The Book of Lists: Horror

Back in the 70s and 80s, The Book of Lists was a bestselling series. The franchise has now been revived, specializing in specific genres and subsets. One of the new entries is The Book Of Lists: Horror, edited by Amy Wallace, Del Howison (owner of Dark Delicacies, one of the premier bookstores specializing in horror), and Scott Bradley, with contributors including Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Eli Roth, and many others.

It's a pretty simple format ranging from fact ("The Top Six Grossing Horror Films in the United States") to opinion ("The Twenty Best Opening Lines"). The opinion lists invite challenge and dissent, but that's what they're there to do (see my sidebar for examples). There's something here to interest anyone interested in horror, and the format encourages reading in short bursts. Many of the individual contributors will be familiar to fans of horror movie or horror fiction. My one quibble with the book is I wish it were better indexed. If you want to refer to a remembered list, you have to thumb through the book to find it. Still, for $14.95, it will probably find its way to the bookshelves of most horror fans.