Counting IS hard!! We are literature/word people, not numbers people 😂 Great list, thanks for sharing! I love reading horror in the fall. Frankenstein is on my list for October; I am excited to read it...but I also have Pet Semetary so maybe I'll try to sneak that in, too. 🐱
I found your channel yesterday while looking for creepy fall reads and I have to say I love your videos. The books your read are quite different from the ones I'd usually turn to and I think that's part of the appeal. I'm really looking forward to checking out some of the books you've mentioned here!
Cool list, several i hadn't even heard of here, and wow you weren't kidding about the prices on used copies of Dark Gods. I picked up that same Machen edition recently after you recommended it, so that will be part of my halloween for sure. My wife and I have tried to make a tradition of lighting candles and reading horror out loud to each other. Last year we did Ligotti and Lovecraft; perhaps this year we'll do Machen and Ashton Smith. Bought Fisherman based on SFF180's review, but have yet to read it. Now I have even more reason to! Thanks for another terrific video
Great list, Mike! I was really glad to see the Fisherman on here. It’s been on my TBR for about 2 years now… I’ll stop putting it off now. I read Head Full of Ghosts last year, and I actually thought it was a masterpiece. So many good things about it, and it was a lot of fun with all the old horror references. But what was really amazing was all the many different types of perspective he kept contrasting… I was amazed at how many layers of perspective Tremblay explored in the book
Great List! Yes, Pet Sematary ! I was surprised how different I Am Legend, the book, was from the movie. I don’t know why they changed what they did. Yes, that Dracula scene with the women 😁
I love The Great God Pan! I read it as an ebook a few years ago and it's so good! I haven't read any of his other short stories though. Pet Cemetery, Frankenstein, and Dracula are also amazing! I'll be adding a few of these I haven't heard of to my TBR, like The Fisherman. Really interesting, horrific list.
Glad Matheson made it on here! Those first few were titles I haven’t heard of, so thanks for sharing them, Michael! I might sneak out a favorite horror list in a few weeks, though most of my favorite horror works are stories rather than full novels. Hope your week starts well! Best, Jack
First of all, I want to say I absolutely adore your enthusiasm for literature and your channel is very underrated. And how have I not heard of Dark Gods? Hmmm... I'll have to see if I can aquire a copy for myself.
Amazing list! I told myself to stop buying books for a while, to try to maintain some sort of book buying budget, but I'm going to have to get several of these because I highly value your opinion and recommendations.
Thanks. It took some doing to duplicate Griffin’s formula for invisibility without driving myself mad but I managed. Now the world will be MINE!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha Ha Ha…Ha ha ha…heh….
Dracula quite possibly my favourite as well. My list would have IT (I've not read Pet Sematary yet), and some Edgar Allan Poe. Enjoyed the video, as always
I'm 100% in agreement with you about Michael McDowell. I loved The Elementals, a book that left me terrified and induced insomnia while I was reading it! I also loved his epic Blackwater,. which has been reissued in hardcover since his death.
I love these top 10 lists dealing with books, this one is no exception. I'm a sucker for the Weird Tales style of horror and definitely would put Lovecraft and Robert Bloch on the list as well as Arthur Machen. If nonfiction could be included I'd have to say Panzram: A Journal of Murder by Gaddis and Long would be near the top of the horror reading list.
Terrific list. I’ve actually read most of these! Before COVID ruined everything we had a local brewery that had a monthly horror book club, and one time they got John Langan to come and talk about The Fisherman. It was a great conversation in a boozy intimate setting.
Loved your list found myself nodding my head in agreement . I had never heard of Dark Gods before so i looked it up on Amazon and wow paperback is $77.00 and hardback is from $807.00 .Will be looking for this one at my thrift stores ! thank you again .
Awesome top ten list sir!!! I can't wait to reread Dracula, which I will be doing very soon. And I will argue that R.L. Stine can make cats creepier than King 😂 I have I Am Legend but haven't gotten to it yet. I have Hell House lined up for a fall / halloween read. I was also a bit surprised to see a couple of modern books on here. Great job I love seeing "favorites" and ranking videos and lists and all that good stuff lol
FANTASTIC! The Elementals has been on my tbr for a long time! So glad to see Pet Sematary made the list, that is one of my all time favoriates. AWESOME picks!
Thank you for sharing your top 10! It gives me a place to start if I ever want to dive into horror. I am legend and pet sematary are the most appealing! I have only read Dracula and Frankenstein! Great video as always! 🧛♂️
Clicked on the video as soon as I saw it :D I have never ever heard of Fisherman and Dark Gods! All in all the books that you showed were either the books that I have read or that are on my TBR. This video makes me want to go and read the TBR ones like Head full of ghosts, The Elementals, Great God Pan and most of Lovecraft :)
The Fisherman sounds tremendous 👌I'm really loving Frankenstein as well! Dracula is probably my favourite novel, my only issues are Van Helsing has too much page time and it is quite dense.
Great list! Some here to add to my wishlist. I loved A Headful of Ghosts, very unsettling. Pet Semetary is most definitely some of King's finest. You know I love my classics and I Am Legend. Suspect my list would be very similar to yours.
Some interesting and compelling choices. Good to see our man Matheson on here. Mainly because 'I am Legend' is the only book on the list I've read 🤣 I see Michael McDowell (as Mike McCray) wrote the Black Beret series. I love this pulpy, trashy, war type stuff. I dont suppose you've (or anyone here) read them ? I have Dracula on my TBR shelf. I was saving it for this top 10 list !! 🤣
T.E.D. Klein was the editor of The Twilight Zone Magazine, which was great. A bit more towards the moral Twilight Zone twist ending stories than horror in this mag, but very well done.
The Elementals is my favorite horror novel. So creepy and brilliant! I am glad McDowell is getting his due. It is so well deserved. I enjoy Cold Moon Over Babylon and The Amulet as well. Scott.
A Head Full of Ghost ,and The Elementals are the only books on Your list I haven't read. So....I put them on my 2 Be read really really soon list. Great God Pan👍😁👍 I Am Legend 👍😁👍 H.P.Lovecraft 👍😁👍 Carrie, or Jaws was the 1st Horror book I ever read. I read them around the same time. Great List, and Video 👍😁👍
Very nice list! I'm not a big horror reader (comparatively), but Dracula and I Am Legend were excellent. The Vincent Price film adaptation of Matheson, The Last Man On Earth, is well worth a watch.
Just sending a tip off. Try reading the relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln child. Then maybe a relinquary cabinet of curiosities and brimstone. Very good books. Pendagast is an amazing character and although he only cameos in relic he later takes over the series and it becomes a sherlock Holmes homage.
I read Relic when it came out in 95 and really liked it. For some reason I never read the rest of the books. I should do that. Thanks for reminding me!
I tried to get into Frankenstein and I just couldn't. DNFd it twice now... I'm going to read Shadow of Innsmouth soon! Super excited for that. I think I may have read, or at least started to read Dracula in middle school, around the same time I DNFd Frankenstein the first time. Idk if I ever finished it.
Frankenstein’s Monster is weeping in the corner now! Hasn’t he been through enough? Well…I guess you wouldn’t know…but trust me he totally has! And now his favorite RU-vidr can’t finish his story. Sigh…Shadow Over Insmouth is awesome.
What a great list!! Even though I’m not brave enough to read horror. The Elementals sounds intriguing especially your description of place. My husband loved Pet Sematary and I think it topped his list. Dracula!!! 🧛
I am glad you picked The Elementals. Very scary book. McDowell was great. I think I liked Blackwater best, which was more a fantasy. Everything he wrote was worth reading. Toplin was amazing.
The Dark Gods copy has been received and rear thanks to you Michael. The Children of whatever sorry I forgot the name WAS FANTASTIC MY MAN! Other stories not that great in my opinion BUT will re-read them just in case. SOLID RECOMMEND FOR T.E.D. Klein!
There’s a few horror books that I want to read and a few I know I need to reread, but I have absolutely no idea which of the ones I’ve read I would count as a favourite. Though I guess it’s probably Dracula, only because I’ve read it more than I have any other horror book. It’s also one of the reasons I was so disappointed in Dracul by Dacre Stoker.
Ted Klein was obsessive-compulsive and afflicted by depression. We knew each other via correspondence and telephone when he was editor of the TZ Mag. Later, he contributed a signed copy of The Ceremonies to an autograph auction we held to benefit blind and deaf orphans. (Yeah, how's that for a charity cause? This was in Japan, by the way.) When we looked at the copy he sent, it turned out to be copyedited throughout - almost every page had inked corrections and changes. Amazing artifact. He was a good guy and like you, I wish he'd written more, he was superb.
I have a hard back copy of "Dark Gods" in excellent condition. Did not know it might be a "collector's item". The four stories are "Children of the Kingdom", "Petey", Black Man with a Horn" and "Nadelman's God". All were excellent. Do you remember which of the four you liked best? BTW, Klein is quoted as saying that he really "hates to write".
Is there a certain edition of Dracula that you would recommend as you did with Frankenstein and the 1818 text…I want to get a good reprint version as close to the real original book as possible…Thank You
Fortunately, with Dracula, the version commonly printed by most good publishers is the original text. You will be fine with the Penguin, Oxford or most others.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Thank You for responding to my question I appreciate it…I do myself usually prefer the Penguin editions but also the Oxford editions are very well done also…I just recently found your channel and I am currently going through your library of videos…I am enjoying your content so far and I am now a new subscriber to your channel…Good Luck with the channel and keep up the good works 👍🏻…Looking forward to your future videos…
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 The best not just horror fiction but book in general I've read in years. The endings a bit weak, but everything else is amazing.
Michael, Google TED Klein and you get a heap of stuff on him, I haven’t watched or read anything yet but there is a video on The events at Poroth Farm and even an interview with Klein himself.
If you can get past the soap opera elements of Dracula then, yeah, it's not bad. Since it's your top pick then you need to read "The Dracula Tape" by Fred Saberhagen to get the story from the Count's point of view.
Pet Sematary scared the crap out of me. I loved Frankenstein. Horror tends to be a genre I don’t read that much of because I am a huge scaredy cat. And I don’t like to be scared.
I dont know why I didn't like I Am Legend. It wasn't scary at all. It was definitely bleak sure but I felt no connection to the character. The only part I really liked was short lived
I was 13-14 when I first read Frankenstein. I was already very familiar with the character of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster thru pop culture and whatever. It's never bothered me when people call the monster Frankenstein, it's know quicker and easier for most. What has bothered me ever since that 1st read is that it has been widely accepted for far too long that the monster is some Giant dimwitted imbecile who just lumbers around grunting like a zombie. When in the source material he is very intelligent, teaches himself to read and write, and I believe learns to speak 3-4 different languages? Why would they portray his as just another zombie albeit a Giant zombie I will never understand 🤷♂️🤬
Man, I just can't get behind Tremblay. Nothing burger of a writer imo. But hey, I'm in the minority on that, so what the hell do I know? Great list though
