Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you celebrate Christmas, do you feel the need to stop reading anything but Christmas-themed romances as the holiday season starts?

I sometimes read a Christmas book or two in December, but I definitely don’t stop reading other books, and I wouldn’t say my Christmas choices tend particularly towards romances either.  Admittedly, my very favorite is The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig, which is a Christmas-set romance.  But my other two favorites are not romances, or much like each other: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.

I actually do more Christmas movie-watching than reading, though.  Always The Charlie Brown Christmas, often It’s a Wonderful Life and recently whichever past Dr. Who Christmas Special strikes my fancy–and the new one, of course!

Do you read Christmas (or other holiday) books in December?  Does it become your main focus, or a kind of add-on?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Candy Corn, a chocolate bar, or Popcorn. Which of these snacks are your favorite to eat while reading?

Definitely popcorn.  Kettle corn specifically, which makes it much more like candy-like, I will admit.  Chocolate is of course wonderful, but I don’t often eat chocolate bars–Reeses cups, ice cream that involves chocolate, and one slightly infamous chocolate bunny (we got attached, so it didn’t get eaten for a long time…) have all come up recently, but I don’t often eat chocolate bars.  And I never liked candy corn.  I don’t hate it, but it’s just kind of tasteless, and more trouble than it seems worth to get out of my teeth!

What’s your favorite snack while reading?  Will you be eating it on Halloween? 🙂

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Who is your favorite horror/suspense author and why?

I am not a reader or watcher of horror by and large–but sometimes I like a good suspense.  I enjoy Alfred Hitchcock (when he’s doing suspense more than horror) and my favorite suspense writer is Lois Duncan.  She writes young adult, sometimes with supernatural elements, but usually contemporary and mostly focused on the world as you and I know it.  And that’s the suspense I like best–stories where, on the surface, everything seems normal…but something very wrong is lurking beneath.

Duncan’s most famous book, I think, is I Know What You Did Last Summer, but, just for the record, the book apparently bears little resemblance to the movie of the same name (I’ve read the book, I’ve not watched the movie).  My favorite of her novels is Daughters of Eve, which very much is that surface-level calm with something else lurking…and it has the most chilling but very understated ending.  It’s masterful.

Do you distinguish between suspense and horror?  Who is your favorite author who writes either?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Both Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein are considered classics. Have you ever read either of them?

I’m not a reader of horror, but I am a reader of classics, so I’ve read both these books.  I was not greatly impressed by Dracula, in all honesty.  It was not nearly as frightening as billed (though a friend who read it alone at night said atmosphere made a difference…) and I was deeply (deeply) bothered by the notion that a character could lose her soul against her will (cursed by Dracula, more or less).  I was also left wondering how we ever got from Stoker’s vampires to the Twilight romantic variety (I’ve been told Anne Rice is the bridge).

I like Frankenstein a lot.  It’s also not too horrifying, in the sense we typically mean horror now, but I found it much more engaging than Dracula.  I hated Victor and felt great sympathy for the Creature (for most of the book), but the key point there may be that I felt strongly about both of them, so I had a heavy investment in the story.  Frankenstein figures slightly in my Phantom of the Opera retelling (another classic Gothic horror, actually).  The Phantom has a copy on his bookshelf, alongside The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Both are probably very unhealthy reading for him…

Have you read either of these classics?  How did you feel about them?