Horror Aficionados discussion

2020 is winding down (and good riddance to it).
Time to look back on that towering pile of books you read through
to see what was really good, what books stand out from the rest.
What were your favorite books of 2020?


I'll start with my favorites from this past year.
Terminal
Everything Under the Moon
Lovecraft Country
Stoker's Wilde
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Skagboys by Irvine Welsh

The Outsider by Stephen King

Alien Intrusion by Gary Bates

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

And when I write it down like this I think to myself, damn...I've had a good years reading!

Mine would have to be Pilgrim. It's the only one published in 2020 that I gave 5 stars.

Randy wrote: "Mine would have to be Pilgrim. It's the only one published in 2020 that I gave 5 stars."

The books don't have to have been published this year, just that you read it this year.

Michael wrote: "Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Skagboys by Irvine Welsh

The Outsider by Stephen K..."

It does sound like a good year!

In no particular order, other than reverse of the order in which I read them, these were my 5*s
The Sentinel
Batman: Three Jokers
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Battle Royale
The Perfect Stranger
The Shadows
The Last Time I Lied
The Last Drop of Blood
American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century
The Sisters Strange
The Woman in the Woods
Carpenter's Farm: A Serialized Novel
The Chestnut Man
The Guardians
adding Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick

I have this rule that I don't give 5 stars to books I wouldn't want to read again, so normally horror (and crime) fall into that category because they rely so much on not knowing what's coming.

That being said, I did have one 5-star horror, and that was one of our group reads: Kin

Some others I enjoyed this year that got 4 stars from me include:
The Roo
'Salem's Lot
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Mexican Gothic
Usher's Passing
Eight Cylinders

And coincidentally I think most of those were group or buddy reads :)

The absolute worst was Paranormal Homicide: The Skinners Incident. It was hard for me to be kind about it haha

My Best Friend's Exorcism

Endurance

The Harry Potter series

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
The Boatman's Daughter (My top horror book)
Pulp
Nine Bar Blues
His Truth Is Marching on: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
The Only Good Indians
Ring Shout
Spungunion
Hammers on Bone
The Ballad of Black Tom
Dark Gods
Malice
Blacktop Wasteland

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
The Sun Down Motel
The Coffin Dancer
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

Well I had lots of five star reads and it would take up way too much room on this post to list them all so I will just have to pick and choose. Be prepared as this list could be "tiny bit" long! lol :)

The Midwives
Ghosthunter
Tormented
Daylight's Deadly Kiss
Blood and Rain
Blood Kin
Voodoo Heart
The Raven
Kill Creek
Scalp
The Malan Witch
The Haunted Forest Tour
Haunted: Perron Manor (all the books were five stars in this series)
The Night It Got Out
The Halloween Store, and Other Tales of All Hallows' Eve
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
If It Bleeds
Violet Eyes
The Horror Collection: White Edition
Damnation Code (this series kicks butt!)
Nang Tani

So that is my five star short list (lol) - I really did have more books to put on here, but I don't think listing out 44 books would be a good idea and it would take me forever too! :)

These are my 2020 5* reads in the order in which I read them.


Rage
Red Metal
An Innocent Client
Orphan X
The Blue Cloak
O Peregrino
The Plague
The Gray Man
Alta Tensão
Hannibal
On Target
O Preço da Vitória
The Walking Dead Compendium 4 😭
A Lei do Triunfo: 16 Lições Práticas para o Sucesso
Priest of Lies
21 Immortals: Inspector Mislan and the Yee Sang Murders
The Wicked Die Twice

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

The Light at the End & The Cleanup by John Skipp and Craig Spector

The Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman

The Stake & Night in the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon

The Lost by Jack Ketchum

Slowly We Rot, 68 Kill, 68 Kill Part 2 and The Freakshow by Bryan Smith.

Bryan Smith is probably my most-read author of 2020. I've read more than a dozen or so of his books, and he is probably the one responsible for mentally surviving the pandemic, probably by showing how much worse, more depraved and fucked-up things can be...

I've also (re-)read some excellent books from the fantasy genre (Walter Moers) and some non-fiction titles dealing with topics like cryptozoology, ufology or other "Fortean" topics, like Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery by Christopher O'Brien or Chupacabras and Other Mysteries by Scott Corrales, but I wanted to focus on horror and thriller here. Yeah, Anno Dracula isn't horror either, but it has vampires in it, of the cool variety.

My favorite book of the year is The Only Good Indians and it probably in my top 10 of all time. I really loved that book.

Here are my other favorite horror books of the year, no particular order:
The Library at Mount Char
Full Throttle
Malorie
Mongrels
Brother
The Ruins
My Best Friend's Exorcism

Non-Horror Faves, again, no particular order:
Blacktop Wasteland
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Daisy Jones & The Six

It's been a good reading year for me!

I loved pretty much everything I read this year. Everything I didn' love I DNF'ed. But stand outs for me were

The Jigsaw man by Gord Rollo
The Meddling Kids by Edgar Contaro
The first two books of the Motherless Child Series by Glen Hirshburg
Hotel Transylvania By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Craven Manor by Darcy Coates

i read a lot of really good ones this year. definitely found some new favorites. in no particular order:

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker
The Shining by Stephen King
Bone Harvest by James Brogden
The Reaping by Bernard Taylor
The Ruins by Scott Smith
The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
The Elementals by Michael McDowell
The Fisherman by John Langan
The Croning by Laird Barron

My favorite Horror books:

-Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno Garcia
-The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
- My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
- The Shadows by Alex North
- Only the Good Indians
- Heart- Shaped Box by Joe Hill

***And the BEST was definitely....
The Reddening by Adam Nevill (5 stars)

Best Horror Re-reads:

-I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid ( 5 stars)
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (5 stars)

Best non- horror/ thrillers:

- The Secret History by Donna Tartt ( 5 stars)
- Bunny by Mona Awad ( 5 stars)

- Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney

- Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

One more to add - The Kingdom

The Executioner's Song, Mailer.

ElleEm wrote: "My favorite book of the year is The Only Good Indians and it probably in my top 10 of all time. I really loved that book.

Here are my other favorite horror books of the year, no pa..."

The HBO show I'll Be Gone in the Dark is amazing.

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Some standouts in the horror genre I read:

Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough
Below by Ryan Lockwood

I have a list of good ones. Its hard to narrow down. These are mostly listed in the order I read them:

The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories
Mystic River
The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe: Manga Classics
Ender's Game
Fahrenheit 451
Justice Hall
Rules of Prey
The Brighter Buccaneer
Joyride
The Saint In England
Season's Creepings: Tales of Holiday Horror

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Just finished Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

My last read of 2020!

Happy new year guys!!

2020 Top 10: horror/horror-adjacent only, no re-reads.



Don't Take Away the Light by J.N. Williamson

Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker

Death's Dominion by Simon Clark

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961–1971

World of Hurt: Selected Stories by Thomas Tessier

Winter Willow: A Novel by Deborah-Anne Tunney

Songs of Giants: The Poetry of Pulp by Lovecraft, Burroughs, Howard

The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

The Sorrows of Satan; or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire by Marie Corelli

My favorites of the year...

The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang
Clown in a Cornfield, Adam Cesare
Kings of the Wyld, Nicholas Eames
The Last Drop of Blood, Graham Masterton
The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie
Into the Drowning Deep, Mira Grant
Feed, Mira Grant
Dead Daughters, Tim Meyer
Blood and Rain, Glenn Rolfe
Traitor's Blade, Sebastien de Castell
Tomb of Gods, Brian Moreland
My Best Friend's Exorcism, Grady Hendrix
The Family Tree, John Everson
The Summer Job, Adam Cesare
Snow, Glass, Apples, Neil Gaiman
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix,
Home Before Dark, Riley Sager
Lock Every Door, Riley Sager
Stake, Kevin J. Anderson
The House on Abigail Lane, Kealan Patrick Burke

Well, for stuff you may know or can at least read:

Dark Sanctuary by H. B. Gregory
Master of Souls by Mark Hansome

Aside from this I have spent this past year reading through the books of Josef K. Šlejhar, a Czech writer, called "the greatest pessimist", who wrote short stories of novels, where life is a series of moments of unendurable suffering and then you die horribly.

Quite dark and grim, this one, probably the grimmest writer I've ever read.

Cool to see some books on my TBR in people's lists; further incentive!

My favorite of the year:
Hotel Iris
Others in no particular order
Penance
In the Dream House
The Fifth Season
At Night All Blood is Black
Grey Sister
The Face of Another
Skullsworn
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

Ferocious by Jeff Strand
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Burden Kansas by Alan Ryker
Beyond the Deepwoods by Paul Stewart
The Hollower by Mary Sangiovanni
Assassins Apprentice by Robin Hobb
and my all time favorite for the year was The Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin

The Fisherman was amazing. It got me through the first few weeks of the Covid lockdowns.

My favorites novels of 2020 were

Mexican Gothic
The Only Good Indians
The Boatman's Daughter
Devil's Creek
The Midwives

And my favorite collections were

Midnight in the Pentagram
We Are Wolves
Graveyard Smash : Women of Horror Anthology, Volume 2
Lullabies for Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror
The Private Lives of Nightmares

Books I placed on my Favorites shelf in 2020 were:

The Snow by Flint Maxwell
Devolution by Max Brooks
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Dead Moon by Peter Clines
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King
Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young
Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

WendyB wrote: "2020 is winding down (and good riddance to it).
Time to look back on that towering pile of books you read through
to see what was really good, what books stand out from the rest.
What were your f..."

Everything Under the Moon! YAY! I love Jeff Johnson!

The rockabilly werewolf from Mars wrote: "In no particular order, some that stand out in my memory:
Maynard's House
A Nest of Nightmares
The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life
[book:..."

I have a lovely edition of Strange Seed that I haven't yet read. Guess I should get to it, eh?

Krystal wrote: "I have this rule that I don't give 5 stars to books I wouldn't want to read again, so normally horror (and crime) fall into that category because they rely so much on not knowing what's coming.

Th..."

Jon would be so pleased to hear that you enjoyed Kin that much.

ElleEm wrote: "My favorite book of the year is The Only Good Indians and it probably in my top 10 of all time. I really loved that book.

Here are my other favorite horror books of the year, no pa..."

The Only Good Indians was my favorite too. He has a new one coming out this year: My Heart Is a Chainsaw

David wrote: "Well, for stuff you may know or can at least read:

Dark Sanctuary by H. B. Gregory
Master of Souls by Mark Hansome

Aside from this I have spent this past year reading through the books of Josef K..."


Have you ever read any Thomas Ligotti?

I see a lot of my favorites listed here already.

The Only Good Indians
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
The Cipher
The Boatman's Daughter
Fantasticland
Boon
Devil's Creek
The Dirty South

I just saw that Grady Hendrix has one due out this year:

Char wrote: "I see a lot of my favorites listed here already.

The Only Good Indians
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
The Cipher
The Boatman's Daughter
Fantasticland
Boon
Devil's Creek
The ..."

I saw that! I still need to read The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Char wrote: "Krystal wrote: "I have this rule that I don't give 5 stars to books I wouldn't want to read again, so normally horror (and crime) fall into that category because they rely so much on not knowing wh..."

Such a bittersweet thing to have loved it so much. I'm so grateful to you mods for organising it though!

Char wrote: "David wrote: "Well, for stuff you may know or can at least read:

Dark Sanctuary by H. B. Gregory
Master of Souls by Mark Hansome

Aside from this I have spent this past year reading through the bo..."

Not really no. I've got a few thousand books already lined up in my reading pile as is but who knows ?

Also I am not exaggerating that number ._.

I've had a good year with classics:
Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie
Les Miserables

And from the contemporary shelf I enjoyed:
The Nickel Boys
Laufen

David wrote: "Char wrote: "David wrote: "Well, for stuff you may know or can at least read:

Dark Sanctuary by H. B. Gregory
Master of Souls by Mark Hansome

Aside from this I have spent this past year reading t..."

His work is often dark, dreary and nihilistic. I thought you might enjoy it.

I hear you about your TBR. I think I have about 1700 unread on my Kindle and one real life very overstuffed shelf full of paper books to read.

Char wrote: "David wrote: "Char wrote: "David wrote: "Well, for stuff you may know or can at least read:

Dark Sanctuary by H. B. Gregory
Master of Souls by Mark Hansome

Aside from this I have spent this past ..."

That's not counting the literal mountain of books growing on the cupboard-thing next to me because I ran out of bookshelf space a looong time ago.

I think it's grown sentient by now.

Jan. 8, 2021--Amazon has "The Cipher" Kindle+Audible on Kindle Unlimited for $0.00. Get both for free, or $1.99 each.

Rachelle wrote: " "

The Sun Down Motel was pretty good.

Favorite reads in 2020:

1. Boy's Life

2. Strangers - Stranger Still - Stranger Danger

3. All my other 5 star ratings ;)

YAY For Boy's Life!
My favorite book of all time.