Dusting off this blog even further... here's that 100 books list widget people have been doing. This was a fun one with some deep, feverish, adolescent/kid-brain cuts! Caveat emptor.
23! You have so many on here that are on/I've got to put on my to-read list... Labyrinths is on my dresser. I want to read Magic Mountain so bad! Name of the Rose! And M&C out from the library right now, actually.
I'd love to hear about what you thought about The Uncanny (I've not read any Freud) and The Wine Dark Sea (recently poking at the edges of horror and my aesthetic responses to it), if you've anything to say in particular about either?
You already know so many of our overlaps, but handshaking extra hard on them (Carson! Howl! MD!), as well as good ol' Ella and the Watch books.
Borges is so good! Legit rewired my brain at a certain point in my life. The Name of the Rose is even more fun post-Borges, I think, since it references him heavily and they have much in common as far as concerns but are very different in style, form, and genre otherwise.
Re. Freud and Aickman - everybody is right and Freud is a crank for sure, and I even thought he was a crank when I first read him at 16-17, but also his theory of the unheimlich really did influence me a lot as a writer and prompt me to think a great deal about my interests when it comes to both horror and the fantastic. I ended up going down a Lacan/Kristeva rabbit hole as well for a while.
Aickman is just a fun, atmospheric writer IMO; Cold Hand In Mine is probably his most well-known collection but my favorite story of his ("The Inner Room") is in Wine-Dark Sea. Aickman's writing is probably on the border between horror and surrealism and sometimes suspense, I think. IIRC I have a few other horror short fiction writers on my 100 Books list: M.R. James (for stories I actually find scary!), Caitlin R. Kiernan, Livia Llewellyn. What kind of horror are you interested in? It's a very broad field; like with romance, I both think it catches a lot of ignorant and conservative flak and also I sometimes get exasperated with the fan defensiveness in return.
Absolutely noted in re: Borges-->Eco, thank you! That sound so fun...
I am so sorry for the long delay in my response to this--I was in the middle of reading about horror and writing up my post about it, and I didn't a. quite KNOW what horror I'm interested in, and b. didn't want to just repeat myself. In advance, I suppose.
Honestly, I don't know entirely, still, but probably am most interested in psychological stuff that resists certainty? I don't know! I liked Hill House, but I don't know that I ever felt scared more than very effectively destabilized.
You don't know me, but queenlua pointed you out to me as a fellow Pearls of Lutra enjoyer and having looked at the whole list, I have to commend your taste in other stuff too! I got 25. Lot of great authors in here.
Oh, nice!! I have a lot of fond Redwall memories in general but Pearls of Lutra has a special place - the quest fantasy, maybe, and also Grath was a badass IIRC. (I'm looking at your list now and - James Herriot! Steven Brust! Oh man, the Mixed-Up Files! Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler & HP Lovecraft were both runners-up/things I considered... I should've put Johannes Cabal on there too. Ditto The Scarlet Pimpernel. 28/100 here ultimately, you also have great taste.)
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I'd love to hear about what you thought about The Uncanny (I've not read any Freud) and The Wine Dark Sea (recently poking at the edges of horror and my aesthetic responses to it), if you've anything to say in particular about either?
You already know so many of our overlaps, but handshaking extra hard on them (Carson! Howl! MD!), as well as good ol' Ella and the Watch books.
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Re. Freud and Aickman - everybody is right and Freud is a crank for sure, and I even thought he was a crank when I first read him at 16-17, but also his theory of the unheimlich really did influence me a lot as a writer and prompt me to think a great deal about my interests when it comes to both horror and the fantastic. I ended up going down a Lacan/Kristeva rabbit hole as well for a while.
Aickman is just a fun, atmospheric writer IMO; Cold Hand In Mine is probably his most well-known collection but my favorite story of his ("The Inner Room") is in Wine-Dark Sea. Aickman's writing is probably on the border between horror and surrealism and sometimes suspense, I think. IIRC I have a few other horror short fiction writers on my 100 Books list: M.R. James (for stories I actually find scary!), Caitlin R. Kiernan, Livia Llewellyn. What kind of horror are you interested in? It's a very broad field; like with romance, I both think it catches a lot of ignorant and conservative flak and also I sometimes get exasperated with the fan defensiveness in return.
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I am so sorry for the long delay in my response to this--I was in the middle of reading about horror and writing up my post about it, and I didn't a. quite KNOW what horror I'm interested in, and b. didn't want to just repeat myself. In advance, I suppose.
Honestly, I don't know entirely, still, but probably am most interested in psychological stuff that resists certainty? I don't know! I liked Hill House, but I don't know that I ever felt scared more than very effectively destabilized.
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