Spring into Horror Read-a-thon

Hosted by Michelle, The True Book Addict

Don’t let the word ‘horror’ scare you away. You only have to read one scary book during the duration of the read-a-thon. However, that book can be horror, paranormal, thriller, mystery, etc. The rest of the read-a-thon, you can read whatever you want. More horror/scary stuff or just your regular reading repertoire.

Wrap-Up

I read start-to-finish two (short) books, two short stories, two poems, and finished the last bits of two ARCs. And I read a few sections of Prose Edda, but that doesn’t go neatly into my apparent Two theme. Grand total of ~624 pages. I didn’t do much reading on Saturday, but I didn’t do much other than reading on Sunday. I deviated from my list somewhat mostly because 14 was pretty good and I have a harder time finding the next book to read when the last one was good. My books were of moderate creepiness. The one word I could use to describe 14 is synonymous with a certain genre of horror and would totally spoil the book. The Prince of Mists is kind of an old-school camp-fire horror story that isn’t going to keep me up at night, but was still a good time.

Goals

I haven’t read too much horror in a while. Lot’s of mysteries this year so far, but not much out-and-out horror. It used to be my favorite genre! I’d really like to get 500 pages in, but I’m going to be missing the majority of Saturday due to frisbee league finals. We’ll see how it goes.

Fodder

I never stick to my lists. This is what I may or may not read:

• Finish Sherlock Holmes & the Needle’s Eye (not scary, but I want to finish it) Done!
• A couple of of short stories – I’m behind on my short story per week reading. Done!
• 14 by Peter Clines (NetGalley) Done!
• The 7th Woman by Frédérique Molay (NetGalley)
• Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp (Stoker nominated)
• Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino (Stoker nominated)
• 44 by Jools Sinclare (Amazon taster)
• Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris (TBR pile)

Updates

Monday: Finished reading Sherlock Holmes and the Needle’s Eye by Len Bailey, a NetGalley ARC that I didn’t quite finish over the weekend. I was on the fence about what short stories I might read for this week. I’m in the mood for Glen Hirshberg, but have none. I was considering the Poe’s Children anthology, but I’m *not* in the mood to deal with the quality inconsistencies that sometimes happen with anthologies. Finishing Mr. Bailey’s book made up my mind for me. It’s time to dip back into Sherlock Holmes canon. “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” by Arthur Conan Doyle is a grisly piece of work, sensational for its time. In it, Doyle mentions Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. I hadn’t read it in years, so that’s my other short story for the week.

Tuesday: Started 14 by Peter Clines. So far, so good. Ended up feeling pretty poorly. Kinda did the minimum amount of work and then read a little.

Wednesday: Feeling better today. Played some ultimate frisbee. Read. Missed the Twitter chat *drat!*. Napped a bit. Worked on the novel. Planning more reading after the movie I’m watching is done.

Thursday: Another pretty good day. Made some considerable progress on 14, added some to the second draft of One Ahead, played some disc.

Friday: Finished 14. I liked it rather well. I’m going deviate from my list to start Dark Water by David Pirie. I just got it from NetGalley and it’s close to its re-release date (though it won’t transfer to my Kindle). And I need to do a couple other not-necessarily-horror weeklies (a couple sections of Prose Edda and a couple Poe poems). [Alas, Dark Water wasn’t doing it for me. Bring on The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon instead.]

Saturday: My Saturday progress happened between midnight and 1am-ish. I was too jazzed up about frisbee league playoffs to read later Saturday morning. My team made it all the way to finals which meant we played four games from 2:30-9:45ish. Too tired afterward to do anything but vegetate.

Sunday: My body hurts. I read on. Actually, I was mostly awake enough this morning to catch the Twitter chat, which was fun and has caused my TRB pile to grow. Finished The Prince of Mist and moved on to finishing Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time, Volume 1.