2015 Horror Reading Challenge – first quarterly update

What did I say I was going to do?

As I said in my sign up post, I am aiming to be a Brave Reader, which means reading 6-10 books during the course of the year.

How am I doing?

Really well actually! I have read and reviewed the following (assisted by signing up for the King’s March challenge so this is a bit heavy on Mr K’s work):

Short stories (individual and collections)

• The Wide Carnivorous Sky by John Langan – which includes Mother of Stone, one of my favourite satires of the year (and possibly ever)
• North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Balingrud – which I didn’t enjoy quite so much
• a couple of short stories by Stephen King & Joe Hill

Novels

• The Death House by Sarah Pinborough – some might not call this horror but I thought it dealt with some very dark issues and it had huge impact on me
• Revival by Stephen King – King meets Lovecraft
• Carrie by Stephen King – where it all began, an important re-read for me
• Cell by Stephen King – King meets (sort-of) zombies

Series

I have been reading the Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross for several years and have now (almost) caught up. Many people consider these sci-fi but all the Lovecraftian stuff puts them firmly in horror for me.

• The Fuller Memorandum
• The Apocalypse Codex

So not bad at all. I really didn’t expect to do so well so early but that King challenge came along at the right time 🙂