This is Natty. Isn’t this a professional picture of him? That’s because Natty isn’t just a reader, he is also a writer and this is his serious author photo. His novel, Backwoods
Natty is one of my childhood friends and while I don’t remember the exact point where I met him in the sixth grade, I do remember him as a friend during those awkward junior high years and I also remember copies of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine books sitting atop his textbooks in those days before the Kindle, the IPod or the SmartPhone when the only way we had to suss out our friends was by the books they carried. But don’t let his interest in Point Horror fool you, Natty was a serious reader even way back then and I’m forever indebted to him for a day back in the 8th grade when he tapped me on the arm during Mrs. Popp’s English class, handed me a copy of The Illustrated Man and told me to read a story called The Rocket Man because it was the most depressing thing in the whole world. If you’re familiar with that story, you know that it kind of is the most depressing thing ever, but it’s also a superb story that I still enjoying reading to this day so if you’re not familiar with it I recommend finding a copy now.
But enough about good books, let’s hear Natty talk about some young adult horror.
Favorite Books: Point Horror series
Bookish Memory: I started reading the Point Horror books when I was in fifth grade. Me and a few girls would trade them around. Christopher Pike was one of the star authors of the Point Horror line, R.L. Stine too (pre-’Goosebumps’). I remember devouring them but, tellingly, I barely remember anything about their contents today – I think the real attraction with those books was the cover design. I did a book report on Richie Tankersley Cusick’s ‘Lifeguard’ in fifth grade and took great care to replicate the title design on the top of my report, rendered in blue and orange crayon on notebook paper.
I think the books were better as ideas than they were as narratives, and this was confirmed for me recently when I found a copy of Pike’s ‘Weekend’ at a thrift store. I bought it and couldn’t get past the second chapter. It’s bad-bad, full of boring characters and lame plot set ups. A funny story about ‘Weekend’: when I transferred to junior high in sixth grade I met a ton of new people. One girl, Amy C., had a copy of ‘Weekend’ in her stack of school books. I told her I was also a Point Horror fan. She asked what I read recently and I told her, it might have been R.L. Stine’s ‘Twisted.’
“How long did it take you to read it?” she said. I told her about a week. “Oh,” she said, indicating to her copy of ‘Weekend,’ which was one of the thicker Point Horror books – “I read that on Sunday.” How I hated her that day.
Awesome post. I still have a small stack of R.L. Stine books in my basement.