Image courtesy of Lukas Neasi, Unsplash.
Have you ever read a book that haunted you for days afterward? I don’t necessarily mean a Stephen King horror novel or a Edgar Allan Poe story.
Someone asked me once about which books stayed with me long after I’d read them. Sometimes what stuck in my memory was a particularly vivid fictitious scene or a description of something that occurred in real life.
“Triangle: The Fire that Changed America” by David von Drehle is one such book. It’s a discussion of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire that occurred in New York. Von Drehle provides a graphic description of what was basically an accident waiting to happen and I’m reminded of that every time I see a ceiling-mounted sprinkler.
Then there’s Stephen King’s “Firestarter”. I don’t generally like horror as a genre (sorry, Stephen), but I like this one since it features an underdog-style character.
Any book about the extremes of human endurance can also be haunting. For instance, any story about polar explorer Ernest Shackleton or Everest climbers holds a strange kind of fascination about how much humans can endure in extreme weather.
At this time of year, I like to re-read Nora Roberts’ “Sign of Seven” trilogy, which takes place in a town where the residents of a small Maryland town experience unusual events every seven years and a group of friends defeat the goings-on. Something about those books seems so suitable for the Halloween season.
Blog readers, ever read books where the effect stayed with you for a few days? Do tell.
Happy Halloween, everyone. Enjoy listening to my favorite Halloween song. (Video credit: EdwardsLandingLights, YouTube.)
Eagle-Eyed Editor 