A note on this blog's organization

Since I first started this blog, I've read well over 600 books. I decided to organize them by sections, so to navigate to specific blog entries, review the sections below. To look for a specific book, try typing the book title or author's name in the search bar at the top left of this blog.

Book Bingo #3 - Spooktober 2019

Book Bingo #3 - Another one of my own creation, inspired by spooky season (24 works, no overlaps with '101 and Beyond')


Okay, so we know I'm not winning prizes for my artwork ;) But these were fun. I did a few that were specifically themed to a season or time of year, and I think this one was the first. As with the other bingos, I'm listing the titles below left to right, top to bottom. 

Note: Blurbs below are either from the authors' websites or from booksellers. When possible, I've linked directly to the author's site to purchase a copy. Alternatively, feel free to use your local library, or buy local! 

Category: About vampires
    • From the legendary mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated creator of Sherlock Holmes, comes a riveting collection that explores the dark, obsessive side of the human (and inhuman) psyche. Stories with Bite gathers chilling tales of lust, loathing, and the supernatural, showcasing Doyle's mastery beyond the realm of detective fiction.
Category: Classic horror
    • Professor William Dyer of the the Miskatonic University knew that the antarctic was a forlorn, dangerous place, but nothing could have prepared him and his expediting for what they would find in the Mountains of Madness. They discover an abandoned city from ancient times. But is it really abandoned? And will any of them be able to get out alive? 
Category: Supernatural
    • Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly sensual dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of her having written the bestselling book The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she’s found herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name.
Category: Set on Halloween
    • Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.
Category: Bonus Book
    • A young witch emerges from a curse to find her world upended in this gripping fantasy of betrayal, vengeance, and self-discovery set in turn-of-the-century France. For centuries, the vineyards at Château Renard have depended on the talent of their vine witches, whose spells help create the world-renowned wine of the Chanceaux Valley. Then the skill of divining harvests fell into ruin when sorcière Elena Boureanu was blindsided by a curse. Now, after breaking the spell that confined her to the shallows of a marshland and weakened her magic, Elena is struggling to return to her former life. And the vineyard she was destined to inherit is now in the possession of a handsome stranger.
Category: Written by Poe
    • Edgar Allan Poe's short story about an unnamed narrator who has a deep fear of being buried alive.
Category: About witches
    • Returning to his childhood home to attend a funeral, a middle-aged man is drawn back to a place once alive with monsters and magic; to a past where the impossible is all too frighteningly real. A haunting meditation on memory, wonder, friendship, and sacrifice.
Category: Gothic
    • The Castle of Otranto is a macabre tale that revolves around a haunted castle. Manfred, the lord of Otranto, finds his son, Conrad, smashed by an enormous helmet on his wedding day. It is soon revealed that according to an ancient ambiguous prophecy Conrad's death might have been an ominous event that signifies the end of his lordship. To rectify the situation Manfred decides to marry his son's bride despite having a wife. Will Manfred plot succeed? Is he indeed a true prince of the castle?
Category: Cozy mystery
    • Brooklyn’s prewedding calm is shattered when one of her formerly feuding friends is found murdered and Brooklyn determines that one of the rare books is a forgery. She can’t help but wonder if the victim played a part in this fraud, or if she was targeted because she discovered the scam. With a killer and con artist on the loose, Brooklyn and Derek—with the unsolicited help of their meddling mothers—must catch the culprit before their big day turns into a big mess.
Category: Mystery
    • Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping domestic thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems. Is Anna an unreliable narrator, or is she the only one who knows the truth?
Category: Contains ghosts
    • When the Halloran clan gathers at the family home for a funeral, no one is surprised when the somewhat peculiar Aunt Fanny wanders off into the secret garden. But then she returns to report an astonishing vision of an apocalypse from which only the Hallorans and their hangers-on will be spared, and the family finds itself engulfed in growing madness, fear, and violence as they prepare for a terrible new world.
Category: About werewolves
    • In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across revolutionary Paris in the 1870s seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.
Category: Set in New England
    • Born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up.  But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes. Subhash, the dutiful son, does not share his brother’s political passion; he leaves home to pursue a life of scientific research in a quiet, coastal corner of America. But when Subhash learns what happened to his brother in the lowland outside their family’s home, he goes back to India, hoping to pick up the pieces of a shattered family, and to heal the wounds Udayan left behind—including those seared in the heart of his brother’s wife.
Category: About magic
    • Under the streets of London there’s a world most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks. A single act of kindness to a ragged girl he finds injured on the street catapults young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his workaday life into a world that is both familiar and threateningly bizarre. Displaying bold creativity and narrative genius, Neverwhere is a dark, funny, and seductive tale that has become a contemporary literary touchstone.
Category: Grimm fairy tale
    • A father had two sons. The dimwitted younger son, when asked by his father what he would like to learn to support himself, said he would like to learn how to shudder (as in, learn to have fear). A sexton told the father that he could teach the boy. After teaching him to ring the church bell, he sent him one midnight to ring it and came after him, dressed as a ghost. The boy demanded an explanation. When the sexton did not answer, the boy, unafraid, pushed him down the stairs, breaking his leg. His horrified father turned him out of house, so the boy set out to learn how to shudder. He complained whenever he could, "If only I could shudder!" 
Category: Contains a spell or curse
    • One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
Category: By Stephen King
    • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King, four “disturbing, fascinating” novellas that explore the dark side of human nature.
Category: With zombies
    • In the ruins of civilization, a young girl’s kindness and capacity for love will either save humanity—or wipe it out. Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her “our little genius.” Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointed at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh. 
Category: Blood on the cover
    • Alison has it all: a doting husband, beloved daughter and career on the up. But nothing is quite what it seems. Alison drinks too much and she's having an affair with a colleague who likes to push boundaries. And it's all getting too much. Alison is representing a client who wants to plead guilty to stabbing her husband, but something about her story is amiss. However, if Alison saves this woman, she believes she can save herself. But someone knows all of Alison's secrets - and wants to make her pay for what she's done.
Category: Haunted house
    • Frances Jellico is dying and remembering when, in the summer of 1969 she was commissioned to survey the follies in the garden of Lyntons – a decrepit and almost derelict country house. There, living in the attic for a month or so, she meets Cara and Peter who are staying in the rooms below hers. This unusual couple encourage Frances to stay up late, to smoke, to eat and drink as much as she wants, and to ignore the work she has been commissioned to do. But Frances discovers a hole in her bathroom floor which allows her to spy on Cara and Peter, an act of duplicity she is unable to resist. As Frances falls under her new friends’ spell and she learns their stories, the house offers up its own secrets, until her life is changed forever.
Category: Creepy
    • The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
Category: Magical realism
    • Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. Oyeyemi’s tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.
Category: By Ray Bradbury
    • Join the shadowy Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud as he takes eight trick-or-treaters on an unforgettable journey to find their missing friend, Pip. Travel through space and time, from the tombs of ancient Egypt to the gargoyles of Notre-Dame Cathedral, all the way to the cemeteries of Mexico on el Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Is Pip still alive? And if so, can his friends save him from a ghastly fate before it’s too late?
Category: Moon on the cover
    • Eleven-year-old Ella Hankerson yearns to know her absent father, but her mother, Lucy, and grandparents constantly evade her questions. Teased by other black kids for her light skin and white-seeming features, Ella indulges in wild speculation—maybe it’s Cab Calloway? Lucy has left Ella in Alcolu, South Carolina, for work and a jazz career in Boston, and although Granny and Poppy provide a loving home for Ella and two of her cousins, 14-year-old orphan Myrna and Ella’s best friend, 12-year-old Henry, the rural South in the 1940s can be dangerous for black folks. Racists charge George Stinney, a quiet, shy boy, with murdering two little white girls, and Myrna once encountered a black family lynched and hanging from the trees. Although Ella eagerly leaves the farm to stay with her mother, she finds Boston also imperfect, as she must spend hours alone in the tiny apartment while Lucy and her roommate, Helen, work as shipfitters. A riveting read, this novel masterfully presents Southern and Northern conflicts through the perspective of a no-nonsense kid who is trying to find her place in the world. 
My Reflections on this Book Bingo

As with the other book bingos, I won't blog separately on each of these books, as it has been a long time since I read many of these, and I wouldn't want to give them short shrift. What I will do instead is share passages I liked and/or general reflections from this bingo board. 
  • Dark Harvest - I loved this one. High recommend. 
    • The stars shine down. The wind doesn't even whisper. For a time. For a little while. 
    • In the end it's not the houses themselves that matter. It's the pepole inside who count. 
    • And you believed - most of all - because you had to. 
    • Tonight the template changed. 
    • Sparks rain down from the night sky in firefly swarms. 
    • Like fire, like fury, stories can't always be contained. 
    • You take the things that can't be left behind. 
  • The Haunting of Hill House
    • I leave before dark comes. Such a great line!
    • We never know where our courage is coming from.
    • Some houses are born bad. This reminded me of '124 was spiteful' in Beloved. 
    • Try to look like a stray sunbeam. Just try, ok?
    • We have marvels still before us. So great. 
  • What is Not Yours is Not Yours
    • A library at night is full of sounds. 
    • We'd spend nights reading together, on separate sides of a shelf, not speaking, listening to the books around us. What a fantastic line. 
    • Every time I go into that bloody house there's the risk of coming out crazy. Sounds like Hill House! 
  • The Halloween Tree
    • Night came out from under each tree and spread. 
    • Darkness moved within darkness. 
    • Every mouth smiled hideously in some new way. 
    • Look long, look deep, make a feast. I love this line. 
    • Bring him back, pop him in bed, toast him warm, save his breath. 
    • They shrieked with in gasped, out gasped terror. 
    • And the moon stopped winking and held very still. 
    • The wind ribboned him with confetti. 
  • The Sundial - I LOVED this one. As I've said in other places, I'm a big Shirley Jackson fan, but I think this is my favorite of hers. It's so wonderfully witty and unhinged. 
    • Where is the secret I am to learn from my many agonies? 
    • After the day the night. After the thief the flight. I love this line.
    • The peril is for others. We are safe. 
    • We are a point of safety in a world of ruin. So good.
    • It's a make-believe world, with nothing in it but cardboard and trouble. 
    • Am I an ogre? Is this castle of mine unguarded? 
    • We must not let a sense of beauty vanish from the world. 
    • Surely we are entering a land of milk and honey? Must we take our own lunch? LOLOLOLOL.
    • No one except Mrs. Halloran may wear a crown. hehehehehe.
Other general reflections:
  • The Demon Lover may just have been my first entrance to smutty romantasy, and boy was it fun ;)  I think my sister Lexie's friend, Emily, recommended it. Thanks, Emily!
  • I remember really enjoying the Neil Gaiman works, though I don't seem to have my notes from them. 
On the whole, it was really fun to read a topical book bingo. As you can see from later entries, I got rather attached to them. :)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)