Book Blogger Hop 10.14-10.17

It's been a long time since I hopped!  I'm trying really hard to comment everyday on blogs (at least 10 comments per day), and of course the Hop is perfect for connecting with other bloggers and finding even more great book blogs to add to my overstuffed Google Reader! ;) Hop along at Crazy For Books

This week's question:

“What is your favorite spooky book (i.e. mystery/suspense, thriller, ghost story, etc.)?”

This should be an easy question, but not for me!  So I'm going to cheat a bit and give a couple of different answers:

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
What don't I love about the Odd one?  He's become one of my all time favorite literary characters.  He see's dead people, but by gosh, he does something about it!  Although I love the series, the very first book is just magic.  Odd's voice, his personality, his sense of right and wrong, everything just drags me in.  His friends and family are wonderfully unique as he is.  I've lost count all the times I've talked about Odd Thomas on my blog, but there's a reason.  While Koontz is a hit or miss author for me, he won me as a fan for life when he breathed life into Odd.



It by Stephen King
I read It for the first time in while I was in the sixth grade and it wasn't even the first King book I'd read.  I have always fancied myself a fan of horror/scary stories, but It was really the first book that scared the crap out of me.  I wanted to be part of the Loser's Club, and when they descended into the sewers of Derry, I really was there with them.  I think King gets a lot of attention as a great horror writer, but he's just an incredibly great writer, period. It's not all about scariness or gore, he writes people so well.  I particularly love how he writes kids, he's just got an amazing talent. There are lots of King books that hold a special place in my heart, and maybe even a few like The Stand that I love more than It.  But It was my first real experience in getting lost completely in a book, and when the mini-series came out a few years later, I got to see it brought to life.  Subsequent re-reads (of which there has been many) always feature Tim Curry as Pennywise and Jonathan Bradis (RIP, Mr. Brandis) as Stuttering Bill.  "He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghost."  The moment Bill's little brother loses his paper boat to a storm drain and meets Pennywise, I dare you not to be terrified.

The best part of October for me is listening to scary stories while driving.  Here's a few of my favorites:

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (currently I'm still listening to this one, but it's fantastic, although it holds a lot of humor!)

And of course, the first time I read Odd Thomas was in audio book format, and the narrator is perfect!

Vacation Post #2

Hit the beach early this morning and managed to finish my first official vacation read, Dog On It by Spencer Quinn.

It was a great beach read, full of mystery and told from the viewpoint of Chet the dog, faithful canine partner to Bernie, his PI owner.  I read this as part of my Stephen King Summer Reading List Self-Challenge, and once again I was rewarded with a good read.  There's an awesome dog narrator (again, it can't be said enough, it's totally Bunnicula for the over 30 club), there's a young girl who may or may not be a runaway, several suspicious Russians, and lots of food mentioned.  Even a little tiny hint of romance- for Bernie, not Chet.

Dog On It gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

Started today: World War Z  by Max Brooks

I doubt there will be much reading done tonight because my nieces are here and there are  already screams and giggles.  Although that may be the ideal background noise while reading a zombie book...