So, I don’t happen to like horror novels very much. There are exceptions, but for the most part I don’t enjoy feeling dread or disgust or much of the rest of the genre stuff.
Which is fine, except that for some reason I keep borrowing novels through the library app, and getting a fair chunk of the way through them, feeling like they were well-written and all but that I wasn’t enjoying the feelings of dread and disgust, and realizing that they were horror novels.
I’m not sure what’s going on there. Is it that Overdrive (the library-loaning site I mostly use) is not doing a good job of describing the books I borrow? Are more horror novels being published that have other elements that appeal to me? Have the publishing conventions in the cover and blurbs and so forth changed in the last few years? Am I more squeamish than I used to be? I have no idea.
It is at least somewhat driving me to more re-reading, since at least then I know what genres those books are in.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Are you reading a lot of T Kingfisher, the adult alt of Ursula Vernon, expecting to find Hamster Princess but getting The Twisted Ones instead?
(Disclaimer: I’ve enjoyed all the Vernon / Kingfisher that I’ve read, but I haven’t read much of her horror stuff, including The Twisted Ones, but I’ve heard it’s an amazing horror novel.)
I have been reading a lot of T. Kingfisher, but only the fluffy romance ones with the severed heads and the gelatinous slime and the crow cages. You know, the sweet ones. I have not opened the ones marketed as horror. Well, I read the Blackbeard one, when it came out. That was nasty.
If I had been reading her fluffy romance books on the library app, though, and then picked these horror books up as ‘recommended if you like…’, then that would make sense to me. But (a) I have been mostly purchasing those books, most of which are not available on Overdrive, and (2) Overdrive’s ‘recommended’ feature is for amusement value only, and does not do anything so nearly-clever as recommend horror books because I have read non-horror books by a horror author. It would be more likely to observe my fondness for Ursula Vernon’s stuff and recommend, oh, Bob Odenkirk’s memoir, a Tom Clancy novel and a book of cupcake recipes.
My general habit is to scan at the (thumbnail) covers of their recent acquisitions once a week or so to put on holds, and also to scan through the currently-available covers, sorted by recent acquisition, and also to put a bunch of holds on things that are recommended by friends or on blogs or in reviews or shows up on award shortlists (if it looks like I might enjoy it). Then I don’t remember at all how any particular book wound up on my virtual shelf. Maybe I’m taking the recommendations of someone who likes horror, or at least likes it more than I do, and doesn’t think to mention the unspeakable dread.
Thanks,
-V.
Which is fine, except that for some reason I keep scrolling through the news articles on my phone’s News app, and getting a fair chunk of the way through them, feeling like they were well-written and all but that I wasn’t enjoying the feelings of dread and disgust.
I’ve been seeing horror previews turning up on non-horror DVDs, and horror ads during non-horror television, and I find it really painful because I do my best to thoroughly avoid horror. I used to read a little bit of horror, but only certain types, and I avoided most of it. Well, and I guess I did watch True Blood, but only because it was with other people, and I did provide some set dressing for True Blood once, but not until like Season 5. But what I was actually starting to say was that I thought we had a societal agreement that horror would never be sprung on people without their consent, and that agreement appears to have disappeared. I assume “we” decided that horror was sufficiently mainstream that there was no longer any reason to respect the small number of people who didn’t want to be exposed to it. It makes me unhappy, and it makes me jumpy when I’m watching things with my kid who I really don’t want to have be exposed to the genre.
That’s interesting! I don’t watch enough DVDs or commercial TV these days to have noticed. I wonder if (part of) what’s going on is that horror is now, as you say, sufficiently mainstream that (a) naturally I am seeing more of it because it’s a higher percentage of books published, and (2) being mainstream has thrown off the genre conventions that helped me not borrow horror novels from the library in the past.
I also am aware of the popularity of horror video games, but it seems unlikely I will accidentally play them.
Thanks,
-V.