Mulberry Jam

Mid-November always makes me want to curl up with a good book. Preferably a scary book. My mental soundtrack in this season is the winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Just picture me in an armchair with a reading lamp over my shoulder listening to the rain outside.

Perhaps it’s perverse of me, but at this time of year I love reading something that will give me a chill in keeping with the dreary weather outside. I’ve just begun reading Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. It’s a collection of stories collected by Dahl, rather than written by him. You may remember Dahl for some of his own creepy stories, like “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Since I’ve just begun this book, I don’t know yet whether it will join the list of favorite short-story collections I go back to year after year. Here’s short list of my loves:

• The October Country, by Ray Bradbury
  Bradbury is a master at creating and sustaining an eerie atmosphere. All the stories are wonderful, but my favorite is “Skeleton,” about a man who becomes obsessed with his own.
• The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, ed. by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert
  This has lots of all-time classics, including the most chilling ghost story every written, “The Monkey’s Paw,” by W.W. Jacobs. It’s the all-time best illustration of the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”
• The Bone Key, by Sarah Monette
  This is a recent book of linked stories by Monette, who writes in a wonderfully antiquated gothic style. The tales are connected by a single protagonist, an archivist who works in a mysterious library-museum, who has a sensitivity to the strange and uncanny.
• The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter
  An oldie but a goody, this book came out in 1979. Not actually ghost stories, these are retellings of classic fairy tales in a much darker vein than normal.

What do you like to read when the weather turns dreary? I’d love to get some suggestions for my nightstand once I finish the Dahl collection.