Stoker Awards

For some time, I've wanted to broaden my horror-reading horizons. Horror movies have never been a problem. For one, movies are short, so if you experiment with them you don't mind the bad ones as much as when you waste a lot of time on a bad book. Plus, movies have a way of embedding themselves in your consciousness through advertising, so I usually am on top of what's coming out. For me, horror books are different. I'm pretty well grounded in the classics of the genre (a good resource for classic horror movies and books are the appendices to Stephen King's Danse Macabre), but my reading has narrowed to King and Koontz over the last couple of years, with only the occasional exception. The problem is that it's hard to know what's coming out and, more importantly, what's good. As the title to this post suggests, I have stumbled on a solution: the Bram Stoker awards. My plan is to look through the titles on the ballot for best novel of 2004 and pick out the one or two that sounds most up my alley. Of course, I'll report back on my selections and my findings.