The book to best represent you?

Matt Cowan · **Posted:** Sun Apr 29, 2007 9:25 pm

If you had to pick one to three novels that you have read to represent the general type of horror you like to read/write which would you pick and why?

I would pick:

Ramsey Campbell's Incarnate for its overall feeling of reality slowly warping into something dreamlike and bizarre.

Summer of Night by Dan Simmons- for the characters. They are interesting in their regular lives as well as when they are uniting together against a dreadfully evil threat.

Night Stone by Rick Hautula for its multi-layered evil threats and the fast paced movie-style feel to it.

What are some of yours?"

Kreep · **Joined:** Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:19 pm **Posts:** 237

Cool idea, Matt. Lessssseeeee....

The Stand...I really like giant, epic stories with scads of characters and a vast evil that takes advantage of a horrible situation. I guess that's why I like the Necroscope series, too...but The Stand is just so completely realistic and successfully sucks you in, it just can't be beat. Another sign this book really affected me was that when it was over and I had read the final page, I felt lost. I was like, "Now what? What happens next?" I felt the need to know more. Any book that does that to me is a winner. I wish every book did that to me.

Richard Matheson's Hell House - Haunted houses are always cool...but this story really gave me the creeps. You can just feel the house's evil oozing off the pages as you turn them.

Brian Keene's The Conqueror Worms - just for the shear fun of it all. It's such a well-written book, and the characters are amazing, and the creatures are fantastic without being silly. Plus, I'm a sucker for giant "creature feature" type books (and movies). (Jeff Strand's Mandibles comes in very close, but that's more humourous than The Conqueror Worms...which is fine, but it's not what I go for most of the time.)

deusExMachina · **Joined:** Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:34 pm **Posts:** 546

Needful Things by Stephen King: I love novels with multiple characters and storylines which eventually clash together in the end.

The Memory Tree by John Little: Time has always been one of my favorite subjects, the ability to twist it, change it, and the consequences doing so could bring.

Winds of Change by Jason Brannon: For it's pace and suspense, always a must.

Cesar

Monty Grue · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:39 am

The Cellar by Richard Laymon. Ruthless and brutal. Terrific ending. The monster is almost natural with only a hint of the supernatural.

Pet Semetery by Stephen King. Damn good ending. The horror is intimidate, creepy and terrifying, but not over the top with flashy effects.

The Shadow Out of Time or At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. A good argument can be made that Lovecraft's horror, in stories like these, is almost science fiction, because his presentation is a naturalistic look at the supernatural.

I suppose it is clear from my choices that I don't favor the heavy doses of the supernatural or magic in horror novels. A little is OK, for flavor, but once vampires can fly like superman, then horror ceases to be horror and ventures into dark fantasy.

Mark Justice · **Joined:** Mon Mar 14, 2005 1:28 am **Posts:** 1683

My choices would change on a daily basis, so here are today's.

Since The Stand has already been picked -- and I've previously named it my favorite horror novel -- I'll go with Stephen King's It, for its scope, its characters and the theme of the past informing the future.

The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon. In his later years, Laymon was combining the grindhouse thrills of his earlier work with richer characterizations and plots with a grander sweep. This one is his best.

In third place, a tie. Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons and You Come When I Call You by Douglas Clegg.

Scott Bradley · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 4:14 am

Hey guys, sorry I've been away from the board - lingering computer problems, etc, etc. - ugh...

ANYWAY...I looooooove this question. Just off the top of my head...

1. RED DRAGON by Thomas Harris

2. I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson

...and, not a conventional Horror novel, per se, but certainly among the most horrific I've ever read, on many levels...

3. THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS by Ian McEwan.

Like I said, LOVE this thread!

SB

ristow · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:12 am

I'm still feeling myself out as a HORROR writer. I've been writing for years, but it was only last summer that I decided I wanted to write horror again, and make it a primary focus, above and beyond writing poetry, per se. This is more of list of all time likes. And this is what made me want to be a horror writer when I was highs chool, before a silly little thing like 10 years of college got in the way

All things Lovecraft

Dracula -- Epistolary novel at it's finest, in terms of form.

Clive Barkers Short Stories

jjclpell · **Joined:** Thu Apr 26, 2007 10:22 am **Posts:** 13

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon Nostalgic look at childhood with all the magic you might remember but know wasn't really there because now you're grown up and know there's no such thing as magic. This is what being an 11 year old should be like.

The Stand by Stephen King I know it's been picked but there's just no way I couldn't put it on the list. This is about mostly ordinary people surviving the apocolypse. Whenever I read this book I always pictured myself as one of the characters. How would I do? Something cool about being only one of the few people to survive. Makes you feel not so ordinary. Robert McCammon's Swan Song also fits into this category

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman I'm a sucker for a good cross-over event and this is a doozy. So many major and minor characters from fiction, movies, and television make appearances in this book. Not only that but the story is a great mystery, a great what-if, a great alternate universe. This reflects my love of stories, characters, and how real they can be to me. So real that they can't be restrained by a single story, their lives go on in new stories. Also why I love The League od Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Raven Bower · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:54 am

Ohhhh nice topic!

In horror (or any genre I read) I love to see engaging characters, swift plots and suspense. It's got to be fun! It's the way I like to write and it's the way I like to read.

I found these books to be most representative of that...it was hard to choose though as there's a lot of good horror fiction out there.

Watchers by Dean Koontz

Swan Song by Robert McCammon

Dawn of the Vampire by William Hill

David T. Wilbanks · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:39 am

Matt Cowan · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 12:09 pm

Kreep · **Joined:** Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:19 pm **Posts:** 237

ristow · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:56 pm

Matt Cowan · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:22 pm

ristow · **Posted:** Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:41 pm

oldmanmike · **Posted:** Thu May 03, 2007 4:03 pm

Kreep · **Joined:** Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:19 pm **Posts:** 237

The book to best represent you?

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