread, so ta!

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You look like you're in for a lot of fun.

I finished reading The Exorcist today!

Oh, and:


That's quite the book.

By the way, reading The Exorcist while in a dentist's chair with a tube stuck in your mouth and weird sounds all around you is a bizarre experience.

And now, I'm editing a science article about exocysts.

Captain Howdy said:

another kid had me reading it on the school bus at age 13 (1972) I think he did it for the cheap thrill of seeing a preacher's son's jaw drop reading certain passages with dog eared pages. later when I was in my 20s and had to live at home (again) briefly, the movie was on network television one night. I came home around ten pm and put it on in the living room, my dad popped out of bed like an exploding kernal of pop corn and said "we do not watch satanic movies in this house". Dear old dad: we found out six years ago that the good Reverand had a life long addiction to prostitutes. And they wonder why I am such a heathen! but I digress...

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Wow, and I thought my brother was annoying.

People who react that way to The Exorcist simply don't get it. There's more in The Exorcist (especially the book) about faith than in many many other stories. Yes, the Devil is in there, and so is doubt, but sheesh. Think of it as a metaphor about adolescent rebellion if you must.

I found a wonderful blog entry or article (can't remember which) about a fan of the book (and movie) who found incredible inspiration in Father Merrin and writes about him as a person of faith, and how touched she was by the scene in Exorcist: The Beginning when Merrin found his faith again and prayed -- while the idiot teens around her were snickering because they didn't think the movie was scary. And yet some people are so stubborn that they would discount her experience because they think anything with the Devil in it must be avoided, even banned. Never mind that you can find lots of fights with the Devil in Christian inspirational fiction these days.