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In celebration of October and the Halloween season, what are some good spooky, scary, or monstrous reads? Bonus points for a movie which would pair well with the book.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates. Definitely not a traditional Halloween read recommendation, but the short story remains one of the most terrifying I’ve ever read. I’ve read it a few times, and it still feels so mysterious, terrifying, and opaque to me, intimating some secret horror about girlhood without fully revealing itself, turning away as you reach it. It’s fantastic. JCO in general is a great Halloween-y author, IMO. She’s written a lot of books featuring brutality, kidnapping, also some gothic novels. Even in her realistic novels, though, I feel like she conveys a creepiness that I don’t find elsewhere. Also obviously recommend Wuthering Heights. I’m not sure whether there are movies I would pair with these, but I love watching corny J-horror movies from the early aughts, those are fun.
I thought The Accursed was a very fun zany attempt at a long gothic novel. Not her best but definitely fits in the Halloween theme.
House of Leaves for a book that actually scared the shit out of me years ago, the complete work of Thomas Ligotti for despondent horror about the era of capitalist realism, and Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" for what I believe to be the finest and creepiest of the great Gothic frights -- and, much like in my adolescent viewings of Deliverance and Aguirre The Wrath of God, it made me seriously consider whether or not I should be spending my time on spooky rivers with unseen enemies in the surrounding woods.
My book recommendation: The Monk by Matthew Lewis. If Lewis had been alive in the era of horror movies, he would have made a sexy sleazy horror movie. Instead we get a book about a Monk (not to mention all the other names in this book’s long cast of characters) who is having a very hard time keeping it in his pants while young women rush at him to flash their tits and convince him to make a pact with Satan. Women, am I right? The book is probably a hundred pages too long, but all the same it’s as much fun as you can have reading an 18th century Gothic novel without taking your clothes off. Unfortunately I don’t have a movie recommendation to pair it with, but I’d say go for something with tits and ghosts and horny men dirtying their soul and you’ll get close.
Woodworm - Layla Martínez A Sunny Place for Shady People - Mariana Enríquez