Okay, I've established that I like me some horror. I don't really like definitive "Ten Best" lists (writing them anyway; I love reading them), so I'll just talk about seven I really like. Some are only loosely horror, but it's my list, so there!

1.   The Arabian Nightmare - Robert Irwin  

    What a weird-ass book this is. A young Englishman comes to medieval Cairo during an epidemic. The victims fall into a never-ending nightmare that they can't remember if and when they wake. Balian, our protagonist, runs into various bizarre characters, such as Dirty Yoll the story-teller (who is also our narrator), possibly comes down with the nightmare, is victim of various conspiracies... It gets very strange, not least when the narrator dies, but keeps telling the story, and then gets better... maybe.

2.   Needful Things - Stephen King  

    Look, I know many people think of this as one of King's worst works, but I love it. Besides, do you need yet another person extolling the virtues of IT, The Shining, or 'Salem's Lot? Of course not.

So, the devil comes to Castle Rock, promising the citizens their fondest wish if they'll just do him one small favor... The premise is awesome, the characters incredible, and some of the writing (particularly the prologue) is the best King has ever published. Scoff if you must, I love this  book.

3.   The Book of Skulls - Robert Silverberg 

    Four college kids go to the desert, seeking the cure for mortality. Two must die, so the others may live forever. Dark, hedonistic, philosophical, and amazing. Told from four different, first-person perspectives in such a way that you never get confused as to who is currently narrating. Brilliant.

4.   The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson,Laura Miller  

    If you know anything about horror fiction, you've heard of this. Do yourself a favor and read it. Probably the best haunted house novel I've ever read.

5.   The Off Season - Jack Cady  

    Another strange one. A wanderer comes to town, along with a cat who purrs in several languages. A Victorian-era madman comes back to life, promising to help the citizens make mucho moolah in the tourist trade by exploiting their many ghosts. There's a parsonage that never stays in the same place, only to become  a flying fortress during the final battle. Whoa.

6.   The Tomb (Adversary Cycle, #2) - F. Paul Wilson  

    First, and best, of the Repairman Jack series. Jack is hired to retrieve a strange necklace for an ancient Indian woman as all hell breaks loose in NYC. Action-packed with many memorable characters.

7.   The Club Dumas - Arturo Pérez-Reverte,Sonia Soto  

    Got into this book after seeing the movie The Ninth Gate, which was loosely based on this.

A rare book dealer is hired for two different jobs: to track down the manuscript of a certain chapter from The Three Musketeers; and to find out which, if any, of the three remaining copies off an evil tome is the original, for unknown reasons. Dark, funny, suspenseful, this introduced me to one of my favorite authors. If you like swashbucklers, check out his Captain Alatriste novels.

This is the second time this year I've attempted to read this book and I just cannot.

Library copy

Another case of the movie was better than the book. I took a bit of a gamble sticking this one on my Christmas book list. This book became the Johnny Depp movie 'The Ninth Gate' another favourite of mine. A dark atmospheric and somewhat chilling psychological thriller involving the occult and rare books. 

I managed barely 60 pages or so of the book. Most likely not my taste, a lot of info-dumping of historical details regarding a missing chapter from a famous Dumas book before getting to anything recognisable from the Ninth Gate movie, but the style of writing I found to be very dry and couldn't connect to any of the characters. Don't think I'm the right audience for this book, but I wanted to give it a shot. Not for me. 

December 11,Today a lot of books will go on their way to a new home. I hope those people do care about them... by the way, I never explained what I do for a living, so bare with me it is a little complicated.
I'm "staatlich anerkannte Heilerziehungspflegerin " (lovely German language), a care assistant or curative educating nurse, working with mentally disabled adults. This means shift work and it means also that we can not meet up very often for after hours or such, because someone must be there. So our Christmas dinner is the one day in a hole year were we all can get together, except for one night watch... She gets her present tonight from a colleague, to sweeten the lonely watch.

But there are more books to come, so here the one for today, but I'm to lazy to write about, I need a shower and some nice cloth. So you have to look them up yourself.

 This results in 52 books from Charity against 95 Books from Amazon.

It's the first day of a new month, which basically means, it's summary time :) I chose some really good books last month and now I only have one book left to finish my goal to read 50 (for me new) books in one year!! I'm really sorry that I wasn't that active here on booklikes in the last couple of weeks, but a cold and quite a stressful time didn't leave much spare time and the little that I had, I just used to try to finish my book challenge. But let's get back to the books I read in November:

Die drei Musketiere (The Three Musketeers) by Alexandre Dumas - even though I chose the free kindle version, which sometimes was kind of exhausting to read, I absolutely enjoyed this book. I definitely needed to get used to the writing style, but in the end I think it actually benefited this book because it created a special feeling and transported me back into the time the story takes place in. 4 stars!!

Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett - once again a funny story about the wizzzard Rincewind. And even Twoflower, Cohen and the luggage. I concentrated a lot on the city watch books, but now that I have read this book I remembered how much fun the Rincewind stories are. I definitely need to continue with those books! 5 stars for an unbelieveable discworld book!

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - I don't know what I should write about this book... Margaret Atwood created an interesting book about a society that centeres around men and doesn't really value women. The story was quite thought-provoking and some aspects of this society really made me angry. The only thing I didn't like about this book...

btw I gave it 4 stars :)

Solo by William Boyd - Since I loved the books I've read from Boyd, I was quite curious about the newest James Bond novel written by him. One thing I can tell you: it's defintely not 100% James Bond like we know him from Ian Flemings books. But on the other hand, I recognized more James Bond characteristics than in Jefferey Deaver's Carte Blanche. It was an entertaining book about our favourite spy, so I gave it 3,5. But now that I think about it, maybe even 4 stars. Btw Boyds writing style was once again absolutely great!!

The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - I haven't really finished this book, but there are only about 20 pages left, so it definitely counts as 'read in November' :) It's kind of difficult to say something about Club Dumas. On the one hand I quite enjoyed the story, but on the other hand I really had problems with this book. When I brought myself to start reading, I really liked the book, but I never had felt the need to continue reading. Throughout the book I never thought, that I really really need to find time to read, because I wanted to know how this book ends. The story was a little bit slow and only started to become gripping about halfway through. But after about 50% those things changed and now I'm kind of hooked, so I would give this book three stars so far. 

Statistics

books read: 4 (5)

genres: spy fiction, dystopian literature, fantasy, historical novel

pages November: 2,003

pages 2013: 19,806

best book: Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett (I read a lot of great books this month, but because I'm a total Discworld fan, I have to choose this one)

worst book: The Club Dumas (I wouldn't say it's the worst book, but it was the one that I had a few problems with)