Book Review - Howard's End is on the Landing by Susan Hill

Book review - Howard's End is on the Landing - Susan Hill

I always enjoy a good ghost story by Susan Hill and Howard's End is on the Landing is a delight. Her memoir on reading is scattered through out with tidbits of wisdom, encounters and friendships with other authors and information on what in her mind makes a good book. 

I found it inspiring and it reminded me why I began writing in the first place. And that is for the pure love of reading.

Rating: 4/5 

For more info:

Book Review - Broadmoor Revealed by Mark Stevens

Book Review - Broadmoor Revealed Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum by Mark Stevens

This was a fun book to read, it's not comprehensive and I would have liked to see more in the way of case notes or journal entries of the patients themselves. It's a good overview of the history and the life inside Broadmoor. Chapters look at 4 individual patients, escapees and babies born inside the asylum.

Rating 3/5
Challenges read for Goodreads and The 2012 Ebook Challenge.

See amazon link below for more details:

Book Review - Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

Purely on a pleasure level, I found this really slow going and tedious. It was hard to keep up with the style of writing the way one thought bled into another unrelated thought. Hard to really know who all the people Virginia writes about are as they were so personal to her daily life that they meant nothing to me as a reader.

Also I never got a sense of change in Virginia's personality as the diaries moved through the years.

From a writer's interest, I found it inspiring to keep going with my own diaries, having all that personal history documented for myself even if it is meaningless to someone else. It's also comforting to know that as writers we will always keep producing work, writing new novels as the years continue to pass.

Rating: 2/5

For further info use the amazon link below:

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 2003)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0156027917
• ISBN-13: 978-0156027915

Other Books you may be interested in:

Write Good or Die edited by Scott Nicholson

Book Review - Write Good or Die edited by Scott Nicholson

Book review - Write Good or Die edited by Scott Nicholson

This is a free download for the kindle, it offers articles of advice on many aspects of writing such as time management, determination, discipline, promotion, publishing and craft techniques. I will be referring back to some articles at a later date and I liked the relaxed tone of the articles some of the heavier "How to" books can be quite stringent.

Rating: 4/5
Product details:

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 286 KB
• Publisher: Haunted Computer Books; 1 edition (13 April 2010)
• Language English
• ASIN: B003H4QZOG

The publishers website can be found here.

My Top 5 Favourite Horror Books of 2011

Another year comes to a close, my goodreads reading challenge saw me finishing the year with 20 books read. For next year I'm increasing that goal to 25 and at least 10 of those will be ebooks. Also hoping to get through a few more poetry collections as well.

These are my top 5 horror books of the year, not necessarily published in 2011.

1) Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill. My review and book details here.

2)The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My review and book details here.

3)The Ritual by Adam Nevill. My review and books details here.

4) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. My review and book details here.

5)The Rhysling Anthology 2011 edited by David Lunde. My review and book details here.

An honourable mention goes to Peter Straub's long story "The Buffalo Hunter."

What were your favourite reads of the year?

Book Review - Playing With Fire - Edited by Coral Russell

Book Review - Playing With Fire edited by Coral Russell

For me, the stories in this horror anthology that I really enjoyed were:
Coral Russell's Devil of a Ghost Tour which had some genuinely creepy moments.

Brian Fatah Steele's Flawed and The Stuff Dreams Aren't Made of, both were quirky and unusual.

Chryse Wymer's This Dark Magic, a fun story of black magic with a well developed character.

Overall, all the stories are vastly different from each but the others didn't do it for me

Rating 3/5
The publisher's blog is here and the amazon link for further info is below:





Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 325 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Alchemy of Scrawl (11 July 2011)
• Language English
• ASIN: B005CDD4IK

Other reviews you may be interested in:

Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

One Buck Horror Volume 1

2012 Ebook Challenge

As the ebooks are mounting up on the ereader and keep getting sidelined in favour of my paperbacks, I stumbled across this challenge on Books and Beyond. It's hosted by Workaday Reads, the sign up and full rules can be read here and the challenge begins on the 1st January 2012.

I'll be going for level 2 - CD - 10 ebooks.

Wish me luck.

Book Review - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 3 edition (14 Dec 2009)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0330468464
• ISBN-13: 978-0330468466

Book Review - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The book takes us to "post-apocalyptic" America. The disaster which happened long ago is never explained in the book, left in its wake is a burnt smouldering world. The two main characters are father and son and we are never given their names. The book paints an extremely bleak picture of a nameless, faceless world. Even the father son relationship is stripped down to its bare essentials. I really enjoyed it.

Rating 4/5

Visit The Official Website for the Cormac Mccarthy Society for more about the author

Book Review - Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson

Book Review - Creative Spirit

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, the characters were well developed with their own motivations and personal conflicts. Plenty of action and plot twists.

Rating: 4/5

• Format: Kindle Edition
• Publisher: Haunted Computer Books (15 Aug 2010)
• Language English
• ASIN: B003ZSHPJS

Book Review - Gorelets Unpleasant Poems by Michael A Arnzen

Michael A Arnzen's Gorelets is a fast humorous read, perfectly bite sized horror poetry for your preferred ebook reader. 

Rating: 4/5

ISBN-10: 1-55404-086-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-55404-086-5
Genre: Dark Fantasy
eBook Length: 82 Pages
Published: September 2003

Available from Double Dragon Publishing or check out Michael's website

Other books you may be interested in:

The Rhysling Anthology 2011

Book Review - One Buck Horror Volume 1

Book Review - One Buck Horror Vol 1 edited by Christopher and Kris M. Hawkins

One Buck Horror is an affordable anthology priced at 99cents. There were 5 short stories in this anthology, all by authors I'd never read before. The two that stood out for me were:

A Lullaby for Caliban by Mark Onspaugh  - A touching story of some kids who try to steal a pickled foetus from a carnival.

The Cornfield by Mike Trier- a fast paced take on the werewolf.

Although the remaining 3 stories didn't work for me, I'll be checking out volume 2.

Rating 3/5

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 125 KB
• Publisher: Coronis Publishing (24 Jun 2011)
• Language English
• ASIN: B00584MMG8

Visit the publisher's website here

Other books you may be interested in:

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

Book Review - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Book Review - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The narrator introduces us to Sleepy Hollow a village rife with superstitions and legend. The main character Ichabod is well liked within the community and has his heart set on the daughter of Van Tassel. After a night of telling ghost stories at the estate, he heads for home and experiences the local legend first hand. Overall it's an ok story, it had an old fashioned charm about it and was interesting to see the original story that inspired the film.

Rating 3/5



Other books you may be interested in:
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill

Book Review - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Book review - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson


The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of loyal friend and solicitor to Dr Jekyll, Mr Utterson which I was a bit disappointed in, as a reader I would have liked to have been up close and personal with Jekyll and Hyde. With so many film and drama adaptions based on this story it was interesting to see how the original work was done and it offers up an interesting idea of what would happen if we could separate those unsavoury drives of the human psyche from our good.

 Rating: 3/5

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Rev Ed edition (27 Feb 2003)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0141439734
• ISBN-13: 978-0141439730

Other Books you may be interested in:

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Book Review - The Ritual by Adam Nevill

The Ritual took me a while to get into but once I was in, there was no escape. For me, the real power came from the main character Luke's emotions and increasing despair and despite the 100 degree heat blazing outside I went cold, hell I even got tearful.

Rating: 4/5



Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Macmillan (6 May 2011)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0230754929
ISBN-13: 978-0230754928

Other reviews you may be interested in:
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill



Or click here to visit the authors website.

My Top 5 Favourite Stephen King Books

Welcome to a new monthly feature "My Top 5" all posts will go up on the 13th of the month. Access this blog feature anytime by clicking on My Top 5 in the labels in the sidebar.


Top 5 Stephen King Novels:

These are my all time top 5 Stephen King Books. King has such a vast imagination that anything goes. In no particular order:


It - The past and the present were seamlessly integrated


The Shining - Great location, great character.


The Dark Half - Had huge appeal when I was using a penname


Nightmares And Dreamscapes - Fantastic short story collection. I loved the way King used two mundane objects in Chattery Teeth and The Moving Finger


Black House - written with Peter Straub, I completely fell in love with the main character.

What are your favourite Stephen King books?

Other Top 5's:
My Top 5 Favourite Ghost Stories
My Top 5 Favourite Poems

My Top 5 Favourite Ghost Stories

These days my fiction writing is pulling me towards the supernatural and in particular ghosts rather than your straight horror. I began thinking about what I would list as my all time favourite ghost stories, there's a hell of a lot of stuff I've read but have forgotten and some of my selections were read/seen so long ago that I'll keep this brief. In no particular order:

1) Scrooge (1951 British version, film) Based on Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol". A Christmas ghost story, I have to watch it every year.

2) Woman In Black (Novel by Susan Hill and a theatre production) Creepy, atmospheric and traditional.

3) Apartment 16 (Novel by Adam Nevill) An original modern day haunting that adds plenty of depth.

4) Haunted (Novel by James Herbert) Probably one of the first ghost stories I read.

5) The Moonlit Path (short story by Ambrose Bierce) Effectively tells an event from 3 different perspectives, each with a unique voice, each filling in the gaps for the reader.

So what are your favourite ghost stories?

Other posts you may enjoy:

Review - Apartment 16
Blogger Zombie Walk

Book Review - The Man In The Picture

Synopsis - An old student visits his Cambridge professor and becomes embroiled in the eerie events surrounding a Venetian painting depicting a carnival scene.

I do enjoy Susan Hills books, it's nice to read something light and easy once in awhile. Although I'm in two minds about The Man In The Picture, it was enjoyable but a little bit thin and on the slow side. On the upside,  there were some great moments filled with suspense, tension, claustrophobia and the crowd scenes were well handled but something didn't gel for me.

Rating: 3/5

The Friday 56 - The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

It's that simple.


My selection this week is from The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James


It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession.

The Friday 56 - We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

It's that simple.


I'm reading this one at the moment and loving it so far.I expect I'll have the review up in the next few days.


It's We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson


I had been sent to bed without any supper, I had not been allowed in the courtroom, no one had taken my picture.

The Friday 56 - The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

It's that simple.


Apologies to the Friday 56 participants I'm not getting much time to get round to everyones selections lately
My teaser line this week is from The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson


Lanyon, my life, my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me tonight, I am lost.