Read it and Weed: The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull by John Bellairs

John Bellairs wrote gothic horror for young readers from 1972 until 1991. This meant he died one year before RL Stine’s first Goosebumps broke gothic horror down into camp and schmalz. He wrote it before Lemony Snicket drenched it in detached irony, before it was reborn as the Neflix series Wednesday. He wrote it before the modern era dictated stories feature character arcs, sympathetic backstories, and rigid adherence to outsider aesthetics. 

All that crap aside, the question remains: Is it any good? Well, it's okay, sort of. The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull is a shaggy dog of a story involving a stolen clock, a tiny skull, and a St. Anthony statue that gives oracular clues. Johnny, his best friend and a priest take a trip to a remote Maine island where it's revealed that family grudges from evil sorcerers are carried from beyond the grave. Note that you can understand all of this without knowing a thing about the main character, a blank slate known as Johnny Dixon, around whom four novels were written.  

There's not a lot of world building or explanation of magic systems, just a reliance on pre-ingrained notions of god-based good and satan-based evil, which lands John Bellairs somwhere between the Hardy Boys and Stephen King. Still, it's tense and goofy and was very popular in its day.

So: Keep or weed? If I'm here ten years I may get one kid who'd even look twice at this book. It's not even Bellairs's best book. Easy weed, right?  

Final Verdict: I threw out all the other Bellaires and this one is the only survivor. Keep.