Horror Book # 21 - The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Going into The Turn of the Screw by Henry James I knew nothing at all about it. Before seeing it on the Best Horror Books list I hadn't even realized that it was a ghost story.

The story is about a young governess that is hired to take care of two young children whose only family is an uncle that isn't interested in being involved in any way with their lives. Once the governess arrives at the estate she begins seeing two ghostly people that match the description of the previous governess and her lover (both deceased). She also thinks that the children can see them too and interact with these ghosts whenever she isn't around.

What I liked about the story is that it is told from the viewpoint of the governess, and since no one else ever mentions seeing the ghosts it is never clear if there are actually ghosts or if the governess is just crazy. I'd lean toward the ghost theory, but "she's just crazy" theory is also valid.

It is a quick read and I'd recommend it for anyone liking turn of the century Gothic stories. I'll give it an A.

Mystery Book # 27 & Horror Book # 86 Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Red Dragon is probably best known as the book that introduces Hannibal Lecter. But really Lecter has a pretty small part in it and the focus is on the hunt for the serial killer known as the Tooth Fairy. The search is led by Will Graham, the man responsible for capturing Lecter. Much like in Silence of the Lambs, the best resource to get into the mind of a serial killer is to consult with Hannibal Lecter.

The book seems like it would be a fairly standard thriller but the Tooth Fairy (or as he calls himself the Red Dragon) is such a weird and fascinating character that the book is a step above the usual crime novel. In the middle section of the book we get the history of the killer's childhood and it almost makes us feel bad for him... but then we're reminded that he is a totally crazy killer.

I rarely say this about a book, but I wish that it were longer! The story moves along very quickly and the climactic encounter between the main characters is just a few pages long and too short to build as much tension as it should have. After reading it I want to re-watch the first film version - Manhunter, and finally see the remake too (and read the sequel). It gets an A-.

Horror Book # 1 The Shining by Stephen King

After reading a bunch of literary classics and then throwing in additional science fiction classics and then adding a mystery/thriller list, I realized I should also add in a horror reading list too... What better way to get an excuse to read some more Stephen King, re-read books about the vampire Lestat, and finally get through the giant H.P. Lovecraft collection sitting on my bookshelf! And what better time to do this than October so as to get mentally ready for Halloween. So first off... I'm going to be using the list found at http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-horror-books-of-all-time. It is a list voted on by users (so it is likely to change a bit) and has a pretty good mixture of classic stuff like Edgar Allen Poe and newer stuff like Neil Gaiman. Will I read everything on the list? Probably not, but it will be nice to read something different every once in awhile.

I'm starting with re-reading The Shining since it has a new sequel that just came out, I just viewed the film Room 237 (which is about the film version) and it is at the very top of the list. The story of course is about the Torrance family, Jack, Wendy and Danny, as they live in the Overlook Hotel during the winter off-season. Five year old Danny has a 'gift' that allows him to occasionally see the future and know people's thoughts and feeling. Jack is a recovering alcoholic and is trying to get his life in order by working at the Overlook and to fix his marriage with Wendy at the same time. However the hotel is haunted by something evil that slowly takes over Jack's mind and encourages him to hurt his family. This evil presence also provides horrible visions to young Danny.

The book is probably one of King's best (probably because it is also one of his earliest). The relationships between the three main characters are nicely examined and you really get a sense of the family dynamic and the pressures that are influencing everyone's actions. The story has a great set up... in most haunted house books/movies I always wonder why the family just doesn't leave the house... but in this case the family really has no choice since they're snowed in and forty miles from the nearest neighbor. And it isn't really a ghost within the place causing the trouble, it is that the actual hotel is an evil entity. For such a horror classic, it surprisingly has a very low body count (1). Most of the suspense is in not wanting anything bad to happen to little Danny and seeing how at first he is busy coping with his 'gift' and his parents dissolving relationship  and then being forced to live in a haunted hotel.

It is hard to read a book like this that has been made into a classic film without comparing the two versions. And somehow Stanley Kubrick managed to make the film version even scarier and more intense than the book. Think of some of the creepiest parts of the film... the chase through the hedge maze, "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy", "Come play with us Danny", "Heeere's Johnny!", the elevator full of blood...  none of those things are actually in the novel. Instead the novel has topiary animals that come to life and a temperamental boiler that eventually blows up the Overlook. I also prefer the fate of Dick Hallorann in the film versus the book (not that I wanted anything bad to happen to Dick, but the film forces Danny to really save himself and what happens to Dick adds to the evil of the hotel).

I give the book an A and I can see how it could be voted number one on the horror list. The only thing that actually detracts from the book is that the movie version is an A+ classic.

Book # 18 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Of all the books on the list, Don Quixote is the oldest. I had high expectations for it since it appears near the top of every "best of" list I've looked at. The story is pretty simple (especially for such a long book), Don Quixote is a crazy old man that is obsessed with books about knights. After reading so many books he convinces himself that he himself is a knight and roams around the Spanish countryside along with his squire Sancho Panza having delusional adventures and causing trouble for most everyone that he encounters.

To say that the book is episodic is an understatement. Every twenty or thirty pages Don Quixote and Sancho encounter a new group of people and somehow wreck havoc with them. Most of the stories are funny and entertaining, from Don Quixote attacking people that he thinks are an evil cult, to him trying to get into a fight with a lion, to Sancho finally getting a governorship of an insula...but as I got closer to the end I started wishing for some larger plot to appear and it never really did.

As with a lot of the books on the list, I had to read a translation. I read the newer translation by Edith Grossman and found it very readable and modern but it still maintains a definite sense of style which I hope is reminiscent of the actual Cervantes text. Probably what I found funniest and most interesting is that in the second half of the book (the book is divided into two parts which were published separately) the first half of the text actually exists as a book within the narrative that many of the characters are aware of and use to know the history of Don Quixote and Sancho and use it against them. What is never really explained is how the book came into existence and how someone was able to accurately record what actually happened. And oddly enough Don Quixote doesn't think it is that weird that the book exists.

I've got to give the book an A+. Both Don Quixote and Sancho are great characters and they encounter quite a few interesting people on their crazy adventure. I really like that part of it willfully isn't explained and makes no sense other than that it is funny. I'll add it to my top 50.

Mystery Book # 4- The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

While reading another 1000 page book from our main list I took a day out to read something much shorter from the mystery book list, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. This book is ranked pretty high on the list and on a similar list by the UK Crime Writers Association it is actually ranked as number one. So I had pretty high hopes for this one.

The story follows a detective that is stuck in a hospital bed while he is recuperating from an injury. While stuck there he becomes fascinated with Richard III and the crime that he allegedly committed hundreds of years ago - the murder of his two young nephews. He reads some books and gets someone to do some research for him and he ends up coming to his own conclusions on what really must have happened.

And that's about it. I must have missed something, because while I'd say it is a pretty good B+ type of book, I don't know  how anyone could say that it is the greatest mystery ever written. Maybe I'd need to be British and have lived in the 1950's to fully appreciate it. First off, I wasn't already familiar with the story of Richard the III. Pretty much everything I know about British kings I learned from watching The Tudors, so I never really knew this story (despite actually visiting the tower where the murder probably took place). So to call into question a major part of accepted history isn't a factor for me since I don't live in that country and it means nothing at all to me. Next, the book is clearly written as fiction so I don't actually know how much to believe of any of it. I feel like I would have enjoyed the unravelling of the real mystery and possible solutions if the book was presented as non-fiction complete with footnotes and references. The characters cite books and letters and such in dialogue but that isn't an actual cited reference. So how much of this book is actual research? I don't know and it sort of bugs me. Next, in the book everyone questioned about their knowledge of the story of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower have been taught that Richard had them murdered. Now maybe that was true sixty years ago when the book came out, but researching the true story on Wikipedia shows that no one now accepts that as an established fact and that really it is pretty much up in the air on what really happened. Maybe it was Richard III, maybe Henry VII, who knows? So maybe this has been a more recent development in the thinking of what happened (possibly caused by the publication of this book), or maybe the book just said that everyone thought history was wrong sixty years ago so that The Daughter of Time could exist. Again, I don't know.

Overall a B+. The mystery of who killed the princes is interesting, but I'd have preferred reading an actual non-fiction book that presents the evidence on what really happened.