|
Well, we're at the close of another great year, October-Halloween 2010 come and gone and gone again.
November peeks from around the trailing skirts of yon Hallow's Eve Queen, begging a month of murder (most foul) and the thousand subtle mayhems of our Mistress Winter's late-fall criers.
Sing her paean next, and we'll bless all the haints and ghouls good-bye, anon good-bye; 'til the year next, good-bye...
|
|
Technically, autumn doesn't close until 21 December... and I think you're right--Thanksgiving and Christmas aside, I'm from Alaska where November and December are synonymous, in my mind, with absolute and utter quiet; desolation and drear; solitude and a queer, silent, tangible agoraphobia, where the entire world echos soundlessly back at you. New meaning to all that the-woods-were-lovely-dark-and-deep jazz...
Still, I think of September-October as haintish, and November-December as murderful.
We need a new thread, maybe...
Great. Now my birthday is MURDERFUL. As if I didn't have enough to worry about on 12/21/12....
|
|
It's that time of year again: Autumn 2011, and welcome!
What are your selections?
I picked up a new anthology: Halloween, edited by the illimitable Paula Guran.
I include it as a seasonal volume that can be un-shelved each year, as it's chocked full of classics and calssics-to-be by all the great Halloween-y writers.
Also, it includes Ray Bradbury's "The October Game" and F. Paul Wilson's companion piece, "The November Game"--great to read one behind the other, and if you're like me, you'll try to read Bradbury, finish at the stroke of midnight, and dive into Wilson the first minute of November!
I'm surprised no one mentioned the late Roger Zelazny's wonderful homage A Night in the Lonesome October.
It's told from the point of view of ** spoiler omitted **
Oh, and ** spoiler omitted ** is one of the good guys.
It also has the best ending of any book.
|
|
Brave New World and 1984 feel autumnal to me. I'm currently reading three books, but the only fall-themed one is that new one by the Decemberists' Colin Maloy (actually I think it's called Winterwood but it starts in September - in Portland, no less!). Bradbury, Steinbeck, and Gaiman are all good fall authors.
We are working under the assumption that fall = depressing gray rain, correct?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We are working under the assumption that fall = crisp cool air, bright colored leaves.
Time to start wearing a jacket but not a coat.
Put up the Summer Decorations and Put up the fall/Halloween ones.
Pumpkin Pie
Apple cider but not yet hot chocolate
ghost stories
Birthdays - yeech
New TV shows
|
|
We are working under the assumption that fall = crisp cool air, bright colored leaves.
Time to start wearing a jacket but not a coat.
Put up the Summer Decorations and Put up the fall/Halloween ones.Pumpkin Pie
Apple cider but not yet hot chocolate
ghost stories
Birthdays - yeech
New TV shows
Okay, I've been f@$#ing up fall:
The air here is cool, but not crisp. I have been wearing a lined raincoat on my ride home (it's actually not very warm but still bulky). Decorations? Not pumpkin, but rhubarb pie. I haven't had apple cider in years, but I have a bit of hot chocolate in my morning coffee sometimes.* I tell the few ghost stories I know in summer around a campfire. My age will not roll over until winter. I don't watch TV.
*Not at night though - that would be weird!
Anyway, I'll add the Hunger Games series to my list (agreeing with above posters).
|
|
We are working under the assumption that fall = crisp cool air, bright colored leaves.
Time to start wearing a jacket but not a coat.
Put up the Summer Decorations and Put up the fall/Halloween ones.Pumpkin Pie
Apple cider but not yet hot chocolate
ghost stories
Birthdays - yeech
New TV shows
Okay, I've been f#*#ing up fall:
The air here is cool, but not crisp. I have been wearing a lined raincoat on my ride home (it's actually not very warm but still bulky). Decorations? Not pumpkin, but rhubarb pie. I haven't had apple cider in years, but I have a bit of hot chocolate in my morning coffee sometimes.* I tell the few ghost stories I know in summer around a campfire. My age will not roll over until winter. I don't watch TV.
*Not at night though - that would be weird!
Youth is wasted on the young.
I'm also a Bradbury fanatic. Dandelion Wine is a fine novel for reading at the start of autumn. It's actually the story of Summer, but the cold, damp, dark spectre of Autumn rides the coattails of every chapter as Douglas moves ever closer to the end of season. Of course, Dandelion Wine is the first book in the Green Town trilogy, followed by Farewell, Summer. Something Wicked This Way Comes, infinitely autumnal, is book three. Summer Morning, Summer Night, an appendix to the trilogy, and composed of vignettes and shorts, is due this Hallowe'en.since you mentioned Ray Bradbury,
Have you read Dandelion Wine? It is one of my favorite books of all time. I don't remember if it has anything to do with autumn, though....
Seriously? A talk about seasonal books by Ray Bradbury and no one mentions The Halloween Tree?
Plus, another vote for A Night in the Lonesome October here, and FYI, the audiobook was finally released on CD just this year.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's October! So, might I recommend Roger Zelazny's "A Night in the Lonesome October".
If you can, read a chapter a day (for each of the 31 days). Of course, you'd have to do catch-up, and it may be impossible to put it down after just on chapter in a day, but... :)
It's October! So, might I recommend Roger Zelazny's "A Night in the Lonesome October".
You might... or you could simply second the 36,000 previous recommendations for it in this very thread, including the one immediately above your post.
If you can, read a chapter a day (for each of the 31 days).
That's actually what I'm doing this year, and it's a lot of fun that way. But then again, I've read it twice before, so that might be coloring my impression of this gimmick.
|
|
It's October! So, might I recommend Roger Zelazny's "A Night in the Lonesome October".You might... or you could simply second the 36,000 previous recommendations for it in this very thread, including the one immediately above your post.
Lots of us read the first post or two and then reply; or we reply at some point in the thread particularly cogent to us...
Anyway, it's a great recommendation; thanks, Talia.
That's actually what I'm doing this year, and it's a lot of fun that way. But then again, I've read it twice before, so that might be coloring my impression of this gimmick.
See, I've wanted to do this, but my copy has been borrowed so often I no longer remember where it is. (Actually, I think it's in Idaho at the moment.) Time to hunt down another copy...
See, I've wanted to do this, but my copy has been borrowed so often I no longer remember where it is. (Actually, I think it's in Idaho at the moment.) Time to hunt down another copy...
I foolishly lent my hardback edition, with the big Gahan Wilson full-page plates, to someone -- and of course never got it back. Now I've got a raggedy paperback edition that just isn't anywehere near as fun to read. It's probably past time for me to hit Amazon and see if I can't replace the one I lost.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This site is a must-check everyday in October, in my book. It is chockful of Halloween goodness: book recommendations, selections, and so forth.
|
|
Fill the crystal dishes with candy corn and Hershey's Kisses wrapped in Fall Foils! It's that deliciously dark and thoughtful time of year--time to post your Autumn 2012 Reading Schedule.
It's finally cooled off here in South Korea, and exceptionally so--we went from 90F to 70F in something like five days!
-I've pulled down Matthias Thulman and the Vampire Genevieve, which have a dark, cold, drafty feel to them, plus witches and vampires!
-Some Ray Bradbury, of course: the Greentown series.
-The classics we've mentioned here over the last few years, from Stoker to Irving to King.
What great works are you guys reading and re-reading this year?
Im finishing the third part of Mayberry's "Rot and Ruin" series. Flesh and Bone. The library got a ARC and Im about 3/4 through it. Its more violent than the first two parts and apparently ends with a cliffhanger. Going to be a part 4 sometime next year.
|
|
That time of year is here, upon us like a sneak; a fell spirit padding the aether on the wispy whiskers of fog-mad felines.
OK, OK..apologies to Carl Sandburg.
Hey! this thread is five years-running! We rock!
I'm reading a proof-copy (yay me) of Abominable by Dan Simmons. Yes, it's as creepy and emotionally troubling as all his awesome stuff. If you liked The Terror, you'll love this book.
What are we reading this year, lads and lasses?
For some reason, I find Katherine Kerr's whole Deverry series very autumnal.
|
This thread is timely. I was just putting some books I had packed away out onto shelves, and I noticed that a while back I had picked up a paperback copy of Needful Things by Stephen King and had been meaning to read it. It seems a fitting time of year.
I've only read a few of his books. For my taste, King tends to run hot-and-cold. I tend to prefer the more psychological ones. (My favorite King novel that I have read is Misery. I'm not sure what that says about me.)
|
|
I'm reading NOS4A2 by Joe Hill.
You know what I like about Joe Hill? He's Stephen King with discipline. I can't say that he's necessarily and qualitatively a better writer than his father, but I think he very technically is a better writer; his work has an almost mathematical polish to it.
Next up, Doctor Sleep by the Master himself.
Probably reread some of my favorite MR James tales as the year dies. I don't know any better literary terror. Maybe something new also. I've been waiting to get my hands on Susan Hill's Small Hand and Dolly.
I usually re-read my collection of horror pulp once a year, so for me it will be some favorite tales from this collection of Robert E. Howard stories. Pigeons from Hell still gives me the chills every time.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides, plus pretty much anything by Charles de Lint.
|
|
Shhhh...listen. The wind whistles softly through the topmost branches, only a spare leaf or two rattle and tremble. The trees are nearly bare, skeletal and frail in the perpetual rainy gloom, the cold autumnal twilight; their motions against the pregnant white dollop of a skull-faced moon make a sound in your mind like wheezing, rickety old women. Shhh...listen. The scritch-scratch scrape of once-sheltering oaks, now towering reaping trolls, tick their grim dark fingers across the too-thin glass of the upstairs panes, freezing time and shadows and your heart. Shhh...listen. They're coming. Don't move; don't breathe. They're coming. They're coming. They're coming...
It's the most muderful time of the year! Mysteries and Thrillers! Algernon Blackwood! Arthur Machen! William Hope Hodgson! What are your post-Halloween reads?
|
|
It's that magical time of year! And the perfect time to resurrect this thread, first began eight long years ago!
Ahhh...
Cerulean-blue skies hiding like frightened children behind the skirts of wind-driven slate-gray clouds pregnant with the promise of rain...train whistles in the distance, beckoning you from bed, or driving you to it...long swaths of leaves blanketing the world in a soft carpet of gold and rubies, lying in great mounds and ready for burning, a sacrifice to older times and darker thoughts...fat, round pumpkins, orange as a winter sunset, heaped on front porches beside sleepy black cats and straw-men dressed in the dying Summer's bib overalls...
But I digress.
As we fall into Autumn...2016!
(ahem)
What are some really good books to call in the best season of the year? A couple of my perennial favorites---
Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist; exceptionally cool if you're able to finish it on Hallowe'en night...
Poe by Gaslight includes all the best-loved seasonal favorites...
Of course, you have to find a copy of Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., and re-read 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'...
The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell; a paean to the darkside...
Something Wicked This Way Comes, October Country, The Hallowe'en Tree, and From the Dust Returned, by the illimitable Master of Autumn, Ray Bradbury...
What can you think of...?
If you want a good cross section of recent horror authors, and a diverse range of subject, Ellen Datlow's Years best anthologies are pretty solid reads.
The seasons don't dictate my reading.
So...no suggestions of books you read all year long that others might particularly enjoy as seasonal reading?
Dunno. People's seasonal inclinations are sorta alien to me.
But if someone wants a general recommended book list, I could go on all day.
