The book I am most waiting for this fall is......

   I am so excited.  I am starting to count down the days!  Needless to say, I'm getting this in hardcover the day it comes out.  What's that, you say?  Susan, you don't like hard covers, you can't carry them?  That's true.  But this book I plan on staying in and reading all that weekend.  I'm not going anywhere, dear readers.  The book I am talking about is, of course:
                             

The new horror book from Stephen King.  Doctor Sleep carries on the story of Danny Torrance from The Shining.  The Shining is one of my all-time favourite novels, and is due for a reread, which is so handy considering the sequel is just about to come out!.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reading slump or no (see my  post  from yesterday), at least I'll have The Shining and Doctor Sleep read in September.  The hard part is waiting for RIP to officially start, so I can count it as one of my RIP books.  And Doctor Sleep.  I can hardly wait!!!!!  What happened when Danny grew up???????????

To get you (and me) into the mood for RIP, here is a link to an Entertainment Weekly interview with Stephen King from last winter, about how he came to write Doctor Sleep.

One month from tomorrow, my Gentle Readers! Doctor Sleep is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Unseen - Alexandra Sokoloff - Very Frightening Haunted House novel

So, you know I am a sucker for horror stories.  I love being scared - in the good way, safely, through a book.  Not in the bad way, which is in real life. I've found that the very best frightening books spill over into my life so that I become unable to read them at night.  I become too nervous, too jumpy.  Now, I like this feeling or I wouldn't read scary novels.  The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff  is one of those novels. It is so good and so frightening that I had to stop reading it last night and wait for the safety of daylight to read it.  So imagine this:  sitting at the kitchen table, cup of tea at hand, children on Wii, sun streaming in the window, and I am still scared.  That's how good and scary this book is.

The premise:
Dr Laurel MacDonald flees from the West coast and ends up in North Carolina at Duke University, desperately searching for a proposal for a book so she can keep her job as associate professor and tenure.  She discovers that the University used to have a psychic research facility on campus, that suddenly shut down in 1965, the year her mother left Durham for the west coast.  Laurel knows she has family back east, but it's only after she buys her house and tells her mother what she's done that her mother reminds her that she has relatives there: her aunt and her uncle.  From the time she discovers that the 700 boxes from the old psychic research faculty have been released a(from where they were hidden in storage), to when she makes the link to her uncle's mysterious mental disability which came from the same psychic research program, I found a real sense of unease growing.  We follow the set-up that leads to her and her associate professor Brendan Cody to Folger House, where an experiment to see if a reported poltergeist experience could be uncovered to be true, first done in 1965 and that led to the mysterious shut down of the department.  They discover the house, and this leads to them deciding to recreate the experiment again using psychological and personality profiles like Myers-Briggs, combining them with tested psychic ability  to see if there is a link between personality profiles, psychic ability and expectation of psychic phenomena (which I think would be an interesting subject to study, by the way).   There is a palpable sense of unease that grows into real terror as Laurel,  Brandon and their two test students enter the supposed haunted house.

There is a little similarity with Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House:  two observers, and two test subjects who test high on evaluation tests for psychic abilities; an experiment at a haunted house, where they stay for a period of time to record what happens.  These are the only similarities, but I did want to point out they were there.  The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favourite and all-time frightening ghost stories, and it is to Ms Sokoloff's credit that the similarities are only in the set-up, not in the execution at all.  The Unseen stands on its own, and is in its own right it's very own ghost story.  And it as unsettling and frightening as The Haunting of Hill House is.

It is terrifying in places, and I am very glad I read most of it during the daylight, and with people around me.  I'm really glad I'm not alone tonight!  That's how scary I found some of this book.   I think it's one of the best horror novels I have read in years.  So if you are looking for something to scare you, if you want that delicious frisson of fear running up your spine and tingling in your scalp, making the hair stand up on your arms just in reading about ghosts, then pick this one up.

5/5 and most highly recommended.

I could only find this in hardcover at my library.  Even now, Amazon.ca says the paperback isn't available in Canada at all. I also discovered at her website that she has a new book just being released: The Book of Shadows.  It combines a detective with a witch as a team.  Sounds good!!!  I'll be looking for this one now.

******Edited to add:  I forgot to add that I have been aware of this writer ever since I reviewed Ms Sokoloff's first novel, The Harrowing, here two years ago.  I am thrilled that The Unseen is better than The Harrowing (at least in my opinion it is) - because as frightening as The Harrowing was, I thought it could be more, and The Unseen does that.  This is a horror writer to watch, and I hope that The Book of Shadows is as good as either of these two.

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?