Every year, I try to hand-pick a selection of books to read in celebration of the Halloween season. Previously, I have participated in Frighteningly Good Reads, hosted over at the blog Silver Button Books. Unfortunately, she did not run that this year. So, with no outlet to participate in to talk about what I read, I just wanted to do a brief rundown on the books I got through on my Halloween reading list for this year, especially since I’ve been less motivated to write full reviews as of late.
I hope everybody else had a spooktacular Halloween! 🎃
Strange Pictures by Uketsu
As a primer for the Halloween season, I read through this novel at the end of September. Though it is much more of a mystery, it had some horror elements running through it, especially in its use of enigmatic drawings, which were suitably creepy. I was hoping something more supernatural would play a role, but I ended up rather enjoying this book anyway, especially as compared to the author’s previous novel Strange Houses. I especially liked how this book used the form of prose to obfuscate information from the reader by exploiting their own assumptions, without lying to them or tricking them, making the twist connections that follow the narrative through line hit harder and more effectively in a way that they couldn’t have in a visual medium.
Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum
I can’t remember where exactly I first heard about this book, but the impression of a wife in the early 1900s tending to her husband, who suffers from a disease nobody can quite understand, left me eager to check it out. Initially, I was going to borrow a digital copy from my library, but I was able to pick up my own copy from a horror bookshop in Toronto, where the seller also highly recommended it as one of her favourites. I feel in an odd spot with this book, because I really think it is excellent. The atmosphere is great, the body horror is positively unnerving, and the story went in a totally unexpected direction that appealed to me very much, but for some reason I did not come away from it really loving it. It was maybe built up too much, and it didn’t have as intense an effect on me as I was hoping. Nevertheless, I do highly recommend this book. Perhaps a future reread, since it is so short, will help me appreciate it even better without the hype.
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker
I picked up this book on a whim; it was a more affordable limited edition, I liked the cover art, and I’d never read any Clive Barker before. What I didn’t know was that this is actually more of a Middle Grade/all-ages read not unlike Coraline by Neil Gaiman, in both tone and plot, though published nearly a full decade before that book. Though perhaps not representative of Barker’s oeuvre as an author, it’s got me eager to check out more of his work. I also have a soft spot for horror media that is accessible for children while still exploring dark themes and frightening circumstances, and this book has everything covered in those respects. It has an especially interesting interpretation of vampirism, with your life being drained taking on a whole other meaning. I don’t know how I’ve lived my whole life without having heard about this book until now.
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
I’ve been trying to read more classics this year, though I’ve only read a handful so far, and I decided that this would be a perfect selection for a Halloween reading list comprised mostly of novellas. I sometimes worry that I’ll struggle with reading older literature, but this novella was perfectly accessible to me, albeit a little indulgent in its use of commas. It made for a fascinating look into the origins of vampire lore; though I imagine many of the ideas came from folklore first, its plain to see how this has served as a seminal work, no doubt popularizing many of the characteristics of vampires we now consider a given. What surprised me most was the trope of the vampire making an anagram of their true name to disguise themself possibly originating here, as Carmilla herself is shown to have done this more than once.
Come Closer by Sara Gran
This is another book that came highly recommended, and I can distinctly recall that I heard about it from various bookish posts on TikTok, which has a bit of a spotty record with recommending books, it would seem. While praise for this book was not unfounded, I couldn’t help feeling extraordinarily ambivalent about it. On the one hand, the main character’s slow descent as her possession by a demon gradually ruins her life and robs her of all agency did evoke genuine anxiety in me, nestling as a pit in my stomach while reading. On the other hand, I couldn’t help finding the story to be too straightforward. There’s an inevitability to it all that does artfully feel like part of the point, but I just struggled to get fully into it and it didn’t truly resonate with me like I was hoping that it would. In equal measure I find myself remembering this book with fondness and frustration.
The Destroyer of Worlds by Matt Ruff
Technically, my reading list was wrapped up before I started this book. However, with nearly a week to spare in October I decided to squeeze this novel in as well. It has been a great many years since the first book, Lovecraft Country, came out, though this book was only published in 2023, so at least I didn’t leave this sequel languishing on my own too long. It did a good job of recapping me on what happened in the first book, jogging my memory on previous events, and I really enjoyed getting reacquainted with these characters, but this book was a little too all over the place as well. Things do tie together fairly well by the end, granted, but some plot lines wrapped up rather unceremoniously in a way that, while good, didn’t quite measure up to the quality of the first book. Nevertheless, it was a worthy sequel that has me excited about a follow-up, and it closed out the Halloween reading season on a high note.
Thank you for reading!
Muse with Me 