http://elskermeg.wordpress.com/2006/09/04/rip-autumn-reading-challenge/

The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson
Kerfol by Edith Wharton
The Pomegranite Seed by Edith Wharton
The Mezzotint by M.R. James
Casting the Runes by M.R. James
The Haunted Dolls’ House by M.R. James
The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

And two marvelous very short novels:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Victorian Chaise Longue by Marghanita Laski

Also, I’ve dabbled in writing some ghost stories myself, so if you’re at all interested in reading some completely sophomoric attempts at such things, I can email one or two of those to you just for fun.

Fencer, I’ve been wanting to read Fahrenheit 451 for a really long time. Thank you for that bit about writing from Bradbury — he’s the real thing, isn’t he? You can tell he writes because he loves it and he’s managed to get through any anxiety he might ever have had to produce a lot of really fine fiction for a really long time.

Hey Mick — there is indeed something about what you don’t see, what happens off stage that can be incredibly chilling. Thank you for this recommendation. And it’s certainly nice to see your virtual self.

He has one discussion, for instance, where he talks about at the beginning he was trying out what he could write that meant something to him. He began to make lists of titles, long lines of nouns. “These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface.” The titles were very simple but meant something quite specific, aroused a specific feeling: The Lake. The Baby. The Scythe. The Trapdoor. The Dwarf. And so on.

But to get back more to the point of your post, the scariest of his stories for me is Fahrenheit 451. A world where the job of the fireman is to burn books!? The horror.

litlove, as always, those are just wonderful suggestions and I am excited about incorporating them. I don’t know anything about French literature, although my childen are French speakers, and I’m looking forward to exploring an entire literature.

Bikeprof — Thank you for those marvelous ideas. I read Ray Bradbury as a teenager, inspired by a science teacher, Mr. Ufer, who used to tell us stories, totally by heart, from books just like Ray Bradbury. It was a Friday tradition and now, as an adult, I can’t imagine how he could possibly have memorized them well enough to tell them. Legend has it he also once lit his moustache on fire during a particularly exciting experiment, something that probably never happens to English professors!

Hi Dorothy of the Century — I’m with you. I think Carl’s doing a great service to us all (and I noticed he has some very sexy book covers up today, forwarding the pleasure project just a little in the process.) And thank you Carl, for the Bradbury suggestion. I like the sound of that.

Courtney, you can be a reader’s muse, how about that? And I know you’re writing, which doesn’t leave that much room for reading. xxoo, BL

Welcome Marta and Ex Libris!  Thank you so much for those suggestions. It’s a funny thing — here in California, I’ve just woken up, and you guys are already up and moving around, thinking and reading — while I was snoozing away, dreaming of the Bradbury house where all the people are absent (in fact, all the people in the world seem to be absent) but everything’s still on automatic and the toaster and the other appliances keep working until, well, they go utterly haywire and the world ends in a blaze of astonishing proportions.

http://www.amazon.com/Homecoming-Wonderfully-Illustrated-Short-Pieces/dp/0060859628/sr=8-4/qid=1157113164/ref=pd_bbs_4/002-8236895-3658440?ie=UTF8&s=books

Glad you’re joining in.