Nobody is "late to the party".
Horror books are eternal.
be late to the party
phrase of party
INFORMAL
become aware of or get involved in something long after others.
"I didn't get into Nirvana until after MTV Unplugged came out—I'm always late to the party"
We need to retire this phrase in bookish circles. This is gatekeeper language. Think about when you “joined the party.” Did you show up having a full head of genre knowledge having met all the requirements?
I showed up to the Horror Fiction Party with nothing but King, Straub, and Rice informing my knowledge of horror. I didn’t even discover “indie horror fiction” until 2015. All the horror I read was pretty mainstream. Thank god nobody rained on my parade when I started reading prolific names in horror for the first time and freaking out about how good they were. It sucks to discover something new to you and then run across the die hard fans that make you feel stupid for only just finding out about it; now you’re this bandwagon fan and you’re disqualified from *real* fandom. Ehhhhhhhhhhh fuck that.
There isn’t a list of horror books you have to read in order to gain entrance to the party. Your membership card is the love you have for creepy shit that you carry around inside your heart.
Oh, you haven’t read any H. P. Lovecraft? It’s fine. So what? I still haven’t read any and I probably won’t just out of spite. Ha!
You still haven’t read The Exorcist, or Dracula, or Shirley Jackson? You’ve come to the right place, Horror Party Goers would love to encourage you to read all the favorite books and then join you for a discussion because we love new fans of old books. They don’t have expiration dates and can be enjoyed at any time. Especially timeless books like Rosemary’s Baby by Ira levin which never feels dated or antiquated, it’s just as unnerving now for a modern audience as it was the day it was released.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re late to the party or you’ve been disqualified as a horror fan because you haven’t read some book or heard of some author or like the same books they do. We’re all on our own genre journey and there is no right or wrong way to navigate the terrain. Some books and authors have these rabid fans who fall on their swords to die on some fucking hill for their horror gods and anyone who even walks by is sucked into the battle. Nobody wants to come to a party like that. That’s some other weird thing that extreme fans need to just do by themselves and quit crashing everyone else’s parties. I saw a booktok guy make a list of Haunted House horror book recommendations and people were losing their minds because House of Leaves wasn't on the list. Get the fuck out of here. The fights people pick with strangers on the internet, the hills they want to die on, are like neon signs tattling on one’s maturity.
Let people live.
Let people love things.
Allow people to discover “old” things and become new fans.
Welcome everyone to the horror genre. Be there when they want to get excited about Psycho by Robert Bloch because they read it for the first time and don’t turn up your nose because they watched the movie first. It’s not something anyone needs to give a shit about.
Nobody is late to the party because the party started before you even got there and will be going on long after you leave so just enjoy the time we’re given to celebrate this genre while we’re all on this planet at the same time.
By the way, I’m reading The Lottery by Shirley Jackson for the first time this summer.
Sadie
xx
This is great! I still haven’t read “The Lottery”, and I just bought my first Laird Barron story collection. My fellow weirdos, you are welcome and I’m jealous of some of the books you’ll get to experience for the first time.
Thankfully, I have not experienced that type of gatekeeping silliness since my days at community college, but I do remember how that felt, so I make it a point to encourage new readers instead of making them feel like n0obs.