Horror: The 100 Best Books

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Horror: The 100 Best Books Details

Review The continuing growth in popularity of speculative fiction (an all-encompassing term for horror, fantasy, and science fiction) has resulted in a recent spate of suggested reading lists. Strangely enough, these two collections, while possessing corresponding publishers, titles, and concepts, utilize vastly different approaches to compile their "best of' lists.Of the two, Jones' and Newman's entry is more interesting, as they have imbued their book with a bit of novelty by garnering the opinions of 100 authors, editors, and others in the genre. Each contributor offers a personal essay on why they made their selection. Contributors include the field's current bestselling authors (such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Robert McCammon) as well as deceased luminaries (such as Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Howard, and H.P. Lovecaft). Chronologically, the selections range from The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, 1592) to Dark Feasts (Ramsey Campbell, 1987). By soliciting the opinions of so many varied voices, Jones and Newman avoid overloading the list with personal bias, and they achieve an eclectic touch that makes the choices extremely interesting. Acknowledging the potential quirky nature of such a selection process, a further recommended reading list is appended, giving the reader enough material to keep him or her busy into the next century. Taking a somewhat converse approach, Cawthorn and Moorcock simply list their personal selections for the 100 best books in the field of fantasy. While the editors' credentials are clearly topnotch, the uniform viewpoint doesn't measure up the variety offered in Jones' and Newman's collection. To their credit, the picks of Cawthorn and Moorcock are wide-ranging, spanning from Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726) to Expecting Sonteone Taller (Tom Holt~ 1987) chronologically, and encompassing commensurate ground thematically. Indicative of the narrow, sometimes imperceptible boundary between definitions of fantasy and horror is the fact that fourteen works have achieved mention in both of these lists. Regardless of the dissimilar methods used in compiling these two listings, there's no question that both offer plenty of interesting and provocative suggestions for future reading. -- From Independent Publisher Read more

Reviews

Of course this list can't be complete (and now it is twenty years old) but it is still a great place to start for a survey of horror literature. For those of us who take horror literature seriously, this is one of the essential nonfiction books to have - along with Danse Macabre, On Writing Horror, and Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature. This is a great resource to read the masters themselves talking about their heroes and what makes good literature. Not only do we have essays ABOUT Poe and Lovecraft - we have essays BY Poe and Lovecraft, along with Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, etc. For a genre that produces so much bad writing, it is invaluable to have a guide to point us toward the good stuff.Now, of course, this list isn't exhaustive. There are many titles that are not included (which is why the book has a sequel). Tastes vary, so I'm not necessarily a fan of EVERY title selected. Also, to be original, some contributors select titles that are just NOT horror. (I think that most horror fans agree that the horror of Johnny Got His Gun is not the type of horror we are talking about here.) Fortunately, the books are listed chronologically, with no attempt to compare their relative merits.

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