Quote of the Week

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

-Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

Happy Halloween!

Goodreads Blog Post: How to Find the Love of Your Life in a Bookstore: The Ray Bradbury Method

Source: Goodreads Blog Post: How to Find the Love of Your Life in a Bookstore: The Ray Bradbury Method

This is a sweet story and the kind of meet cute I think all book lovers would like to have.

Spooky Reads

Happy Halloween!  In celebration of the holiday, I thought I share a few of my favorite Halloween reads.  As a rule, I do not read many horror or thriller novels.  I’m just too much of a wimp.  But during the month of October, I do enjoy a seasonal read.  One of my go-to books for Halloween is Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree, which I discovered thanks to the animated version shown on television in the 1990s.  While I still enjoy watching that movie version, the book transports you to small town America on that most haunting of nights thanks to Bradbury’s powers of description.  My favorite phrase from the book is “a perspiration of boys”.  How wonderful is that?

For a scarier read, I enjoy reading the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe.  “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a particular favorite of mine.  An audio version presented during class in middle school still haunts me with the palpable beating of the heart through the floorboards.

And Halloween isn’t just for fiction.  Though I scare easily, I do enjoy a good ghost story.  Especially if they occur in places I can recognize.  In high school, I read Ghosts Along the Bayou by Christine K. Word and particularly enjoyed the stories of places near my own hometown in South Louisiana.  It is the perfect read on a dark, stormy Louisiana Halloween night.