HDC Top 100 Horror Books
 

I suggested this soon after getting named HDC president, and although March is looking hectic, my schedule's gonna get worse before it gets better, so I might as well get on this quickly. HDC is not just a site for horror movies. This is not horror movies. com. This is horror.com, and the word means a lot of things. It's a concept that predates cinema. And horror predating cinema means drama, visual arts, poetry and fiction. It's been awhile since HDC has had one of these lists to get excited about and been awhile since HDC has truly been excited about horror fiction. So we're going to change that with a list of the Top 100 Works of Horror in Literature.
To start with, I'd like folks to post 10 books, plays, poems or books of poetry containing horror elements or influencing the genre. Plath's Ariel (the book, not the poem), Shakespeare's Macbeth, Joyce's Ulysses have as much horror to be found in them as Salem's Lot or American Psycho and should not be ignored just because they do not meet some arbitrary standard for the genre. Unlike real politicians, this HDC President is going to hear out your arguments in favor of works that you think might be controversial. Arguments against things are for later in the process. No eyerolls, no "Kafka isn't horror", "The Invisible Man isn't horror", "Haunting of Hill House isn't horror", "The Joy of Sex isn't horror" yet. I will assemble a panel for the purpose of cutting the list down to 100 when we have a substantial amount of entries. I'll start with ten:

1.) The Inferno- Dante Alighieri
2.) Macbeth- William Shakespeare
3.)Salem's Lot-Stephen King
4.) Ariel-Sylvia Plath
5.) Haunting of Hill House- Shirley Jackson
6.) Naked Lunch-William Burroughs
7.) Howl-Allen Ginsberg
8.) Ulysses-James Joyce
9.) Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque- Edgar Allan Poe
10.)Dracula- Bram Stoker

Great idea Doc

Here's my list

It - Stephen King
Duncan's Diary: Birth of a Serial Killer - Christopher C. Payne
The Scary Stories Trilogy - Alvin Schwartz
The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe
Wait Until Dark(play) - Frederick Knott
Frankenstein - Mary Shelly
Re-Animator - H.P. Lovecraft
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris

I'm on it.:)

Give me a few days.

now you're talking Mr. President.......great idea. :D

will throw some suggestions out soon

Geez - Admittedly I haven't read a whole lot of horror (sadly) - Will ruminate for a while and see what I come up with...

1.Imajica-Clive Barker
2.At The Mountains Of Madness (and other stories)-HP Lovecraft
3.The Pit And The Pendulum (or Tales Of Mystery And Imagination)-Edgar Allan Poe
4.Shadowlands-Peter Straub
5.The Vampire Lestadt-Anne Rice
6.The Turn Of The Screw-Henry James
7.War And Peace-Leo Tolstoy
8.Crime And Punishment-Fyodor Dostoevsky
9.The Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath
10.Weaveworld-Clive Barker

Here's a few:

The Collector - John Fowles
The Monster at the End of This Book - Jon Stone
The Gashlycrumb Tinies - Edward Gorey
What Was I Scared Of? - Theodore Seuss Geisel
For the Love of Evil - Piers Anthony
Der Struwwelpeter - Heinrich Hoffmann

I'll need a bit of time to think!

Extremely difficult to pick just ten, but here you go:

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe
The Call Of Cthulhu - HP Lovecraft
The Haunting Of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Turn Of The Screw - Henry James
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Oh Whistle And I'll Come To You My Lad - MR James
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
Salem's Lot - Stephen King