{"id":5424,"date":"2017-10-30T07:14:34","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T14:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=5424"},"modified":"2017-10-30T07:14:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T14:14:34","slug":"alfred-hitchcock-presents-a-deal-me-in-challenge-status-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/alfred-hitchcock-presents-a-deal-me-in-challenge-status-report","title":{"rendered":"Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Deal Me In Challenge Status Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alfred<\/p>\n

One of my favorite reading challenges this year has been the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge<\/a>. Every Sunday I look forward to drawing a random card from the deck to see what story I’ll be reading this week. At this point in the year I only have nine cards left, which means I’ve read 43 stories. I’ve enjoyed this challenge so much that I’m already looking at anthologies to use for next year’s challenge.<\/p>\n

If you’ve been following along, you might remember that my theme is year “The Macabre,” with most of the stories coming from collections of stories gathered from\u00a0Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine<\/em><\/a>. The magazine was founded in 1955, the same year that\u00a0Alfred Hitchcock Presents<\/em> began airing on TV. If you’ve seen any episodes from that series then you have a pretty good idea of the kinds of stories published in the magazine: eerie tales with a bit of dark humor thrown in. Every so often the publisher would gather the best stories into a collection and ask Hitchcock to write an introduction.<\/p>\n

Most of them are out of print, but if you ever see any of these collections at a used book store or garage sale, be sure to pick them up. You can usually buy them for next to nothing, and they feature some fantastic writers: Ray Bradbury, Donald Westlake, Robert Bloch, Jack Ritchie, Edward D. Hoch, and more. I have the following anthologies in my library, and I paid from fifty cents to a dollar for each one:<\/p>\n