Post by Fairweather on Oct 8, 2009 9:18:21 GMT -5
Fair's Fave Five Spooky Books
1) The Three Coffins, by John Dic*kson Carr
2) The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
3) The Hound of the Baskervilles, by A. Conan Doyle
4) The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
5) The Collected Stories of M.R. James, by Montague Rhodes James
The Three Coffins features Carr's rotund Englishman, Dr. Gideon Fell, but its atmosphere and Carr's prose are what make it, for me, the spookiest book I ever read. (See: "The Spookiest Book I Ever Read" at fairweatherlewis.blogstream.com/v1/pid/276039.html#TP)
The Haunting of Hill House is possibly the best of all Shirley Jackson's novels, although she is best remembered nowadays for her short story "The Lottery" (which was in my sophomore English textbook in HS). I love it on the basis of the sentence that ends the first paragraph and is repeated as the last sentence of the book: "whatever walked there, walked alone."
Although there turns out, as in the Carr book, to be nothing truly supernatural in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the setting on the moors and in bleak Baskerville Hall make it spooky. I especially love the bits about Holmes roughing it in the prehistoric beehive shelters.
The Phantom of the Opera was a favorite long before the Lloyd Webber musical came out--a musical which differs almost wildly from the original source. Hey, there IS a lake under the Paris Opera House--
As for M. R. James--I was hooked from the first time I read an abridged version of "The Mezzotint". James can give a body the creepiest sensation up the spine without ever once crossing the line into slasher territory.
Okay, how about y'all? What are your spooky favorites?
1) The Three Coffins, by John Dic*kson Carr
2) The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
3) The Hound of the Baskervilles, by A. Conan Doyle
4) The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
5) The Collected Stories of M.R. James, by Montague Rhodes James
The Three Coffins features Carr's rotund Englishman, Dr. Gideon Fell, but its atmosphere and Carr's prose are what make it, for me, the spookiest book I ever read. (See: "The Spookiest Book I Ever Read" at fairweatherlewis.blogstream.com/v1/pid/276039.html#TP)
The Haunting of Hill House is possibly the best of all Shirley Jackson's novels, although she is best remembered nowadays for her short story "The Lottery" (which was in my sophomore English textbook in HS). I love it on the basis of the sentence that ends the first paragraph and is repeated as the last sentence of the book: "whatever walked there, walked alone."
Although there turns out, as in the Carr book, to be nothing truly supernatural in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the setting on the moors and in bleak Baskerville Hall make it spooky. I especially love the bits about Holmes roughing it in the prehistoric beehive shelters.
The Phantom of the Opera was a favorite long before the Lloyd Webber musical came out--a musical which differs almost wildly from the original source. Hey, there IS a lake under the Paris Opera House--
As for M. R. James--I was hooked from the first time I read an abridged version of "The Mezzotint". James can give a body the creepiest sensation up the spine without ever once crossing the line into slasher territory.
Okay, how about y'all? What are your spooky favorites?
