Any spooky (or scary) books you wish you hadn't read? I read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and it was just okay. The ending was weird and wasn't what I would call literary genius.
06:43 PM - Oct 14, 2023
(Edited)
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I was assisting someone on directing his stage adaptation and read the novella so I could be all prepared when we had our first meeting. I proudly told him and he said, "I'm so sorry."
10:30 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I've read Turn of the Screw twice and I think it is not good. It's so boring.
10:06 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Danielle H.
It's not the "gotcha" I think the author intended. Or maybe it's just dated?
10:17 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I can’t think of any… there is one that affected me a lot, I read as a kid back in the 70s about a woman whose nightmares began to come true. I wish I could find it now.
09:41 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Katie Kadwell.
There are books I read as a child that I wish I could find now, but even my librarian skills aren't always enough.
10:30 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
"Ghost Story" by Peter Straub. I don't scare easily, but I was spooked for a while after this one.
12:12 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
The very first Stephen King book that I read in Jr. High was Salem's Lot. It scared the crap out me. Today, it's one of my favorite Stephen King books. The Shining and Pet Semetary scared me, too.
09:28 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
The Shining by S King is still the worst for me, although I don’t regret reading it. Have never liked scary movies though.
09:25 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
The Exorcist. Mid 70s, just moved into an apartment by myself. Near farmland, not a lot of neighbors/other buildings. Started reading, could not put it down. I had every light ON, all doors/windows locked. I bundled up w/blankets in a corner, to scared to move. Read all night till sun came up. 😱💀
09:10 PM - Oct 14, 2023
(Edited)
In response to Lo.
😱OMG - same!🙀My husband was working second shift, and my next door neighbors (who were like my parents to me), asked me to come over to watch The Exorcist - and I said, "hell no!" knowing that I would be home by myself afterwards!
09:32 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I think it was Scary Tales to Tell In The Dark. It was a collection of short stories. To this day I still remember the story of the girl who thought she had a boil or a pimple and it kept getting bigger and bigger. *spoilers* Then she took a bath and out came baby spiders. 🤢
09:05 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I love Henry James' What Maisie Knew. I remember liking Turn Of The Screw a lot, but it's been a while since I've read it.
Now, I will have to check my bookshelf and see if I unpacked it to read again. 😊
Now, I will have to check my bookshelf and see if I unpacked it to read again. 😊
08:41 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I don’t necessarily regret reading it, but Stephen King’s Needful Things put me off the genre and off Stephen King until I read the Dark Tower series many many years later.
08:20 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
We had to read The Turn of the Screw in high school. I don't recall being scared. Truthfully I don't remember much about the book. Probably because we were assigned another book right after that.
07:56 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
Most everything I read of Stephen King. I was obsessed with reading them all as a teen and could not put them down. They haunted every dream and had me jumping at shadows. Lived it then. Could NOT do it now. 👽👻👺
07:53 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I read Stephen King’s Needful Things. Not outright scary, but hated the awful way people treated one another. Quit reading his books after that. This was thirty years ago, before our present day existence in the Trump enabled MAGA world of today. It’s like that book come to life. 🙁
07:49 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Mary Ann Lyons.
It's been a while since I read "Needful Things," but King definitely had his finger on the pulses of proto-MAGAs. Even before "Needful Things" - remember the people of Derry in "IT"?
07:53 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Mary Ann Lyons.
SK once said that there was nothing his imagination could invent that was more terrifying than what human beings can do to each other. Bag of Bones is another one that leans into that.
12:21 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I can think of one in particular but it might upset a lot of people on this platform if I reference it
07:34 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to PJ.
Why? You’re allowed to like/dislike whatever you want to. Just because other people think a book is brilliant, doesn’t mean you do. I hate Gulliver’s travels with a passion. Other people love it. It is what it is.
07:44 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
Misery the book cuts a little differently than Misery the movie.
IYKYK
IYKYK
07:20 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to E Z.
I loved the book! The movie was enjoyable but definitely not as scary as the book.
07:28 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to E Z.
They thought about it - it's in the original script I think - but when they came up against it Reiner decided it would be too much for the audience, he didn't want to risk losing their engagement w/Annie as a character. It's bad enough as it is, they had a terrible time finding actors who'd play It.
12:33 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
when traveling I exchanged books w fellow backpackers & chanced at one point to read Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
the creepy killing scenario somehow imprinted itself into my imagination and I thought about it for years and years 😩
the creepy killing scenario somehow imprinted itself into my imagination and I thought about it for years and years 😩
07:18 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Hester Prynnecess, beat reporter.
But, that book did turn me onto William Blake poetry so I call it a wash.
07:33 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Hester Prynnecess, beat reporter.
That book made me close the curtains TIGHT every night! The thought of someone with no apparent ties to you stalking and watching your family just......... too much.
07:40 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I read Tell Tale Heart when I was pretty young, maybe 10 years old. It may have started my dislike of anything horror related. Wish I hadn’t read it that young, who knows if I’d feel differently about horror novels now. 🤷🏼♀️
07:17 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Sue Lee.
I remember a teacher reading it to us in junior high. Not sure if that was a good idea.
07:18 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
The Shining, never finished it and NEVER saw the movie.
07:17 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
Jaws.
Still uncomfortable swimming in the ocean.
Still uncomfortable swimming in the ocean.
07:13 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to The Phantom..
Jersey Man-Eater of 1916
True story.
Lester Stillwell / Stanley Fisher.
Sorry.
True story.
Lester Stillwell / Stanley Fisher.
Sorry.
07:44 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
IT and Pet Cemetery by Stephen King
Mistake. Big mistake.
Mistake. Big mistake.
07:11 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Lisse (she/her).
I am with you on IT also The Shining both mistakes I read them late night.
07:17 PM - Oct 14, 2023
(Edited)
In response to Read aBannedBook.
"The Turn of the Screw" was . . . weird. Just weird.
I love horror novels, but I wish I'd never read "Pet Sematary." Even "IT" was tame by comparison. I can recall the final lines, and after 37 years the back of my neck *still* wants to shudder off the bone.
I love horror novels, but I wish I'd never read "Pet Sematary." Even "IT" was tame by comparison. I can recall the final lines, and after 37 years the back of my neck *still* wants to shudder off the bone.
07:09 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Thee NW Mankiller Magpie.
I read a synopsis for the Pet Sematary movie and was just like NO, never, just no.
07:15 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Thee NW Mankiller Magpie.
Despite the potboiler title I think it's one of SK's best, a surprisingly insightful novel that's really about grief. I find he's often writing about something more than just things that go bump in the night, & Pet Semetary is one of those, as The Shining is really a novel about alcoholism.
12:41 AM - Oct 15, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
Je ne regrette rien but I read The Exorcist in one sitting in spite of the fact it scared the living hell out of me.
07:08 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Alexander J. McKinley, QBE.
I would've read "The Exorcist" as a teen, but my mom was barely okay with watching the movie with me (which she insisted on doing). She refused to let me bring the book into the house. Having seen the film, I decided I'd had enough. I still haven't read it.
07:31 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Alexander J. McKinley, QBE.
I could not read it. We went as a froup to see the movie. If not for the people behind us narrating and commenting the most hysterical things, I would have left the theater. Had no desire to read it after seeing it.
08:20 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
My brother still likes Stephen King, and even though I tell him I stopped reading King decades ago, he keeps holding the football out like Lucy and I keep kicking it. I think King helped bring a genre to life and has written some great tales, but his writing style isn’t for me. At least not anymore
07:02 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
I read a Jackie Collins book years ago that just creeped me out bad.
06:54 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Jim Flanigan.
I camped next to a minister's wife at a fiddler's convention once, and she confessed that she secretly read romance novels; I think she mentioned Jackie Collins specifically, or someone like her.
06:56 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Read aBannedBook.
No, but I don’t read horror (as I don’t watch it). That said, I don’t think scary books affect me the same way movies do.
06:49 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Professor Kyle.
I don't read horror either. Turn of the Screw is the closest I've gotten. Unless Helter Skelter counts.
06:54 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Professor Kyle.
I started watching The Night Manager on Britbox, mainly because Hugh Laurie is in it. And I find it very scary. I can only watch it in small increments.
07:00 PM - Oct 14, 2023
In response to Salma Typhii.
I mean, it was sad, but it didn't stay with me, probably because I never got invested in the characters.
06:46 PM - Oct 14, 2023
