Who You Gonna Read? (Something of a Love Letter to Halloween Lit)
Friday night we ducked over to Disneyland's California Adventure to do their trick or treat thing with Claire, our neighbors, and their kids, which was loads of fun. Claire is very funny these days. She wasn't so much into the candy as she was going on the rides, the faster the better. We spun around on the Ladybug ride (think: teacups witha A Bug's Life accent) twice. Also, the bumper bugs, flying cookie boxes, carousel (I'd forgotten there was a carousel in the California Adventure), and for the very first time, took her on the Ferris Wheel. I have to tell you, the Ferris Wheel at California Adventure goes, very, very high. I love rollercoasters and the like, but being up this high, sitting still in a caged box spooked me a bit. Not Claire, though. She wanted to know why it went so slow.
(What's even funnier about this is that we watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown the next night. At bedtime, Claire said she never wanted to watch it again. "Why?" I asked. "Because Snoopy gets sad when that boy's playing the music on his piano." Damn, I love this kid.)
Toward the end of the night (almost 11pm...way past my bedtime) we were walking back toward the gates to get the kids home and happened across an outdoor dance floor where they were playing Ghostbusters. "Wow," I told my friend Mark. "I love this song. I can't believe how much I want to see that movie again now."
That's something I love about Halloween: some of the stuff it produces is like comfort food for my soul. Saturday, Claire and I were "buying" books from my bookshelf. Claire always, always without fail picks the same books initially. A bunch of Ray Bradbury stuff and Elizabeth Bear's Scardown. (No, I have no idea why but damn, I love this kid.) She gave me several other Bradbury books, including Something Wicked This Way Comes and From the Dust Returned. It'd been 15 years or so since I read Something Wicked... so after paying our cat Woodrow for the books, I lay down on the bedroom and read the first page.
I'm sad to say, I'd forgotten how much I love Ray Bradbury. I got up off the ground and went into the living room where Emma sat and read that first page to her, both of grinning like idiots. I think we're going to try and read the whole thing aloud together now. It might be one of the most perfect Halloween stories ever.
Over the weekend, I finished reading Samantha Henderson ( 's) excellent Heaven Bones. Not exaclty a Halloween story as it's a Victorian Era dark fantasy/horror novel, but it certainly brought the creepy, weird, and the macabre. I also read Bradbury's "The Dwarf" and two Joe Hill stories: "Best New Horror" and "20th Century Ghost" -- both which were excellent. I very much dig the daily experiemental serial Alasdair Stuart ( ) is doing on the Nostrum House Expedition this month. I'll probably crack Gaiman's The Graveyard Book open next, which I'm hoping will also be an excellent Halloween read. (I'm also put in mind of his comic book The Last Temptation starring Alice Cooper which is definitely an homage to Something Wicked...)
There's loads more crowding my bookshelf, too, and I'm a bit sad I can't read them all. Anyway, all this to say I think this might be my favorite time of year to read. And I especially love the spooky stuff.
Are there any books you love to read around Halloween? Or movies and TV show epiosdes?