5. "Sharp Teeth" by Toby Barlow

Toby Barlow tackles the werewolf legend in Sharp Teeth, a novel-in-verse. While the plot coalesces somewhat slowly, the characters are compelling: a compassionate dog-catcher, a weary cop, and various members of the three werewolf packs prowling and plotting in the greater Los Angeles area.

There's a level of brutality in the book that can be difficult to take, especially in descriptions of dogfights and the cruelty perpetrated by some of the dogcatchers. But there's also a strong sense of vengeance toward those who exploit animals, exhaustion at the harshness of life, and hope and possibility. Barlow's poetry sometimes reaches eloquence, and I have to admit to misty eyes at the end.

156. "Wormwood" by Poppy Z. Brite

So, as I was driving from Georgia to North Carolina, I decided I needed to reread Wormwood, Poppy Z. Brite's first short story collection. Most of the stories are set in the rural South, although there are also some New Orleans entries. Brite was between 18 and 24 when he wrote these stories, and that comes through in both positive and negative ways--there's freshness, enthusiasm, and excitement, but also an overly dramatic and adjective-ridden prose (these are faults I still fight, so no harsh criticism here). I first read this collection as a goth graduate student at Penn State, which isn't the South but does have lush vegetation, humidity, and quirky, isolated mountain towns, so I could kind of relate to the world in the stories. I'm not sure I'd ever read the book in its entirety since then. Rereading it was a fun little jaunt into nostalgia and also helped me wrap my head around a few issues in my own writing.

133-135. "Goosebumps: The Campfire Collection"

Goosebumps: The Campfire Collection consists of three R.L. Stine novels: The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, Ghost Camp, and Welcome to Camp Nightmare. I'd never read a "Goosebumps" title, and I didn't have high expectations, but I was still disappointed. I'd hoped for a good little frisson of fear, at least; only the first title delivered, and only sort of. I didn't see the end coming; the twist was decent, but the narrator was such a brat that I had trouble caring about her fate.

35. "Drood" by Dan Simmons

After spending several days with the lengthy Drood by Dan Simmons, I'm still not sure what to say about it. Narrated by William Wilkie Collins, the book follows the adventures and misadventures of his "frenemy" (to use an anachronistic but fitting term), the aging Charles Dickens. After he nearly dies in a railway crash, Dickens tells Collins about his encounter with the strange and sinister Drood, a figure that continues to obsess and haunt him--or at least this is what Collins believes. And Drood himself becomes the muse or motive or mystery behind Dickens' final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Simmons' Collins comes across as a bitter, vindictive, arbitrarily cruel man. I haven't read any biographies or contemporary accounts of him, so I don't know whether this is an accurate portrayal or not. However, I very much enjoyed his novels The Moonstone and The Woman in White, while I find Dickens virtually unreadable. (Is it heresy for an English major to say this? I no longer care.) Dickens, though, fares no better in the novel, emerging as a narcissistic, controlling figure who insists that his "friends" refer to him as "The Inimitable."

The portrayals of both men intrigued me enough that I'm adding biographies of them to my Wish List, and I downloaded a couple more Collins novels for my new Kindle (a Christmas present from my parents).

Does that make Simmons' book a success? I'm not sure. There are definitely suspenseful, dark, creepy aspects that make for satisfying reading. But, as in some of his other lengthy works (and many of Stephen King's, as well), I get the sense that Simmons wrote himself into a corner and wasn't sure how to extricate the plot. The ending seems rushed, abrupt, and anticlimactic; the novel builds and builds toward what should be an intense climax but doesn't quite deliver.

That said, not every writer can take two disagreeable, arrogant, nasty, manipulative characters and make them compelling enough that I'm willing to turn almost 800 pages to learn their fates. Simmons certainly deserves props for doing that, and doing it very well.

31. "Creature" by John Saul

John Saul makes a foray into Colorado in Creature, a late-80s horrorfest about a "too-perfect" company town hiding a dark secret. Having written one well-received but thus-far-unpublished creature story set in the Colorado mountains, I'm obviously intrigued by the premise. Creature is a fast read, a little too fast--the characters are sketches, and the plot develops too quickly. Saul goes for the jugular on the horror without spending the time Stephen King does in building characters and suspense. But his horror is more consistent than King's, which I find hit-or-miss.

1. "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman

I know plenty of people who think Neil Gaiman is amazing, but I'm a bit more ambivalent. Half the time I think he's amazing, and half the time I feel like he's overrated. I did not, for example, find Coraline deliciously creepy, as many others did. So I had mixed feelings about reading The Graveyard Book, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I'm glad I did: It turned out to be satisfying, quirky, thought-provoking, and, yes, deliciously creepy.

Our hero is young Nobody Owens, known as Bod, who crawls into a graveyard one night as the rest of his family is being murdered in their beds. (The killer carelessly left the front door open, allowing the toddler to escape.) Adopted by ghosts and raised under the guardianship of the graveyard's resident vampire, Bod grows up protected from the man who killed his family. Various residents of the graveyard teach him history, reading, writing, and other academic subjects, as well as more esoteric skills such as Fading, Haunting, and Dreamwalking. Bod is a typical boy, but his coming-of-age adventures include being captured by ghouls, finding ancient treasure buried in a hillside, and befriending the ghost of a witch. Finally, Bod must leave the graveyard to confront the evil that left him orphaned.

I do wish Gaiman had fleshed out his villains a bit more, but they're original and entertaining. Bod is a likable, noble, and sympathetic hero, and the denizens of the graveyard make for a diverse, often funny, very human cast. And of course, although I knew what was going to happen at the end, I still cried a little. But that's me.

The Graveyard Book was my Halloween read, a young adult book that offers plenty of appeal to so-called grownups as well. Heartily recommend!