Collecting books is like any collectable. You have to decide which ones to collect.
I collect vintage horror novels.
For some reason they go well with Christmas.
One of my few first editions is this hardback Hell House by American Richard Matheson [1926-2013] penned in 1971. It was later filmed in 1973 as The Legend of Hell House starring Roddy McDowell and a band of scientists pitted against the evil of the Belasco House.
Although easily done it shouldn't be confused with The Haunting of Hill House written by fellow American Shirley Jackson [1916 - 1965]. This is how the 1959 first edition looked and I'd love it in my bookcase.
It was later filmed in 1963 as the atmospheric black and white shocker The Haunting, one of the most frightening films of all time.
I do have another of Shirley Jackson's books on my shelf, Wir Haben Immer Im Schloss Gelebt. This is the 1991 German paperback version of We Have Always Lived in the Castle [1962], which I found in a German charity shop.
The 1962 first edition, which I'd love too, had a particularly scratchy cover.
The theme of the castle reminds me of another eerie tome I own, I'm The King of the Castle by English author Susan Hill, written eight years later.
My paperback has what I assume to be a detail from a painting by Van Gogh on the cover in an attempt to convey the the story's fields and crows so important to the bully at the heart of this dark tale.
The carrion crow on the book's 1970 first edition is, however, a much more powerful image in my opinion and again a collectable book I would like to have.
Susan Hill, born in Scarborough on the English Yorkshire coast in winter 1942, went on to greater fame with her neo-classic The Woman in Black from 1983.
A solicitor's gothic report reminiscent of Stoker's Dracula but written a century later, Hill tapped into the ghosts' motherlode with this tale of spectral wrath set on a lonely islet in Northern England probably not too far from where I live in Yorkshire.
It has since been performed to much clapping in London's West End and produced no less than three times for the big screen: a fabulous music-free favourite of mine from 1989 and two less atmospheric loud modern efforts starring Harry Potter.
My own copy is a well thumbed nineties paperback lined with sand from several summer holidays but the copy to drool over is this gorgeous first edition, another one noticeably lacking from my bookcase!
Have you any books you love or would love to have readers?
I collect tv tie-ins. I've got all the Anderson ones for example. I'm also collecting the different editions of Brian Stableford's "Hooded Swan" novels as they are favourites of mine.
ReplyDeleteI have a lot of TV tie ins too Kev. film tie ins too. Are there any you are looking for at the mo?
DeleteI like lots of different books Woodsy. If I had to pick two all-time-faves though, I'd say 'Dispatches' (Michael Herr), and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' (Ken Kesey).
ReplyDeleteWill have to look up Dispatches Tone. Never read Cuckoos Nest but I loved the film. The big guy lifting the sink was phenomenal. I was given Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion in 1980 in my hippy days when I lived on a bird reserve. To my shame I've never read it. It's gathering dust in the attic!
DeleteDispatches was/is, for me at least, the defining piece of literature about the Vietnam War experience, Woodsy. Set against an unpopular, intensely mobile, media saturated, war... Michael Herr's personal account is a beautifully penned narrative, which personifies the rock-n-roller vibe of that controversial conflict. I was a teenager when I first read it and I've revisited the book several times since.
ReplyDeleteAs for Ken Kesey's Cuckoo's Nest... I love the characterisation of the anarchic McMurphy and his oppositional defiance towards the insane regime of the psychiatric institution and it's matriarchal head nurse. I read the book some years before I finally saw the movie on VHS. It was a double win. Cuckoo's Nest provided one of the odd occasions when I found a film that stayed true to the literary integrity of the powerful novel it was based upon :)
some great cover art there Woodsy, especially the moggy ang Hughesian crow!
ReplyDeleteYes crows always add something to the spectral mix. They are gothic birds. For me solitary crows landing in leafless trees are the essence of winter.
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