My favourite genre to read while hiking is paranormal horror. There’s nothing like curling up in your tent in the middle of the Lappish wilderness with a good scary book.
One of my favourite things about horror and dark fiction, – especially anthologies – as a form of media is that they’re such efficient cross-sections of different cultural or demographic psyches. I genuinely feel like no other genre gives you as good a view into the demographic it originates from; Dark fiction shows you a community’s fears, hopes, its historical and collective traumas, and how they view themselves in relation to the world around them. Whether it’s queer, gender or race minorities, whole nations or geographically defined demographics (Nordic horror!), nothing gives you an inside look into that community like the horror it produces.
One my favourite horror anthologies is Never Whistle at Night. It’s a collection of American Indian dark fiction stories, and it’s such a prime example of that sort of cultural insight I mentioned above, and to top it off, the quality of writing in these short stories is fantastic. Most anthologies in my opinion suffer from both inconsistent writing quality and thematical confusion, but Never Whistle at Night manages to compile writing so good and so beautiful it sticks in your head for days.
by Villagedog_lady