Quelle Horreur!

image source - Graves and Ghouls 

If you were to ask me off hand what my favorite holiday was, I would say that I didn't have one. Nope, not even Christmas - and everyone loves Christmas. I think Halloween may be the closest  thing to my favorite holiday, just because of the attention I pay to it. I have some very fond memories of that fist-full amount of hours between after-school and trick-or-treating, the waiting and prepping. The air crisp and clean, the static sound of leaves rushing through the air, and during the main event - my favorite part - peeping into the foyers of the houses we'd visit  as my bag was being filled. No one really trick-or-treats in our neighborhood anymore, which is really too bad. I enjoy visiting with the parents and children who come by (always friends and acquaintances - usually students that attend the school my mother works at. It's amusing to see the expressions on the children's faces when they realize Teachers have Homes, just like They do!) At a certain age, I was deemed too old to dress up, and so just like that, I was done with Halloween. How can you love a holiday you aren't going to participate in? Though to my parents defense, my costumes were never ever store bought. They were always home made. It is one thing to make a tasteful Pocahontas costume for an 8 year old, another thing to make a historically accurate Gibson Girl costume for a 14 year old. So there is that.
A few years ago I decided I would honor the holiday they best way I knew how - by devoting the entire month to horror novels. Under normal circumstances, I actually hate the horror genre. Too often I look at the stories and themes far too pragmatically and think to myself "This isn't scary at all - it's ridiculous."Take The Ruins, for instance. It's about flesh eating plants. On the one hand, you will never view your mother's house plants the same way again (try walking past them armed with a plastic knife - just for in case - and then take a good long look at yourself). But at the end of the day, it's just about irrationally evil plants. The more I look at what we consider "scary," all it really sums up to is irrational violence. And irrational violence can at times be, well, funny.

So I'm not a fan of the horror genre. But every year I make a noble effort to try to read something from that genre. That in mind, it also takes me a tremendously long time to read these books. Most of them I never actually finish before I've fully formed and solidified my opinion. This year, rather than read novels, I've decided to try something new. I'm only going to read horror (or "spooky themed") anything-but-novels. So look out for those!