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F**k yes.

They were literally all I read when I was a kid. R.L. Stine is one of the reasons I’m such a huge horror fan (although. looking back, his books were far funnier than they were scary).

Discuss?

I remember reading Stine when I was 12 long before the Goosebumps craze. The book in question was Blind Date and the ‘who’ was so obvious you just had to groan once you got there. It did have a scene involving a sledge hammer and a bound kid’s foot. Chilling.

Stine also wrote some Indiana Jones choose your own adventure style books.

The key to Goosebumps is the cliffhanger chapter endings.

DZ - 29 May 2008 12:52 AM

I remember reading Stine when I was 12 long before the Goosebumps craze. The book in question was Blind Date and the ‘who’ was so obvious you just had to groan once you got there. It did have a scene involving a sledge hammer and a bound kid’s foot. Chilling.

Stine also wrote some Indiana Jones choose your own adventure style books.

The key to Goosebumps is the cliffhanger chapter endings.

This is true, although it did get tiresome to discover that our hero was never actually in any danger a minimum of twenty times per book. The twist endings were what really kept me coming back for more, along with the bad ass covers.

Never really got into the Fear Street series, though. Not enough monsters for my taste… although Monster Dog was pretty good.

I never read any of Stine’s books. My introduction to horror began when I was 5 (ok, 25 years ago, I’m in the 30 year old club also.).  I was at my elementary school book fair and picked up an illustrated children’s version of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Mask of Red Death (I still have it). That was enought to creep me out. A few months later, a babysitter let me watch the original Night of the Living Dead (it was filmed about 20 minutes away from my parent’s house) and then Jaws.

The damage was complete.