Halls of the Dark Muse

I don't usually do seasonal reading, and I usually find it kind of cheesy to choose books to read based upon upcoming holidays, so I generally don't pick the books I am going to read based on the time of year, but I do love Halloween so I decided I would try to focus my reading around Halloween themes.

The most predominately Halloween related book I read was Let the Right One In a brilliant book and probably the best vampire story since Dracula. It is one of the best contemporary portrayals of vampires which I have seen in a long time. While the story is modernized, the author in many ways also stays true to the classical vampire, and I feel there is a Dracula influence in the book.

Next, is The Bell Jar, which I know you are thinking, does not sound very Halloween like initially, but there are a few reasons why I think this was a valid choice. For one, the obvious reason being that Plath's life, or death I should say has a very cult like following, and she was in fact born in October. As well the book deals with being in an Asylum and shock therapy treatments, and in many ways having these things presenting in a real-life way is more chilling than a sensationalized horror story.

Blood Meridian is another book which may not be a traditional horror story, but it is very dark and I think that the violence and death in the book, and the graphic scenes does homage to the blood and gore horror sub-genre, and the story does introduce the topic of evil and the devil.

I, Tituba, is a book that does deal with more traditional and classical Halloween themes, being about witchcraft. I find the Salem Witch Trails to be fascinating, and I love The Crucible, one of my favorite characters was Tituba, the black slave, and so I was intrigued by this book which tells of the events from her point of view.

Now, World Without End, is the one book which I thought would break my Halloween themes and would not fit in, but I wanted to read it since I have it sitting around for a while now and it was part of a group read, and it ended up surprising me. The book actually opened up on All Hallows Eve and than toward the end circled back around the Halloween again, and there was a considerable portion of the book which dealt with the black plague, and had these very grotesque and morbid scenes, which ironically were the best part of the book for me.

Last but not least, the week before Halloween I started reading The Mistress of the Art Death, and so I am still in the process of reading it.