as of lately i have found my reading habits leaning towards horror fiction. this is a genre i loved a few years ago during my incessant watching of buffy the vampire, but recently i have been let down as a whole. before halloween i went to half price books and purchased 8 horror novels thinking i could down one to two a week like i usually can. it’s now november and i have only finished one and quit the other one. now i find myself with a little predicament. do i continue and finish the rest, or do i give the genre another go around?
before i decide, i have to get a few things off my chest about the genre. first, why does it have to be near impossible to find a horror book that does not heavily rely on romance as its key plot point. the last book i chocked down hadd at least one sex scene per chapter. dont get me wrong i dont mind sex in my books, but i do mind sensless sex just to fill pages. the whole book felt like the author had a certain page count he had to reach and decided poorly written sex scenes were in order to fill that page count.
my next biggest complaint is the lack of actual horror in these so-called horror novels of today. everything just seems so tame compared to the classics like Richard Matheson’s hell house and i am legend. even Washington Irving the legend of sleepy hollow is more terrifying than half of the other books out there today. i remember when i finally found a copy of i am legend when the film came out, i read it straight through in one day. afterwards i found my self dwelling on the loneliness of the main character. today i just finished howl-o-ween and i can honestly say that there was not a single scene or feeling that the book left me with. if it was a movie i could forgive it for being terrible, but i have invested too much time into this book to come up with nothing and yet that is exactly what i have. no visions of headless riders in the woods. no sense of abandonment and dread. just hours spent trying to craft a picture in my imagination, yet there is not a single line on the canvas of my mind.
where does this leave me? i know there is more to say, but i am to disappointed to write anything else. maybe i can come back in the future and finish what i have started, but for now this blog remains like my thoughts on the genre as a whole, wanting more and not yet receiving it.
