The Game-changers (part 3): Horror

I am a bit of a scaredy-cat. I don't like mirrors in dark rooms, I don't like being alone at night, and I know better than to watch even my beloved Law and Order when the sun starts sinking! The title above, a girlhood favorite, is about as much fear as I usually like to court. Nonetheless, a small contingent of scary books have made a big impact on me and I'm including them here!

One of my favorite writers and books of all time, The Halloween Tree doesn't seem that eerie at first glance, but that's Bradbury's gift. Like his story of "The Finnegan" there's more happening underneath than the surface might seem to reveal! Every fall, I roll into this story as into a leaf-pile, savoring the candy corn burst of the descriptions and then getting a heartache instead of a stomachache as the boys make their bargain for the soul of their friend. When the Jack-o-lanterns are set a'flickering this All Hallows, you need to sit in their light with this one on your lap!

I think that I've noted in other posts that I come from a long family of readers, including my grandmother who urged me to write "a normal novel," by which she meant something with murder in it rather than magic users; everyone has a different version of normal, I suppose! This is one of the books she gave me to read, a sprawling (often profane) novel of humanity's endurance in the wake of a plague. I love it for its creation of believable characters and emotional manipulation, as well as for the blend of fantasy and reality and it never fails to completely creep me out!

I'm not a fan of the umbrella term post-modern (trying to define it on my undergraduate comprehensives significantly lowered my score), but I fell for House of Leaves hook, line, and sinker. There are sections that are frustrating to the usual readerly experience (holding the book sideways, or to a mirror), but the two stories being carried on (one in the text proper and one in the footnotes) drag the reader in to the depths of the house until it seems very real -- and very frightening!

A recent find, this one has shot to the top of my favorite Halloween reads. It's sort of a modern re-imagining of Shirley Jackson's lottery where the young men of the town compete for a ticket out - but the game is brutal and dangerous, and not at all what it seems. I'm not one for horror movies at all, but I think this would make an amazing one!