List Love 4: 10 Best Horror Novels That Have Been Made Into Good Horror Films

Time for a little List Love.

I came across this list of 10 best horror novels made into films when I was checking if had forgotten to mention something good on my Top Ten Books for Halloween list.

This does not seem to be a consensus list, but rather one person’s opinion, but since film adaptations of books are a subject I am interested in, I decided it was worthwhile to look at this list in an issue of List Love.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971). The book made me afraid to go to sleep – the last book ever to do so. The movie was good, very creepy and the “pea soup” scene was disgusting.
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967). I have neither read nor seen this one, but the book is on my Top Mysteries Challenge list, so I will read it one day. I generally find that reading the book before I see the movie is better, so I will not be watching it until I am done with the book.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). One of my top 10 best supernatural suspense novels. The 1963 movie captured the atmosphere perfectly and was fairly faithful to the book. I haven’t seen the second movie, but I have been told it sucks. Both are titled The Haunting.
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988). Good novel, although I preferred Red Dragon, and the movie is very good, very creepy.
Misery by Stephen King (1987). I have neither read nor seen this one, and am not particularly interested in doing so.
The Shining by Stephen King (1977). Another one of my Top 10 supernatural suspense/horror novels. The Kubrick movie changed the story considerably but captured the atmosphere perfectly, while the TV mini-series was more faithful to the book but didn’t capture the atmosphere as well. My advice is to not view the Kubrick movie as an adaptation of the book as much as an independent work inspired by it.
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818). I wrote my thesis in English literature on this novel. My favourite film adaptation is the old James Whale film, starring Boris Karloff. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was more faithful, but it doesn’t have the atmospheric tension of the old black-and-white feature.
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957). I have neither seen nor read this one, but I like Wyndham’s writing and plan to read the book. It has been filmed twice as Village of the Damned and once as Children of the Damned. I am following a webcomic that speculates about what could have happened if the children in the story had grown up: FreakAngels.
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897). I also wrote a detailed essay about this one when I was in college. I have seen several film adaptations of it, but the two that I like best are the 1958 adaptation with Christopher Lee, who made a damn creepy count, and the Coppola version, Bram Stoker's Dracula, from 1992, which followed the book pretty well. This is probably the horror novel that has been filmed the most times, and definitely the one with the most spin-offs.
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972). This is one I have no desire to either see or read.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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