[grimoire] Seasonal reads

[Robert Mingee]

Man, I've really been absentee here of late -- my job seems to be a never-ending rat race, leaving my free time for keeping up with personal email lists almost non-existent.  For a while things were so crazy I really didn't even have time for recreational reading, but thankfully things have calmed down a bit now.  It could definitely be worse -- in this economy I'd rather be overworked than out of work like a lot of former colleagues...

Anyway, who has some special Halloween reads lined up for the month?  I started out with James Moore's "Harvest Moon", which was really good.  I finished that yesterday, and decided next to revisit "Once Upon a Halloween" by Richard Laymon, since it had been a while.  Other choices I considered were Stewart O'Nan's haunting "The Night Country", CD's massive "October Dreams" anthology, and M.R. James' "A Pleasing Terror", the latter 2 of which I'll probably pick and choose a few things from, assuming I finish my current read in time.  I've got a couple of other Halloween books I haven't read yet, the most recent 2 in Earthling's Halloween series (aside from this year's, which I don't think is out yet, but I could be wrong), but I decided to save those for next year.

Anyone have a particular recommendation for good stories to read to kids in the 9-13 age range?  Obviously the low end of that is somewhat more limiting, but I have a 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son, and I think it'd be fun to start reading ghost stories in the evening as Halloween approaches.  Both really like Halloween and are into mildly scary things (they both will go to family-geared haunted houses with me unlike their mother the self-professed chicken :-).  I'm sure there have got to be M R James stories that would be appropriate, and choosing some "classics" definitely appeals to me, but A Pleasing Terror is so huge I'm not sure where to start.  For that matter, I'm sure there are also some works by Poe that would be OK.  I plan to poke around, but I thought someone here might have a personal favorite or 2 they could recommend off the top of their head.  Most of my favorites that come to mind would be a bit too much for my daughter.

Hopefully all is well with everyone, and I'll try to be a more frequent poster again.  Carla, you still out there?  It's been ages since we corresponded.  Can you believe my daughter, the first official grimoire baby, is 9? :-)

-- robert
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