Tag Archives: All Hallows Read

All-Hallows Read: Have You Met Shirley Jackson?

…If you have not, please allow me to introduce you to her, and her fantastical genius now.

From shirleyjackson.org

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco on December 14, 1916.  When she was seventeen (and had already been writing for several years), her family moved east, and Shirley enrolled in the University of Rochester.  She withdrew after a year, however, and focused exclusively on her writing, producing no less than 1,000 words a day.

In 1937, she entered Syracuse University, and published her first short story (titled “Janice”), and was appointed editor of the campus humor magazine.  She also met the man who would become her future husband, aspiring literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman.  They both graduated in 1940, and moved to Greenwich Village.  Though she and Edgar worked odd jobs, Shirley kept writing every day, and her stories were published in the New Yorker, among other elite literary outlets.  In 1944 Jackson’s story “Come Dance With Me in Ireland” was chosen forBest American Short Stories.

The next year, Stanley was offered a job at Bennington College, and the family moved to North Bennington.  It was here, in this old house, in this insular community, that Jackson produced what is generally considered the greatest short story of the twentieth century: “The Lottery”.  Published in The New Yorker  in 1948, this story generated the largest volume of mail ever received by the magazine–a record that remains unbroken to this day–and nearly all of it hateful.

This story cemented Jackson in the public eye…not as an stunningly subversive, keenly insightful, and unsettlingly funny writer, but as “Virginia Werewoolf”.  To be fair, the fact that her described herself as an “amateur practicing witch”, who put hexes on prominent publishers, didn’t necessarily help.  But the tragic fact remains that Jackson’s glory still hasn’t been thoroughly recognized.

And that is a genuine shame.  First and foremost, Jackson is a mightily talented writer in so many forms.  As we can see with the infamous “The Lottery”, she had the art of the short story mastered.  And though “The Lottery” is probably the most well-known of her stories, the thing is that all of her stories are rich in atmosphere, full of indescribably realistic characters, and all of them have that wrenching, world-tilting twist that up-end everything you thought you knew about everything you just read.

That unsettling magic is on full display in her novels, as well.  The Haunting of Hill House is more than a haunted house novel…it’s a masterpiece of bewildering, terrifying confusion.  The walls and the floors of this story just don’t meet at right angles, and it’s that unbalancing that makes this story so flipping scary.  We Have Always Lived in a Castle twists the entire premise of the story–showing you the beating heart inside of a haunted house…and the twisted, wild, unapologetic women who live inside it.

And that, I think, is what I adore most about Shirley Jackson.  She doesn’t go for the cheap thrills, or the empty scares–the literary equivalent of the jump-cut.  Her stories force us to confront the evils and ills of society, of suburbia, and of our beliefs in each other.  She deals with the insidiousness of racism, the pervasive evils of small-towns, the poison of prejudice.  And she does it all in a such straightforward manner, with uncomplicated prose and gentle humor, that the savage twist comes without the reader even being aware of it.  She writes about women who aren’t strong and put-together and beautiful.  She writes about women who are lost.  About women who know rage.  About women who simply refuse to take it anymore, and who do the unexpected and the unthinkable.  And I love her for that.

Shirley Jackson lived something of a double-life.  She was a renowned, celebrated, and reviled author whose work was translated and published around the world, and whose books were adapted into critically acclaimed films, in the course of her short lifetime.  She was also a neighbor and a  home-maker, a mother, and lived almost as a shut-in in the final years of her life.  But a single glance at her headshot, posted above, convinces me that those two parts of her life were not disparate halves.  Her insight–into human nature, into her own numerous selves, and into the world around her (and us)–starts in the minutiae and the mundane details of the everyday, and spiral up and out from there, and her talent produced tales that still have the power to teach, tickle, and unnerve to this very day.

So this Halloween season, if you’re looking for some stories to make you shiver, I cannot recommend Shirley Jackson’s work more highly.

 

A Genre-Bending All-Hallows Read

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http://intbride.blogspot.com/2014/09/all-hallows-read-posters-2014.html

Books, like people, are made up of layers and contradictions…and flaws and strengths….the list goes on….but the point is that, like people, books aren’t just one thing.  This can make them difficult to shelve, or to choose which of those little genre stickers to affix to the spine:

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…But it can also be glorious for readers, because there are so many options in this genre buffet from which to choose: there are mysteries that have ghosts in them, and there are horror novels set in space, and there are legal thrillers that have romance in them, and they can be set in the past or the future, or during the holidays, or be aimed at younger readers or older readers….

The point is that there is a books for everyone, and for every taste.  And your All Hallows Read selection doesn’t have to be a nightmare-inducing, white-knuckle terror-trip, and it doesn’t have to be set in this time period, this country, or this galaxy.  There are ‘spooky’ stories aplenty (and by ‘spooky’ I mean a book with elements of the horror genre, like ghosts or vampires or weird trees) that are genuinely, delightfully funny, powerfully romantic, and whip-crackingly insightful.  And while they might not be the first books that people think of when they think of Halloween, they are absolutely as satisfying a Halloween read as the standard classics.

Here are just a few ideas, by way of example, of books that will might help you discover your new favorite All Hallows Read selection:

3739635The Gentleman: Faithful readers will know that Lady Pole truly loved this wonky Victorian tale about a young poet who marries for money, and then inadvertently sells his wife to the Devil.  I am pleased to announce here that, while her literary opinion should always be regarded as excellent, in this instance, she was spot on.  This book is a marvel of comedic timing and verbal wit, while at the same time delivering some charmingly well-rounded characters, including several very impressive female characters, and terrific plot.  Though there is plenty of devilry and Faustian bargains in this tale, I promise you that it will also keep you grinning the whole way through.

2385049The Terror: I will be honest with you, I was just a little heartbroken when the news broke a few weeks ago that scientists had discovered the remains of the HMS Terror, the ship that carried Sir John Franklin’s Arctic Expedition on their doomed voyage to discover the Northwest Passage in 1845–because it means we might not get any more historic horror novels like this gem by Dan Simmons.  A very gifted historical novelist, Simmons has the ability to blend facts and accurate details with wonderful sensory descriptions and emotional characters that make his worlds come alive, and put the reader right in the middle of the action.  Here, we are aboard the Terror, experiencing the cold and the dark and the hunger right along with the crew…..but those same literary talents also make Simmons a powerful horror writer, because whatever it is that is stalking the ship’s passengers, it isn’t human, and it is very, very scary.  The combination of history and horror makes this a big, epic, thoroughly creepy adventure that is sure to give you plenty of shivers.

3712878The Everything BoxI adore Richard Kadrey’s books, particularly the Sandman Slim series, as we’ve discussed, and was thrilled to see that this new series, featuring a former (and/or current) thief named Coop, and his exploits with the Department of Peculiar Science, features all the fever-dream creativity and larger-than-life characters that I had come to expect from his books.  But I truly didn’t expect this story to be as absurdly funny, or bitingly snarky as it is.  Kadrey is one of the few authors who can truly capture the cosmic horror of a modern-day shopping mall, or the frustrations of a would-be doomsday cult, and is definitely one of the only people who could bring the two together in a quest for the cube with the power to deconstruct reality in a book that manages to be a kind of slapstick paranormal adventure and still an emotionally engaging series that I cannot wait to follow.

3587650Get In Trouble: The author of the One City One Story selection  at this year’s Boston Book Festival, Kelly Link’s short stories are the stuff of marvels.  She takes armloads of familiar tropes and characters, from fairy tales and travel narratives, from aging movie stars and post-modern teenagers, and produces whole worlds and startling original tales that are funny and haunting and insightful all at once.  This book, which was a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize, features nine stories that are all wild and wonderfully creative–from a young woman charged with guarding a house full of unseen creatures to a ghost-hunting reality show in the Florida swamps–but each also remains deeply grounded in human emotions and relationships, making these stories all vividly real, utterly unique–and compellingly creepy.

Be sure to check out the displays in the Library for more selections for your All Hallows Read!

 

Saturdays @ the South: Something Spooky for Everyone

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It’s no secret that I’ve spent a fair amount of my Saturdays @ the South space discussing children’s books. This is partly because I believe that children’s books can be great literature and also because I think that adults can find great enjoyment in reading a child’s book, whether or not a child is present during that reading. So in the spirit of All Hallows Read, I’d like to talk about spooky books that are good for kids and the kid in all of us.

goosebumps_booksGoosebumps, by R.L. Stine is probably what most people think of when they think of scary stories for kids. This perennially popular series has maintained its status as a hit for several generations now, with an additional boost from last year’s movie starring Jack Black. I have to be honest, I’ve never read Goosebumps; they were published after my young self had moved on from kids’ chapter books. (Fortunately, my older self has come back around to kids’ books.)  I do, however, have fond memories of reading the Fear Street series 1727221by R. L. Stine, a slightly scarier series that was designed for teens rather than emerging chapter-book readers. This series whiled away uncountable hours during my formative reading years and to me, it will always be the series I most associate with Stine. Fortunately, there are still some copies available in the NOBLE system, for those of you who would like to check out some vintage scares.

3111724I did a search for Bunnicula on the Free for All and was completely appalled that we haven’t mentioned this seminal kids’ series here before. Given both my and Arabella’s mutual love for this book and it’s subsequent follow-ups, I’m really not sure how that happened, but I’m going to rectify that glaring, borderline-criminally-negligent, absence today. Bunnicula, by James and Deborah Howe is quite possibly the best spooky series for kids. It is about a rabbit who gets adopted by a family after finding him in a movie theater that was showing Dracula, hence they gave him the name Bunnicula. The pets already in residence at the family’s home, an erudite dog of letters named Harold (he is the one “writing” the story) and a delightfully well-read cat named Chester, have their suspicions about the new family member. After vegetables in the fridge start becoming bleached-white overnight (coincidentally the only time the new rabbit is truly active) Harold and Chester have their suspicions that Bunnicula is, in fact, a vampire. I have it on good authority that Arabella’s favorite in this series is The Celery Stalks at Midnight.2371148 My personal favorite is Howliday Inn,1565752 but I recommend starting with the first book, simply titled Bunnicula, as it gives Bunnicula’s origin story and was the loving work of both James and his late-wife Deborah Howe, who tragically passed away before the book was published. This series strikes the perfect balance of scary, humor and legend and one that I love returning to this time of year.

While these are some of the best series that can provide exceptional, spooky reading this time of year, there are several stand-alone kids’ books that are worth a look during All Hallows Read:

3690594The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

I mentioned this book last year during All Hallows Read and I will likely mention it every year subsequently. This book is amazing, spooky and creepy with overarching themes of friendship, eternity and kindness that can easily make it part of the classical canon. The edition at the South Branch is one published just last year with illustrations by Gris Grimly that are tonally an artistically perfect to the text. Like several of Bradbury’s books, this one is easily enjoyed by young and old alike. This is my Halloween equivalent to A Christmas Carol; it deserves to be part of a regular Halloween tradition.

2067597Halloween by Jerry Seinfeld

This picture book is one of the rare ones that I think may be enjoyed even more adults that it will by children. This is partly because it is impossible to read this book without hearing Seinfeld’s trademark stand-up style and observational humor. It’s also because this book is a reminiscence of childhood Halloweens that kids’ today don’t necessarily appreciate. (I particularly identify with the plastic masks and costumes that barely made it through 1 hour of wear.) The illustrations in this book are stunning, with vivid colors that really capture the tone of Seinfield’s text. Be prepared for a sarcastic romp through Halloweens past.

3470238Constable and Toop by Gareth P. Jones

The ghosts of London are disappearing to a disease affecting only those who have died by not crossed over. Haunted houses are being left empty, or worse, trapping ghosts who don’t have the proper clearance to be there.  It’s up to Talker (a person who can see and talk to ghosts) Sam Toop to find out what’s going on and see what he can do to stop it. This book is a delightful story set in Victorian London that looks into both the inner life of ghosts and those who are haunted by them. This puts a friendly spin on hauntings that gets the reader on the ghosts’ side. Its just the right level of spooky to satiate kids with a hunger for the scary but not so creepy that it will keep them up at night. Plus it’s a good balance of Victorian-style fiction for those of us who love a good, classic ghost story.

3780718Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

This is a graphic novel with stunning art that takes a look into the cultural traditions of both Halloween and La Dia de los Muertos. Cat’s family moves to a Northern California town for the health of her little sister Maya who has cystic fibrosis, only to find that ghosts are a natural part of the town’s culture and traditions. What happens isn’t necessarily spooky, but it does help Maya and Cat grow closer while they examine their roots, traditions and gain a better understanding of the ghosts that inhabit the town. This book doesn’t talk down to kids or sugar-coat a terrible disease, but still manages a sense of whimsy that allows it to be fun and hopeful, making it a completely accessible read for adults as well kids. I highly recommend this book, even if you’re not into graphic novels, as the cinematic qualities of the art will easily engage you to the point where you forget you’re reading in panels instead of lines.

Till next week, dear readers, I hope you’re able to find just the right story that satisfies your hunger for spooky during All Hallows Read. We at the library will be here in the meantime to help you with all your reading and viewing needs, be they spooky or otherwise.

All Hallow’s Read!

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In his play An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde wrote “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it.”  As far as I am concerned the same can be said of books.  There is very little I enjoy more in this world than passing on a book that I have enjoyed to another reader.  And, it turns out, I have enjoyed a lot of scary stories in my time.  In putting together the display at the Main Library for All Hallows Read, I realized that my stupidly long arms came in handy as I harvested books from the shelves like apples from trees.

Not only that, but we’ve had several patrons requesting scary stories for their Halloween reading, which fills me with more joy than I can express here.  I love sharing books in general, but realizing that there are other people who enjoy the shiver-inducing kind of books that I do is another aspect of being a reader that is so magical.

So, with that in mind, I figured it was time to share with you, dear readers, some of our best spine-tingling, gasp-worthy, dread-inducing books for your All-Hallows-Read-ing pleasure!  And feel free to let us know which books are making an impression on you, too–after, like good advice, books should be passed on, as well!

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1702838-1Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark: I know we mentioned this book last year, but seriously, if you grew up in the late eighties or nineties, you probably had at least a passing relationship with this book.  Most of the people I spoke with, however, need only to hear the title of this book to start shrieking, years and years later, that those stories…and moreover the illustrations, oh good Lord the illustrations were one of the most terrifying aspects of their growing-up.  Largely culled from folklore, these stories play on every fear your brain stem holds from ions back…the dark…strange sounds….spiders…..and does it in quick, but descriptive detail, providing a perfect bit of bite-sized terror.  I still carry traces of the terror these stories induced in me to this day.  The only consolation is that so many other people apparently do, too….

2181969The Shining:  We all have a cultural memory of Jack Nicholson hacking through a door and leering, but how many know the novel that inspired this part?  Stephen King’s third novel is so much more than Kubrick’s adaptation–and that’s nothing against Kubrick at all, but there is a lot of haunting subtlety in the text that you can’t put on film.  Even as the troubled Torrance family moves to the Overlook Hotel in the hope of turning over a new leaf, there is the hint of darkness overlaying their conversations, a whisper of things to come that makes their seeming mundanity increasingly gripping.  Even if you know what is going to happen, and the odd abilities that young Danny Torrance possesses, it won’t spoil the reading of this chilling, visceral bit of horror.  Also, the Library has a little tiny paperback edition that is remarkably light (and thus easy to transport!) but shaped like a brick, and I think it might be the cutest book we own.  Come see for yourself!

3140975Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James: File under “oldie but goodie”–James’ stories have been around for a century, but his works, and the format he used are still considered seminal works in horror fiction to this day.  Though a bit of a traditionalist when it came to his opinions on literature…and most other aspects of his life, James truly gifted at ghost stories, largely relying on implication and suggestion to his advantage, forcing the reader to fill in the blanks in his stories with their own nightmares.  The result is a set of stories that are occasionally gruesome, often weird (Lovecraft was a big fan of James’ work), and truly unsettling.  There’s a reason that James is still cited as one of the most important horror writers of the past century—and still read widely today.

3789454I Am Providence: And speaking of Lovecraft…Nick Mamatas’ new book is a perfectly creepy, deeply insightful, twisted little novel that makes terrific reading for those who know Lovecraft’s writing, and those who only know his reputation.  This murder mystery of sorts unfolds in two story-lines–one from a female author at a Lovecraft convention who discovers the body of the man with whom she was sharing a room–and the dead man himself, from his drawer in the morgue.  While Mamatas isn’t above mocking Lovecraft’s fan-boys with whip-sharp brutality, but he also provides a beautifully eloquent insight into what Lovecraft does well–and what makes him so utterly deplorable.  The result is a book that will have you laughing, right up until everything gets weird…and shockingly, disturbingly real…

Until next time, dear reader….be sure to read with the lights on!

Saturdays @ the South: The Unshushed Library – A Frightening Tale

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As our regular readers are already aware, we here at the Free for All are celebrating All Hallows Read all month long. In that spirit, I thought I’d tell you a scary story here today. So “gather ’round while I elucidate…“**

It happened one weekday afternoon. There were the steps, the door, the gateway to… what? Some say knowledge and infinite possibilities. Others say silence and restrictions. Her feet froze, indecisive. Should she enter into the unknown? What will she find there? Would the rows of seemingly indecipherable letter and number combinations overwhelm and eat her alive? She’s heard stories about the gatekeepers; the shushing magnates that peer down from their high perches and squint grudgingly upon those who found it necessary to enter their guarded territory. Every fiber of her being shouted “Beware!” She took a deep breath and slowly put one foot in front of the other, walking hesitantly into the undiscovered frontier. 

OK, so this story is a thinly-veiled analogy for the library. I’m sure most Free for All readers found it somewhat absurd, but library anxiety, much like book anxiety, is a very real phenomenon as seen here, and here. It involves having the feeling of being intimidated, overwhelmed or otherwise enervated by libraries or librarians. It is most common in learners who come to the library for a project and don’t know where to start (or who to ask about it), but it can also be found in varying degrees by people who just don’t know how to navigate a library, don’t think the library has anything for them or find the library to be a frightening place because of bad experiences they’ve had at a library in the past. While psychological anxieties should not be taken lightly, I think certain library stereotypes have been propagated by some well-meaning but misguided myths.

Late Books

Books sometimes come back to the library late. This is a fact to which pretty much every library worker has resigned themselves. People get busy, misplace books, forget the due date. It happens to the best of us. I don’t want people to think that bringing a book back to the library late is the end of the world or a reason to avoid the library. Don’t get me wrong; we love seeing our books again. (Mini bibliophile confession:  Sometimes I’ll check in long-overdue books and greet them like a lost friend.) If a book is a popular hold, it’s respectful to bring it back on time so the next person in line isn’t waiting longer than necessary. Patrons bring them in sheepish and apologetic. The sentiment is appreciated, but we don’t want patrons to become so embarrassed that they feel they can’t come back to the library. If you find a long overdue book, you can bring it back knowing that you will receive the same high-quality level of service as someone who has never returned a book late in their life (though who this mythological person may be, I don’t know). Also know that your account will be cleared and once you have paid the late fees on the book it will not show up on your account again. There is no secret Library Illuminati that monitors people who bring their books back late or some scarlet letter B etched onto your account. We consider it water under the bridge and want you to feel comfortable returning to the library to check out books again. Consider our due dates to be a friendly reminder or a fuzzy request like this:

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and not a threatening warning like this:

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or this:

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Overdue Fees

Ah, the dreaded late fine. Much like overdue books, this is something that happens to the best of us. The fine for the Peabody Library is minimal ($0.05 per item, per day) and while other libraries make their own fine determinations that the Peabody Library must honor, I don’t believe you should have to break the bank to return a library item. The whole point of loaning out items is to give access to people who may not otherwise have it. That said, like overdue books, we appreciate it when people pay their fines, but we also recognize that not everyone can pay them on the spot. This is why we allow you to carry a balance on your card (not many people know this). Your account is considered in good-standing if it has fines less than $10.00. We also understand that not everyone carries cash with them in this increasingly credit-based world. Fortunately, NOBLE has worked it so that people who manage their accounts online can also pay their fines online via a credit card. Again, we’d prefer that there not be a shaming, anxiety-ridden response to overdue fines, so we won’t come after you like this:

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Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

Shushing

Out of all the possible anxiety-inducing stereotypes of libraries, this is the one that irks me the most. While a library should have quiet places for reading and reflection that pays homage to the preference of people who like to read in quiet solitude or among like-minded book people who are too introverted to actually want to talk to the like-minded book people (been there!). But to say that the entire library should have a morgue-like pallor of silence hanging over it defeats the purpose of the modern library as a place for discovery. Information is rarely acquired in a vacuum. Knowledge is something that goes far beyond mere information and hard facts. We propagate knowledge through books, media, programs and making the library a lively, welcoming place. We cannot be a community center without inviting the community in. We can’t assess the needs of a community by telling them to remain quiet. Un-shushing the library makes us a better place that can serve our patrons by tailoring what we offer to the patrons needs, which can only be done by listening to the sounds that they make. So please, don’t approach your library staff members with a fear of a wrath akin to this:

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Instead, know that we enjoy when our patrons speak up to us and understand that we are here to help and even bend the rules if the appropriate situation arises.

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Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer and Pat Brady

Library anxiety can be caused by more reasons than listed here; often they are deeply personal, but I hope that anyone who feels any type of anxiety centering on the library can work up the courage to come in and chat with us. Yes, we like our items to be returned and our patrons’ accounts to be in good standing, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not reasonable people who understand that sometimes people get into unfortunate situations. We try to make our collections as accessible as possible (hence the transfer of the West and South Branches to BISAC). So if you know someone (or if you yourself) is unsure about returning to the library, or stopping in for the first time, I hope this article will turn what could be a scary story into one that has a happy ending. Till next week, dear readers, know that we’re here for all your needs, including alleviating library anxiety!

**Full disclosure: I watch The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (from which this quote was taken) every October together with It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield’s Halloween Adventure for a delightful, retro Halloween movie marathon, and I’ve always wanted to start a spooky story that way. Thanks for indulging me Free For All readers!

Saturdays @ the South: Haunted Humor

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Image created by The Introverted Wife

Ah, dear readers,  it’s fall. The crisp cool nights and warm-ish days have arrived and I couldn’t be happier to welcome my favorite season. I also couldn’t be happier that our wonderful blogger-in-residence Arabella got the ball rolling on All Hallows Read. For those of you who remember our celebrations last year, I hope that you will enjoy this year’s posts as well as we revel in things spooky, horrific and creepy.

I thought I’d start off the Saturdays @ the South festivities a little lighter. Sometimes horror books can be taken extremely seriously because it is a genre based on the emotion of fear. Horror can tap into some of our deepest fears  including death and the unknown. As Arabella has mentioned previously, it’s healthy to explore these fears in a safe space  and books give a perfect outlet to do just that. That doesn’t mean, however, that books that scare us can’t have other emotions tied to them. Romance is arguably the closest genre to horror because they both deal with strong emotions and horror books can have a romantic element in them.

'Mummy, can you please pull the curtain and make it dark please? I'm scared of the light...'
‘Mummy, can you please pull the curtain and make it dark please? I’m scared of the light…’

A reaction that seems diametrically opposed to horror, however, is laughter. And yet, there are some great books out there that masterfully blend both elements of horror and humor. The two aren’t quite as disparate as they seem. If horror allows us to safely explore our fears and provide an outlet for our worst-case scenarios, humor allows those fears to be put aside and made that much less powerful by making them absurd. Voltaire once prayed “O Lord, make mine enemies ridiculous,” because this is precisely what takes away their power. The marvelous Mel Brooks adapted this philosophy by making the horrible figure of Hitler a ludicrous one in The Producers. Both horror and humor can lessen the impact of something fearsome, loathsome or otherwise horrific.

To that end, I’d like to recommend some books that blend the elements of humor and horror, to varying degrees.  Some of them might scare the pants of off you (as a couple of these titles did for me) but give you a chuckle in the process, while others consider humor their job first, and adding horror elements as a way to move the story forward. The spectrum here is broad, so hopefully there will be something for all to enjoy:

2344748A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Moore is one of those authors who doesn’t shy away from a silly fart joke but can also make some interesting commentary on the more serious aspects of life. In this book, he takes on death, parenthood and a coming apocalypse all with his characteristic light touch. Charlie Asher has inadvertently become the Grim Reaper and if that wasn’t hard enough, he’s worried that he may end up passing it along to his child. Hilarity ensues as he tries to shield his daughter while saving the world.

3605662Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

If anyone can bring humor to a grim subject, it’s the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves which brought a sense of humor to a treatise on grammatical mistakes. In this fiction tome, Truss writes of a cat, Roger, who speaks to Alec Charlesworth and tells him frightening tales of recent deaths that may be linked to dark forces. If a talking cat doesn’t undercut a terrifying situation with humor, I don’t know what does.

3143872The Postmortal by Drew Magary

If sarcasm in the face of horrifying events is more your take on humor, then this book may be more your speed. John Farrell gets “The Cure,”  a death cure that renders someone impervious to old age and theoretically, won’t die. That is, unless some other outside force kills him. He and several others have taken part in this illicit treatment, but find it increasingly difficult to keep it under wraps as more people try to gain immortality. But can the world handle the load on its resources if an entire population doesn’t die? He’s sure to live long enough to find out. I’ll be honest, this book has some great one-liners in the humor department, but it successfully scared the daylights out of me!

3794357The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp

Speaking of one-liners and books that terrify me, this take on horror is a non-stop, gripping ride take takes a somewhat epistolary approach to horror. Jack Sparks is a loud-mouthed social media presence who is quick with a quip and was researching a book on the occult when he died. This is the story of how he died in the process of researching that book. The humor here comes in with Sparks, who isn’t shy about mocking much of what he sees (some of these lines made me laugh out loud) and the terrifying part comes in with just about everything else.

3553458The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero

This book is similar to The Last Days of Jack Sparks in that it has some fantastic one-liners that can definitely break the tension of a gripping read, it’s told in an epistolary style with records and transcripts from a stay in a haunted house and it scared the pants off of me. I also couldn’t stop thinking about this book long after it ended. A. (we know him as nothing else)inherits a house from a distant relative in West Virginia and stays there with companion Niamh only to discover that the house hides secrets about his family, about the area and about its inhabitants. It’s a bit indescribable. You’ll just have to read it for yourself. But be sure to lock doors before you do…

Till next week, dear readers, I hope you find your own balance of humor and horror during this month of All Hallows Read.

Happy All Hallows Read!

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The time has come again, beloved patrons, for All Hallows Read, a monthly indulgence in all things spectacularly spooky, deliciously dark, and gloriously ghoulish!

All Hallows Read was started by the Great and Good Neil Gaiman in 2010 with this blog post, which called for a new Halloween tradition, and stated, in part:

I propose that, on Hallowe’en or during the week of Hallowe’en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they’ll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they’ll enjoy.
I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. Make their flesh creep…
Now we at the Free For All never do things by half, waiting around until the week of Halloween really isn’t an option for us.  So instead, we are taking the whole month to showcase the scary (and scary-ish) books on our shelves, in the hopes that you will find your own beloved book among them, or a new favorite to savor.  Check out our display at the Main Library, and revel in some suggestions below.  And feel free to check out the Twitter handle: #AllHallowsRead to see what scary reads people around the world are enjoying, too!
For those looking for a place to start, here are some Free For All Favorites for All Hallows Read:
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3622766A Head Full of Ghosts: This book, man.  Oh, this book.  First off, it’s set in Beverly, and Paul Tremblay is a Massachusetts native, so there is a good deal of (accurate) local flair.  Second, it features a whole bunch of unreliable narrators: beginning with Merry, who is relating the story of her older sisters alleged possession, the reality television series that invaded her family’s lives in order to film their trauma, and the blogger who analyzes the reality show in stand-alone chapters.  Third, its will keep you guessing and wondering and questioning from the very first scene, doubting what is true, what is really happening, and just how much you as a reader are willing to believe in the power of evil, which makes for a genuinely engaging, and unnerving read.  Fourth, it has one of the biggest, best twists in the history of literary twists.  So much so that I made my dad read this book so that I could discuss it with someone.  He agrees with me.  As does Stephen King, who said that this book “Scared the living hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare.”
3637428Slade House: I am going to put it out there–I have never been so scared by a book, and so annoyed at its author at the same time as I was when reading David Mitchell’s first official foray into the gothic horror genre.  The book itself is made up of intertwined short stories, each taking place on the same day in different years, and each set at the titular Slade House, which only appears to those looking for it.  Even as my rational brain was telling me that Slade House was a trap, that no good could come to those hunting for it, or searching through it, or trying to escape from it, I was genuinely scared while reading of the way that Slade House toyed with its victims, turned their realities inside-out and upside-down, and destroyed them.  Those looking for a truly dread-full read should look no further than this odd little yellow volume (and those who have read Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks will find an added treat in the ending).
2296095The OvernightRamsey Campbell is one of the masters of horror fiction, and has contributed an enormous amount to the genre as a whole.  Though not one of his most famous works, this tale, set in a chain bookstore run by an American on British soil, was too appropriate to pass over.  Woody, the manger of Texts (the bookstore in question) wants nothing more than to make his store into a calm, orderly, peaceful place for customers to browse and buy.  But every day when he and his staff enter the store, the books are tossed on the floor, broken, bent…and mysteriously damp.  The store’s computers literally have a mind of their own, ringing up stocking and purchasing errors at random.  And the employees, too, are falling apart–bickering, accusing, and one has even lost the ability to read at all.  Desperate for answers, Woody demands his staff remain overnight in the store to perform a final stock count…and together, they discover the hell that really lurks on the shelves….This book is told from the point of view of each of the employees in turn, which may make it a tricky read for some, but it also helps create an atmosphere of tension and suspense throughout that works very, very well.
3703559‘Salem’s Lot: I am pretty sure there is some kind of limit about how many times I can recommend a book.  But since I have read this book every year since 2009, and still love it (and still find it scary), I’m going to recommend it again.  Set in the township of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, Stephen King’s book is at once a tale of the undead horror that unravels the town from the inside out, but it is also a love story to autumn in New England that is just as easy to relate to now as it was when the book was published in 1975.  I’m in the middle of my eighth reading of this book, and still finding new treasures in it–and still creeped out about that scene in the graveyard.
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Until next week, dear readers…Happy All Hallows Read!