Tales From the Crypt Challenge

Welcome to the start of our Halloween reading challenge! You can read more about it on our challenge page. Today we announce the first weekly theme. All 4 themes are Halloween focused but designed to be broad enough to let you pick and choose.  And the weekly theme is….

DEAD THINGS

Now it’s time to pick out your costume (a.k.a. book). Will you be a vampire, ghost, zombie, or something else? Remember you have to claim your book on the challenge page and either Book Worm or myself has to officially approve that it is not a duplicate because it’s no fun to show up to a party and see someone else dressed in the same costume. Feel free to read any genre (adult, young adult, fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, short stories, novella, etc.) but it must fit the theme. In other words, the book should be at least mildly spooky – no sparkly vampires please.

You must read your book and post a brief review (on the challenge page) before the following monday at 6am EST to qualify for the weekly draw. At the end of the week we will randomly pick one winner from among everyone who read a book that week.

At the end of all four weeks one lucky person (who has read at least one book over the course of the month) will be randomly selected to win the grand prize. NOTE: For the grand prize, you do not need to finish your book within the week. You will be allowed to pick a book for the weekly theme and as long as you finish it before the end of the month, you will be eligible for the grand prize!

When you are ready to pick your costume, head over to the main challenge page and post a comment with your book title.

Fellow bloggers & shelfari friends: You can write up your reviews on your blogs (or on shelfari) and then just post the links to the reviews on our challenge page. Please mention this competition when you do so.

Need some help?

Vampires: Here’s a list from the Guardian with some classic vampire tales. And here’s a list from SciFiNow. I would also like to make a plug for the audio version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula narrated by Tim Curry and Alan Cumming!
Zombies: Here’s a list of 5 books from Huffington Post.
Ghosts: Here’s a list from Publisher Weekly of top 10 Ghost stories/novels.

Here’s a list of Guillermo del Toro’s favorite spooky reads from Book Riot. He will also be posting book and film recommendations on twitter this month.

Check back every monday for the next weekly theme! I’ll be joining all of you, if I can find a book. I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to scary books but there are lots of great classics out there that might work for me.

NOTE: If you end up buying a book for this challenge, please do so through our Amazon page. Just click the “powered by Amazon” logo in the top right part of store page and it will take you to the full site where you can search for your book. By doing so, you help us generate even better prizes for our competitions.