Horror novels
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Topic: Horror novels
Posted By: BaldFriede
Subject: Horror novels
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 14:31
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I deliberately left out authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, because they fall into a category I name "gore" and not "horror". Also I decided to allow one book per author only. Now go thee ahead, vote and shudder! All are highly recommended by me, by the way. "Krabat" is supposed to be a book for children; well, I read it when I was 12 and had nightmares for weeks. I think it should better be read by grown-ups. -------------  BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Replies:
Posted By: stonebeard
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 14:39
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Well, not a novel, but The Fall of the House of Usher is my favorite horror piece period.
------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
Posted By: Snow Dog
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 15:05
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Stephen King is horror imo, because his books are not gory in particular, and Koontz is not horror or gore, but mystery.
Besides that..none of the above. ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/Snow_Dog" rel="nofollow"> 
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Posted By: R o V e R
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 15:16
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out of this list,..
I Choose "The Picture of Dorian Gray" But my favourite HoRoR writers are 
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Posted By: R o V e R
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 15:19
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What...?
i didnt noticed ..Frankenstein |
Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 16:15
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I read two novels by King, "Pet Sematary" and "Needful Things". Both started out great and could have been really good and satisfying had King not destroyed everything with a gore feast at the end of both books. Sorry, but that's not my idea of a horror novel. I don't need a graphic description of how a throat is being ripped out. Saying less and leaving it to the imagination of the reader is a lot better. That's why I dislike King. ; he does not know where to stop. Not that I am against violence; the end of "Die andere Seite" is probably more violent than anything King has ever written, at least more violent than those two books I have read of him. But it feels completely different when being read, especially since Kubin comes across with a strange kind of black humour.
------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: micky
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 16:28
casting a vote for my better half who is the educated euro... I'm the barbarian Yankee who spends his days reading ESPN.com  Pictures of Dorian Grey.... nice RPI tie-in as well hahhaha ------------- The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip |
Posted By: The T
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 21:17
Incredibly, I've read quite a few of these books!
  First, a word about King... I've read 7 books by him: pet sematary, IT, Cujo, Salem's Lot, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, the shining, and... well, I guess I've only read 6 then...
 ... I suggest you to read The Shining which is terrific, a great psychological analysis of the main character... I think King is underrated... He really does BUILD his characters, one can familiarize with any of them (at times he takes it too far and builds complete chapters out of useless character-development stories, I know)...But he does create great suspense... Salem's Lot is, for me, the best vampire book ever written in SHEER HORROR... the elegance and magic of Dracula will never be surpassed, but the suspense, horror and (let's admit) a little bit of gore (not that much actually) help makle that story, also with the fact that it's so REAL, the best vampire story. (I've yet to read Le fanu's, Polidori's, Hoffman's, Quiroga's, which I just bought ).... IT is fantastic, though a little bit too long... Cujo is good but at times it falls in some "gore-ism" (not to be mistaken with fans of Al Gore).... Pet sematary is very good... maybe could've been better....I haven't read a word from Koontz....
Now to the few books I've read:
Frankenstein: magnificent for a -20 year old victorian girl, with a few flaws (I think the creature turns into a philosopher rather too quickly
) but it's great...Read it twice. Jekill and Hyde : very good but very short and not truly horror, IMO. Read it twice, the second time I liked it much better than the first time when it seemed overrated for me.
Arthur Gordon Pym: fantastic only-novel by Poe, but I wouldn't say it's horror, but "scary suspense" (whatever that means
)... Read it once...Dorian Grey: A masterpiece but I think the horror factor is not too great... for me the novel is more of a personality analysis and a confession than a horror novel, though when I bought it, it was categorized as horror by the publishing house... (ANAYA)... read it once...
The turning of the screw... In spanish translated as another turn of the screw (if we're talking about the same book), I liked it a lot... phantom stories (ghost stories) are great... but to be honest, I read it once when I was like 13, so I don't remember that much...
 Otranto's Castle: arguably, the first horror novel ever... I loved it. Again, I read it like 15 years ago, so my memory falters...
But, off this list, of course,
DRACULA - the masterpiece of masterpieces of classic horror, it dowsn't hurt the fact that I've read it four times
and that I've had since I was a child a special fascination with the Count... but from the introduction (better yet if Dracula's Guest is added as an introduction), from the trip from Harker to Transylvania, the diary structure, the newspaper stories used to tell the story (like the wolf escaped from the zoo or the collision of the Demether), all the aura, the foggy atmosphere, for the dead travel fast, everything is great. I think near the end it gets a little over-the-top when everybody uses exaggeratedly pompous words to talk about everybody else (each time Seward, Van Helsing or Harker write about Mina, it's almost unbearable how they proclaim her the most wonderful creature in the world), or the fact that the Count, supposedly incredibly powerful, gets defeated in a rather brief "fight" ... but at least for the first half, just because of the first half, DRACULA is one of my favorite books and the fiction character I love most.... I've watched more than 10 cinematic versions, and there haven't been one that truly captures the atmosphere of the novel (maybe a mix from Herzog's Nosferatu with Fisher's Horror of Dracula and some touches of Coppola's would make the perfect match...)------------- 
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BaldFriede wrote:Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 21:42
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Not a huge horror reader, from the list Bram Stoker was the last one I read and I thought it was surprisingly good. I like some Clive Barker, but not a all. I enjoyed Poppy Z Brite's Lost Souls, Drawing Blood and Exquisite Corpse and Freda Warrington's vampire books. Stephen King, Laurell K. Hamilton and Anne Rice leave me unmoved and on the strength of the Bones tv series I have read one Kathy Reichs book but found it hard work (is that gore or horror?) My favorite is Muriel Gray - who some of the older UK members may remember as a presenter of The Tube and as a Radio One DJ - she has three superb horror novels - The Trickster, Furnace and The Ancient. ------------- What? |
Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 21:47
Mr T, I totally agree King builds up his characters nicely, and I really enjoyed 90% of both "Needful Things" and "Pet Sematary". But then he goes and ruins a perfect horror novel with a gore feast at the end, which in my opinion totally invalidates the books. What horrific things people could do to each other without all that gore! I highly recommend you read those books you don't know, if you can get them somehow. ------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: The T
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 22:19
I can see your point. At least when the gore comes in a book, the author has to use words to describe the horrendous scene, so at least there's some merit, unlike in movies where gore for gore's sake it's just a show of lack of any creativity (gone are the days when horror movies were good fantastic tales... now all we see are gorefests where the director that can put more blood and organs in a scene is the most praised
 )On the other hand, for sure I'll try to read all of the other books... I'm a horror/suspense lover since I was a child.  And this great thread has reminded me of that... -------------
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Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 21 2007 at 23:48
The_T, a REALLY good author can describe the final horrors WITHOUT using all this gore. In "Das grüne Gesicht", "The Green Face", another horror novel I didn't mention because Meyrink already appears on the list with "The Golem", Gustav Meyrink manages to describe a scene where a man entertains the audience in a theatre by getting an erection on stage without ever mentioning the sexual organ at all (the novel is from 1914, and mentioning a penis in a novel at that time would have caused an incredible scandal). Now that's what I call good writing! ------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: Viajero Astral
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 02:49
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H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu
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Posted By: asimplemistake
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 03:16
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Oops, I voted before reading that you didn't count gore. I voted other for "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis, although I did also love "Lunar Park" which was also by him, but not a gore novel. I especially liked Lunar Park because PT's "Fear of a Blank Planet" was heavily based off of themes from Lunar Park. |
Posted By: Snow Dog
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 05:00
I just find it irritating, that the man, wkdely known as "The Master Of Modern Horror" has to be recategorised by you!
Is there a genre caled "Gore" anyway? ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/Snow_Dog" rel="nofollow">
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Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 05:09
| Wollstonecraft (Shelley) |
Posted By: Australian
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 06:32
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If Dracula weren’t so focused around those damn letters then it would probably get my vote… ------------- 
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Posted By: paolo.beenees
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 06:55
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Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym" is a terrific novel - even if you couldn't define it as a horror one. The same goes with Lovecraft's "At The Mountain of Madness", which is more a distopic novel with some horror hints at the beginning and the end. The real horror novel by H.P. Lovecraft is "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", which would surely get my vote. ------------- 
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Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 09:54
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SnowDog, you should al least have read what I wrote. I read "Pet Sematary" and "Needful Things" and really enjoyed the first 200-300 pages. And then I came to the last 20 pages and was severely disappointed. All this excellent writing leading to nothing but a bloodbath, described in detail? That was a severe letdown. I personally believe it is not the fault of King though; I am pretty sure he knows better than that. But I can imagine a publisher's letter in reply to the manuscript of the first ever novel of King: "Dear Mister King! We read your manuscript with great interest and sadly have to say we can not imagine publishing the novel the way it is. However, if you rewrite the last 30 pages of your manuscript and put in a bit more blood, we see a market for it. There is a $5000 check attached to this letter; please take it as an advance payment and be assured there will be more of this if you follow our suggestions. Regards (some undecipherable squiggle)" That is most probably the way it was. I myself am very certain King himself would have liked to stay less descriptive, but he got used to that kind of writing and after a while didn't think about it anymore; it had become second nature for him to put in all this gore. ------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 13:25
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I just noticed I left out one very important horror novel: Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin. This novel should definitely be on the list.
------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: Snow Dog
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 13:28
I had read what you said, makes no difference to my reply at all.
You live in some strange fantasy world though, where you make up scenarios, and for you they become reality! ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/Snow_Dog" rel="nofollow">
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Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 14:44
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You never cease to amaze me, SnowDog. I could somehow understand your insisting on King being a great author; after all, de gustibus non est disputandum. However, off-handedly dismissing all the other authors on the list is somewhat keen. Maybe you have read them all and thus you do have an opinion on them, but somehow I doubt that. You would at least have been a bit more careful in choosing your words then, because there is some really excellent horror in these novels. But no, you act like a stubborn fanboy who feels hurt because someone has a different opinion about his favourite author. That's a bit puerile, in my opinion. "Number of sold books" does by far not equal "excellency", else authors like James Joyce, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust would be the most bestselling authors in the world. Not that I think that I do have the final word on what "excellency" means. As I mentioned before, "de gustibus non est disputandum". Some people will be ultimately bored by the likes of Mann and Joyce. But I sincerely doubt any serious person would dismiss them as "bad authors". These people knew how to deal with language. As did the people on my list. And I even grant King that he knows how to deal with language. Yet I have my own opinions about his splatter feasts on the last pages of his novels, at least of those two I read so far (which didn't encourage me to rad more of him). In a way Kubin surpasses King when it comes to outright violence in his novel "Die andere Seite" ("The other Side"), but he does it with a grim kind of humour. Sentences like "So endete der Doktor als ein Spießbraten, und zwar als ein schlechter. Auf der einen Seite war er ganz verkohlt, auf der anderen Seite noch ganz roh. Nur in der Mitte war er schön knusprig." ("Thus the doctor ended as a barbecue, and as a bad one too. He was completely charcoaled on one side and almost raw on the other. Only in the middle was he nicely crisp.") are grim as well as funny, a quality which I miss in King. ------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: stonebeard
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 15:16
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I personally don't think Frankenstein is a horror novel. It's intriguing, in a way, and perhaps was scary to people back when it was first released, but it's more philosophical/social commentary than anything else. In many ways, I think it's stupid. As another member said, Frankenstein's monster's transition from beast to enlightened thinker is so sudden, it's hilarious.
------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
Posted By: BaldJean
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 16:04
I disagree; "Frankenstein" is a classic horror tale, and it is still as scary today as it was back then. the splatter feasts which are offered to us as "horror movies" in cinema today may have immunized some people against the more subtle horrors of the original Gothic novel though. as to the monster changing from beast to enlightened "suddenly": ahem, have you noticed the time span of Frankenstein? -------------  A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
Posted By: stonebeard
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 16:14
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Compared to E.A. Poe tales, Frankenstein is like Sesame Street.
------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
Posted By: BaldJean
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 16:40
Interesting; I had no idea that Sesame Street was all about killing someone's whole family. I have to watch the program again. ------------- A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
Posted By: The T
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 21:25
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I agree with the first part but about the second, the idea from which I suggested originally, I stand by what I said that the change is a little sudden. Yes, it's no overnight thing, it's months till the creature develops conversational skills; one can argue that, by observing the family in the hut and he himself being made of, let's say, "used parts" ( As for the cinematic versions (I've seen a lot, too A fantastic novel, worthy of inclusion on this list. -------------
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) all he had to do (his brain) is REMEMBER, not LEARN. But, even if we agree on that, when they're in the cold snow (the creature and the modern prometheus, his creator) the creature's lines are just too philosophical, I think it's a little sudden that he turns from illiterate into Plato in a few months...Posted By: The T
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 21:33
Well, if a grown-up family watches an episode of Sesame Street, maybe there could be a mass suicide or something...
 Bald, I suggest you, if you care to give King a last chance, to read The Shining. No gore, only three main characters (plus a few extras), a closed setting (a hotel), a few "mental" ghosts... excellent.
It's a shame that King's books have NEVER been decently turned into movies... only The Shining but Kubrick's film is too different from the movie in the causes of the main character's insanity and final killing rampage.... The other movies are gore fests, (but compared to current atrocities like HOSTEL or WOLF CREEK they're like Disney movies) and both Salem's Lots fail to deliver (specially the latest, TNT atrocity..) -------------
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Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 21:48
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DeNiro is amazing as the creature, that film is one of the best adaptions. As for Frankenstein reading like Sesame Street, many great works are cleanly and simply written; 1984 (you wanna talk about horror), All Quiet on the Western Front, White Fang, many others.
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Posted By: 1800iareyay
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 21:49
| No one plays Frankenstein's monster better than Peter Boyle |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: July 22 2007 at 21:50
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..and Hackman as the blind man, genius
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Posted By: bluetailfly
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 00:33
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Poe's "Pym" is a fascinating novel, not really a horror novel, more of a fantasy work along the lines of Lovecraft stuff that came later. However, what I find truly disturbing isn't Poe's storyline, but the racism that seems encoded in it. ------------- "The red polygon's only desire / is to get to the blue triangle." |
Posted By: BaldJean
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 02:46
this kind of racism was common belief back then. to the modern eye it may seem astonishing and even horrifying, but literally every white person was convinced of the "superiority of the white race" at that time. no-one would have understood the accusation of racism back then; this superiority was considered to be obvious ------------- A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
Posted By: Zargus
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 09:39
H.P. Lovecraft:: At the Mountains of Madness, altough i have read some other storys by him that was even more creepy. And yes some of the racist stuff in his novels are realy disturbing and i found it realy wierd at first that he culd write stuff like that and get away with it. But i gues thats how it was back in that time.  ------------- 
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Posted By: Man Erg
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 09:56
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Ramsey Campbell's The Count of Eleven gets my vote as one of the best horror novels in recent years.
Oliver Onions' 'Edwardian Gothic' short story,'The Beckoning Fair One' is majestic in it's pace and psychological twists and turns,An absolute classic.Up there with Wilkie Collins,Le Fanu,Dickens and Saki. ------------- 
Do 'The Stanley' otherwise I'll thrash you with some rhubarb. |
Posted By: VanderGraafKommandöh
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 10:30
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I will go for a short story (not the excellent "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which I agree did not feel as a horror to me), Charles Dickens' "The Signal-man". It is not a horror novel per se though, but it is one of the a handful of prose I have read that disturbed me at the time. I have not read any Steven King, but from what I have heard, the film adaptation of The Green Mile is not completely different from the novel. I have the novel upstairs somewhere, so I shall read that one day. -------------   
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Posted By: bluetailfly
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 11:26
I beg to differ. I'm not taking a "modern eye" view here. This story was written when slavery was being hotly debated, debated because many, if not most, people believed slavery was wrong, and believed that the black race wasn't inferior or "evil" and deserved rights as fully invested citizens of the U.S. Other contemporaries of Poe's---Whitman, Emerson, Melville, Stowe, and many others---wrote stories that worked to tear down the southern racist belief systems (e.g., Benito Cereno, Song of Myself)
It seems to me that Poe was contributing and supporting, albeit in a rather indirect way, the self-serving, race-based belief systems that many southern slave holders (and others invested in the continuation of slavery) put forth to justify slavery. And it's some pretty ugly logic.
I think many people of Poe's time would have understood the accusation, and many would have been appalled by Poe's encoded racist viewpoint. ------------- "The red polygon's only desire / is to get to the blue triangle." |
Posted By: BaldJean
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 12:04
you are confusing two things with each other. certainly the abolishment of slavery was in discussion. but that did by no means mean that the white man was of the opinion he was not superior to the black. or did introducing a law for the prevention of cruelty against animals mean that animals suddenly became equal to us? no, the superiority of the white race was still firmly planted in the white man's brain at that time. I am not trying to defend racism (Goddess beware; where would that leave me with my mixed gene pool?), but one really has to see the "racism" in Poe's writing with the right perspective. It is something else with the racism in the writings of Lovecraft though, because he was a writer of the 20th century. just think about how long it took the civil rights movement in the USA needed before black people where considered to be equal. Martin Luther held his "I have a dream speech" in the 60s of the last ; he would not have needed to hold it if not most white people still had been of the opinion they were superior to the black at that time. and if you go into certain areas of the USA this mentality will still be planted deep inside the mind of people there ------------- A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
Posted By: bluetailfly
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 13:15
Well, I disagree with this viewpoint. If we limit the discussion to artist/writers of the time (pre-Civil War America) who I believe represent the "progressive" viewpoint of that time, it is completely inaccurate to characterize their belief in abolition as similar to "animal rights." That's utterly inaccurate and rather insulting. The authors I mentioned earlier believed blacks to be in no way inferior to whites; Stowe, Melville, Whitman, Emerson, et al. did not share in that way of thinking at all. They believed slavery was wrong because they believed the slaves to be human beings and inferior to no other race.
Now granted it took time to struggle against the racism embedded in Euro-American culture, and it's still going on today. But the humanitarian beliefs of the those artists deserve credit for empowering the humanitarian movement that led to the abolition of slavery.
If you're going to paint with a wide brush everyone who lived during that time as a "blacks are inferior to whites" racist, please support how the artists I mentioned fit that criteria.
And Poe's racism, "in the right perspective" was in support of Southern racist viewpoints that justified slavery and argued for it's existence, a viewpoint that was under increasing attack by others at the time. Poe knew both sides of the debate, and he came down on the Southern slaveholder side. ------------- "The red polygon's only desire / is to get to the blue triangle." |
Posted By: stonebeard
Date Posted: July 23 2007 at 13:32
 Obviously I'm talking about horror content. I got more chills reading the Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, and the Tell-Tale Heart are so much more intense than any time in Frankenstein. Killing is not necessarily scary.------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
Posted By: Visitor13
Date Posted: July 25 2007 at 14:44
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"The Thing on the Doorstep" - Lovecraft's short story collection is delightful, and quite funny in places. Ditto "The Call of the Cthulhu". "At the Mountains..." wasn't as good as these.
I also loved "The Langoliers" by Stephen King. What a wonderfully crazy idea that book is based on. Poe gave me endless creeps when I was little... Is Thomas Ligotti any good? Not a horror novel, but I will admit I am actually too chicken to play any of the Silent Hill games, especially part two. |