Horror: The 100 Best Books (Paperback)

by Stephen Jones (Editor), Kim Newman (Editor) "It is not that the old stories are necessarily the best stories; rather that the old stories are the only stories..." (more)
Key Phrases: Stephen King, Weird Tales, Heart of Darkness (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
First published in 1988, Horror: The 100 Best Books has remained the only book of its kind: a solid (and entertaining) annotated reading list spanning the range of horror fiction from the 16th to the 20th century. The device of asking 100 horror, fantasy,and science fiction writers to write about their favorite horror books might seem at first to capture an idiosyncratic sample, but through diplomacy and diligence, editors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman succeeded in obtaining short essays on most (if not all) of the well-known classics, as well as many more lesser-knowns that are well worth discovering. Readers who follow up on these recommendations will find tips about books by writers mostly known for other genres--such as Iain Banks, Robert Holdstock, Lisa Tuttle, and David Morrell.

Also valuable are write-ups on literary works not always acknowledged as horror, such as Kingsley Amis's The Green Man, Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, and John Gardner's Grendel. And the write-ups offer a fascinating peek into the minds of the contributors, who include just about all the top horror writers of the'60s-'80s. This 10th anniversary edition makes no changes in the list of 100 books, but updates the entries and includes a 9-page reading list of titles from 458 B.C. to 1997. --Fiona Webster

Review
The continuing growth in popularity of speculative fiction (an all-encompassing term for horror, fantasy, and science fiction) has resulted in a recent spate of suggested reading lists. Strangely enough, these two collections, while possessing corresponding publishers, titles, and concepts, utilize vastly different approaches to compile their "best of' lists.Of the two, Jones' and Newman's entry is more interesting, as they have imbued their book with a bit of novelty by garnering the opinions of 100 authors, editors, and others in the genre. Each contributor offers a personal essay on why they made their selection. Contributors include the field's current bestselling authors (such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Robert McCammon) as well as deceased luminaries (such as Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Howard, and H.P. Lovecaft). Chronologically, the selections range from The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, 1592) to Dark Feasts (Ramsey Campbell, 1987). By soliciting the opinions of so many varied voices, Jones and Newman avoid overloading the list with personal bias, and they achieve an eclectic touch that makes the choices extremely interesting. Acknowledging the potential quirky nature of such a selection process, a further recommended reading list is appended, giving the reader enough material to keep him or her busy into the next century. Taking a somewhat converse approach, Cawthorn and Moorcock simply list their personal selections for the 100 best books in the field of fantasy. While the editors' credentials are clearly topnotch, the uniform viewpoint doesn't measure up the variety offered in Jones' and Newman's collection. To their credit, the picks of Cawthorn and Moorcock are wide-ranging, spanning from Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726) to Expecting Sonteone Taller (Tom Holt~ 1987) chronologically, and encompassing commensurate ground thematically. Indicative of the narrow, sometimes imperceptible boundary between definitions of fantasy and horror is the fact that fourteen works have achieved mention in both of these lists. Regardless of the dissimilar methods used in compiling these two listings, there's no question that both offer plenty of interesting and provocative suggestions for future reading. -- From Independent Publisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 2 edition (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786705523
• ISBN-13: 978-0786705528
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #75,588 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #1 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( J ) > Jones, Stephen
  #1 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( N ) > Newman, Kim
  #9 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > British

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Buy This Book, You'll Just Need Another Copy, December 23, 2000

By	"netchild" (Lubbock, TX. United States) - See all my reviews

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.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, but what about..., December 13, 2000

By	Philip Challinor (London England) - See all my reviews

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A horror aficionado's guide to great reading!, August 22, 2001

By	Henry W. Wagner (Rockaway, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.