Interesting book links and my Top 10 Ghost Stories

In keeping with the current theme of all things dark and scary, here are two things that I found today that I really liked:

- if you're looking for a ghost story treasury to read, possibly one for a 8 years or up child also, this one sounds so good that I might get it for our spooky night stories:  from Bookslut:  Stories to Tell in the Dark post.

- I was looking for a listing of the Byrant and May mystery series to make sure I had bought the right one next in line, and came across Christopher Fowler's wonderful blog.  Filled with writing tips, publishing stories, all kinds of cool things, including this wonderful photograph that is just a little bizarre and oh so cool and very in keeping with RIP themes..  Very Dickensian too, and now I'm longing to go see London again. 

When did it become a stigma to read?
Yesterday, Chris at Book-a-rama had this lovely rant post about an article that appeared in the NY Times in August about people who read books.  I can see why she ranted.  Reading it, I am incensed too. What do you mean, there is a stigma against reading alone in public?  I am left shaking my head at this one.  If there is social stigma against reading a book, I'm not aware of it.  Since reading is intrinsically a pleasure for the self, it is of course going to be done alone.  I do know we have the 'book nerd' thing attached - at least I have.  But I lost any care about that long ago.  I didn't know I had a social stigma against me for reading.  I feel kind of cool anyway.  In my little corner of the world, books are cool and interesting, and best of all, I can take a book almost anywhere and open it up and read.  Plus, I've had people approach me and ask about the book, and go away to find a copy for themselves. Personally, I think talking on cell phones in public is far more intrusive, invasive, and socially unacceptable.  I'm quiet when I read, whereas you, young woman with your phone on your ear today on the bus talking incessantly beside me to someone -and really, if she drew a breath in ten minutes I didn't hear it - oh yes, give me a book any time.  If there's a stigma against reading alone in public (and is this an oxymoron too?), then there should be a taboo against talking loudly and in public on your cell phone in spaces where people can't get away from you.

If you're still looking for some horror books to read for Carl's RIP V challenge, then  here is a top 10 list from Charlie Higson over at Guardian Unlimited.  I agree with some of his choices, and I think I'm one of the few people to have read Daphne Du Maurier's Don't Look Now, as well as seen the movie, and they both scare me very much.  I would have put The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and The Woman in Black by Susan Hill on the list. So.......this made me think:  what are my current top 10 of horror books?


Susan's Top 10 Horror Ghost stories books

1. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson - my all time personal favourite ghost story.  Whatever walks at Hill House, walks alone.  Just writing those words makes goosebumps appear on me.
2. The Shining - Stephen King - I still hold this up as the best of his, although Duma Key is a very close second.  I might have to read them both again and compare........
3. The Terror - Dan Simmons - my book of the year two years ago.  Scared me, and still does. 
4. The Night Country - Stewart O'Nan - haunting and sad and beautiful.
5. Tamsin - Peter S. Beagle - my favourite ghost story featuring a ghost cat and ghost girl. 
6. The Prayer of the Night Shepherd - Phil Rickman (I swear, there are a couple of scenes in this book where I could feel the hair lifting on the back of my neck).  The scariest, so far, for me, in the series, just because that sense of the ghost was so authentic, and frightening for Merrily and for me.  Every book has eerie moments though, and is filled with a delicious sense of haunting and atmoshere.  Plus there is the ghost of Lucy. 
7. Swan Song - Robert R McCammon - still the best of the end of the world books, with evil stalking a lovely little girl, and the heroes who stand guard over her.  Due for a re-read
8. The Bone Doll's Twin series - Lyn Flewelling - it's not often a fantasy series uses a ghost so believably, and to such good purpose. Very dark fantasy and very very good.
9. The Uncanny - Andrew Klavan - gothic ghost horror story that is very good.
10. The Harrowing - Alexandra Sokoloff - classic ghost story setting: five young people, alone for the holidays in a university campus, and an ouija board.  What could go wrong?

 I can't remember if Swan Song has a ghost or not, though it's still one of the scariest books because it's so real, so possible, and the evil - yes, I dare you to read it, dear Gentle Reader, and tell me if you don't have a nightmare or two. 

So, have you read any of these? Do you agree with my list?  Do you have your own list?

Sunday Salon - Writer's Block!

Thanks so much to Emily at Telecommuter Talk for writing the post that sparked this idea for me. She wrote about the difference between having an active imagination and an over-active imagination. For both of us, the over-active imagination comes out (in one of many various ways) in imaginary discourses with a very critical inner critic. In my comment to Emily on her post, I described my inner critic as 'a judge from Plymouth times who is almost impossible to please." It doesn't matter what I write lately, once I've gone away for the day from my work, out he comes and starts saying I am stealing plots and ideas, or just uninspiring and boring, and it's already been done, and I'm not adding anything to what's been written before.

I couldn't describe him clearly until just now, for the first time ever, when I realized, describing him to Emily, that he was like a combination of a witchcraft judge from Salem MA, and the judge from Peter S Beagle's Tamsin that I read last summer. It's only taken me 35 years to put a face to this critic!!! It was actually Stephanie in the comments to the post who described her inner critic, so I owe her a thanks too.

My answer to Emily's inner critic and to my own, is the same: it doesn't matter the audience you create for. If you write - or create anything for that matter, be it a sampler, a work of art, a garden, a song for your band - my daughter's bead necklaces - the important thing is that I, and you, create from the truth - write what the true story is, the real story, paint what we see, create what we know. The audience will come to it, they always find a way to it. Maybe not in our lifetime, but maybe we are creating something for the future. You, and I, can't know, until we have finished it, what we are even doing.

I know I would rather be writing than almost anything else in the world, so I also know that I have to put my inner critic, fearsome as this judge is, in his corner and tell him to shut up.

So thank you Em, for a most inspirational post!

I have to also admit that the clearest image I have for the 'real story' is from Stephen King's On Writing, because he describes the storyteller's job as uncovering the bones of the story. I like this image of passing the brush over the bones, slowly uncovering the story in the dirt of our words, until we have written and rewritten the story until it shines clearly in the full light. That's how I write, too.

And tell me, dear reader, do you have an inner critic who stops you from creating your dreams? Is there a work of art, or some project, you have been longing to do, but keep putting off?