“Horror isn’t only a style, it’s a calling. A secret handshake at midnight.”
– Sadie Hartmann, introduction
“For the reason that flip of this century I’ve been an expert e-book recommender within the area of Readers’ Advisory. The crux of this work is matching books with readers via the native public library.”
– Becky Siegel Spratford, “Why Ask Why”
Becky Siegel Spratford is an expert librarian who focuses on horror. That’s, she focuses on sharing her acquired information of the style of horror with different librarians and readers throughout the nation, working to make sure that readers get the proper books for his or her tastes. She does this via Readers’ Advisories, via articles and essays, via telephone calls and emails with different librarians, and has develop into an acknowledged go-to individual for details about the style.
Spratford requested a lot of writers for an essay of not more than 1,500 phrases about, “Why I really like horror” and was shocked that so many busy writers discovered time to reply. Their solutions are gathered on this e-book and the writers are Brian Keene, Hailey Piper, John Langan, Alma Katsu, Gabino Iglesias, Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Grady Hendrix, Cynthia Pelayo, Clay McCleod Chapman, Nuzo Onoh, Rachel Harrison, Victor LaValle, Mary SanGiovanni, David Demchuk and Stephen Graham Jones. Sadie Hartmann (a.ok.a. podcaster “Mom Horror”), creator of 101 Horror Books to Learn Earlier than You’re Murdered, gives an introduction.
The solutions vary from “I grew up with it” – fairly just a few boil right down to that, although there have been a wide range of avenues main there, leaving this reader nostalgic concerning his personal studying historical past – to extra intensely private memoirs of sanctuary in and identification with the monstrous. I need to particularly be aware essays by Cynthia Pelayo, wherein a childhood overloaded with trauma was considerably mitigated by watching monsters on the small display screen; David Demchuk, who discovered sanctuary in horror from his wrestle with incapacity and the sense of being an outsider due to being queer; and Rachel Harrison whose anger at societal views of ladies erupts in simultaneous humor and outrage. Pelayo’s essay spurred me to learn her novel The Shoemaker’s Magician and Harrison’s essay result in studying her The Return, neither of which was on my studying checklist earlier than that.
Every essay comes with a quick introduction to the creator and their works by Spratford, and the suggestion of one other creator a reader may like if the reader enjoys this creator. The e-book is wrapped up by Stephen Graham Jones in a remaining essay that neatly summarizes a lot of what got here earlier than whereas providing private insights into the style and his personal attachment to it.
Every now and then one style or one other gives a e-book one thing like this, the place followers of that style, conscious of a scarcity of scholarship or important work dedicated to the style, take the problem and produce a piece analyzing the style. That has led to volumes of 1 author’s reminiscences about early studying and viewing, like Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, a number of writers providing studying ideas like Horror: The 100 Greatest Books or one reader producing a snapshot of the style within the current second, like Hartman’s 101 Horror Books to Learn Earlier than You’re Murdered. Like these, this one deserves to be learn by present style followers to glean perception into favourite writers, as an entryway into the works of unfamiliar writers, or simply as a reminder that you simply’re not alone in your style in fiction.
© 2026 Randy Cash
Paperback | Saga Press
WHY I LOVE HORROR, Essays on Horror Literature ed. Becky Siegel Spratford
June 2025 | 272 pages
ISBN: 9781668 20 5099
Assessment by Randy Cash
Leave a Reply