Both OB and I have very busy Septembers planned - I will be road-tripping from Tennessee back to Oregon with my son and husband, after my husband drops off my daughter at her new home (sobs).

Therefore, we are proposing only one buddy read for this Halloween bingo, to start on October 1!

Our theme this year is: haunted houses. It's time to begin nominations!

Please nominate ONE book that is related to the general theme of "haunted houses". Prior to nominating something obscure, do some research on sourcing. Ideally, the book will be still in print for a reasonable price, and will be widely available through the library so everyone can join in if they want to!

Nominations are open through next Monday! Once the nominations are closed, I'll make some decisions about polling. If there are more than 5 or 6 nominations, I'll probably do two polls - an initial poll to narrow down the choices, and then a final poll to select the book.

As was the case last year, the buddy read book can be used as a "wild card" to fill any space, so long as the reader finishes the book and posts at least one substantive post on the discussion thread! Buddy reads can be a lot of fun!

Thanks, everyone!

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It's short (125 pages) and free at the Gutenberg project (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/696). It would count for the Gothic, Ghosts, and Classic Horror squares.

Hell House by Richard Matheson from 1971 - it's popular classic horror. It's about 300 pages and still in print. It should be easy to find in the library, as a cheap used paperback, or $10 in the Kindle store.

Reply to post #2 (show post):
PM - one nomination only (although they are both solid nominations), please! Which one do you want to settle on?

Hell house - I've had a tattered paperback copy sitting on my shelf for a while.

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

I'm going to nominate The Sundial by Shirley Jackson, because I am always ready to read more Shirley Jackson.

I'll snag Portable Magic's other nomination then:
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

I've been tempted to read it since Austen mentioned it in ... the one book of hers whose title I can never remember. You know which one. ;-)

I'm assuming you mean Northanger Abbey where she names all sorts of gothic fiction? That could be cool. I should probably read that.

I'm thinking I should nominate something wacky and fun though, like Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. It's got witches and evil elves.

Reply to post #8 (show post):
Hmm. Now there's an idea. Wyrd Sisters -- haunted castle?

I love the idea of a Discworld buddy read for HB. Maybe one of these days someone will start a Discworld book club.

Hmm...haunted castle may trump evil elves. Perhaps we could do a rogue read of one of the witches' books in September anyway?

Discworld book club could be interesting, although I'm not sure I could devote enough time to it. I'm afraid I haven't been spending much time on my grand re-read of the series (plus catching up the three I haven't read).

I'd definitely be up for a rogue read as well. And a Discworld Club ...

Haunted castle sounds beyond awesome.

At the risk of going completely off-topic, is it necessary to read the Discworld books in any particular order?

Reply to post #14 (show post):
Almost none of them. And you definitely don't have to have read the first "Witches" book (Equal Rites) before reading Wyrd Sisters. Equal Rites is, if anything, a very early prequel -- for all practical purposes Wyrd Sisters really *is* the first "Witches" book.

ETA: Also, the various subseries are substantially self-contained. So you don't have to know any of the other subseries, either -- and the few common denominators that define the entire series are very easy to pick up on, regardless which book you start with.