Customer Reviews

Horror: The 100 Best Books

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If you buy this book you'll just have to buy another one down the line. My current copy is falling apart from the constant use. The one I had before that still hasn't been returned. So with the next one I buy I'll be on my third copy in just under a year since my initial purchase. For the horror fan who doesn't have the time or volition to check out the horror websites or sift through all the rotten horror novels and anthologies, this book is perfect for you. In this volume of articles by distinguished writers and anthologists you get a taste of everything from splatterpunk to Gothic. Writers as diverse as Harlan Ellison and Richard Laymon (even going back as far as Poe) get to put their two cents in. You find established classics like Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and underappreciated gems like Carroll's The Land of Laughs. You get writers who you never associated with horror like Shakespeare(article for Will writen by writer/director Clive Barker) and Melville. Of course Stephen King and Peter Straub, the modern heavyweights, are included, it wouldn't be a party without them. Once you see the Hundred choices made and read the articles, you will understand why they are there(even if you disagree with the choice). Reading this book sent me out to my used book store in an attempt to locate the out of print volumes, but somebody else must have beat me to it. And I still have yet to go through the dozens and dozens of books listed in the recommended reading list at the back of the book. So do yourself a favor, don't buy this book, you'll just have to buy another copy and you'll find yourself hunting for books like Sarban's The Sound of His Horn or Laymon's The Cellar. It is an addiction worse than smoking. It is a fear addiction, and there's no patch for it.

Of course, they're not MY best hundred, or yours either - but that's the fun of it. Of course, there's a fair sprinkling of idiots and semi-literates - Shaun Hutson (on David Morrell's excellent The Totem) admirably lives down to both labels. Colin Wilson apparently believes that Stoker's Dracula can't be appreciated without a knowledge of Stoker's biography; the ever-infantile Forrest J Ackerman drools inconsequentially over a forgotten (and deservedly, by the sound of it) 1940s pulp novel; and Richard Christian Matheson is disappointingly vague and platitudinous about his father's magnificent I Am Legend. Also, the editors have cheated slightly in resorting to dead authors for some of their reviews - though this is of course wholly in keeping with the spirit of the enterprise, and is well justified by the presence of critics like H P Lovecraft (on Robert W Chambers' The King In Yellow) and Edgar Allan Poe (on Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales). The presence of the writing dead also helps ensure that the late twentieth century is not more over-represented than absolutely necessary, though I could have done with seeing works by Thomas Tessier, James Herbert and Michael McDowell in place of James Branch Cabell (Something About Eve, reviewed in horrendously sloppy style by Robert E Howard), Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey is a lovely read, but horror it ain't) and Henry James (whose 120-page treatment of a 5-page story, The Turn of the Screw, is reviewed by R Chetwynd-Hayes with his usual pedestrian flippancy). (It's wonderful, by the way, to be writing a favourable review which simultaneously gives me the chance to pan.) The editors also commit the enormity of repeating the usual old wives' tale about The Castle of Otranto - "turgid and unreadable"; it's nothing of the kind. But the huge majority of these articles are thoughtful, well-written and calculated to make you rush out and buy all the titles featured, or at least all you can find - an unfortunately large number of these books are out of print, rare or simply unobtainable (E H Visiak's Medusa, intriguingly reviewed by Karl Edward Wagner, is a particularly frustrating example). But the advent of Internet shopping (not to mention Amazon.com auctions) may serve to ameliorate the situation until some enterprising publisher decides to bring out a 100-volume companion series to this book. It's about time somebody did. If your favourite author isn't reviewed here, s/he's probably a contributor - the only major one I can think of who's been completely passed over is James Herbert, and even he turns up in the extended bibliography at the back, along with Aeschylus, Dante and the ghost of the kitchen sink. Ramsey Campbell's foreword ends with the hope that this book will broaden the reading of whoever uses it, and it's hard to imagine anyone picking the book up without that hope being fulfilled.

This updated version of the 1988 Bram Stoker Award winner is appealing for several reasons. First, it's a modern classic in horror scholarship, a survey of horror literature spanning fifteen centuries, several genres, and a plethora of authors. Second, there's the thrill of reading great writers' thoughts about their favorite authors--Stephen King on Robert Marasco, Peter Straub on King, and Ed Bryant on Dan Simmons among others. Third, it's basically a big list of good books. The 100 entries combined with an extensive list of recommended titles (now updated through 1997) have enriched my reading for years. Plus, I'm always gratified when knowledgable people reel off their recommendations--their picks send me scurrying to used bookstores in search of new treasures.

In their introduction, Messrs. Jones and Newman express their hope that the book is "...informative and fun," also stating that it "should offer a guide for the relative newcomer to the subject, but also some meat for the veteran afficionado. We hope we've succeeded in giving a working overview of an often maligned field of literature." I, for one, think they've achieved their goal--Horror: 100 Best Books is a worthwhuile addition to library of any horror maven, a useful, entertaining work that belongs on the shelf next to books like King's Danse Macabre, Winter's Faces of Fear, Skal's The Horror Show and Wiater's Dark Thoughts on Writing.

I have had a copy of this book since the early 90's and I come back to it often to read and re-read the comments given by the various authors on their favorite horror books. It is an interesting experience to be able to see, within these covers, the growth and evolution of horror, inspiring itself over and over to become the phenomenon of today. From The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (the first work chronologically) to Dark Feasts (the last, the book was printed in 1988), we get to see a veritable timeline of horror.

Lists of this sort are invariably subjective. The authors commissioned for this were asked to write about their favorite book, not to describe the best books so some great works are going to be left out. But it is an excellent starting point and this list (along with the Suggested Reading in the back) should keep any horror afficionado trembling for years to come.

Such list books are often dull, patchy, or smug literary circle-jerks. This one dodges pretty much all the pitfalls to give something you can dip into, use as a shopping list, or read end-to-end as a history of the genre. Nothing will please everybody's taste (R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 'usual pedestrian flippancy' - how dare you sir!) but I don't think you'll come much closer than this. For both veterans and novices to the world of literary horror, this is highly a rewarding read.

This is the sort of book one who thoroughly enjoys horror keeps in the bathroom or by the bed for easy reading. Each allotment is easily written and often times gives a brief summary of the novel/book in question. What makes this 'companion' all the more intruiging is its inclusion of many atypical genre pieces (including Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' and whatshisname's 'Grendel'), which helps expand the definition of the term horror. I'd reccommend this to anyone wanting a somewhat slim but thorough persual of a genre much-deserving of more books just like this one.

Of course this list can't be complete (and now it is twenty years old) but it is still a great place to start for a survey of horror literature. For those of us who take horror literature seriously, this is one of the essential nonfiction books to have - along with Danse Macabre, On Writing Horror, and Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature. This is a great resource to read the masters themselves talking about their heroes and what makes good literature. Not only do we have essays ABOUT Poe and Lovecraft - we have essays BY Poe and Lovecraft, along with Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, etc. For a genre that produces so much bad writing, it is invaluable to have a guide to point us toward the good stuff.

Now, of course, this list isn't exhaustive. There are many titles that are not included (which is why the book has a sequel). Tastes vary, so I'm not necessarily a fan of EVERY title selected. Also, to be original, some contributors select titles that are just NOT horror. (I think that most horror fans agree that the horror of Johnny Got His Gun is not the type of horror we are talking about here.) Fortunately, the books are listed chronologically, with no attempt to compare their relative merits.

This is definitely a most invaluable resource for the horror/supernatural literature collector/aficionado. When I purchased the first edition in 1988, the appendix, a "List of Recommended Reading," covered books published up to that year.

After poring through the book and the appendix, I was able to find and add to my collection 34 titles from the list of 100 and 52 titles from the appendix. This was in addition to the titles I already owned.

Unfortunately, many titles are out of print, or my collection would have expanded even more. Searching through the internet yielded few discoveries.

Happy Hunting!

If your new to horror or just want to find some good recommendation definitely pick this up. Not only does give a list and reviews by authors of their favorites but there's also a list recommendation from way back to just a few years ago. Definitely worth it.

This book is an amazing list of horror books with comments from various horror authors who review/comment on the books in the list. You not only get to find out which books are considered classics and/or noteworthy but gain insights into each book/collection from masters of horror/fantasy/sci-fi.

This book is like a key that unlocks a whole other realm of possibilities and I just had to put in a 5 star review upon seeing this on amazon again.

Check out the other more lengthy reviews for more details.