The Book Review: Why we love to be scared
Plus: a close look at Mick Herron’s writing in “Slow Horses.”
Books
October 17, 2025
The image portrays a black-and-white photograph of a scary-looking man in a vampire costume.
The actor Lon Chaney in 1927. Those drawn to the macabre, writes Coltan Scrivner, tend to be “people with dark minds but soft hearts.” Library of Congress

Dear readers,

For lovers of the darker things in life, here is a book for you: “Morbidly Curious,” by the behavioral scientist Coltan Scrivner, examines why humans are drawn to things that horrify us. He organizes the book around four general interests — the minds of dangerous people, bodily injuries and gore, physical violence and the paranormal — and offers some evolutionary and psychological explanations.

Personally, my appetite for anything morbid is more in the Edward Gorey/Far Side cartoon camp as opposed to the full-on horror of a “Saw” movie. But I appreciated learning that there are biological reasons some of my loved ones enjoy screaming their faces off.

On a related note: This month’s Book Review Book Club pick is “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” by Stephen Graham Jones. Jones includes Indigenous history and mythology in his riff on a vampire story, and the result is a blood-spattered romp. Share your thoughts about the book in the comments section and we might include your observation on the podcast. Our discussion of the book will air — of course! — on Oct. 31.

I’ll leave you with some pre-weekend trivia: More than a century after his death, Oscar Wilde is finally getting his library card back.

See you next week.

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