Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! For my Halloween post, I’m going to focus on horror novels on my to-read list. (I’ve done this topic a few times in the past several years, and given the state of my TBR list, it’s time to do it again.)
About half of these are holdovers from last year’s Halloween TBR… giving you some idea of how behind I am when I comes to keeping up with my reading plans! Of the books on my list, most have been around a while, and a couple are upcoming new releases:
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Needful Things by Stephen King
Dread Nation by Justine Ireland
Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson
Dead Weight by Hildur Knutsdottir
The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Have you read any of these (or for the upcoming new releases, do you plan to read them)? Which ones look best to you?
What’s on your Halloween TTT this week? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
Lately, I’ve been bouncing back and forth for my Tuesday posts, alternating between the Top Ten Tuesday and Top Five Tuesday memes, depending on their topics for the week. This week, both are Halloween themed… so I’m doing them both!!
First up… it’s Top Ten Tuesday:
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! For my Halloween post, I’m going to focus on horror novels on my to-read list (updated for 2024). I’ve done this topic a few times in the past several years, and given the state of my TBR list, it’s time to do it again.
Noted with shame: Some of these books were on my Halloween horror TBR list last year! So, you know, I’m not exactly great at following through…
Still, here are a bunch I really do want to get to… including a few upcoming 2025 new books.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Dread Nation by Justine Ireland
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong
The Return by Rachel Harrison
Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker
Overgrowth by Mira Grant (upcoming 2025 new release)
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (upcoming 2025 new release)
My Ex, the Antichrist by Craig DiLouie (upcoming 2025 new release)
Are any of these on your TBR too? Which ones look best to you? And if you’ve read any, let me know what you thought!
Next, let’s take a look at this week’s Top 5 Tuesday:
Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Meeghan Reads — check out the next batch of upcoming topics here.
This week’s topic is Top 5 books to recommend for Halloween, and the prompt is: It’s trick or treat time — are you going to tell us your best scary books or cutesy Halloween tales?
My picks are mainly ghost stories, plus a funny/clever fantasy that I reread every October!
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny (review) — I’m reading this one again right now! Such a fun annual tradition.
What books do you recommend for Halloween? I love a good ghost story — do you have any favorites? Save
Save
Save
In case it’s not obvious, I’ll probably be spending my Halloween with my nose in a book! Wishing you all a happy Halloween, whatever you’ll be doing!Save
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! For my Halloween post, I’m going to focus on horror novels on my to-read list. (I’ve done this topic a few times in the past several years, and given the state of my TBR list, it’s time to do it again.) Some of these books have been around a while, and some are upcoming new releases:
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
Dread Nation by Justine Ireland
What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher
Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Have you read any of these (or for the upcoming new releases, do you plan to read them)? Which ones look best to you?
What’s on your Halloween TTT this week? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! I didn’t have enough time to really brainstorm a topic, so I thought I’d just update a theme I did a few years ago — horror novels on my to-read list that I really do need to get around to reading! Some of these are upcoming new releases, and some are books that have been around a while:
Have you read any of these? Which one should I read first?
What’s on your Halloween TTT this week? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
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: Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales Edited by: Stephen King & Bev Vincent Published: 2018 Length: 332 pages
What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):
Fasten your seatbelts for an anthology of turbulent tales curated by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. This exciting new anthology, perfect for airport or airplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, along with brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill.
About the Book:
Stephen King hates to fly.
Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.
Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you’re suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like—gulp!—a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we’ll bet you’ve never thought of before… but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.
Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, “ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents… Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight.”
How and when I got it:
It was an impulse buy while I was visiting a favorite bookstore about a year ago.
Why I want to read it:
I’m not a short story reader, but every once in a while, a collection catches my eye… and how could I resist this one? I mean, look at the authors included!
Table of Contents: Introduction by Stephen King Cargo by E. Michael Lewis The Horror of the Heights by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson The Flying Machine by Ambrose Bierce Lucifer! by E.C. Tubb The Fifth Category by Tom Bissell Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan Simmons Diablitos by Cody Goodfellow Air Raid by John Varley You Are Released by Joe Hill Warbirds by David J. Schow The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury Zombies on a Plane by Bev Vincent They Shall Not Grow Old by Roald Dahl Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne The Turbulence Expert by Stephen King Falling by James L. Dickey Afterword by Bev Vincent
I have a feeling I’ll be terrified and will never want to get on a plane again… but then again, with the pandemic’s end nowhere in sight, it’s not like I’m traveling anyway. So maybe now really is the perfect time to read this collection!
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: We Sold Our Souls Author: Grady Hendrix Published: 2018 Length: 337 pages
What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):
In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success — but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania.
Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western – she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry’s meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris’s very soul.
This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It’s a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that’s darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul…where only a girl with a guitar can save us all.
How and when I got it:
I bought it as a new release in 2018.
Why I want to read it:
If you happened to stumble across my blog earlier this week, you may have seen my review of Grady Hendrix’s newest book, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. I loved it, just like I’ve loved everything I’ve read by this author. And even though I bought a copy of We Sold Our Souls, I just never got around to reading it — maybe the heavy metal theme turned me off a bit, but for whatever reason, it’s still there on my shelf, unread. And that just won’t do.
Grady Hendrix’s book are always unique and strange and thoroughly entertaining. I’ve heard this one is great! Clearly, I have to fill in the gap in my reading by getting to this book ASAP.
What do you think? Would you read this book?
Please share your thoughts!
__________________________________
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.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is: Genre Freebie (pick a genre and build a list around it! i.e., best/worst romances, non-fiction for travelers, memoirs for foodies, classics that feel timeless, romance novel kisses, science fiction that feels too real for comfort, women’s fiction for newbies, etc.)
I was thinking about horror — fitting for these days, right? — and mind naturally went to Stephen King, and how even though I think of myself as having read a lot of his books, there are still plenty more to get to. So, without too much fuss or bother, I thought I’d share the ten Stephen King books that are highest on my Stephen King TBR list!
Note: While putting together this list, I realized that I’ve already read ALL of SK’s releases since 2009. Go, me! And I’m only include one Dark Tower book on my list, even though I actually have four from the series still to read. Because if I never get around to reading the next one (#4), why bother listing the ones that come later? I also realized that the reference list I was using for Stephen King books didn’t include his Richard Bachman books, so actually, there are even more SK works for me to get to! In any case, here are my ten priorities… for now.
1. The Dead Zone (1979)
2. Firestarter (1980)
3. Needful Things (1991)
4. Dolores Claiborne (1993)
5. The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass (1997)
6. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
7. The Green Mile (2000)
8. Dreamcatcher (2001)
9. Lisey’s Story (2006)
10. Duma Key (2008)
If you’ve read any of the above –which one should I read first?
What’s your TTT topic this week? Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie! For past Halloween freebies, I’ve done lists about witches and lists about ghosts, as well as some really icky, gross horror novels. This time, I thought I’d keep it simple and just list a bunch of horror novels on my to-read list that I really do need to get around to reading! (Too late to read them in time for this Halloween, but there’s always next year!)
To top ten to-read horror books are:
We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
Needful Things by Stephen King
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
We Are Where the Nightmares Go by C. Robert Cargill
Full Throttle and Strange Weather by Joe Hill (okay, those are two separate books, but since they’re both story collections by Joe Hill, I’m counting them as one!)
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Have you read any of these? Which one should I read first?
So what’s on your Halloween TTT this week? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I host a Book Blog Meme Directory, and I’m always looking for new additions! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info.
Bookshelf Fantasies 