How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
This is probably in my top three books of the year. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this story. That being said, it was less campy than I was led to believe by the title or the jacket blurbs.
Wonderfully paced, I remember at one point toward the end of the first third of the book, as the supernatural was ramping up and the terror was seeping in, I took some time to reflect on how the story had progressed to this point from where it had begun. Everything felt logical and natural. It’s a rare story that can make the supernatural feel natural.
Everything about this story was satisfying and I highly recommend it.
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Moby Dick by Herman Melville
There are a few Classics that I somehow navigated my school career without reading. Moby Dick is one of them. Instead, we read The Octopus by Frank Norris for that section of American Lit.
I decided to read this book, having been inspired by the Acknowledgements section of Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman. In it, Chapman dedicated some time to calling out the books that he took inspiration or information from to write his story. Of course, everything goes into the slurry pot of my brain, but I’d never thought about reading something specifically for inspiration for a story. Well, spoiler alert for next week’s post: I’ve got a new idea and I’m patterning one of my characters after Captain Ahab. I think. But I decided to go to the source rather than rely on the collective consciousness.
The style took some getting used to, of course. In fact, I started off with some pretty nasty flashbacks to needing to chew through about 500 pages of 19th century gothic literature a week for my senior seminar. Once I set my brain to that level of language, the story just hums and I am enjoying it more than I expected.
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I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T Shirt by Madeline Pendleton
The subject matter and style both appealed to me, so I took the plunge, despite my protestations that I don’t enjoy nonfiction. But I’m coming to the conclusion that I simply don’t enjoy unengaging nonfiction. Now, my disengagement could be due to style, subject matter, or both. But fiction can also be unengaging.
Pendleton is a great story teller and what she has to say about capitalism isn’t eye-opening. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. But it probably would be for some people. Unfortunately, those folks who act like they are in class solidarity with billionaires probably wouldn’t read a book like this.
But everyone else with half a brain should. As a bonus, each chapter is followed by a capitalism survival tip, living up to the subtitle of the book: everything I wish I never had to learn about money.
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Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
“”Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space.” -Charles Stoss”
Need I say more?
Recommended to me by my younger twin, this is the closest I’ve come to reading fantasy in a long time. I grew up on Drangonlance, but I loved EAP and my first King novel cemented that I wanted to be a horror writer. Even still, my first and third attempts at writing a novel were sword and sorcery stories.
I’m super stoked for this genre mash up of a story!
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Hey, psst. Come here. Since you made it this far, I’ve got a surprise for you.
Coolest bookmark ever!
The Chimerical Dark 