Have Never Read a Horror Book

It depends what sort of horror you fancy, really.

Psychological? Clockwork orange, 1984

Easy to read? King's firestarter or dead zone spring tomind.

Epic? The stand ( strong stomach needed)

Ghostly? I am a fan of the haunting of hill house.

A few others i think are good. 'Salem's lot, still one of the finest, and scariest, vampire stories

Koontz's Intensity imho his best, remains with you a longtime.

If you are a sci fi fan looking for a crossover to horror, Ray Bradbury touches onhorror nicely.

Snuggle down under a reading light, and remember they're not real... Are they?
 
I'll add Vonnegut and Lovecraft and to some extent some of the dystopians if you fancy a more brain heavy thinky sort of horror - Brave New World perhaps or some Wyndham...
 
As others have said, it all depends. Part of that also comes down to whether you like older literature, or gravitate toward contemporary works. Either way, "horror" is such a broad field that, like sf, it is almost impossible to define clearly.

A couple of suggestions that might help:

Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature", which remains quite possibly the best historical survey of the field ever done. The problem is that it only goes up to the point where it was originally published (the mid-1920s), which is something of a limit for anyone who sticks to modern writing.

David G. Hartwell's excellent anthology, The Dark Descent, which was extensive enough to require being broken into three volumes for paperback reprint. This covers an extremely wide range of horror fiction, from the classics (such as Poe) to very modern writers. Anthologies such as this are very useful for finding types of stories or writers you might be interested in following up. Even with as extensive as this is, it barely scratches the surface. (Another excellent anthology -- but, again, all older work) is Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. by Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser.)

Here is a link to HPL's essay:

http://hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.asp

Here is one for the TOC of Hartwell's anthology:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?37873

And here is one for the Wise & Fraser anthology:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?289442
 
Brave New World, horror? I wouldn't go that far. Dystopian psychological thriller, more like.


There's a few disputes over the title of Master of Horror. If you want classic, Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe. I've never read any of Lovecraft's stuff, but Poe is one of my favorite horror authors. Bradbury stuck mostly with science fiction and dystopian, but some of his stuff could be stretched into the horror genre.


More modern day, the two that come to mind most to me are simply Stephen King and Clive Barker. Clive Barker was the one responsible for Hellraiser, for one. I would suggest Weaveworld as well, but unfortunately, I never could get too far into that one. It has a demoness in it, however, if you like that kind of thing. ;)


Stephen King tends to be considered the money shot, but honestly, you can skip a lot of his stuff. The ones of his I recommend would have to be The Stand, Desperation and its spiritual sequel The Regulators, I would suggest The Long Walk, Bag of Bones, and if you feel you can handle it, Pet Semetary. (Yes, it's spelled with an S, not a C.)


Other than that, nothing really. Some would suggest The Dark Tower series, but I've never read them, so I can't. I would avoid The Dark Half, which is not part of the Tower series-it about put me to sleep. I would also check out some of his anthology collections. Four Past Midnight, Skeleton Crew, and the more modern Everthing's Eventual.
 
Try older Dean Koontz like Phantoms (1000X better than the movie), Watchers is brilliant, Winter Moon, Midnight, anything written in the 80's buy him and early to mid 90's. His newer stuff is preachy and whimsical but the older books are very good. The Bad Place is also a great book.
 
Eh...I've heard only horrible things about The Bad Place myself, all from my family, and we have similar tastes.

To be honest, I wouldn't delve too far into Koontz, especially his newer stuff. I just wouldn't find it worth the time.
 
Actually, Bradbury wrote quite a bit which fits very comfortably into the horror genre -- simply look up Dark Carnival, The October Country, The Small Assassin (story collection, not the individual tale), A Memory of Murder, or Long After Midnight....

We also have a current crop of writers in the field who are very good indeed, such as Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Michael Cisco, W. H. Pugmire, Cody Goodfellow, Thomas Ligotti, Joe Pulver, Sr., Ann K. Schwader... just for starters.....
 
Indeed. And I still say it's hard to go wrong with Bradbury regardless. Although I do feel ashamed at the atrocious calamity anyone ever had the nerve to do with the so-called "movie" version of The Sound of Thunder. THAT goes on up near the top of my list of Movies Whose Producers Should Be Shot In The Street. Right up there with Cloverfield.
 
Stephen King used to write horror, great books are The Shining and Pet Sematary. The Stand and It are amazing but they are over 1000+ pages each. Needful Things is very good, he likes to play on the dark side of human psyche.
 
I would ask what kind of things you do like reading, outside of horror, and then go from there. Basically, some kind of horror crossover into a genre you already do read might be a good "gateway" into horror.
 
In terms of King, why not start at the beginning with Carrie? Won't take long to read and if you like it you can move onto some of the other King recommendations here? For me, early King is best - Salem's Lot, Shining, Stand, Dead Zone, Pet Semetary.

That said, I've often thought horror is the one genre where short stories are superior to novels, so maybe a good short story collection?

Kind regards,
Derek
 
Brave New World - well I spent a good year analysing it for a coursework essay, and the themes of control did seem very horror-esque...perhaps not on first look, but the themes are very horrory...
 
Karn Maeshalanadae said:
I always considered them to simply be thriller, not outright scary. *Shrugs*
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Isn't it more closer to supernatural thrillers? Not in the vein of sparkly vampires but more along the lines of Insomnia or Pet Sematary, King does like to give a "plausible" explanation of why the supernatural exists and why it forms a "horror" story.
 
:)Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I will check them out, some of them actually might seem not that bad. When I'm done reading them one at a time I will let you all know what I think, again thank-you.:D
 
biodroid said:
Isn't it more closer to supernatural thrillers? Not in the vein of sparkly vampires but more along the lines of Insomnia or Pet Sematary, King does like to give a "plausible" explanation of why the supernatural exists and why it forms a "horror" story.
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No, Brave New World is not supernatural. Dystopian. I wasn't meaning to lump King's works in with it.


And I would say that supernatural thriller does cross over into horror.
 
Hehe Karn, would The Stand be classed as dystopian or is it just post apocalyptic? I think the term horror was invented by critics who were "horrified" that the story could gross them out so much and make them feel uneasy :D. That's probably not the real meaning but it's just whacky to see all these sub-genres being named just because the author twists the story in a different way. I always laugh when people say Stephenie Meyer turned the vampire story on it's head...by making vampires sparkle? I think not! Just because Stephen King twisted the whole zombie concept in the book Cell doesn't mean he created a new genre or turned it on it's head. I am rambling, I apologize.

Planetocean - You won't be dissappointed with the advice given on this forum, the chrons are very well read!!
 
biodroid said:
Hehe Karn, would The Stand be classed as dystopian or is it just post apocalyptic? I think the term horror was invented by critics who were "horrified" that the story could gross them out so much and make them feel uneasy :D. That's probably not the real meaning but it's just whacky to see all these sub-genres being named just because the author twists the story in a different way. I always laugh when people say Stephenie Meyer turned the vampire story on it's head...by making vampires sparkle? I think not! Just because Stephen King twisted the whole zombie concept in the book Cell doesn't mean he created a new genre or turned it on it's head. I am rambling, I apologize.

Planetocean - You won't be dissappointed with the advice given on this forum, the chrons are very well read!!
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:)Thank you for all the suggestions, they sound like great reads. I like what you had to say about the names of genre's and how they come about.:D
 
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