Celebrating Tales Gothic, Eerie, Creepy, and Dark

I first heard about Carl's R.I.P. II Challenge in comments left by Janet and Stephanie on my review of Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse. Despite my enthusiasm for the Twilight series and my love of mysteries, I wasn't sure if this challenge was up my alley. I generally steer clear of too much creepiness. As I visited Carl's post, however, and perused his lists of suggestions and a few lists of participants, I found several books that are already on my TBR list. Besides, as Carl said, "Some of you wonderful readers, or would-be readers, may have a tendency to shy away from this genre, thinking it is just not your cup of poisoned tea. However, it wouldn’t be a challenge if I wasn’t challenging you." So I guess I'm in!

The requirements for this challenge are very flexible. What I'm going to attempt to do is read three books, one a children's book and the other two fairly lengthy novels:

• Gossamer by Lois Lowry


• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (This was recommended to me several months ago by my Blokus friend amaretto.)


• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

(Both The Historian and The Thirteenth Tale are on my second-tier of picks for the "Something About Me" Challenge, so by cross-listing them, I'm sure to get them read! At least I hope so.)

This challenge runs from September 1 through October 31 - and if I'm not done before Halloween, I'm sure I'll be reading while answering the door to trick-or-treat-ers!

By the way, the full name of this challenge is the 2007 Readers Imbibing Peril Autumn Reading Challenge! Also, Carl created a blog just to post links to reviews of R.I.P. II picks: R.I.P.ing Yarns.