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12 October 2011

Seasonal Favorites



So as we creep closer and closer to the best holiday of the whole entire year all I can think about is scary books. What I'm noticing though is it's not so much that I want to read any scary book it's more than I want to go back and read old favorites. For me that means Stephen King in general and It in specific. It isn't really King's best novel (for my money that's either The Stand, The Dead Zone or Misery) but it's the one that freaks me out the most and the one I seem to want to go back to every year around this time.

That made me start thinking about other seasonal books. Old favorites we go back to at some particular time of the year. For me it's It around Halloween and A Christmas Carol around Christmas. (original, I know) Now there are the obvious connections to the seasons in these books, but it also occurs to me that these seasonal favorites are generally books we read first as kids. As great as Christmas and Halloween are now, we don't really approach them with the awe we did as a kid. We don't believe in them as much. I think perpetually returning to these books and movies is a way to recapture a bit of what these holidays felt like when we were younger.

So I'm curious, do you guys have any seasonal favorites? Halloween books? Christmas books? Summertime books? What puts you all in the spirit?
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4 comments:

  1. Lily CateOctober 12, 2011 at 9:29 AM

    Aww. My parents still have a shelf full of our favorite picutre books that my mom reads to my son now. At Christmas, it's Bialosky's Christmas and Little Critter's Christmas by Mercer Mayer, which my brother looooved when he was a toddler.

    As far as scary books, we had a lot of King and Koontz laying around the house when I was a kid, so that was pretty much year round reading. We had the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthologies, too, but those were for camping. You should always bring some good ghost stories when you're going camping.
    This year, I think I'll break out the Scary Stories to read on Halloween.

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  2. Mandy P.S.October 12, 2011 at 9:40 AM

    As much as I read, there really aren't any books that I read seasonally. I think its because I like to share the holiday experience with other people, and its really hard to get the rest of my family to agree to read a book with me.

    But oh the movies. It's not Halloween unless I've watched the original, 1963 "The Haunting." And every Halloween I was in college, my friends and I would all get together and watch a scary movie marathon ending with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (which isn't exactly a scary movie, but still necessary, nonetheless).

    And of course, at Christmas its "The Santa Clause", "It's a Wonderful Life", and all those classic claymation movies like "The Year Without a Santa Clause."

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  3. JenniferOctober 12, 2011 at 3:46 PM

    I really don't know if I have seasonal books. I read pretty much whatever year-round, though I do love pulling out The Legend of Holly Claus every now and then around Christmastime. I can't remember the author, but the book is great. I haven't read it in awhile, and now I'm tempted to dig it out so I can read it in December...

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  4. Carol RiggsOctober 12, 2011 at 4:10 PM

    I adore A Christmas Carol, so I'm with you on that (and no, it's not cuz my name is in the title!). For Halloween? Dunno, I'm a wimp when it comes to horror books and movies. I did read JAWS as a pre-teen, though.

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