Jones, Stephen and Kim Newman, eds. Horror: Another 100 best books. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005.456pp.
This is a great book based on a great idea. Ask 100 people in the extended horror fiction family to write a short essay about their favourite book and then publish the results. If you can get authors like Robert Silverberg, Poppy Brite, Nancy Collins, ST Joshi, David Morrell and a whole bunch of others, you're in business. I liked this book a lot, as well as the first book in the series published a few years ago, Horror: 100 best books. It's a great thing to leave around the house and read a chapter or two here and there -- I've been reading the darn thing since June and just finished it today. I actually read all the chapters in sequence, something I've not done yet with the original book. There are also books in the series on science fiction and fantasy. I hope to give all three of those this same treatment one day; in fact, I think I'll be putting the sf one at my bedside today. One great thing about these books is that they also have additional reading lists at the end. This one has the TOC from Horror: 100 best books as well as a year by year listing of important books from 458 BCE (The Oresteia by Aeschylus) to 2005 (The mysteries by Lisa Tuttle).
The best thing about a book like this is that is introduces you to books and authors you've never heard of or didn't know much about and gets you excited about trying out there works. It also gives you a chance to judge your own comprehensiveness in genre reading, letting you know if there are serious gaps.
By way of a meme-y thing, I present the list of 100 here, with the ones I've read bolded and the ones I want to get around to reading in italics. Many of the later, of course, suggested by my reading of the essay in the book. Many thanks to the link here for saving me a lot of typing.
- Robert Silverberg on The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur
- Chelsea Quinn Yarbro on Pikovaia Dama/The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr Puchkin
- Elizabeth Hand on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Doug Bradley on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Jay Lake on Rekopiz Znaleziony w Saragossie/The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan, Count Potocki
- K.W. Jeter on New Grub Street by George Gissing
- David J. Skal on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- Les Edwards on The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- Tony Richards on The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Rick Hautala on The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" by William Hope Hodgson
- Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier on Le fantome de l'Opera/The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
- Tim Lucas on Fantomas by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allan
- Christopher Wicking on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
- Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden on They Return at Evening by H.R. Wakefield
- Sydney J. Bounds on Creep, Shadow! By A. Merritt
- Chaz Brenchley on The Trail of Fu Manchu
- Stephen Volk on The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley
- Gahan Wilson on The Haunted Omnibus ed. Alexander Laing
- Robert Weinberg on The Edge of Running Water by William Sloane
- T.M. Wright on L'Etranger/The Stranger by Albert Camus
- David A. Sutton on Sleep No More: Twenty Masterpieces of Horror for the Connoisseur ed. August Derleth
- Storm Constantine on Lost Worlds by Clark Ashton Smith
- Stefan Dziemianowicz on Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales by Henry S. Whitehead
- Gwyneth Jones on Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural ed. Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser
- Joel Lane on The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch
- Christopher Fowler on Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
- Gary Gianni on Carnacki the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
- Randy Broecker on Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
- Tanith Lee on Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
- Lucius Shepard on Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell
- David Bischoff on House of Flesh by Bruno Fischer
- Anne Billson on Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier
- Nancy A. Collins on The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
- Laurence Staig on The Third Ghost Book ed. Lady Cynthia Asquith
- Andy Duncan on The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
- John Gordon on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- Norman Partridge on The Hunger and Other Stories by Charles Beaumont
- Robert Irwin on The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
- Mark Morris on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
- Howard Waldrop on A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn
- Ed Gorman on A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson
- Muriel Gray on The Weirdstone of Brinsingamen by Alan Garner
- Terry Dowling on Tales of Terror ed. Charles Higham
- Peter Atkins on Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
- Jack Womack on We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- Darrell Schweitzer on The Case Against Satan by Ray Russell
- Peter Crowther on Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Ian MacLeod on The Collector by John Fowles
- Glen Hirshberg on Who Fears the Devil? By Manly Wade Wellman
- Simon Clark on A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher
- Nancy Holder on Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
- Ellen Datlow on The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural Selected by
the Editors of Playboy - Terry Lamsley on Pages from Cold Point by Paul Bowles
- John Farris on Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
- Stephen Baxter on The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
- Elizabeth Massie on Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
- P.N. Elrod on The Night Stalker by Jeff Rice
- Michael Swanwick on Blood Sport by Robert F. Jones
- Nicholas Royle on Nightshade by Derek Marlowe
- Roz Kaveney on Peace by Gene Wolfe
- David Drake on The Year of the Sex Olympics: Three TV Plays by Nigel Kneale
- Marc Laidlaw on Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
- Paul McAuley on The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
- Jo Fletcher on Darkness Weaves With Many Shades by Karl Edward Wagner
- Sir Christopher Frayling on The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
- Thomas Ligotti on Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
- D.F. Lewis on The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen
- Christopher Golden on Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror ed. Kirby McCauley
- John Burke on Tales from the Nightside by Charles L. Grant
- Yvonne Navarro on They Thirst by Robert R. McCammon
- Poppy Z. Brite on The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
- David Stuart Davies on The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
- Michael Marshall Smith on Pet Sematary by Stephen King
- Anthony Timpone on Clive Barker's Books of Blood Volumes One, Two, and Three by Clive Barker
- Nancy Kilpatrick on Perfume: The Story of a Murdered by Patrick Suskind
- Bill Sheehan on Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier
- Kelly Link on Strange Toys by Patricia Geary
- Allen Koszowski on The Dark Descent ed. David G. Hartwell
- Graham Joyce on Misery by Stephen King
- Frank M. Robinson on The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- Mark Chadbuurn on Prime Evil ed. Douglas E. Winter
- Jay Russell on By Bizarre Hands: Stories by Joe R. Landsdale by Joe R. Lansdale
- Peter H. Cannon on The Grotesque by Patrick McGrath
- David Morrell on Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
- Stephen R. Bissette on From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
- David McGillivray on American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
- Brian Hodge on Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
- China Mieville on The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison
- Adam Simon on Flicker by Theodore Roszak
- Paul Di Filippo on X, Y by Michael Blumlein
- Caitlin R. Kiernan on Skin by Kathe Koja
- Tananarive Due on Throat Sprockets: A Novel of Erotic Obsession by Tim Lucas
- Simon R. Green on The Off Season: A Victorian Sequel by Jack Cady
- S.T. Joshi on The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti
- Roberta Lannes on A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
- Michael Shea on Reprisal by Mitchell Smith
- John Pelan on A Haunting Beauty by Sir Charles Birkin
- Jeff VanderMeer on House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
- Richard A. Lupoff on Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories by Bob Leman
- Tim Lebbon on More Tomorrow & Other Stories by Michael Marshall Smith
Labels: collection, criticism, horror
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