#& ‘is your blood as red as this’ by helen oyeyemi i love them both SO much . like i cannot convey this enough

[blackberryjam]

should i subject u all to my Thoughts again tonight . i think i shall

[cor-ardens-archive]

Hi, I'm a different anon from the one who asked for incest recs (and I promise I'm not baiting you either; sorry you have to deal with dickheads on here :/) but I loved your answer and I was wondering if you had a rec list specifically for sibling incest (or even just intense sibling relationships)? Thank you in advance!!

I was taking a long time to answer this because I knew I was forgetting a lot of relevant titles, but then I realized I’ll never be able to make a complete list, so have a few scattered recs instead.

Some of these are quite triggering and involve child on child sexual abuse, others are just very dysfunctional/unhealthy, and some are simply romantic. Look them up before delving into them if triggers might be a problem, or feel free to ask me about specific works.

Books/short stories:

Querelle de Brest, Jean Genet

Les Enfants Terribles, Jean Cocteau

The Carnivorous Lamb, Agustín Gomez-Arcos

Ada, Vladimir Nabokov

The Blood of the Walsungs, Thomas Mann

Os Maias, Eça de Queiroz

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan (recently recommended to me by a mutual, I haven't read it yet though!)

Twins, Bari Wood

The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter

Angels and Insects, A. S. Byatt

There’s a brief incestuous encounter in James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone (and i hardly see this mentioned at all, which is odd because homosexual incest is considered particularly scandalous, and the incest motif is pretty important in Baldwin’s works in general. i have a lot to say about this and how it compares to the incest motif in gothic literature actually but this is not the place). There's mention of an incestuous couple in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness that isn't central to the book but still relevant. Geryon in The Autobiography of Red is sexually abused by his brother as a child, and although not central to the plot it is very important to his character.

Subtext/ambiguous:

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (if you read Cathy and Heathcliff as siblings, and their relationship as sexual, which i do)

The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe

White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

War and Peace, Tolstoy

A Sicilian Romance, Ann Radcliffe

Just about anything by William Faulkner. There is of course The Monk by Lewis, but I have so much to say about that and how bad it is and also how different from Gothic works written by women (like, compare Radcliffe’s brother-hero to Lewis’s rapist brother. but of course this is not the place.)

Also, I don’t want to say much, but there’s As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCan. There are layers to this... I could say more but I won’t :)

Off of the top of my head, two great books with dysfunctional/co-dependent siblings (actually sisters in both examples) are We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (i think it was Joyce Carol Oates who said the relationship was incestuous? i didn't read it that way but it's certainly an extremely compelling, dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship. this is a perfect example of what i want to read more of!) and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.

Movies:

Incest is so common in films (especially in horror) that I simply couldn’t begin to make a list. But I think you’re looking for an specific kind of dynamic (sorry if I’m wrong!), so I recommend you these:

The Mafu Cage (1978), dir. Karen Arthur (sibling incest explicitly referenced but not shown, parental incest as subtext)

Crimson Peak (2015), dir. Guillermo Del Toro (everyone’s seen it by now)

Carne de tu Carne/Bloody Flesh (1983), dir. Carlos Mayolo (explicit)

Ginger Snaps (2000), dir. John Fawcett (subtext)

Dead Ringers (1988), dir. David Cronenberg (subtext)

Actually, I can’t do this. There are too many. Google “films with sibling incest” for a number of lists.

[redgoldsparks]

July Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, read by Ramon de Ocampo 

I loved this book! Holy shit, it was everything I wanted and more. First of all, it's set in a brighter timeline of American history- instead of the current administration, the President elected after Obama in this book was a Democratic Senator from Texas named Ellen Claremont. Her son, Alex Claremont-Diaz, a senior in college focused on his own future political career, is the lead character. Alex is very close with his older sister June, who wants to be a journalist, and Nora, the VP's math-quiz granddaughter. These three have been given the nickname the White House Trio and do a lot of press and campaigning with their families. So it isn't a surprise that they are invited to the Royal Wedding of Philip, the oldest of the three children in this book's alternate English Royal Family. Alex is not excited to go, because he feels like he has a rivalry with the younger son, Henry. His Royal Highness said something rude to Alex at the 2016 Rio Olympics and that, in addition to his extremely good looks, makes Alex dislike him. A belligerent conversation at the reception ends with both of them tripping into the $75,000 wedding cake. They are then required to do a "pretend to be best friends" press tour weekend together to smooth things over. The weekend ends with Alex giving Henry his number. A friendship develops between them long distance as Alex grinds through finals and starts a job as a White House intern and pressure ramps up towards the 2020 election. The author is clearly a big fan ofThe West Wing, which is explicitly referenced more than once, and I would make an educated guess that she is also a fan of royalty AU fanfiction. The surety with which this book hit every emotional fic beat filled me with warm fuzzy feelings. But it is also quite political, and the climax of the story is a series of scandals that threaten the outcome of the election. The ending left me wistful for a more progressive America.

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

This is my second favorite Helen Oyeyemi book so far after What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a book that made me declare "I will read everything this author ever writes". Oyeyemi's stories are very hard to pin down. It feels deeply simplistic to call them re-workings of fairy tales, though that is one aspect of some of her books. They are generally set in the present day and generally at least one magical or impossible thing occurs, but that is what the whole plot revolves around. They also often end very abruptly, before what I would consider the end of the story, and leave me dreamy and pondering for a while afterwards. The main character of this book is Harriet, a teacher and ginderbread baker, who has a challenging mother and a challenging daughter. The bulk of the book is her telling the story of her childhood to her daughter Perdita. Harriet was born in Druhastrania, an Eastern European country which may or may not actually exist. Her and her mother escaped the country with the help of a changeling and a family of wealthy benefactors who then almost completely controlled their lives. Every relationship in this book is a complicated one, with the ties of love, duty, fear, obligation, hate, spite, affection, and blood all deeply tangled together. I'd recommend it, but be prepared for some of it's mysteries to stay mysteries.

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

This is such a fun book to read aloud. It's a very slim fairy tale (just over 100 pages, with a lot of illustrations in my edition) but it's full of amazingly silly word play. This is my favorite paragraph: "The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets. Farther along and stronger, bonged the gongs of a throng of frogs, green and vivid on their lily pads. From the sky came the crying of flies, and pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a stream, in which swift and slipper snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets."

Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges and Polterink

This is a very sweet story set in the Lumberjanes world, but which can be read out of sequence of the single issues, or possibly even as a stand alone. A cursed magical compass separates the Lumberjanes in the woods, making one after another lose their way. But sometimes you have to lose your way before you can find it.

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Janson

A quick re-read because the Moomins have been on my mind. It's just a delightful as I remember it. My mom read this to me and my sibling when we were young and many of the magical images lingered in my mind. Even though it's technically in the middle of the series, it's not a bad introduction to the regular characters of Moomin Valley.

Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo was recently chosen as the United States Poet Laurent, the first Indigenous writer to be appointed to this position. I read a short news article on her a few weeks ago and decided to pick up some of her books, starting with this memoir. This book is divided into four sections (East, North, West, South) and covers her early life, from her ancestors, through her childhood and adolescence, into the mid 1970s around her time in university and the birth of her children. She would go on to be a major voice in the Native American Renaissance literary movement, but this book ends just as she is beginning to write poetry. It's a powerful and lyrical telling of a challenging youth. I am grateful to have her as a part of American history and future.

Memoirs of a Book Thief by A. Tota, illustrated by P. Van Hove, translated by E. Gauvin

Set in Paris in the 1950s, this gorgeous black and white comic is about an arrogant young man who aspires to poetry but resorts to theft. He recites a plagiarized poem at a literary gathering to impress a girl, then falls in with a band of house robbers. It's translated from French and contains numerous references to poetry movements and personalities (which I all took as true, knowing nothing personally about this literary period). It's enjoyable and strange.

The Witch's Vacuum Cleaner and Other Stories by Terry Pratchett read by Julian Rhind-Tutt

This book collects a batch of Pratchett's early short stories, some written when he was in his late teens, which were serialized in a local newspaper. It's fun to see the beginnings of themes that he would play around with in later Discworld books. There are three stories about very tiny protagonists (an ant, a fairy, and a gnome) which made me think of the Wee Free Men of the Tiffany Aching books. There were several stories all set in a fictional Welsh town with an intentionally unspellable name, parodies of wild west stories about "The Coal Rush", sheepboys, and clashes between the bicycle-riding town constable and local rascals. Another set of stories take place in the town of Blackberry, which was prone unusual events such as outbreaks of time travel. None of these pieces is very long, but they showcase Sir Terry's growing strength at mixing the magical and the mundane.

Soppy by Philippa Rice

A series of sweet diary comics about Philippa and her partner, Luke Pearson. Many of them are silent, and all of them are charming.

[fuckitfireeverything]

10 Spooky Book Recommendations from your Favorite Ex-Librarian

Now that I’m not a Librarian anymore I really miss recommending books to people, and since Halloween is my favorite time of year, I thought I’d made some recommendations of my favorite Halloween-appropriate spooky books! Below, you’ll find a list of ten of my favorites -- I’ve tried to spread them out in terms of genre and style as much as possible so that everyone can find something they like!

1. My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Emil Ferris (2017)

Spoiler alert: this is already my Book of the Year, and for good reason. Ferris’ semi-autobiographical comic is half coming of age story, half post-Holocaust mystery adventure, and her unique ink sketch illustrations are interspersed with old horror movie posters against a backdrop of 1960s Chicago.

Read if you like: Harriet the Spy, the Universal monster movies, lesbians, stores about outcast preteen girls finding confidence, stories about outcast preteen girls trying to solve mysteries, stories about outcast preteen girls having crushes on other preteen girls, hippies, the 1960s, monster theory

2. White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi (2009)

A supernatural story from one of my all-time favorite authors, White is for Witching is told through a litany of voices. It is about Miranda, a late-teen girl, and her twin Eliot, and their dead mother Lily, and the house-turned-bed and breakfast that their mother and her mother and, eventually, Miri herself, haunt; featuring: Miri goes to Oxford and vampirizes her cute girlfriend for a while. I sound flippant, but there’s something very haunting to the novel, a kind of late-fall-emptiness to the resonance of it that you can’t easily shake. 

Read if you like: haunted houses, dead mothers, lesbians, witches, mirror selves, Oxford, magical realism, African folklore, co-dependent twins, maternally inherited curses

3. House of Leaves, Mark Z Danielewski (2000)

I think this one makes it onto most spooky book lists, but the feeling I got when I read it almost ten years ago still sticks with me, so I can’t pass it up. The book is the transcript of a documentary about a house that is bigger on the inside than on the outside (in a terrifying way, not in a Doctor Who way), which has been footnoted by a literary scholar writing about the film, which has been found by a drug-addled tattoo artist who scribbles his own story in the margins. Notorious for it’s typography, there is no right way to read House of Leaves, but you should absolutely give it a shot. 

Read if you like: haunted houses, documentary horror, literary theory, footnotes, getting very dizzy while reading, post-structuralism

4. The Changeling, Victor LaValle (2017)

I think the newest release on this list, but possibly already one of my favorites -- LaValle’s latest tells the story of a new father, Apollo Kagwa, who was abandoned by his own father as a child, and his search to understand the unthinkable actions of his wife both right after she gives birth, and several months down the line after she has disappeared. It’s a little heavy-handed on the “social media is Bad” undertones, but well worth it for a particularly good joke about a bad iPhone app.

Read if you like: warrior women who live in secret hidden islands, distrusting social media, Scandinavian folklore, contemporary stories, complicated characters, unexpected twists, not trusting men, being afraid to have children

Don’t read if: you just had a baby. Seriously, don’t do it. 

5. Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (2014)

A graphic novel that collects several discrete stories, Through the Woods is a quick read and delightfully macabre. If you’re unsure, read a couple of Carroll’s online comics (linked below) to get a feel for her -- especially “His Face All Red,” which is included in the collection as well as available online.

Read if you like: a sense of general unease, creepy folk tales, being afraid to look under your bed, bold colors, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, body horror, scaring the bejeesus out of children, any of Emily Carroll’s other work

6. The Girl With All the Gifts, M R Carey (2014)

Not your typical zombie story, Gifts is a zombie apocalypse story that focuses on a young girl, Melanie, who is both a zombie and not-a-zombie. While most of the zombies (called Hungries, in the novel’s parlance) are mindless eating machines with no higher cognitive functions, human scientists study the learning capabilities of an unusual group of zombie children who, aside from an irascible hunger for human brains, are perfectly normal, thank you very much. Set primarily in the English countryside, the novel follows a scientist, a solider, and a teacher, who are traveling to safety with Melanie in tow and trying to decide whether to see her as a person or as a monster.

Read if you like: who-is-the-real-monster stories, questions of scientific ethics, precocious children, survival horror, the-earth-wins-out post-apocalyptic fiction

Bonus tip: Gifts was made into an excellent movie in 2016 with one of the best soundtracks I think I’ve ever heard -- worth a watch if you like a good zombie movie. A follow-up novel, The Boy on the Bridge, was also released this year, but if you’ve read Gifts, check out my article on why you shouldn’t bother with Bridge.

7. Harrow County, Cullen Bunn (2015-present)

The third graphic novel to make it onto this list, and an ongoing serial so there’s always more coming when you’ve caught up! Harrow County takes place in a haunted town in rural Southern America filled with all kinds of restless ghosts and ghouls and monsters; it follows a girl named Emmy who, on her eighteenth birthday, realizes she has a strange connection to these haints, along with a whole family of other mediums, psychopomps, and witches. 

Read if you like: Southern Gothic, haunted forests, power struggles, uncertain pasts, whispers in the night, amazing but morbid character design, stunning artwork in muted colors

8. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter (1979)

A fairly famous collection of short stories, most of Carter’s works are feminist re-tellings of famous folk tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard. Carter’s use of language is exquisite and her stories are quick reads. Themes are about what you’d expect of late-70s feminist writing -- female sexuality, marriage, coming of age, corruption, female relationships -- and her prose has a distinctly Gothic feel that’s just right for this time of year. 

Read if you like: Gothic fiction, more creepy folk tales, wolves, feminist reinterpretations, wolves, girls drinking blood, wolves

9. Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt (2016)

Two connected stories told interwoven together, part of Mr. Splitfoot is about Ruth and Nat, orphans adopted into a religious cult where they learn two things: co-dependency, and grifting strangers by pretending to communicate with ghosts. The other part of it is about Cora, Ruth’s niece, who finds herself first pregnant and second visited by her old, mute aunt who leads her on a strange and inexplicable road trip on foot. 

Read if you like: the Fox sisters, unhealthy co-dependency, orphans converging timelines, strange and silent road trips, pseudo-religious cults, doomsday cults, upstate New York

10. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (1938)

“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” will always be my personal favorite opening line to a novel, and for good reason: even though Rebecca is known for its plot, primarily through Hitchcock’s film version of the story, the writing is gorgeous. It tells the story of the unnamed Second Mrs. de Winter, who joins her new husband in his mansion on the English coast and is haunted by the memory of his first wife. 

Read if you like: stories about rich people, Jane Eyre, gorgeous prose, being the second wife of a rich man with a dark past and enjoying the lap of luxury even though his dead wife is haunting the shit out of you, Alfred Hitchcock, British mysteries, that late-1930s posh English aesthetic

Have any other good spooky October reads? Let me know! I’m always looking for more to read and recommend and I’d love to hear what books you revisit when the Halloween mood strikes--