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Welcome to Monster Movie Month!

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and it’s true that in a horror movie you can experience in a a moment a feeling of terror you might never capture with words. With the right camera shots, music, and special effects, films do more than give a face to horror– they add new dimensions to storytelling. There are a lot of horror readers who also love horror movies (reviewer Colleen Wanglund is currently spending a lot of time at the New York Asian Film Festival)Yet there’s a divide between horror movie watchers and horror fiction readers–there are lots of people who watch horror movies who don’t read horror fiction, and there are many readers who don’t watch the movies.

This gives readers advisory librarians a special opportunity to share the horror genre with both audiences–watchers and readers. It can be hard to know what to suggest, especially if you don’t know much about the genre. In the recently published second edition to The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, author and RA librarian Becky Siegel Spratford suggested ten horror films for horror readers. Then my six year old Monster Kid asked if we would write about monster movies (he’s a big Godzilla fan). So we are declaring this July Monster Movie Month (I apologize to all those expecting Werewolf Month, but I promise we’ll still have something for you).

We created a Monster Movie Month web page where we’ll be posting reviews of some of the great movies in the horror genre, with suggested watch-alikes and read-alikes, and we’ll also have several guest blogs- you’ll want to take some time to read what Becky Siegel Spratford has to say about marketing horror, and what the podcasters from The Cutting Room horror movie podcast think about horror movies, books, and libraries.

We’ll also be sharing a variety of resources for further investigation- in addition to links on the web page, visit our Monster Movie Month board on Pinterest and you’ll find additional resources. Right now, we’ve got some great information on Lovecraftian horror movies and Godzilla, kaiju and giant monster movies, and there is more to come. Visit us often to see what new things we’ve posted to this blog and added to the Monster Movie Month web page. There is a ton of cool stuff here so take time to explore! And thanks for joining us for Monster Movie Month!

To find the resources for Monster Movie Month easily, check out the links below, and search for posts about Monster Movie Month on this blog’s tag archive under Monster Movie Month!

Monster Movie Month Web Page

Monster Movie Month Pinterest Board

Posted on July 1, 2012 by , 2 comments

Why Read The Classics?

Well, for one thing, they’re available. The Brevard County Library System in Florida pulled the erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey from its shelves this week after determining that it didn’t meet the library system’s selection criteria. Library services director Cathy Schweinsberg said,

“Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it’s been called ‘mommy porn’ and ‘soft porn.’ We don’t collect porn.”

What I find most interesting about this is that the intrepid reporter covering the story (click here to see it) did a little browsing in the library catalog, and found a variety of well-known erotic titles, including The Complete Kama Sutra, Fanny Hill, Lolita, Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and Fear of Flying (if she ever leaves journalism, she could have a bright future as a readers advisory librarian). When the library director was asked why these titles, with content of a similar nature, were on the shelves, she said:

“I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing… This is not a classic.”

(I wonder if they own Twilight?)

So if I want to check out erotica from the Brevard County Libraries, it has to be well-aged, and well-written. (I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t live in Brevard County). But this whole incident raises an interesting point. There are many who look down on the horror genre- on post 1974 horror in particular (to use Becky Siegel Spratford’s demarcation) and who wouldn’t dream of having those nasty covers, those possibly badly written books, anywhere nearby, because they’re not old enough and haven’t been canonized yet. And a lot of books ARE badly written and never will become classics. But people want them. They want that feeling. It’s not fair to dismiss the desires of your readers and users, whether those desires involve erotic Twilight fanfiction or ravening zombies.

If you happen to have a library that doesn’t have the horror fiction you are looking for, it doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. They are in disguise, lurking in the depths of the library- Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson… Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, Victor Frankenstein. If you can’t find the latest, try out the early greats. And then harass your librarian to get you the new stuff while you read… the classics.

Posted on May 5, 2012 by , Reply

The Best and Worst of Stephen King

I think we can all agree that Stephen King is such a part of American pop culture that it’s hard to have gotten through the past forty years without experiencing at least one of his stories in book, graphic novel, television, or movie form. Even people who don’t read horror may have read Stephen King- my sister, for instance, who has complete disdain for genre fiction, loved The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It’s actually one of the few books that she and my dad, who has much different reading tastes, will both discuss enthusiastically with each other.

King is a huge draw for reluctant readers. One King-obsessed guy I knew in college had never read anything until he discovered and devoured King. The Stand is the ONLY book I know of that my best friend has read cover to cover twice (she also brought the audiobook of Nightmares and Dreamscapes with her on an endless car trip we took together one summer to the Pennsic War. King in audio is pretty awesome).

Still, I am really pretty darn impressed that someone took the time to read everything he’s ever written and rank the books in order (click here to see the rankings). I know there are people who have read all of his stuff, but I certainly can’t claim to have done so. The rankings, as rankings always are, are pretty subjective and open to debate, but my gosh! It takes perserverance to get through some of those books (ahem, IT), and for the very reason that many non-readers of horror have found a King book they like, it’s hard, I think, to find someone who will find that all of his books will be personally appealing. I think that actually makes it hard for librarians to know which of his books to recommend. If someone comes in looking for another King book, is it because they loved Lisey’s Story, or because they were scared out of their wits by The Shining? I’d love to know if Becky Siegel Spratford, the RA queen of horror, has a list of read-alikes for them, since so many of them are so different in nature.

I will admit that I haven’t read a lot of the books that made the top ten. Some I had no desire to read, others I had no access to (a lot of the King I read was stolen from my dad’s bedside table). And my favorites, with the exception of Misery, didn’t make the top ten on this particular list. Carrie is right there at the top for me. When I read it in high school (which is the best time to read it) I literally jumped out of my seat when the bell at the end of study hall rang.

So, King. What are your top picks? Do you agree with the author of the rankings list?

Posted on April 26, 2012 by , Reply
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