Let’s Talk Bookish is a Friday post, created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and hosted by Aria @ Book Nook Bits, where we discuss a prompt about Bookish topics. This week’s prompt is a self-pick-topic. I’ve chosen to talk about the horror books that shaped my love of the genre.

When did I discover my interest in Horror?

I was 7 when the first Goosebumps book came out and I remember finding it at the school book fair. It was Welcome to Dead House (by RL Stine). I fell in love with it and spent the next several years buying every new release. Even though they did scare me, I had a great time reading them, and being a little scared in the dark was okay. When I was a little bit older, I read everyone’s childhood favorite, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, and I was even more afraid of the dark. But I really did love the feeling of being creeped out.

To me, what makes a good Horror book?

I love being a little bit scared or uncomfortable while thinking about what’s lurking in my dark closet. As long as the book is interesting, has some kind of paranormal/unexplained/monster aspect, and is written half decently, I’m game for it.

What Horror themes do you love?

Zombies, paranormal, monsters, gothic, and Lovecraftian. I absolutely love being scared while walking my dog at night and what really gets my nerves going are books involving spooky things in the dark, the unexplained, monsters, and the paranormal.

Horror books that got me hooked on the genre?

Every Goosebumps Book by RL Stine
The Regulators by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King
Nightmares & Dreamscapes by Stephen King

Basically, I read a lot of Stephen King as a young teen. Probably much too young for the material but it was what was in the house at the time and I loved to read, so I did. I also read a lot of the VC Andrews books in my teen years, which I enjoyed back then, but have moved on from as an adult.

Are there any Horror book elements that I avoid?

I read somewhere a long time ago that the 5 elements of horror writing are suspense, violence, supernatural, fear, and gore. I love supernatural, I like fear and suspense, I am okay with violence depending on the situation, and the gore has got to be within a certain limit. What I’m not a fan of and tend to avoid are medical horror, extreme gore, violence against animals, descriptive violence against children, and I’m not a fan of descriptive violence against women. I once DNF’d a book because it had several pages describing a rape scene. How disgusting and off-putting. As for the gore, it has a time and a place and over using it for shock value or to elicit disgust is low-effort writing (with the exception of the splatter gore genre because that IS it’s time and place, its just not my thing).

What about you? Why did you fall in love with Horror novels? What are your favorite types and are there any elements that you avoid?

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