Thursday, October 01, 2009

The towels are kinda scratchy

It's that time of year again: time for me to read a scary book for Halloween.  It all started on Columbus Day 2005.  I had the dark, rainy day off, but The Missus didn't.  By coincidence, I had finished a book just the night before.  The mood was perfect for a classic tale of horror, so I pulled Bram Stoker's Dracula off the shelf.  For the next few weeks, I buried myself in Stoker's masterpiece.  When I turned the last page, I had been more scared and more satisfied than since I saw The Exorcist.  I read Stephen King's It in 2006 and Insomnia in 2007.  In 2008, I read The Shining.  Now, my friends, I burst forth with a new scary book for 2009:

The Dead Zone

That's right.  I'm entering The Dead Zone.

2 comments:

Pope said...

Please tell me you didn't think that Insomnia was scary. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't scary at all. Good tie-in to the Dark Tower, though.

I may have to pick up The Shining or It. I've seen the movies, but never read either. Which would you recommend?

Jeremy Masten said...

No, I can honestly tell you I didn't think Insomnia was scary. A couple of times, it had the potential to be scary or at least stick-with-you (I vaguely remember some women's shelter burning down in a scene reminiscent of Carrie). But it just never crossed the line from intriguing to scary.

It v. The Shining - The Shining is one of the scariest books I ever read, and it doesn't even have the freaky twin girls. But . . . it also explains why Jack Torrance went crazy, and that takes away from the fear for some people. But I thought it made the book a lot scarier than the movie.

It (the book---I hate that title) is good, scary, and loooooooooong. Over 1000 pages. If you go with It, I warn you now, you'll start seeing random balloons all over the place.

In the end, I recommend The Shining. It is really a masterpiece of horror.