(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
I don’t normally enjoy scary books (or movies or television shows), but Halloween is a good excuse for me to scare the pants off myself with some good spooky reading. Here’s my list of books that should be read on Halloween.
1. Lucy (Laurence Gonzales) – I read this book just in time for Halloween last year. It’s been called the “modern-day Frankenstein,” but instead of dealing with reanimating the dead, it deals with genetic experimentation and the first half-human, half-ape: a girl named Lucy.
2. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) – Of course this book makes the list. Not only was it written on a dark and stormy night, it’s full of creepy science experiments and corpses and other awful things. A story all about how playing God never ends well.
3. Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux) – Ghosts, murderers, doors hidden behind mirrors, secret passages, falling chandeliers…what’s not to love?
4. Graveminder (Melissa Marr) – Ghosts who are also zombies (kind of). Definitely creepy.
5. Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) – This book is definitely out of my comfort zone, and so far it’s done a good job of giving me the creeps. It’s about an aging rocker who finds a “haunted suit” for sale online and buys it, only to realize that the suit actually is haunted, and that the spirit attached to it has a personal vendetta to settle.
6. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (Mary Roach) – Okay, so this isn’t a creepy book. But it’s all about the science of the afterlife: are there really ghosts, and can some people really talk to them? Where does the soul reside? What’s beyond that “white light” that everyone claims to see when having a near-death experience? And because Mary Roach wrote it, you know it’s as hilarious as it is well-researched and fascinating.
7. From Hell (Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, and Pete Mullins) – The story of Jack the Ripper in graphic (extremely graphic) novel form. Despite being a weirdo and bit of a jerk, Alan Moore is a genius storyteller, and this story gave me nightmares.
Okay, readers. What books scared you silly?
Oh that’s right, Northanger Abbey had a bit of a sinister, creepy plot. Good call.
Anne
My Head is Full of Books
Northanger Abbey was less about being actually creepy than it was about a silly girl who had read too many scary stories and was doing nothing but freak herself out. I can relate. 🙂
I haven’t heard of some of these. I love Frankenstein but I think it’s more sad than scary.
Frankenstein didn’t scare me because it had a monster; it scared me because Frankenstein himself became a monster by playing God. There’s a lot of parallels to modern life in that book, and even more in Lucy, which feels like a modern-day retelling of Shelley’s classic.
I was so close to adding The Phantom to my list – perfect ghost story! Good call on Frankenstein too!
Btw – I still haven’t seen the new Jane Eyre and I’m rather bent out of shape about it!!! It’s in our NetFlix queue, but we keep forgetting to return our current DVD. Maybe this weekend if I’m lucky…
I’m generally good about returning Netflix DVDs quickly, but there’s been a couple times where we’ve had one DVD for several weeks without having watched it; usually because one of us added it to our list and lose interest by the time it gets to us. So then it sits on our coffee table until I get tired of not watching it and just send it back. :p But I digress.
I think the casting for the film was great, and it changes the order of the story up, which was kind of nice. I’ve read it so many times that it was nice to mix things up.
Frankenstein taught me not to run from my problems, because the will find you. I also picked up accept your children for who they are, or you will seriously screw them up. Even though I doubt that is the message the book was trying to give.
I think the “don’t play God” lesson was meant to be the main one of the story, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that people picked up all kinds of other themes (such as the ones you list). That’s a great thing about books: they mean different things to different people, and everyone’s always right! 🙂
I had to laugh. ‘…playing God never ends well.’
I should say so. Ha!
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, I never thought of reading that. Great idea.
Glad I could make you laugh. Yes, you should definitely read Phantom, it’s wonderfully dark and creepy and amazing.
I thought of including Phantom of the Opera too but in the end I decided not to – it definitely has its eery, chilling and oppressive moments!
I think this is the second list I’ve seen Heart-Shaped Box on – I’ve heard the title before but didn’t know anything about it. Still not sure it’s my thing – I don’t generally read horror.
Was just reading your comment above about Jane Eyre – I agree about mixing up the storyline, and casting was good – though I’ve never seen or imagined Jane displaying so much emotion before – and it had lovely cinematography, but I was disappointed overall – thought the chemistry was lacking, and the love story in general felt rushed because of time constraints. What did you think of that aspect?
I’d never heard of Heart-Shaped Box until it was nominated for this month’s 1book140 reading. It’s not my typical read, either, and I’m not really enjoying it that much.But I joined 1book140 so I could maybe stretch my reading comfort zone, so I’m not giving up on the book just yet.
It’s been just long enough since I last read or saw a different film adaptation of Jane Eyre that some of the finer details (such as Jane’s exact level of stoicism) escaped my notice. I thought the casting was excellent, and the actor they chose for Rochester was perfect.
The 1996 version (the only other one I’ve seen) and the 2011 version are both fairly short (112 and 120 minutes, according to imdb.com), so yes, I agree that the romance did feel rushed. There’s only so much you can show in that length of time. But the entire story is so magical and mystical that I think it’s possible to suspend your disbelief, if only for a couple of hours. If Jane can hear Mr. Rochester’s voice calling her name from miles away, why can’t she fall in love with him in a short period of time?
Oh, no, that’s not what I meant, I mean he fell in love with her the first time he sees her didn’t he; I just meant that I love the scenes of them together, becoming real friends, and they really had to cut back on those to fit it all in. My favourite adaptation by far is still the relatively recent BBC mini-series, with Toby Stephens – have you seen that one? I think it spoiled the movie for me. 😉
Ooh, a mini-series. Awesome! I’ve just added it to my Netflix queue. They do tend to ruin movies, don’t they? I’ve seen the “Pride and Prejudice” one about a gazillion times, so anything else leaves too much out. 🙂