IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN: Hadestown is on my speakers, my fav pumpkin beer is in my paw, my fav pumpkin bread is fragrant and warm from the oven, and the only thing that matters is the urge to curl up in a cozy burrow, light a bunch of candles and SPOOK MY OWN SELF OUT. Here are some of the books that, for me, have that chilly magical dreaminess about them: perennial fall re-reads that I would recommend to anyone.
The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson. When it comes to the fall spooks I have no interest in gore, but i L O V E creeping, overwhelming, suffocating dread. SHIRLEY is the hands-down world-beater when it comes to that sweet spine-tingling action. Her women are dreamy, imaginative, isolated, terrifying. I love the audiobooks, too: Bernadette Dunne has an eerie, shivery voice that’s as perfect for tight-wound Eleanor and the inexorable omniscient narrator of Hill House as it is for spooky, sharp-toothed Merricat.
The Secret History, Donna Tartt. Have I talked about this book enough yet? Have you figured out that I love it? You probably have, but just to confirm, i do. I really, really love this book. You know the whole “mystery” from about page 2, but the horror of it ebbs and flows, nightmarish and captivating. There are so many moments of loveliness and so many moments that are chilling and the whole thing feels suspended, like a spiderweb or a dream. It’s not as generous as The Goldfinch and a lot of people find Richard irksome, but who cares. I hope we’re all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. This book is so expansive, so vivid, so – well, magical – that it transcends the usual prerequisites of an autumn read (viz., Be Creepy). Not that it doesn’t have its creep factor moments – Childermass turning Vinculus’s cards, Stephen in Lost-Hope, Lascelles at the castle of the plucked eye and heart – but they are scary mostly because you are wound so breathlessly in the spell of Clarke’s world. This book is like 900 pages long and I’ve read it, estimating without exaggeration, probably 6 times all the way through and way more than that in snippets. I LOVE THIS BOOK.
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James. The Turn of the Screw is a classic for a reason. It will take you about an afternoon to get through, and it doesn’t matter where you are during that afternoon – an office, an airport, a cozy room, a crowded metro car – there will be a moment that catches you, a trickle of ice water down the spine that you’ll remember just when you’re trying to go to sleep. In the best way.
What about you guys? What do you read when it starts to get cold? Have you read Le Fanu or Wilkie Collins? I keep meaning to but I always just read these instead.
There’s a nip in the air and a sweater wrapped around my shoulders and I am SO PSYCHED to bring this post back. Here are some more Fall Reads, fiction and non-, for the coziest of creeps.
Deathless, Cathrynne M. Valente
Sabriel, Garth Nix
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
The Writing Class, Jincy Willett
Dark Entries, Robert Aickman
Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
White Is For Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
Eileen, Otessa Moshfegh
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons From the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty
Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
The Stolen Lake, Joan Aiken
Dare Me, Megan Abbott
The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier
What Was She Thinking?, Zoe Heller
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
The Diviners, Libba Bray
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, M.R. James
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Shadow in the North, Phillip Pullman
Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Rivers of London, Ben Aaronovitch
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova* (*this book actually infuriated me at the time but i do find myself re-reading parts of it because, god help me, it’s got Atmosphere, so like, caveat emptor.)
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Ghosts I Have Been, Richard Peck
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
Got more? Tell me your favorites! Feed my insatiable hunger for creepiness!!!
