2022 ONTD Reading Challenge discussion

Gargoyles, psychics, everything’s ungodly! October is a month for spooky reads!

I think I'm going to try to tackle It for this one!

i'm going to finally pick up The Road!

I think I'm going to try to read a classic this month, so maybe The Woman in White, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or The Turn of the Screw...

October will be a good month for me to read the books I've gotten from three months of the Nocturnal Reader's Box lol, I'm so bad about subscription services. I get my monthly box and then don't read the books :/

I also have a couple books on my Kindle to read (Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist) that I was going to read a few months ago for a theme but didn't have time. October will be a fun month for me, I think!

Oh man I am SO excited for October. I've always loved Halloween but this year I'm going to fully embrace it!

I've recently really got into Point Horror/1990s teen horror books thanks to the Teen Creeps podcast so I think I'm going to keep reading them. I might also finally read My Best Friend's Exorcism.

ALL THE CREEPY!

I might give A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness a go, I read a chapter or so a few months ago but lost interest. It's relatively short, so seems achievable for the month!

Alright, I made a list of books that came from Nocturnal Reader's Box that I'm going to try to get through this month (most are short so hopefully I'll get through them):

Mapping the Interior
The Grip of It
This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It (sequel to John Dies At the End which I've never read or seen, so guess I need to do that first)
Come To Dust
Bleed
Pork Pie Hat
Gwendy's Button Box (fun fact: there's a character in this one with the last name Kepnes. King named this character after Caroline Kepnes, who wrote You, which naturally led to her fangirling on Twitter. I loved finding that last week, so awesome)

Any feedback on these books/what to start with?

I also hope to do a reread of The Shining and then read Doctor Sleep but I feel like I'm being really ambitious with all these goals haha.

I've only read Gwendy's Button Box out of those. It's VERY short and so you will finish it within a day or 2, easy. I liked it!

Rachel wrote: "I've only read Gwendy's Button Box out of those. It's VERY short and so you will finish it within a day or 2, easy. I liked it!"

Cool, thanks!! I have so many other books I want to read too, but working full time + internship + last class before I finish my Master's...I don't have time for all this lmao. This month and next month are the ones where I have the longest list of books I want to read so this was clearly not the best timing haha

I'm going to try reading The Terror. It's a behemoth of a book at 700+ pages. I hope that it holds my attention.

Vivian wrote: "I might give A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness a go, I read a chapter or so a few months ago but lost interest. It's relatively short, so seems achievable for the month!"
I loved that book!

I'm going to read The Grip of It and maybe something else if I have time.

I'm planning on reading A Head Full of Ghosts and We Have Always Lived in the Castle this month. Hopefully I'll finish It soon too.

The ONTD post is up! Thanks for the great recs, Rachel! :D

https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com...

Thanks to user recs (bless these posts omg) I'm probably going to read NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Fledgling by Octavia Butler or even some Anne Rice. I think I'm in a vampire mood this month lol

Cara wrote: "Vivian wrote: "I might give A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness a go, I read a chapter or so a few months ago but lost interest. It's relatively short, so seems achievable for the month!..."

So I finished the book, it was definitely not what I thought it was going to be, but I really enjoyed it! Definitely not what I'd define as 'horror', but a great read.

For October I wanna read The Fireman and Bird Box.

Not strictly horror but I'll give these a go as well
Brimstone:
Three Dark Crowns

Susan wrote: "Thanks to user recs (bless these posts omg) I'm probably going to read NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Fledgling by Octavia Butler or even some Anne Rice. I think I'm in a vampire ..."

omg i looooooved NOS4A2, i read it last year (i think? or maybe even the year before?) and it has stuck with me. i'm not even a huge horror fan.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! Excited to read something spooky

I'm reading The Case Against Satan, and also have The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror that's been in my to-read pile for a while!

I started reading Dark Harvest yesterday.

I'm going to read Pet Sematary and Salem's Lot this month if anyone is interested in buddy reading!

Rachel wrote: "I started reading Dark Harvest yesterday.

I'm going to read Pet Sematary and Salem's Lot this month if anyone is interested in buddy reading!"

I've never done buddy reading before but I need to read Salem's Lot and reread Pet Sematary (it was my first King book and I read it when I was probably 12 so I don't remember much!) so let me know when you're going to read them and I'll join you!

I just finished There's Someone Inside Your House which was a good beginner suspense book for me. Don't go into the book expecting intense horror, blood, and gore. It's YA for a reason.
I'm going to read My Best Friend's Exorcism next.

I finished Vampire Mountain , part of the Cirque du Freak series. Really fun, the books have been consistently good.

I'm starting Ghost Road Blues today.

Eve wrote: "Rachel wrote: "I started reading Dark Harvest yesterday.

I'm going to read Pet Sematary and Salem's Lot this month if anyone is interested in buddy reading!"

I've never done buddy..."

Yay! I'll set up a thread soon. I'm probably going to pick up Pet Sematary this weekend.

I just got a couple of Stephen King books out of the library (Mr. Mercedes and Gerald's Game), so I'll be reading those! Well, depending on whether or not I'm in the mood for Gerald's Game when it comes to it, lol.

I wanted to read Let the Right One In but forgot to put it on library hold a month earlier so I won't be getting it in time for Oct. I'm going to read Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places instead since I am too chickenshit to read The Exorcist.

Surprisingly I had no idea what I wanted to read this month. I think it was because I had too many choices :X I ended up getting Downers Grove on a whim because it was on the librarian recommend shelf. It's about a local suburb and was described as a "coming of age horror novel" which I'm sort of in the mood for after IT. I'm going away on a business trip later this month which means I'll have reading time on the plane so I'll probably be working in another book or two as well... possibly Handling the Undead since I've owned it forever and haven't actually read it yet.

I'm still working through Ghost Road Blues (which I'm really liking, despite the mixed reviews), and I started Bone White by Ronald Malfi that I'm zipping through. Bone White is excellent, very creepy!

I just added both of your books to my TBR shelf, Kelly, thanks!

I just started World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and hope to read Night Shift and Slade House before the month is out!

I'm a little over 100 pages into And the Trees Crept In and I'm underwhelmed. The writing is average and the characters aren't interesting. I'm not one for horror novels (though I'd definitely not consider this a horror novel), but I've read some books that weren't meant to be scary and ended up being pretty creepy. I wish I was invested enough to be disappointed but I'm mostly just meh.

After finishing A Monster Calls, I've also picked up Into the Water for this month. Getting to know all of the characters in the beginning of Into the Water is a little challenging, since I'm reading it digitally and I keep having to flip back, so it's a little slow-going for me, so far.

I'm about a fifth of the way through The Fireman, and I'm really enjoying it. The main character married a philosophy major, so it's pretty terrifying.

FYI, in case anyone is interested, I just pre-ordered a Kindle version of The Complete Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe for free! It's going to be released Oct. 26. Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems...

FYI! A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay is currently on sale for 1.99 at amazon! (kindle)
It would be an excellent read for this month, or if you need a recommendation to make up last month's task... here I am recommending it! :)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MTSKHKO/...

I ended up reading Meddling Kids, which I will say is like Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated meets Cabin in the Woods. I enjoyed it, but I'm also a big Scooby Doo fan, which I think helps. It's also not that scary, which is good for me.

I'm going to attempt another book, but have no expectations for myself, lol. I have a couple of books checked out of the library which are due in the next couple of days, so we'll see what I can renew.

How I'm doing so far...



Image isn't showing on mobile for some reason, so here's the direct link: https://s1.postimg.org/1vmk6gu2cf/Hor...

Quick question, is Battle Royale horror??

Lea wrote: "Quick question, is Battle Royale horror??"

I would say yes! (i didn't read it, but the movie was horrific lol) plus horror is listed as one of the genre on the book's page so it should count because of that

I'm currently reading Salem's Lot... i love it, omg!

I finally finished The Girl with All the Gifts. It took me awhile because I was so distracted this month, but I really did love it. It was such a fresh take on an exhausted genre that I typically have zero interest in reading. Now I'm going to try and finish We Have Always Lived in the Castle before the end of the month.

I finished World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War the other week and it was okay, not really what I was looking for this month but I don't have time to read another spooky novel this month because, A. I've started dating someone and I've been spending a lot of time with him and NOT reading lol, and, B. I'm reading Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection in order to prepare for the release of Oathbringer in mid-November.

The boy is cool and all but he's really thrown me off on my reading schedule hahaha

So all 3 of the books i read this month were kind of a bust in that they weren't really 'spooky':
First i read The Road which was terrifying (in a "Donald Trump is president omg this could actually happen very soon" kind of way), but not really spooky.
Then i picked up The Woman in Cabin 10 which i thought was going to be scary but really is was a bland "thriller."
And now i'm reading Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three because i figured a true-crime book about the horrific murders of 3 boys and the town's belief they were tied to the occult might weird me out a little, but really it is just making me angry at the criminal justice system. It's also a much longer read than i expected so i won't finish it this month and won't get to anything else for this challenge. bummer.

I read Dracula, and it was just ok for me. At least I crossed off another classic from my list.

Juliana wrote: "I just finished There's Someone Inside Your House which was a good beginner suspense book for me. Don't go into the book expecting intense horror, blood, and gore. It's YA for a rea..."

I agree about There's Someone Inside Your House, I never read horror, but watch a lot of horror movies, so I thought it was a good beginner for the genre. It wasn't particularly scary, and I wish there had been a bit more of a mystery, because I don't think you could really guess the killer.

I read A Head Full of Ghosts, which I liked and found creepy. I was kinda surprised by how sad I was by the end. I also read The Turn of the Screw. It's a quick read and perfectly spooky. I'm almost finished with It.