Horrors! 365 Scary Stories by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz

Horrors! 365 Scary Stories Reviews

• 
  Tyler J Gray

  As I made my way through this book through-out the year I wrote a rating down for each story by it's title in the table of contents and kept a note of the average every month. Avg 3.18 An interesting mix of stories.
  
  Did I read one story a day? Obviously not if i'm finishing this on December 8th, but I read as many stories each month as there were days in said month. Normally just reading them all in one day in each month. But yeah, definitely some interesting and scary stories within.
• 
  Erik Graff

  As friends on Goodreads know, I've been organizing events at local cafes for several years, events ranging from puppet shows to music, from academic lectures to readings. I picked this book up at a recent night devoted to horror fiction, Martin Mundt, my favorite horror writer, having included it on the literature table at a discounted price.
  The gimmick to this collection is that it has a story, usually of one to three pages, for each night of the year. Lacking that kind of patience, I went through the thing in a few weeks and, not having followed the prescribed regime, may be accused of misappropriating its contents. In any case, several stories a night didn't work for me and maybe one a night, especially if read aloud, might have worked better.
  There are a lot of writers here, many of them with multiple submissions, Marty, for instance, with three. Consequently, styles differ. Many try to be funny. Some actually attempt to be scary. Only a tiny handful were even remotely disturbing, the attempts at pure horror being, for me, ineffective. It's hard, especially staying within the traditional themes (vampires, ghosts, zombies etc.) of the genre, to be original without being transparent in one's efforts, hard to avoid infectuous self-consciousness. I read most of them like a creative writing teacher reads the products of his class. A slightly higher percentage of the ostensibly funny efforts did evoke a chuckle. Overall, however, I wasn't often impressed on any score, many of the authors writing like amateurs which, presumably, many of them are.
  I'm going to give this one away to a fan of the genre who works so hard that he may in fact only essay a tale a night. We'll see what he thinks...
• 
  Hayley

  Although the stories are not very scary a lot of times, they are extremely creative. Each story only gets 2 or 3 pages tops, so the authors have to try to tell a story in that amount of space (or less). It is a collective of many different authors.
• 
  Ashley Daviau

  This short story collection was such a nice surprise. I’m always hesitant going into short story collections but they fear was unfounded with this one. As soon as I read the first story I knew that I was holding a gem in my hands. With each story I kept saying to myself, “okay this one is my favourite because it just can’t get better than this!” But then it did keep getting better with each story and I can’t pick a favourite because they’re all great and there’s literally 365 to pick from! The reason why I had to dock a star was and not give it a full 5 is because obviously in a collection this size there are some duds and some pretty awful stories too. It’s bound to happen with 365 stories bound in one collection! But on the whole the stories are really fun and some are even quite hilarious. This is a fun one not only for adults but for younger readers too, the scares are fairly mild and it’s more of a humorous horror deal than a scary horror deal. Special shout out to the best friend ever, Jess for not only finding I book I didn’t already own but that wasn’t on my radar at all and that I never would have known about otherwise!
• 
  Rabbit {Paint me like one of your 19th century gothic heroines!}

  I'm gonna read one story per day.
• 
  Aedon

  I love this book because it is a horror genre and I love horror and I always loved how the stories ended in either a cliff hanger or a scary jump-scare and a lot of these stories were great! I recommend to anyone who likes horror/thriller and is in for a good spook!
• 
  G. Miranda

  A horror story for every day of the week! It’s like Christmas every day—or Halloween!
  
  365 Scary Stories does something most writers fear more than anything. It makes them tell a complete story in less than three pages. That’s right; none of these stories will take you more than a few minutes to read. And they are all mostly well done. Just like any other collection of short stories, there is never really one that can be called a favorite, but some of the better ones are super-short (just a few sentences long). That is really the beauty of this book.
  
  
  
  However, some of the stories fall a little short on the spooks, opting for more humor, but none of them are truly terrible. This is a simple of case of good writers writing good stories. Enjoy this at Halloween parites by taking turns reading from it, or just horad it all for yourself.
• 
  Kate

  these stories are pretty disturbing. i like them.
  
  but they're kinda short.
• 
  Kwirebaugh

  Given to my be my sister to read.
  You have to be prepared for some strange and creepy stories. They are short! there is a story for each day of the year. If you like horror, this is a read for you.
• 
  Jessica

  One of the best collections of short horror stories, with the highlight being "For Your Immediate Attention". Scary as hell.
• 
  W.B.

  Yes, these short, short stories are total genre fiction. But I enjoy the genre, so I enjoyed the book. There's a preponderance of horror stories or just dark twist stories over ghost stories here. As you can well imagine, with three hundred and sixty-five tales, these are all very quick reads, flash fiction or microfiction. But there's much wit in these pages and some clever and often darkly funny writing. In one of the shortest tales, Romeo and Juliet is retold (well, the titular characters' death scene anyway) by Jessica Amanda Salmonson and it gives overkill a whole new meaning. If you're a fan of the creepy pasta phenomenon (it's launched more than one television series to date) then you might enjoy this anthology of one-a-day stories whose caffeine is blood.
• 
  Naomi

  11/10/09:
  
  One of the books from my sister Hayley's shelf that she recommended to me when I asked for books to read while visiting. Most of the stories aren't too scary, though they are definitely really bizarre and very creative. I have had some really interesting dreams the past few nights and these stories are definitely contributing to them.
• 
  GracieKat

  Going into the book I really wasn't expecting a whole lot due to the length of the stories but some of them were really very good. The two that stand out in particular are the Vampire on Christmas one (I loved the funny little irony twist at the end) and one very creepy one that was really disturbing about a ransomed child and no one at home. I think it was called Phone Tag but i'm not sure.
• 
  Colleen

  This is kind of a cool book. You could literally read one tiny little short story a day for a year. Mostly, they're only a page or so long. Think about that! That's a real talent: being able to tell a complete story in under 500 words. It's remarkable. Some, I must admit, I didn't enjoy nearly as well as others, but I'd say that about 90% or more were pretty darn enjoyable.
• 
  Merri

  A lot of the stories in here are kind of avant-garde/experimental horror, but nevertheless, most of them are REALLY good and creepy. My favorite is the Bone Garden. I'm doing the whole one story a day thing, and it's really entertaining :)
• 
  Jessica

  A fun collection of quick, bite-sized stories perfect for bedtime or a short break from other work. Of course, not all of the stories are fantastic, but in a collection of 365 tales, there are more than enough to keep the reader satisfied.
• 
  Brett

  Anthology,Horror
• 
  Zeta T.

  This took a few YEARS to finish...
• 
  Morgan

  It was alright. There were some really good stories, some really stupid stories, but the majority were just ok.
• 
  Bryan Whitehead

  To be sure, short short stories have their drawbacks. For example, there’s rarely enough room for any serious plot or character development. On the other hand, the benefits often outweigh the drawbacks. When the story doesn’t need to be sustained for any significant length, authors have a lot more freedom to deliver the punch line without stuffing a lot of excess padding into one-joke tales. Further, if a particular writer happens to be working well outside the range of his or her talent (and with 365 stories packed into a single volume, you know that’s going to happen at least a time or two), the reader can take comfort in the fact that the stinker will play itself out in two to three pages, thus making it more an annoyance than an ordeal. Further, prolific editors Dziemianowicz, Weinberg and Greenberg manage to score a lot more hits than misses this time around. I passed up the obvious one-a-day pace suggested by the story count, but I’m not sorry I did. With only a few depressing or pretentious exceptions, the entries in this collection are worth a read. The final plus was that all the stories (unless I missed something somewhere) appeared to have been written specifically for this book, so seasoned veterans of the genre aren’t stuck with a book they’ve already half-read.
• 
  Chelsea Trubell

  One of my favorite books ever! Started me on my journey as a horror buff, at just 10 years old, when I first read this book! I read it so many times that the pages became worn! This book includes horror stories/myths/legends from all around the world and introduced me to some of my favorite horror legends from England, to Asia, to Native American folklore.
• 
  Dragoș Ionescu

  Some of these were amazing, a few of them were good, and the rest were either confusing, or just incredibly dumb.
  
  Oh well, I've done worse on a Sunday night.
• 
  Jabberjawocky

  Exceptional anthology featuring extremely brief short stories. The format works well and there's an extensive variety of clever ideas & concepts.