Halloweenie of the Day!

Just to remind everyone. I'm sharing with you some of our favorite scary things because (a) I love Halloween. and (b) It is now close enough to Halloween to go nuts. If you want to see a discussion of why I blieve that Halloween isn't harmful in and of itself, go here.

And now, one of my favorite scary things:


Needful Things probably isn't my favorite story of King's. But it is the reason I began reading King to begin with... and the first time my wife and I really got to seriously talking it was because we were both reading King in a study hall... so in a way, Needful Things is responsible for my marriage. In any case, Needful Things is the last King novel set in the fictitious rural Maine town of Castle Rock. And I first picked it up because I saw the first half of the movie (which is the best half, by the way... read the book and leave the movie alone, in my humble opinion)--I honestly don't know if I would have continued to devour King if I'd read, say, The Stand first. But as it was, if this was the last Castle Rock novel, what were the others? And that's how my King phase began.

Needful Things also represents one of my first epiphanies about horror. I already instinctually knew that being scared can be fun in the same adrenaline rush kind of way that thrill rides are fun. But Needful Things taught me that the basic horror plot is, undertneath everything else, about Good vs Evil. So pick up a copy of Needful Things, and see if Evil wins out in the end.

Be good to each other,
Rev. Josh
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