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Title: Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful
Series: ———-
Editor: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Children’s Fiction
Pages: 262
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
A collection of short stories that purport to deal with haunted houses, things that go bump in the night and other such supernatural goings ons.
| My Thoughts: |
This was part of a “Young Readers” series put out with Hitchcock’s name on it. He wrote an introduction to each book but each consisted of short stories by other authors. I think I was introduced to these when I was 10 or 11 and I loved them. This particular one I re-read because I own it and needed a paper book to read while on lunch breaks. Kindles don’t deal well with sitting in a bookbag in sub-freezing weather for 8’ish hours.
Honestly, besides one story with a ghost and one story that involves a supposed haunted house, this book was more a collection of “boys adventure” stories than anything. Also, several of the stories are from other collections or novels. For example, one of the stories was the Sherlock Holmes “Mystery of the Red Headed League” and a long excerpt from “Tom Sawyer” that involved the story with Tom getting lost in the caves and finding treasure. Several of the other stories I am guessing were also parts of series that I simply wasn’t aware of.
That doesn’t mean they were bad stories, it’s just that the cover is extremely mis-leading. I did find the Sherlock Holmes story too long and the same for the Tom Sawyer excerpt. They weren’t nearly as short as the other short stories. I can easily see a 10 year old getting bored by them and putting the book down.
It helped lunch time pass tolerably well for a week or so, so I consider it to have succeeded at what I wanted it to do. I don’t have any desire to go search out any of the other “Alfred Hitchcock’s….” anthologies however.
★★★☆½
That’s a shame. If there was a series of books like his films and tv programmes I’d have loved it
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I know right? He had some really cool stuff of his own 🙂
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Yes, I grew up loving watching it all 😊
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Hate it when you put huanted houses on book covers, but the stories contain adventure elements… glad that the stories were enjoyable enough.
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Thankfully, I recognized almost all the authors so I knew I was getting decent stories. Just not about haunted houses
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Huh, that’s weird. It doesn’t sound like a bad idea for a book, but certainly misleading.
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Very misleading. Should definitely have put effort into finding actual haunted house stories than big name authors. I figure both Twain’s story and Doyle were there because of being out of copy right and because of name draw. Which is too bad…
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Cool to see a Alfred Hitchcock book for the young audience being mentioned. I didn’t read that much as a kind but Hitchcock’s Three Investigators was really a favorite. Yes I know he wasn’t the actual author but still…I associate them with Hitchcock since childhood.
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Ha, funny you should mention them. I actually got this as a present and along with it was a 3 investigators book. Started me on my journey with them for many years.
Sadly, they don’t age well for the mature reader. I tried reading the first one again several years ago and decided that was probably enough…
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Too bad. I had many enjoyable hours reading those books in 4th through 6th grade.
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I think I read a few of these books when I was a kid. They had some at our library. This is back when I was devouring Hardy Boys too.
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My school library had a the whole collection and I ended up devouring them. One of them was a “monsters” collection and the first one was about this jellyooze from the ocean that enveloped its prey. It absolutely enthralled me 🙂
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Yes, somewhat disappointing when a Hitchcock isn’t a Hitchcock. A case of the name will sell, I suppose. I’m still looking for a good read for next Halloween/October and was hopeful when I saw this book but after reading your review, I think I’ll pass it by. It reminds me slightly of Edith Wharton’s Men and Ghosts. I read a few of the stories and there wasn’t a ghost (or anything scary) among them. And because I was expecting that genre, I think I completely missed any value in the stories I read because of my distraction in looking for it. Hey, this topic might give you a whole new idea on a
rantpost for mis-titled books ! 😉LikeLiked by 2 people
I suspect any ranting will have to wait a month. I’m finishing up the final Malazan Book of the Fallen and it is kicking my emotional butt, in a bad way. I’m actually feeling so “meh” right now that I’d probably just look at a communist if I saw one. You know I’m bad off then!
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Am pretty sure I read this one on grade school – I think I read a couple of these anthologies because I was such a Three Investigators fan. Even then I showed signs of discernment and abandoned the anthologies for something better.
Still, was hoping when I saw the cover for a good nostalgic trip (as you probably were). Rats.
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The 3 Investigators were definitely a common thing back then. Never quite as big as the Hardy Boys, or the Bobbsey Twins, etc, but they did get their own “come back” series in the 90’s I believe? They weren’t very good 🙂
I was hoping for good nostalgia too. Oh well. Now I know…
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Yeah I definitely get what you mean about the title being very misleading.
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“Boys having Adventures” probably wouldn’t have sold as well though 😀
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Such a bait… I actually thought for a second that Hitchcock wrote these or adapted his movies into books or something. 😦
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THAT would have been cool. Sadly, this just used his name and an introduction to sell it…
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