Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: 20th Century Ghosts
Author: Joe Hill
Published: 2007
Length: 316 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

A collection of short stories.

Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She’s also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945….

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn’t easy to make friends when you’re the only inflatable boy in town….

Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he’s an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing….

John Finney is locked in a basement that’s stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead….

The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past…

How and when I got it:

I bought it after reading Heart-Shaped Box, which scared the hell out of me.

Why I want to read it:

I’m a fan of Joe Hill’s novels, but haven’t read his short stories yet. Well, to be honest, when I bought this book soon after it came out, I read one story — and it was terrifying and horrible (as in, bloody and gory, not badly written), and I basically had to put the book down and run away. A friend later told me that I would have been fine if I’d skipped that one story, but oh well — the damage was already done! In any case, I still own a copy of this book, and because I do love Joe Hill’s writing, I’m determined to screw up my nerve and give it another try… one of these days. (All this is putting aside the fact that I don’t usually have the patience for short stories… this book will definitely be a stretch for me.)

__________________________________

Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

• Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
• Add your link in the comments!
• If you’d be so kind, I’d appreciate a link back from your own post.
• Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save