It's Halloween, which means I'm almost obligated to do a horror-themed book thread, and yet I haven't read a horror novel in years and years. The quality of that subgenre has never been particularly high, but the last decade or so has seen "horror" novels become subsumed under other genres: fantasy, romance (as in the Twilight books), sci-fi, what have you.

So while I will link some of my old favorites, the commenters might be better-equipped to suggest new authors.

Let's begin with (inevitably) Stephen King. He hasn't written any actual horror novels in decades -- nearly all of what he writes is either fantasy or sci-fi of some kind. But his early novels are still stellar examples of the horror form. My favorites have always been 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Dead Zone (though again, The Dead Zone isn't really a horror novel). Some would add The Stand, but while much of that book is very good, a lot of it is horrible -- it's a bad book and a good book rolled up into a single mediocre book.

Peter Straub has always been a favorite of mine, and I've never understood why his popularity never reached that of his sometime-collaborator Stephen King. His early novel Ghost Story is a masterful story, and Shadowland is another good read. Straub is simply a better writer than King is, and his horror depends more on atmosphere and pacing than King's stuff. Straub's thrillers are even better than his horror novels: Koko is one of the best thrillers of the past forty years, in my view.

If you like horror in a sci-fi milieu, I've recommended George R. R. Martin's Nightflyers many times in past threads. His vampire novel Fevre Dream is a good one, too.

If you like rather old-fashioned ghost stories, you'd probably like Robert Aickman's Cold Hand in Mine.

If you like the bloody, chunks 'o' flesh kind of horror, you'd probably like Clive Barker's Books of Blood. (One of these stories formed the basis of the Hellraiser films: The Hellbound Heart.)

For more recent stuff, I'd say that Douglas Clegg's Neverland was the best ghost story I've come across.

If you like your zombies, you can't do any better than Max Brooks' World War Z, which is written documentary-style. It's an excellent book even if you're not normally interested in this kind of thing. (Word has it that a movie version of the book is due for release soon.)

I'm not singling out any of Lovecraft's stuff because all you Morons already know that stuff is great, right? But a writer in the "Cthulhu mythos" you may not know is Arthur Machen, who wrote a great story called The Great God Pan. Recommended if you like this kind of thing. Robert Bloch and Clark Ashton Smith have also done some really good stories -- there are lots of collections out there.

Happy Halloween, Morons!

Posted by: Monty at 05:49 AM | Comments (155)
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Normally staid Sears adopts a ummm...not so "fresh" marketing approach - they're appealing to the undead. That would of course be Zombies.

I like this new Zombie-centric approach. It has good potential for the long haul as the dempression grinds on and definitely works if we slip into something along the lines of James Axler's Deathlands. Even Stickies and other Mutants need to buy stuff, right?

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:17 AM | Comments (63)
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Let's preface this by reminding everyone (as if they needed a reminder here) that they need to get out and kick serious ass in the voting booth on Tuesday.
All of this is moot if we don't get out and utterly crush the Left on Tuesday.

That said, starting Thursday after the election, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) is throwing a bunch of town hall meetings around Tennessee. The schedule and some thoughts are below the fold... more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:22 PM | Comments (66)
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It was a dark and stormy ONTÂ…

Some mood music:

The Compleat Online H.P. Lovecraft:

In case you need to brush up on your Cthulhu Mythos studies while the stars reel sickeningly overhead. The site apparently contains his entire body of work…if you dare enter. From “The Mountains of Madness:”

"At the time his shrieks were confined to the repetition of a single mad word of all too obvious source:"

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

Aw shitÂ…I gave away the ending. Let me make it up to you with a bonus cheerleader below the fold...
more...

Posted by: Genghis at 06:00 PM | Comments (996)
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One of many such I'm sure across the country in congressional districts that are about to send Democrats packing in favor of conservative Republicans.

After the speech, Gibson worked the group and seemed to be enjoying himself in the home stretch (being up 9 points in the most recent poll will help your mood).

Due to some mis-communications, the Be the Wave effort here didn't quite work out as planned but there were a few of us there. As always it's good to meet fellow morons.

Gibson in case you have forgotten, is highly decorated retired Army Colonel (who, oh by the way, also has a PhD. from Cornell) who is running to unseat Scott Murphy (who flipped from no to yes on health care).

I saw Gibson a few months back when he announced he had secured the GOP nomination for the run and he's become a much better candidate since then. Today he gave a gracious and upbeat stump speech which hit all the right conservative points (without a TelePrompter!). Naturally the crowd loved it and the smell of victory was in the air.

It's not done until it's done though. Bill Clinton is coming in on Monday morning to stump for Murphy and the Gibson people plan to have strong prescience at the event. Still, I think if you are a Democrat and you aren't up by at least 5 (maybe even 7), you are probably in big trouble. Murphy isn't anywhere near that.

I had a chance to speak to one of the guys from his campaign and he says their internals are showing the same 9 point lead the most recent public poll shows. Low keyed optimism seemed to be the order of the day. He said the turning point was when their TV buy went on the air (Murphy had way more TV ads originally) to compliment the building campaign of what Gibson described as "neighbors talking to neighbors". The campaign guy also said they had good support from the NRCC, which is good to hear. I was worried they were late getting here or were going to skip it when Murphy was thought to be up big.

Gibson is a bright, personable and ambitious guy (that's not a knock, you don't make Colonel and stand on the threshold of a seat in Congress by laying around). It'll be interesting to see what, if any, impact he has in coming years.

In the meantime, one more Republican seat in the House come Wednesday morning is a damn good thing.

What's up in your local races?

Posted by: DrewM at 12:15 PM | Comments (412)
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While we've been preoccupied with the latest election polls and candidate gaffes, the rest of the world has been ambling along. And Gregg Easterbrook, taking note of some of the more hostile ambling betwixt the US and China, tries to convince us that China is no threat at all:

China should not be our next whipping boy
...
But in the main, there has never been a superpower relationship like the one between Washington and Beijing — mainly constructive, mainly cooperative, neither side positioning to destroy the other.

The world’s largest public works endeavor — the $75 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project in its early stages in China — could be smashed from the air in a day by United States precision-guided bombs. China is building the project because Chinese leaders assume they will never go to war with the United States. That’s what we should assume too — and not make China into a distant whipping boy for our own domestic problems that U.S. leaders are afraid to face.

Posted by: Geoff at 11:24 AM | Comments (114)
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GM's agreements with Pontiac dealers officially expire Oct 31.

Courtesy of the GarageBlog, one of the primary reasons this patient died on the table was producing a long series of mediocre vehicles so damn butt ugly, they looked like well...a Pontiac Aztek.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:11 AM | Comments (179)
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A lot of predictions of GOP gains in the House have been floating about. Without any ado, here's a graph of the predictions published in the past month.

Posted by: Geoff at 09:50 AM | Comments (51)
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What the hell have I got left? The Longhorns are up against the Baptists. The Cowgirls are 1 and 5. The Rangers got their asses handed to them in the city by the bay.

Dark times.

And being number one in the rankings is like a death sentence. It's as bad as being the most recently promoted Taliban head honcho in North Waziristan, always listening for that odd sound from the sky, before the lights go out.

Oh well. Miss BCS, all smiley and cutes.

Poise is important, in cheerleading.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:01 AM | Comments (100)
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Slow Saturday as we hoard our stength for the week ahead, and look forward to the festivities on Hallowe'en. Let's put on a blues soundtrack while we look pensively out over the dead leaves being blown to and fro by the dry wind.

more...

Posted by: Monty at 08:16 AM | Comments (103)
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