October 2019 Books

♥ The Exorcist ¹ by William Peter Blatty 

The Edgar Allan Poe Collection ¹ by Edgar Allan Poe

* The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ¹ by Washington Irving

* It's Halloween, I'm Turning Green! ¹ by Dan Gutman

♥ The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat (it came with stickers!!) by Stan & Jan Berenstain 

♥ Nancy Drew Mystery: Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk by Carolyn Keene - I'm fairly certain that this book was picked up at the Little Free Library at MOM's in Bryn Mawr and it was really, really good! Nancy Drew books are really timeless in a lot of ways. Her intellect is very natural, not like a know-it-all in the least, and she's so likeable.

Araminta Spookie: My Haunted House and The Sword in the Grotto ¹ by Angie Sage

♥ Ghost Buddy: From Zero to Hero ¹ by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver

* The Monkey's Paw ¹ by W.W. Jacobs
* The House On Windy Hill by Clyde Robert Bulla - This book was my older brother Dave's from our childhood. I never read it and I'm not sure why I kept it but it was a nice read and I should have read it as a kid as it was spooky but never scary.

* The Book of Joe ¹ by Vincent Price - Oh how I wish that Vincent Price himself had read this, but his daughter Victoria did it justice, nonetheless. I always felt that Vincent Price was a very serious man and not terribly accessible. He never struck me as avuncular until reading this, where I was given great insight into the man and how warm he was.

* The House That Drac Built by Judy Sierra

* 'Salem's Lot ¹ by Stephen King - This is Pax's favourite Stephen King book and so I decided to buy the audiobook off Audible. I'm not a big vampire fan but this book was excellent. Great characters and I love the slow build up and the solid development of all the players. This, like The Exorcist, is one I can see listening to every October, to get me in the mood for the season.

The Canterville Ghost ¹ by Oscar Wilde

* A Winter Haunting ¹ by Dan Simmons - I was scrolling through Hoopla looking for Halloween themed or scary or mystery books to borrow. I had never heard of Dan Simmons but the premise of this book sounded intriguing: man returns, alone, to his childhood hometown, and moves in to a kind of run down home of his friend who died in an "accident" when they were kids. There are spectres and boarded up sections of the house and a group of young psychopaths/racists in the town. Oh, and Bronson Pinchot did a fabulous job narrating, by the way.

♥ Gus was a Friendly Ghost by Jane Thayer - A classic from childhood! I mean he's looks like a typical ghost but with a cute lil' face and hands. Adorable

* The Fate of Mercy Alban ¹ by Wendy Webb - I liked this story but as I'm writing this I have absolutely no memory of the plot. Isn't that terrible? Christ, I'm old. It's as though my mind only has enough space for certain things and since I'm trying to learn Spanish it will hang on to all these new words but books and movies? They gone, y'all.
* The Amityville Horror ¹ by Jay Anson

♥ Ghost Buddy - Mind If I Read Your Mind? ¹ by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver

Gus Goes to School ¹ by Jane Thayer

* The Elementals ¹ by Michael McDowell - Cerpts had mentioned this book on The Land of Cerpts and Honey and when I saw they had an audiobook version I just had to buy it. I don't know how it is on the written page, but R.C. Bray's reading was absolutely absorbing. He gave true life to the characters and had me longing for a happy ending.

(photo kidnapped from amazon)

♥ Ghost Buddy: How to Scare the Pants Off Your Pets ¹ by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver - Winkler just continues to make a lousy day bearable with his nuanced reading of his (and Lin Oliver's) delightful stories. He leaves me wanting more!

* Ghosts Beneath Our Feet by Berry Ren Wright - When I was in grade school and we would have the Scholastic Book Fair (and in younger years the Troll Books Fair which was thee best because they had super-dooper double terrific stickers!!) and I was usually drawn to slightly spooky or supernatural stories with a female lead. I still have so many books from my childhood and decided to re-read this. It was actually still really good and I remembered absolutely nothing. Big surprise, right?

Something Wicked This Way Comes ¹ by Ray Bradbury - This story went from being interesting to confusing to not great to slow to fast to good and then just blah.
Poirot Investigates ¹ by Agatha Christie - All the stories that were read by David Suchet were very well done (Hugh Fraser was okay, but nothing beats Suchet's Poirot) but none of them stood out or held me on the edge of my seat.
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment ¹ by Nathaniel Hawthorne - A short story that never really grabbed my attention.
The Werewolf of Fever Swamp ¹ by R.L. Stine
* Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes ¹ by R.L. Stine - This Goosebumps story was the only one I've liked so far. They just aren't as fun and silly as Winkler's Ghost Buddy books. But, hey, at least I gave them a shot!

* The Hound of the Baskervilles ¹ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The narrator was excellent but I found this story hard to follow and my mind wandered. It got to the point where I had to go to Wikipedia to read the synopsis in order to understand what was going on. I think I need to listen to it again to fully appreciate it.
* Lullaby ¹ by Jonathan Maberry - A short story read by Scott Brick, one of the best audio book narrators of all time. It's a sad, spooky tale but worth a listen.
Casper the Friendly Ghost in Ghostland - Another book from my childhood. It was the last day of the month and I was trying to read a book a day that could maybe fit with the season and so this was the only one left. It wasn't terribly memorable and I've no idea why I held on to it.

¹ - audiobook
² - abridged version
* - liked
♥ - loved
Any unmarked titles were, in my opinion, so-so.