Columns

13 Things Book Covers Can Learn From Horror VHS Covers

October 28th, 2015

Let's flash back to a young Pete as he browses the aisles of Blockbuster.  He walks the store's perimeter to check for new movies. Sees if there are any guaranteed-in-stock titles that are all rented out, just for the sake of getting a coupon to rent something for free later (not that he ever actually WANTED to see Hope Floats).  And then, he steels himself and heads for the horror section. Friends, THIS is what prompted this column:

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Bookshots: 'The Monstrous' edited by Ellen Datlow

October 28th, 2015

Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review Title: The Monstrous Who Wrote It? It's that perfect mix of sentiment and horror, violence and survival, the unavoidable and the unspeakable. Edited by Ellen Datlow, the queen of horror anthologies.

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Product Review: Shelfie

October 26th, 2015

image courtesy shelfie.com Back in the late eighties/early nineties people complained that they'd have to replace their entire vinyl and cassette music collection with the new, supposedly superior CD audio format. Ditto complaints with the advent of iTunes, Amazon Music and other digital sound file shops. The same thing happened when DVDs became the standard format for home entertainment, replacing the VHS—and again when Blu-Ray discs rose to prominence.

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5 Chilling Books Set on Halloween

October 23rd, 2015

Halloween is upon us. There are plenty of book lists out there this time of year, promising spooky reads and haunted fun. Some are even on this very website! Finding a spooky read for Halloween is pretty easy. But what if you want something more specific: Stories that are set on Halloween? That’s a bit trickier, but we've got you covered.

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Storyville: 10 of the Scariest Moments of 2015

October 23rd, 2015

In the spirit of October and Halloween, here are my scariest moments of 2015.

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5 Scary Books to Read This Halloween (Plus 100 more)

October 22nd, 2015

With Halloween right around the corner it’s inevitable we’re going to be inundated with ‘top horror’ and ‘scary story’ lists. I’m adding to the noise with my own recommendations, but am hoping to provide you with something a little different.

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The Undead Don't Need Hall Passes: 7 YA Zombie Novels

October 22nd, 2015

October is the month to honor things that go bump in the night, and what better way to celebrate than by delving into the world of the undead? There's no lack of young adult novels dealing with zombies, with gems from authors like Courtney Summers and Jonathan Maberry. There’s something for every horror fan, from humorous tales of zombie infestation to gory accounts of undead attacks. There’s no doubt about it; when it comes to young adult literature, zombies are hot.

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How Libraries Acquire Books (Because Most People, Including Digital Piracy Advocates, Don't Seem To Understand This)

October 21st, 2015

A few years ago I wrote an editorial for this site about why digital piracy is super not okay. The TL;DR version is: If you steal art, that means you think art has no value, which means you are a jerk. Since art is not something you need to survive, you are also greedy. So if you pirate you are a selfish jerk. 

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Splatterpunks, Expanded Universes and 'Book of the Dead'

October 21st, 2015

Splatterpunk is a term that gets thrown around casually but isn't often clarified. It sprung out of the 1980s when “punk” was the term of choice, catching on with William Gibson's cyberpunk craze and rolling forward with K.W. Jeter’s coining of “steam-punks” in a 1987 letter to Locus magazine. While those two, and others, have kept ahold of certain niche fandoms, splatterpunk's popularity dwindled in the late 1990s. The genre, defined by one of its forefathers David J.

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10 Well-Written Horror Films Part III: Season of the Witch

October 20th, 2015

header image courtesy Slant Magazine We've come together again in this the tenth month of the year, with All Hallows' Eve just around the corner. We shall thus gather 'round the glowing box of moving pictures and partake of ghastly cinematic delights whilst gorging our stomachs with pumpkins of mellowcreme and other sweets guaranteed to later conjure such bellyaches of pure torment. We have been here before. We will always be here.

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