Books: Straub, Gaiman

-Finally finished Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I picked this up 'cause Stephen King considers it one of the best horror novels of the 20th century. I mostly disagree. I get that Straub was trying to create a nice syncretic union of a bunch of different kinds of horror stories, but it really didn't work for me. Plus, A) on page 440, three of our heroes enter a haunted house, whose resident has killed a half-dozen of their friends and neighbors, and the first words said are, "Let's split up." This was so frickin' stupid that I nearly put the book down right there. Would've, if I hadn't been only 120 pages from the end. And, B) the book was written in the mid-70s, and it shows, particularly in the way it handles marital infidelity, which is an odd combination of, "Cool, it's the 70s, and I can actually mention infidelity in a book and still get published," and, "Aren't we worldly and jaded, with all the affairs going on, this is just the way things are," and, "Infidelity is the worm at the root of this society." And yes, the second and third attitudes are kinda contradictory. Anyway, mildly glad I read it the once, but it's going in the book swap box.

-Also, finally read Gaiman's Coraline, which is a fine little modern fairy tale. The kind where fairies are scary-@$$ individuals. Recommended.

(Hmm. I seem to talk more about the books I don't like, than the books I like. I should work on that. But really, I don't have much more to say about Coraline . . . )