Since I listed my favorite horror films, I decided, why not list my favorite horror novels? I don’t consider myself any kind of “well read”; Most of my recent reading has been for my own novel research, and since I no longer write a lot of strict “horror,” I don’t read a lot of it. I will state this, however: I love [most of] Stephen King’s horror/supernatural work.
Now, having said that, there was one book of his I’d started and never finished, because I found it to be so mean-spirited I just didn’t want to read any further. That book was Full Dark, No Stars. Loved the title, but didn’t want to be subjected to what I was reading. It was too real. Too nasty. Mean. It surprised me that he’d written such a novel. It was about revenge and the nastiness that can reside inside people. As one Amazon reviewer said, it was “just gratuitous nastiness.” And that so many people loved this book is kinda unnerving. Really, people love reading about that kind of stuff? Granted, this question can be levied at horror fiction, in general, but holy shit. At least to me, reading horror (and supernatural) fiction is about a release from the real world, of entering a fantastic world of The Weird…about experiencing something that engages the fright mode in each of us—but in a comfortable way. Full Dark, No Stars, however, was like reading real accounts of Mankind’s Inhumanity To Mankind. Or getting inside the heads of these people who commit crimes, and that simply doesn’t interest me. I don’t read true crime and have no interest in getting inside any mean-minded individual’s heads. I don’t enjoy that kind of material…it’s not a release, not cathartic, and certainly not entertainment for me. Sometimes fiction can be too real, and while I applaud King’s ability to write like no other (and incite these feeling in me with his work), that doesn’t mean that I have to like everything he writes (same goes with any writer’s efforts—including mine).
So I returned the book, unfinished.
On to more fun reading!
Below is a list of those novels (no anthologies) I’ve read over the years and really enjoyed. Most I have not read again since the first read, sometimes, years and years ago, but, again, like the movies I’d written about, they stuck with me for some reason. In once case, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I’d read it four times, and still love it. There are also several books out there from King and some others, like Anne Rice and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, I have yet to get to, so they may yet be included in future editions of this list….
And given my one extreme, with Full Dark, No Stars, I can honestly say that my other extreme, my most favorite horror read of all time (so far), was Pet Sematary. When I read it, it was the scariest horror novel I’d ever read, and everything I’ve read since, I measure against it! Nothing has come close…but again, I don’t consider myself “well read.” But, the feeling of utter creepiness was and still has stuck with me as the best all-time creepiness I’ve ever read. Dracula would tally in as the most atmospheric novel.
So, feel free to check out any of these great reads—and suggest some of your own favorites—maybe I’ve read them and simply forgotten about them, as I did with The Ring, in my favorite horror movies (I have a saying that “I’ve forgotten more than I ever knew…”)!
Now…enter my library…if you dare….