All Hallow's Read: because there aren't enough traditions that involve giving books

October 31, 2011 9:11 AM

"This Halloween, give somebody a scary book, to read. That's it. That's the idea. It's going to be a tradition." It's an idea Neil Gaiman came up a year ago. It's called All Hallow's Read, with a website and everything, which has book recommendations of all sorts, plus stickers, bookmarks, cards, and a small story you can print off, as well as a poster contest for next year's event.

There's also the Twitter hashtag #AllHallowsRead, and a bunch of give-aways on various sites (Google search link, as to avoid playing favorites).

posted by filthy light thief (22 comments total)

Spanier's Algebraic Topology ought to do the trick nicely.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:18 AM on October 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Should be about as popular as the houses that give away toothbrushes. If there's one thing that'll make reading cool, it's setting it up to fail the expectations game against candy. I have a better idea: Read to your kids. And not just on Halloween.

Also, it was thoughtful of Neil Gaiman to list many scary books by well-known scary book author Neil Gaiman.
posted by DU at 9:22 AM on October 31, 2011

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, collected by Alvin Schwartz, with new illustrations by Brett Helquist

...are you fucking kidding me? Half the, er, "fun" of that book was the fact that Stephen Gammell's illustrations were, uh, the stuff childhood trauma is made of.
posted by griphus at 9:26 AM on October 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

This year I'm just giving people High Rise and waiting for their will to live to die.
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM on October 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, collected by Alvin Schwartz, with new illustrations by Brett Helquist

...are you fucking kidding me? Half the, er, "fun" of that book was the fact that Stephen Gammell's illustrations were, uh, the stuff childhood trauma is made of.

Yeah wait what? New illustrations? Those books are the Playboy magazines of scary stories, kids didn't read them for the articles.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 9:33 AM on October 31, 2011

I'm afraid you're mistaken, Whelk. The new Nicholas Sparks novel is called The Best Of Me.
posted by griphus at 9:34 AM on October 31, 2011

Should be about as popular as the houses that give away toothbrushes. If there's one thing that'll make reading cool, it's setting it up to fail the expectations game against candy.

Did you look at any of the links? There's no suggestion of giving books to trick-or-treaters, just of giving somebody a scary book indepedent of trick-or-treating.
posted by Zed at 9:38 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like it when people try to get new positive traditions going. Things like "let’s make fun of homeless people" or "let’s dress like pimps" get a "hell yeah", anything genuine gets snark.
posted by bongo_x at 9:50 AM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Thanks, Zed. If you can't watch YouTube where you are, I've transcribed it:

Hello, I'm Neil Gaiman. I'm an author, and I'm here to talk to you about something that concerns all of us. It's something called All Hallow's Read. The idea(r) of it is incredibly simple. This Halloween, give somebody a scary book, to read. That's it. That's the idea. It's going to be a tradition. In ten years time, everybody is going to be giving somebody else, or lots of somebody elses, a scary book for Halloween. But for now, we're starting with you. All Hallow's Read. We're not saying don't give candy. Candy is important. Candy is important, fake blood is important, uh, zombie teeth, incredibly important. Do they have zombie teeth? If they have zombie teeth, they'd be incredibly important. The point is, give somebody a scary book. Give kids scary books that kids would like, and give adults scary books that adults would like. If you have friends, give them the kind of scary books friends would like. Buy the scary books for them. Borrow scary books for them. Get them second hand. Check them out of your library. Your local librarian would be a fine source of information on scary books. So would your local book seller. The important thing is, All Hallow's Read, give somebody a scary book this Halloween, and spread the joy. Well, the terror.

Also, the book recommendations are from 11 sources, one of them being Neil Gaiman, which does not include a single Neil Gaiman book (if you can't view PDF from your current location).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:54 AM on October 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not wake up. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to wake up was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to wake up. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and please wake up.

hooray for creepy reads!
posted by curious nu at 9:57 AM on October 31, 2011 [7 favorites]

If you want a quick read, The Colour Out of Space should do nicely.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:05 AM on October 31, 2011

You can get the entire works of HP Lovecraft on your Kindle for .99.
posted by jquinby at 10:09 AM on October 31, 2011

Or Ghost Stories of an Antiquary for free.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 10:35 AM on October 31, 2011

You can get the entire works of HP Lovecraft on your Kindle for .99.

Or the same compilation for your Kindle or any epub-supporting ereader for free.
posted by Zed at 10:39 AM on October 31, 2011

jquinby: You can get the entire works of HP Lovecraft on your Kindle for .99.

I was going to balk at someone trying to charge for public domain text, but it sounds like the collection is well done, and 1) you can get it for free, or 2) donate to Cthulhu Chick on her website, or 3) buy it on Amazon and support her for her efforts.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:46 AM on October 31, 2011

The Lovecraft collection is pretty well put-together (no obvious typos or OCR glitches) and I was cool with the .99 for her work.
posted by jquinby at 10:58 AM on October 31, 2011

I read quite a bit of horror, and SF--both old school and new school, and have for a while; i also watch horror tv and horror film, in all kinds and varieties. While books have unnerved me (including but not limited to Lovecraft, Disch, Ballard, and that fairly recent, v. good anthology of Victorian Ghost Stories, and various stuff from theological traditions) it hasn't terrorized me-- i don't know why this is the case, but for some reason, i cannot think of a book that I can give to someone and say, here, look, this scared me, but I could give them thousands of hours and tv and film--maybe it's visual--like Hans Baldung Grien's etchings, or Japanese ghost images, or Fusli paintings, or Tibetan depictions of hell, or etc scare me too.

I don't know what this means
posted by PinkMoose at 12:26 PM on October 31, 2011

I have a sweet book of ghost stories with Gorey illustrations and I just need to decide which little girl's pillow to leave it under...
posted by padraigin at 12:36 PM on October 31, 2011

>While books have unnerved me (including but not limited to Lovecraft, Disch, Ballard, and that fairly recent, v. good anthology of Victorian Ghost Stories, and various stuff from theological traditions) it hasn't terrorized me-- i don't know why this is the case, but for some reason, i cannot think of a book that I can give to someone and say, here, look, this scared me, but I could give them thousands of hours and tv and film—…<

As I get older I realize more and more that people just process information differently, and so see the world differently. I’m a bit the opposite of your description, I’ve had to put books down because they were so intense, but can count on the fingers of one hand the number of movies that were really scary and have plenty of fingers left. I usually have a hard time paying attention to horror films because I’m not getting it.

When my wife and I went to see The Exorcist re-release years ago, I remember walking out and she said "that’s still one of the scariest movies ever". I was actually taken aback because it never even occurred to me that you would actually be frightened watching it. On the other hand, the Silent Hill games left me tired afterwards because they were so intense for me.

I think for me, books, and somewhat video games, are something I’m "in". Movies, and (oddly) to a slightly lesser extent pictures, are just something I’m looking at, a representation.
posted by bongo_x at 1:44 PM on October 31, 2011

padraigan, is it the NYRB collection Gorey edited himself? I had that by my bed for weeks earlier this year; it's a very cool collection of Victorian-era creepingness - mostly low-key horror, but some (like W. F. Harvey's "August Heat") really odd and unsettling. And for historical interest the collection can't be beat.

It'll be a perfect gift for next year's All Hallow's Read.
posted by mediareport at 1:45 PM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

padraigan, is it the NYRB collection Gorey edited himself?

It's not, it's called..."scary ghost stories" or something very similar, but now I can't remember which box it's in. It will have to wait for next year.
posted by padraigin at 7:25 PM on October 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Neil Gaiman on Craig Ferguson Oct 31 2011
posted by homunculus at 8:55 AM on November 2, 2011 [1 favorite]