Neil Gaiman suggests a new gift giving tradition for Halloween in his blog:

I’m proposing something slightly different.

That you give someone a scary book this Hallowe’en.

You certainly don’t have to give everyone you know a scary book. Just pick someone, or a few someones, you care about. Then give them a book this week that’ll scare their hair white.

And why not? At the very least, you can go the Bookcrossing way and put a couple of your scary books on the bus this weekend.

Speaking of Horror, I can’t remember the last time I read a truly frightening book. Perhaps because I don’t gravitate towards this genre much now. Horror was a big thing for me in my primary school days (by way of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike). I guess that tendency leaked out of me once I grew older and found the world scary enough as it is.

But if I had to come up with a top 5 scary books list off the top of my head,

“It“ by Stephen King would definitely be there. Till today, I have a crisp memory of myself staying up at 4am, huddled in my blanket while reading that book,  and getting scared to death doing so.

What else? Maybe some of Lovecraft’s work. Even though I’ve only read a couple of his stories like The Call of Cthulhu and The Rats in the Walls, (and I always take some time before I get drawn into his writing style),  it’s effective Horror, the quiet kind that creeps up on you slowly and makes your spine tingle as madness seeps out from the pages.

Yes, yes, my knowledge of the Horror genre needs brushing up. What is the scariest book you’ve ever read?