Over the last few nights I’ve been reading Ghost Stories, a collection of M.R. James tales selected (and introduced) by Ruth Rendell. Hey, I figure it’s close enough to Halloween to justify it. I finished the last story last night with just a little bit of regret. These are some pretty good yarns. If, like me, you harbor an unspoken love for Victorian-era ghost stories, you must […]
Thoroughly modern vampires
Look, you either like vampire horror or you don’t, and I can sympathize with both points of view on this. But it’s nearly Halloween. So after reading The Strain, I’m inclined to give the genre the benefit of the doubt again — as long as the vampires remain monstrous and not the objects of ludicrous teen romance. There are only two real vampire novels, of course: Bram […]
The Count abides
Can any book be considered truly frightening these days? Maybe not, what with an entire generation now conditioned to equate horror primarily with power tools and torture porn. But there was a time when certain books kept a lot of people awake at night, alert for a subtle creaking on the stairs, a scratching at the window. That time started in 1897, with the book Dracula. Bram […]
The two scariest books ever written
Since it’s now Halloween and the western sky has gone amber here in middle America, the window is rapidly closing for horror-themed posts. I’d better get with it. Soon trick-or-treaters will be making their endless demands and I’ll be too busy shoveling candy at them to do much else. Let us turn now from scary movies to scary books. I wonder: Is it easier to terrify someone […]
The dog days, and "August Heat"
It’s a slow day in the blogosphere, so let’s go to the mail bag. Wait a second … I don’t have a mail bag. I suppose that means it’s time to pull something out of the air. Or my ass. Here in Wichita, we are in the middle of a string of 100-degree days, a string that seems likely to continue through next week. It’s a daunting […]