I had a great day at work today. The NSW Readers Advisory Working Group meeting was held in Wagga so lots of the people I work with in the group, but don't get to actually see very often, came to town, several of them from Sydney. It was great to see them and we also Skyped a librarian in Denmark (poor fellow got up at 1am to chat with us) and a couple of librarians in Queensland. We worked out the themes for the Twitter reading group next year. Seeing as Ellen came all the way from the State Library, she is staying to run a seminar on future reference (as in reference work in libraries) tomorrow. Can't wait!

I forgot to take photos today so instead, I'll repost today's post on Love2Read. I can because I wrote it :)

I am a highly emotional person. I laugh easily and often, tears are always just under the surface. I get very involved in what I read (and watch) so there are some books I have come away from with an intense feeling of dislike because they made me either too scared or terribly depressed. Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance is my least favourite of all the books I have finished (I’m sure I have started books I have disliked more but did not persevere with them) because the ending was so wrist-slittingly depressing. You often find it on a top 100 list.

Stephen King’s horror books are also favourites for many and I did read them as a teenager but what I liked about them was not the scary story but the way he wrote about American life. I rather lost my taste for America once I hit my twenties, and do not enjoy being scared, so haven’t read Stephen King since, though I have very much enjoyed quotes attributed to him about Harry Potter!

If you like to be frightened, there are so many options!

Dystopia

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

1984 by George Orwell

Shade’s Children by Garth Nix

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Horror

The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: the classic regency romance – now with ultra-violent zombie mayhem by Seth Grahame-Smith

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Don’t get me started on movies, I can’t watch those or I’d never sleep!

Which stories have frightened you?