I’ve always been a fan of horror movies. Old school horror movies anyway. The Shining is one of my favorite movies ever. Alien and Aliens were both great. Psycho! What a movie. I also enjoy a good scream-queen fronted b-level horror or slasher film. The Nightmare on Elm Street series, for example. I am not a fan of the more modern gore and gross-out centered “torture-porn” kind of movie though. Assume I’ve never and will never watch most things that fall in that category. Until last year though, I’d never really read horror.
I don’t know why that is. Before 2012 I think I had read exactly two horror novels: The Shining by Stephen King and Dean Koontz’s From the Corner of His Eye, and one of those may not even really qualify as horror. While I didn’t hate either of them I didn’t love them either. I’d also read a handful of short stories that could be considered horror – all written by Harlan Ellison. That was the extent of my literacy in horror prose. 2012 was the year that changed.
