October Reads 2017: A Month of Scary Stories

Sort of half intentionally and half unintentionally, all the books I read this October were Halloween-worthy. I started out with the idea of finally tackling my Stephen King TBR List and it spiralled from there.

I first read The Dark Half,  a novel about Thad Beaumont, a literary novelist, and his much more successful penname George Stark, who is “not a very nice guy”. When Thad tries to lay George to rest, George takes on human form and begins murdering all the people in Thad’s life who were involved in both creating and killing George.

This actually read more like a crime novel than a horror, and I can’t say I was frightened at any point. If you’re into serial killer novels with a bit of gore, this might be the one for you, but I wasn’t excited by it. There were good moments but I’m unlikely to ever re-read it.

My Stephen King TBR List.

I’ve read a few King books in my time, and have always found him to be somewhat hit-and-miss. The books I do enjoy, I really really enjoy, but the books I don’t enjoy, I can’t even finish. For some reason it’s all his biggest bestsellers that I don’t like – The Shining, It, Carrie (I did finish that one – it’s pretty short – but can’t see what all the fuss is about) and all his lesser-known ones that I love: Misery; The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon; and Thinner, to name a few.

Because of this, there are severa King books that I’m just not interested in reading. However, he has given me hours of reading pleasure and there are several that still really intrigue me. I’m always wary of starting a King book just in case it takes me a while to get into it, so some of this have been on my TBR for years.

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1. The Dark Half

This is about an author and his – alter-ego? Twin? I’m not sure, but I think it’s a pseudonym he writes under which comes to life, or maybe it’s all in his head à la Secret Window.

(Actually, Secret Window‘s plotline sounds so similar to The Dark Half that for a long time I thought they’d just changed the name.)

This less traditional horror story is the sort I really enjoy from King, so I’d like to give the book a go.

The Goodreads Book Tag.

I have actually done this tag before, but I was tagged recently (no, not recently – I just checked and it was in  June!!!) by Lindsey at Paradis Books (thank you!) and figured I may as well redo it because it’s the sort of tag where your answers will change a lot.

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What was the last book you marked as ‘read’?

The Bad Beginning, the first in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket. Which means we are now 11 days into March and I haven’t finished a book yet this month!

Top Ten Disappointing Reads.

Because I like controversy, here’s a few books I was expecting to be great but ended up being variations of OK to downright terrible. Sorry if any of your favourites are on this list!

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10.
The Light of the Fireflies by Paul Pen.

I actually started out really loving this book. Its Room-esque plot was intriguing and I found the writing style easy and interesting to read. It’s about a family living in what we assume is a basement or a nuclear bunker, where they have been living for years without ever going outside, and suddenly the daughter is pregnant – so we know something’s up.

 The ending was such a disappointment. After an exciting, sinister read, I was fully expecting to give this book 10 out of 10 – when suddenly it ends in a shower of victim-shaming. The daughter has been bullied and abused by other members of the family, yet somehow it is she who gets her comeuppance, not her abusers, and she is painted as the villain.

The Creatures of the Night Book Tag.

This tag was originally created by YouTuber Katytastic and I was tagged by the lovely Zezee With Books here on WordPress. I’m not a huge fan of Halloween but thought I should do something on my blog in honour of it, and this is the only tag I’ve found that I really liked.

The idea is that you choose a book that has each supernatural creature listed below in it.

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1. VAMPIRE.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

July Reads 2016.

This list is not very extensive or impressive, but I’m pleased with it. I finally seem to be properly back into reading, even though there was nothing this month that I really loved.

Most of these books were read during BookTubeAThon, which is why I didn’t bother doing a wrap-up last week – I figured it would end up being too similar to this post.

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1. Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik. 

Day 2 of BookTubeAThon 2016.

07:31

Ahahahahaha I was fighting this gym at the train station and I could see someone else was fighting it at the same time and when we beat it some guy sauntered over, leaned in like he was offering me drugs and went, ‘So what team are you on?’

I love how Pokemon has just completely taken over again like it did when I was a kid. But this is a book blog, Emma, not a Pokemon Go blog. Keep your Sandshrews to yourself.

Burn, Rewrite or Reread Book Tag.

Today I’m doing the Burn, Rewrite or Reread Book Tag. I was tagged by icebreaker694, whom you should definitely visit and follow!

I also only condone virtual book-burning. No books were harmed in the making of this blog post.

THE RULES:

• Choose 3 books. (Most people have been using the ‘random’ option on Goodreads so I’ll be doing that too.)
• For each group of books, choose a book to burn, to rewrite, and to reread.
• Repeat until you completed three rounds (I did 5 because I got too excited).

 

ROUND 1:

The Inside Out Book Tag

The Inside Out Book Tag was originally created by booktuber Kristina Horner.

This tag is based on the Pixar movie Inside Out.

1. Joy – which book brings you the most joy?