The most terrifying novel I have ever read!

Before I name the book all of you are familiar with, I want to mention that I finished the next Repairman Jack novel in my stack of "to be read" hardcovers. It was By the Sword by F. Paul Wilson, and it turned out to be one of the best novels in the long series of excellent reads by this exceptional author. Most people tend to forget that Mr. Wilson wrote The Keep, which was an International bestseller back during the early eighties and followed two years later by The Tomb, the first Repairman Jack novel. Because of my love of Japanese history, martial arts, Katanas, Zen, and Japanese swordfighting, Mr. Wilson's By the Sword was a real page turner for me. I intend to write a review of the book this weekend and post it on my blog. I still have Ground Zero and Fatal Error to read before the last Repairman Jack novel comes out this fall. Also, if you've never read F. Paul Wilson's Black Wind, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's a great read with a lot of factual history in it.

Okay. I'm now re-reading the most terrifying novel I've ever read in my life. The first time I read this book was back in 1977 and then again around 1989. I've seen the two movies that are based on this novel dozens of times over the years. And, though I've read hundreds of horror novels over the last three decades, this book till holds the title for me. If you haven't guessed it by now, it's The Shining by Stephen King. I'm about thirty pages into it, and in a sense, it's like I'm discovering the story all over again for the first time. It was The Shining that cemented my love of King's fiction. Salem's Lot was great, but The Shining took me places I could only dream about and taught me the true meaning of story-telling by a mastercraftsman. This book is deinitely a masterpiece of horror fiction and hasn't been equaled since its first publication by Doubleday in 1977. Even though I appreciate and sincerely like the two different movie versions of the book, I still think the definitive film hasn't been done yet. Maybe one day it will. For now, I'm going to be spending most of the next week or two at the Overlook Hotel. Maybe I'll even manage to stay alive and escape the terrors that literally reek through the walls of the place, seeking to warp your mind and disolve your will to live. This is what great story-telling is all about, and no one does it better than the Maestro--Stephen King!