RA FOR ALL...THE ROAD SHOW!

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Monday, October 3, 2011

Monday Discussion: What's Your Favorite "Horror" Story?

It is officially the haunting season as October has begun.  Over on my horror blog, I am running "31 Days of Horror, " with a new horror related post each day.  The focus is on how to help horror readers from the public library perspective.  Click here to follow the series.

Today, I thought I would get the RA for All readers into the discussion too.  Even if you do not like horror yourself, it is hard to ignore it during the month of October.  Also, horror means something different to each person.  What scares each of us is different, and our personal tolerance for terror in our leisure reading will vary.

If you are anxious about horror and/or helping horror readers, start here with an article I wrote for NoveList about the appeal of horror.

But for today's Monday Discussion, I want to talk about your favorite "horror."  I put "horror" in quotes here because I do not care if it would be technically classified horror, I just want to know your opinion on the tales you find the most scary.

I will start, but with a disclaimer.  Sometimes, I feel too close to it all to even start listing my favorites.  With all of the work I do surrounding the genre, my favorites are vast, but at the end of each chapter of my new book, I do give Becky's Picks of the 3 titles I most enjoy for each subgenre.

You'll have to order the book for the specific suggestions.  But today I will offer up my personal favorite living horror authors: Joe Hill, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, and Dan Simmons.  Although these writers all have a different style, one thing they each excel at is the interesting and complex characters they create.  Each is also profiled at length in Chapter 3 of my new book, but if you have access to NoveList, I have written the author statement for each.  So, you could go an see those right now.

So  for today's Monday Discussion, let me know what your favorite horror books or stories are.  If you like a particular author, please share it.  I want to keep my opinions out of the discussion as much as possible and let you all have a chance.

For more on my specific opinions all month, turn to 31 Days of Horror.  Also, for now let's limit the discussion to books and/or audiobooks.  I will ask about favorite movies and TV shows next week.  We do have an entire month to fill, so let's pace ourselves here.

Click here for the Monday Discussion archive.

4 comments:

John BPL RA said...

I've read horror for so long that I'm jaded. However, the books that still scare me are the ones with stories that are plausible or even probable. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favorites. Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite is also high on my list of scariest of all time. I also like the early Stephen King novels that steer clear of the supernatural. The Shining is probably the best of these.

Mike said...

Mike BPL REF

"What Was It? A Mystery" a
short story written in the
19th century by Fitz James
O'Brien, is one of the most
unnerving things I have ever
read. It concerns a man who
is attacked in his bed by an
invisible force and how he
tries to subdue it. And never
finds out how it came to him
or its purpose.

Jose said...

Zombies zombies and more zombies…The post apocaliptic tales of survivors fighting there family and friends who have turned into flesh eating monsters, nothing like that to get your heart racing.

Anonymous said...

For me, it's still Dracula that does it. We have a very old copy that is bound in black (of course), and it's so old the pages are yellow and smell slightly mildewy. I can get the creeps just picking the book up and not even open it.

Betty RA BPL