Once again following the lead of the delightful Brenna from Literary Musings, here's my Top 10 follow-up to The Broke And The Bookish's Top 10 Tuesdays. Today, my top 10 scariest books. It's a hard top 10 to make because it's an emotion cinema triggers SO much better for me. Also, vampires don't scare me so we chalk a good chunk of horror lit. right there. Nonetheless, it's Halloween soon, so I made and effort and I found ten books that triggered that uncanny feeling within.
1-The Whisperer In Darkness by H.P Lovecraft: The story in itself is only 72 pages. So this is a novella, a short story, whatever you call it. It's the only written narrative who put me in a state of profound terror. I worked security at night when I read it. Not a good idea.
2-Adrift by Koji Suzuki: From the Dark Water short story collection. Sailors board the ghost ship of the Marie Celeste...and boy, what a ship this is....
3-The Shining by Stephen King: A more classic pick. King's portrait of a haunted hotel really got to me. I was paranoid of evil spirits for a few days after that reading.
4-Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk: The unhealthy feeling of this book is unparalleled. Makes you scared of yourself as a writer. It's scary because it's a story you can relate too so easily.
5-120 Days Of Sodom by Marquis de Sade: It's truly scary to realize mankind never really had a downfall of their morals. Human being were always those dark and twisted creatures. Only book of the top 10 I will never read again.
6-Child Of God by Cormac McCarthy: This novel got to me in this unique and deranged way. Lester Ballard first appears as this strange loose cannon, only to make you wonder at the end, who is really the monster in that story. More disturbing than scary, but it has it's moment. McCarthy's prose is angst-inducing.
7-Killer On The Road by James Ellroy: I don't think anybody got into the mind of a killer with such drive and abandon. It's mesmerizing and petrifying at the same time.
8-2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke: If you fear the unknown, please do yourself a favor and read Clarke's space odyssey series (even if you don't like science-fiction, please do). 2010: Odyssey Two is the biggest argument against the existence of God.
9-Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane: Once you can get over how shitty and cliché the title is, you will find a novel in proper Lehane tradition where the bad guys do terrible things, but you're not so sure you wouldn't have done the same.
10-To The Lighthouse by Virgnia Woolf: It appeals to a more personal fear of mine, but reading this novel felt like a suffocating nightmare. It made Woolf to be one of my favorite female writers.
