The Horror Book Club

This month we are revisiting Beloved, which we first read back in June 2019.

Here’s the summary from Goodreads:
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.
Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

The meeting will start at 7pm and finish between 9.00 and 10pm (BST), with breaks in between. Just a reminder that the pub lets us to use the room at no charge so please do purchase drinks/food from the bar. Bringing in your own food from outside the pub is not allowed!

CHANGE OF DATE! We will be going to the BFI Imax on Saturday 15th November, 1.30pm screening.
Please note, everyone is responsible for purchasing their own tickets: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/imax/Online/mapSelect.asp

OK so not strictly speaking horror, but it's a King and we have to see if it beats the Arnie adaptation. We'll be going to see this along with The Constant Readers (All Things Stephen King) book group.

Blurb follows:
In the near-future, "The Running Man" is the top-rated show on television, a deadly competition where contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins. Desperate for money to save his sick daughter, Ben Richards is convinced by the show's ruthless producer to enter the game as a last resort. Ratings soon skyrocket as Ben's defiance, instincts and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite, as well as a threat to the entire system.

Just in time for Christmas, some poetry! There is a version of this read by Sir Ian McKellan on YouTube if you would prefer to listen, rather than read this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1raSUYAr0s0

Here’s the summary from Amazon:
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language. It is the longest major poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was written in 1797-98 and revised in 1817. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

The meeting will start at 7pm and finish between 9.00 and 10pm (BST), with breaks in between. This one will be online only due to the difficulty in booking venues in the run up to Christmas! I will post the Zoom link on this page about 10 minutes before the meeting is due to start.

We love to have something creepy and weird to read over Christmas, so let's all enjoy this short classic! There are free versions available on Kindle and YouTube.

Here’s the summary from Goodreads:
A manuscript is found: filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home - and its even stranger, jade-green double, seen by the recluse on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam.
Soon his more earthly home is no less terrible than his bizarre vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse - more inexorable, merciless and awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.

The meeting will start at 7pm and finish between 9.00 and 10pm (BST), with breaks in between. Just a reminder that the pub lets us to use the room at no charge so please do purchase drinks/food from the bar. Bringing in your own food from outside the pub is not allowed!