All Hallow's Read

Thanks to Ruanne, I have a great jumping off point: All Hallow's Read. If you can't be bothered to read the link, basically it's a new tradition to give people scary books for Halloween, inspired by the thought that there are not enough traditions that involve giving books.

I like this for a lot of reasons. I love gift-giving traditions. That's one of my favourite things about Christmas. And I love scary books. I have lots, because I sort of left home and took them with me, but I actually haven't read that many, because I mostly read at night, and that has often gone badly!

In late October I'm having a Halloween Craft Party, and I'm using this exploration on the blog to develop ideas for it. So I'll start with this one. I'm thinking a Secret Santa style gift arrangement (Secret Skeleton perhaps?) where everyone gives a book to one other person.

There is a list of recommended titles on the All Hallow's Read site, and Dover Publications have recently emailed about recommended Halloween books (also if you subscribe to their free samples you can download lots of Halloween clip art and some activity pages like colouring-in). But perhaps wandering a second-hand bookstore and finding something you've never heard of would be fun too. Most of the ghost/horror books I have are odd obscure old collections. And some of my favourite creepy short stories are not from "scary" collections as such (100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories has some gold - I like Trace, Fire Sale and A Cup of Hemlock for slight chills).

Also, consider e-books. I quickly checked Project Gutenberg and found some authors I recognised from my short ghost story collections, lots more promising titles and even one of my favourites - The Judge's House by Bram Stoker.

Ahh the internet is a wonderful! I searched for another favourite - The Cat Man, by Byron Liggett and found it on community radio audio!