COLLECTING JAMES HERBERT

I've just bought a second-hand copy of the Magic Cottage by the late James Herbert.

James Herbert was the wunderkind of British horror writing in the 1970's. Our very own Stephen King. I remember reading The Fog, The Rats and The Survivor in my teens. All very enjoyable and well written fear tales, at least one of which has been put on film.

The Survivor movie starred Robert Powell I seem to recall but it has not left a great impression on me. Maybe I ought to revisit it.

I wonder if many more of his tales have been made into films?

Herbert also penned Fluke about a dog that recalls its previous life as a human.  I never read Fluke but its on my bucket list. I often got it mixed up in my mind with a book I did read called the Plague Dogs, one of the icons of Nineteen Seventies animal writing by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down. I was a keen anti-vivisectionist in my teens and the Plague Dogs caught the mood perfectly.

Herbert also wrote many other novels, which I'd like to read. The Dark, Moon and The Spear. I don't actually know why I haven't read them bearing in mind I'm a horror novel nut and I have a huge collection of horror paperbacks. They just seemed to pass me by for some reason. I did read Sepulchre and recall one particularly grim scene in it which has stayed with me ever since!

And so to the Magic Cottage. It's on my small reading pile at the side of the bed. When I've finished Dead and Buried again, it'll rise to the top. I hope to have it finished by Christmas when I think the Missus will ask Santa to get me Starve Acre, the third creepy tome from the new wunderkind of horror, Andrew Michael Hurley.

His first two novels were real slow burners so I'm hoping for more scares in third one.

Have you read any James Herbert or Andrew Michael Hurley or Richard Adams readers? Do you collect books?