Halloween Reading

 

I usually like to read something classically spooky this time of year. The time of year when the air is brittle and crisp and nights are eerily lit by starlight through slender clouds. When half-bare trees cast moonshadows along the dead leaves on lawns. When neighbors decorate their yards with tombstones, spider webs, and things with glowing orange eyes.

Halloween, and the ten-day lead up to it.

Now, down here in Texas, we’re really about a month behind seasonally. Leaves still haven’t fallen that much. As I write this it’s 82 degrees out. But since we lack mountains and forests and thus have long horizons, there’s plenty of moonlight and there’s plenty of starlight through slender clouds.

So it’s kinda sorta Halloween down here. To help push it forward, to help me get in the mood, I began my Halloween reading on October 20th.

It’s a ritual I quite enjoy. I’ve read some good novels this time of year over the years: Weaveworld by Clive Barker, The Terror by Dan Simmons, A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (twice! in ’07 and ’17), The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. And when a scary book doesn’t jump out to me in the run up to Halloween, I go to the old faithful: Edgar Allan Poe, and, on occasion, Jorge Luis Borges.

But this year I’m feeling nostalgic for some old time horror. Some universal horror, if you catch my drift.

A few weeks’ back I steamrolled through Frankenstein, and though I enjoyed it immensely, it seemed a bit overrated to me. However, that did not keep me from moving on to its spiritual companion, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

So far I’m about a quarter of the way through. As I mentioned in a prior post, I read Frankenstein way back in high school, but I never read Dracula, though I am very familiar with the plot due to seeing about a half-dozen movie versions of the story (the last one was last Halloween during Covid when the wife and I watched the Bela Lugosi flick with the girls). Like Frankenstein, it, too, is a fast read. I am really enjoying it and look forward to my evening hour of reading before bed.

Originally I bought the book so I could do a dual-read with my youngest, who got a brand new copy for her thirteenth birthday six weeks ago. We did something similar two years ago with The Count of Monte Cristo. But she is very temperamental, and even though she’s agreed to read it with me, and says that she wants to, she still hasn’t cracked the novel. Which is okay. If she keeps it on her bookcase and gets to it next year, or the year after, or five years after, I’ll still smile and be proud of her.

In fact, I might re-read it again then.