This year has been a year full of major life changes, including all sorts of changes to my reading habits. One major change is that I’m starting to move away from Goodreads, and am reevaluating how I track and document the books that I read. So this may very well be my last time doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge, specifically, though I will still be tracking my books and setting numerical goals. I’m still experimenting with finding the best alternatives, but one that I’ve started using is StoryGraph. I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting on there, but you can follow along with me at TheGothicLibrary.
Month: December 2022
Winner of the Haunted History of Invisible Women Giveaway
Congratulations to Danielle on winning last week’s giveaway! Danielle, who has been contacted by email will be the proud new owner of a copy of A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, signed by authors Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes.
For the rest of you, I still highly recommend grabbing this book from your favorite local retailer, or buying it online and supporting The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link.
I haven’t done a giveaway in quite a while, but let me know if you’d like to see more of these!
Review of Lavender House—A Queer Murder Mystery
When the police would rather beat you than help you, who do you call in to solve a murder? The queer communities of 1950s San Francisco are the backdrop to a murder mystery in Lev A.C. Rosen’s latest novel, Lavender House, which came out in October. After being drawn to this book’s gorgeous purple cover every time I passed it, I finally picked it up and it’s been one of my favorite reads of the year! Continue reading Review of Lavender House—A Queer Murder Mystery
A Haunted History of Invisible Women Review and Giveaway
A wispy woman in white, a widow who haunts the home she once ruled over, a fair maiden whose life was tragically cut short—have you ever noticed how many of the ghost stories of popular culture and local legend feature female spirits? Brilliant and knowledgeable ghost tour guides Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes—whom I have taken many tours of NYC with through Boroughs of the Dead—explore this phenomenon and its significance in their first nonfiction book, A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts, which came out back in September. Through a blend of personal, professional, and academic lenses, Leanna and Adrea provide a cultural analysis of the ghostly women that populate American legends and what their stories can tell us about ourselves and about American society. As a lover of ghost stories who also loves to examine why and how we tell them, I cannot recommend this book enough! In my excitement to preorder the book, I wound up with more copies than I need, so I’ll be giving away one of my extras. Read to the bottom of this post for information on how to enter to win a signed copy of A Haunted History of Invisible Women! Continue reading A Haunted History of Invisible Women Review and Giveaway
Cautionary Tales Against Resurrection
It’s a common moral in tales of folklore and fantasy: Do not disturb the dead. No matter how powerful of magic you possess, it is always inadvisable to go against the laws of both nature and the divine by attempting to reverse the irreversible. Even if you do manage to bring someone back from those Plutonian shores, they are never quite the same. Yet, as humans with a complicated relationship to mortality, it is natural for us to grieve the absence of those we love and to long to bring them back to life. Countless tales of Gothic and horror literature are here to remind us exactly why those thoughts should remain just a fantasy and not be acted upon. Here are just a few of my favorite examples of stories that warn against raising the dead:
