Horror Literature
 

Horror...Its a genre that many say Stephen King invented, but if one digs deep enough, horror stories have been told around the campfires of the world, in every remote part of every region, for generations.

I've always enjoyed a good scare while reading. In fact, I enjoy being frightened, period.
I think the books which got me into horror were actually 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' by Alvin Schwarz (drawings by Stephen Gammel) which I picked up when I was very young. It turns out that many of the stories are based upon urban folklore.

These days I find myself drawn to the works of HP Lovecraft (In the Mountains of Madness), Alfred Hitchcock collections (Stories for late at night) and especially Clive Barker. I mention this because I had a chance to meet Doug Bradley today (Pinhead from Hellraiser) and he read excerpts from Clive Barker's 'Hellbound Heart'.

I think my favorite piece of literature from this genre is a collection of short stories on behalf of Clive Barker entitled, 'Books of Blood Volume I-III'. Barker is truly a visionary and works perfectly well with coinciding practical writing and believability with imagination.

Do you appreciate horror literature? If so, what?

I got onto a Lovecraft stint a few months back when the Cloverfield trailer was released. Normally I don't read much horror, though. I have yet to read something that really gripped me, but I'm interested in "House of Leaves" after glancing through it a bit recently. I love stuff that deals with breaking the fourth wall, or blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

I've read a good amount of Stephen King and Dear R. Koontz. And I enjoyed most of what I've read. Not all of their stuff is straight up 'horror'. The scariest thing by King that I've come across were some of the short stories in Night Shift. This one story called Gray Matter really freaked me out when I read it many many years ago.

Some of Michael Crichton's work reads like B horror movie material. Jurassic Park, Eaters of the Dead, and Prey. Entertaining and scary at times.

Thats what interests me as well. Incidentally, there is a film in the movie night thread (In the Mouth of Madness http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/my...wnloads-6.html) which is based upon Lovecraft mythos which you might find interesting. Its themes are heavily related to how fantasy and reality can literally blur together.

But yea. I find that its difficult to get into a story if the line between fantasy and reality is not credibly (or at least interestingly) drawn. It either becomes too unbelievable to take seriously, or it becomes far too subtle to stimulate the imagination. Its a difficult balance...

Sounds cool! :eagletear:

edit: Btw, Divest, you are a punk. Quit rating down my posts because you have a vagina instead of a penis. Thanks!

Gray Matter really is a good one of King's. Nightshift was the first book of King's work that I got my hands on, and boy there still are some of my favourites in there, "The Mist" being the cream of the crop.
Lovecraft has incredibly cool ideas, but his writing can get a bit tedious at times. Especially his spontanous 2 page monolouges of bystander characters tend to confuse me every time I run into one.
Other than that... *ponders*
I doubt I've read other "horror" literature. Short of some books of ghost stories when I was a kid, which hardly qualify as "horror" due to being ghost stories for kids... Allthough some of those were pretty scary.
At least... I remember them to have been scary...

I think I can say I'm into "supernatural weird fiction", not just plain "horror". I have read writings by H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Robert E. Howard, and other folktales leaning into the weird and macabre. But I was first dragged into this genre when I first read the Hellboy comic by Mike Mignola. I like how he was able to incorporate various elements of folklore, mythology, religion, fantasy, the supernatural, and occult in his stories. Most of these days my "horror" fix comes from the Hellboy and B.P.R.D comics, but sometimes I buy books to add to my "collection" of horror books.

^^^ What kind of books?

I've recently acquired a few horror novels (for my birthday). One of them: Stephen Kings, "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" and Clive Barkers, "Weaveworld".

So far, the Stephen King literature is pretty intense. I am not sure what it is about his writing, but it seems to be almost too relatable, or accessible. It makes the imaginative element of his stories seem more probable- as if we were right there experiencing the ordeal along with him. That's true horror, to me. (That we in essence become a part of the writing.) Making sense of non-sense and whatnot. Clive Barker has a similar gift for making magic of ordinary everyday situations and putting a surreal twist upon them.