Reading report
How I end up at night:
I don’t usually sleep with a Nutella jar. One of my sons added that prop.
I call this photo “Living High & Letting Die.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our new pastor invited me out for coffee and asked what I’d been reading (besides the Bible). To his dismay, I told him I’d been making a special effort this season to get through various Gothic and horror classics.
What do you like about them, he asked.
The weather, I said.
It’s the truth!
Then I said something about “sins of the past.” That’s true, too.
Here are some items, a few of which I’ve already mentioned in this blog:
(1) Julia (Peter Straub; very Iris Murdochian)
(2) If You Could See Me Now (Straub)
(3) Ghost Story (Straub)
They’ve just been re-issued by the Library of America, although I’ve been reading them in other editions. Straub is the editor of the LOA’s two volumes of “American Fantastic Tales.”
(1)–(3) aren’t bad, but I wouldn’t have canonized them.
(4) The Greater Trumps (Charles Williams; introduced by William Lindsay Gresham, whose Nightmare Alley I might read, too)
(5) All Hallows’ Eve (Williams)
(6) Ortranto (Horace Walpole; ridiculous)
(7) The Haunted Looking Glass (compiled and illustrated by Edward Gorey)
(8) A Gothic Treasure Trove (Reader’s Digest Condensed Books)
(9) The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins; my fifth or sixth – and, thus far, most successful – attempt)
(10) Fludd (Hilary Mantel; there is a “Mrs. Fludd” in Straub’s Julia)
(11) Beyond Black (Mantel)
(12) Stories by Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth Gaskell, and M. R. James
I don’t usually sleep with a Nutella jar. One of my sons added that prop.
I call this photo “Living High & Letting Die.”
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our new pastor invited me out for coffee and asked what I’d been reading (besides the Bible). To his dismay, I told him I’d been making a special effort this season to get through various Gothic and horror classics.
What do you like about them, he asked.
The weather, I said.
It’s the truth!
Then I said something about “sins of the past.” That’s true, too.
Here are some items, a few of which I’ve already mentioned in this blog:
(1) Julia (Peter Straub; very Iris Murdochian)
(2) If You Could See Me Now (Straub)
(3) Ghost Story (Straub)
They’ve just been re-issued by the Library of America, although I’ve been reading them in other editions. Straub is the editor of the LOA’s two volumes of “American Fantastic Tales.”
(1)–(3) aren’t bad, but I wouldn’t have canonized them.
(4) The Greater Trumps (Charles Williams; introduced by William Lindsay Gresham, whose Nightmare Alley I might read, too)
(5) All Hallows’ Eve (Williams)
(6) Ortranto (Horace Walpole; ridiculous)
(7) The Haunted Looking Glass (compiled and illustrated by Edward Gorey)
(8) A Gothic Treasure Trove (Reader’s Digest Condensed Books)
(9) The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins; my fifth or sixth – and, thus far, most successful – attempt)
(10) Fludd (Hilary Mantel; there is a “Mrs. Fludd” in Straub’s Julia)
(11) Beyond Black (Mantel)
(12) Stories by Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth Gaskell, and M. R. James