#Halloween Reads

[bookboundnewsletter]

[checkoutmybookshelf]

And both Uncle Shakespeare and Aunt Edgar are fantastic Halloween/Samhain/All Hallow's Eve reads, because they have ghosts, spookiness, and just entirely the right vibes.

[freckles-and-books]

It’s finally October! And I have, once again, created an overly ambitious tbr. But I’m hoping the books I read will contain all the atmospheric, gothic, and witchy vibes I need to enhance my experience of my favorite month. 🪦🕸️🍂

Here are my October hopefuls:

The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland 🧙🏻‍♀️

Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio 🪦

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal 🎎

The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G. Slatter 💀

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson 🧛🏻‍♀️

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey 👁️

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny 🦴

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles 🗝️

The Secrets of Hardwood Hall by Kate Lumsden 🕯️

And that’s not to mention my audiobook, American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond by Jeremy Dauber, or my current read, The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette. It should be a full month!

[franticvampirereads]

I can’t believe that people are sleeping on this series! I think it’s one of the best witchy series that I’ve read in a really long time. It’s got everything you could possibly want in a dark witchy story: it’s got neon drenched horror vibes, it’s queer as fuck, it’s got a funky little spell book turned ink demon, and it’s got an unhinged group of teenage witches who aren’t afraid to fuck your shit up. And I loved every unhinged second of it!

I loved getting to see more of Sideways and the girls being their unhinged selves. I loved getting to see them be soft with each other and being shards of broken glass with everyone else. I also really loved that they took in Shiloh (a former witchfinder) and giving them the space they needed to just be themself. All of it was so good! The Scratch Daughters is getting five stars, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next one.

[fics-by-noworriesifnot]

Chapter Seven: "A Twist of Fate," is coming this weekend!

This is a continuation from where we left off in chapter six. Some of you have been asking questions and I promise we are very slowly clawing our way towards some answers. I was working on chapter 7 alongside 6, and they're both a little shorter than previous or future chapters, so for the first time ever i'll be able to post some chapters only a week apart! i feel accomplished and achieved.

I should mention chapter 8 is tough going. It's going to be a long one and it's got sensitive material that might not be for everyone. It's going to take me a bit longer than usual, but i hope it will be worth it <3 CW for this chapter: discussion (argument?) on the topic of death.

[slu7formen]

k, here i am again.

let me tell you, I LOVE halloween, and it’s tomorrow and I really wanna write a halloween related story for Luke but like, my head’s not working and I can’t bring any ideas and if they do, they’re poor AF, so here I am asking for your help <3

I know u guys are just amazing at sending sooo original and cool requests so if you have any that you wanna share or ask related to this day, feel free to! 🖤🎃

[a-book-scarfing-goblin]

What book are you reading to celebrate Halloween?

[bookaddict24-7]

🎃A few recommendations for your October TBR. 🎃

IG: @daylafm

[marlocandeea]

Haunted Houses in Gothic Cinema, for Degenderate no.4

If every house is a character, then each one has its own identity, starting with its gender. My suggestion is that there are houses with a feminine tendency and houses with a masculine tendency, from architectural structure to character movements, down to the story’s meaning.

After watching Spencer at the Venice Film Festival, I thought: haunted house stories will never die. The biopic by P. Larraín on Lady Diana, half character study and half psychological drama, is filmed with a Shining aesthetic. And the combination works, for reasons that are almost anthropological. Wherever there is a building, an unconfessable secret, and a gallery of isolated characters, a haunted house story emerges naturally.

Judging by the success of American Horror Story, The Haunting, and reboots of cult classics like Picnic at Hanging Rock or The Turn of the Screw, pop culture today continues to embrace the gothic. Gothic is older than horror by at least a century; it's more than just a subgenre—it's a way of thinking. It's a distinctly Western sensitivity towards family, hierarchies, gender roles, and sexuality. The haunted house story, in particular, distills these conflicts to their smallest unit: the space where people cohabit.

A house lives in multiple dimensions. It is a space, of course, but it's also a time—the sum of the events that have occurred there, and the events possible within it. Space shapes action: if there is a staircase, it can be climbed or descended; if there is a door, it can be opened. If irregularities occur—such as a ghost passing through a wall—even the violation has a meaning inseparable from that of the rule itself.

The same duality applies to characters. A building can be "haunted," meaning bewitched, but a person can also be "haunted" by doubts, secrets, or guilt. Every house has its cast of residents with various intentions, sympathies, and antipathies, but if we widen the perspective, we realize that the house itself is a character—a radiograph of a personality full of conflicting instincts or a fractured, combative society. At the heart of the story, we often find a young woman who enters the house and eventually wants to escape. But what exactly is she escaping from?

It depends on the house. If every house is a character, then each one has its own identity, starting with its gender. My suggestion is, there are houses with a feminine tendency and houses with a masculine tendency, from architectural structure to character movements, down to the story’s meaning.

Feminine Houses A clear example of a feminine house in cinema is Argento's Suspiria. It is not a normal dwelling but a dance school, with minimal masculine presence. Authority is entirely feminine, and even the danger takes the face of a matriarch.

As the protagonist arrives, another girl is seen fleeing in the opposite direction. The main tension in feminine houses is outside-inside/inside-outside—a horizontal movement evoking a vortex, like the contractions of a womb. The secret to be revealed has a location within this space, and in feminine houses, it often lies in a double layer, a fourth dimension at the core of the building. Feminine monsters—typically witches, vamps, and other unsettling or cannibalistic figures—have their lair in the hidden heart of the house. The young woman's spiral journey to the antagonist’s den is the most famous sequence in the film, with a haunting synergy between the soundtrack and the labyrinthine journey of the protagonist as she (the celesta) weaves through the hostile walls of the house-hag (the bass sound, possibly a drone).

In feminine houses, the heroine encounters her own shadow—the oppressive shadow of the mother, the destructive potential in her femininity, even in relation to other women. The moral of these stories oscillates between responsibility and repression: defeating the monster means, depending on the case, accepting adulthood or renouncing personal agency. Failure in this test means withering away, never blossoming. Female ghosts are often depicted descending or ascending the stairs to the ground floor, forever drawn to the house's secret heart, unable to fully enter or exit.

Masculine Houses A sense of verticality, a high-low/low-high movement, characterizes masculine houses. Today, they might be skyscrapers or experimental projects hidden in the mountains (Ex Machina); once, they were monasteries, colleges, or palaces. The masculine house exists where private power overlaps with public and social power. Dracula's castle is perhaps the most famous example, the benevolent fairy tale king turned into a monster.

An anxiety over social, sexual and family hierarchies pervades these stories, mingling the fear and desire to defeat or be defeated. The dangerous secret lies in the lowest or highest point of the building because it’s a secret of power. In horror films, the most destructive hauntings, like demonic possessions, usually originate in the attic or basement.

The protagonist of these stories is often a young man dealing with a more powerful tyrant, struggling between the need to defeat him, the fear of becoming like him, and the ambiguity of their bond. When the protagonist is a young woman, the gothic veers towards the dark fairy tale and romance, revealing its ancient ancestor: Bluebeard. Just as Dracula bites at the neck, Bluebeard marries women only to slit their throats and hang their bodies in a forbidden room, indistinguishable from his other beautiful and precious possessions.

Queer Houses These aren't rules but themes to play with. When a film, series, or novel invents something new, it’s just another piece to add to the infinite puzzle. Gothic has a long queer tradition. The monster as a metaphor for irregular identities and desires is one of its richest tropes, and the blending of masculine and feminine elements is often used to provoke unexpected reactions of attraction and repulsion in the mainstream audience.

For this reason, most haunted houses, while tending more toward masculine or feminine, are ultimately always queer: only when the status quo is challenged can a story emerge. The house in Spencer, Sandringham House, is in many ways queer. Prince Charles is not entirely a Bluebeard, nor can the ambiguous Queen Elizabeth be considered a witch. We do not know to what extent Diana is being controlled or protected by maids, cooks, and butlers. Nor do we fully understand her relationship with her wardrobe maid, Maggie. What matters is that Diana can make her choice, as long as she accepts the consequences, and escape from imprisonment to freedom, from past to present, from the gothic to History, from the role of helpless girl to that of woman and mother.

References:

George Haggerty, Queer Gothic, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 2006. Anne Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of the Gothic, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995. Dario Argento, Suspiria, Seda, Italy, 1977. Alex Garland, Ex Machina, DNA Films, United Kingdom, 2014. Stanley Kubrick, The Shining, Warner Bros, United States, United Kingdom, 1980. Pablo Larraín, Spencer, Komplizen Films, Fabula, Shoebox Films, Germany, Chile, United Kingdom, 2021. Peter Weir, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Australia Film Commission, McElroy & McElroy, Picnic Productions Pty, Ltd. EZ, Australia, 1975. Alexis Martin Woodall, Patrick McKee, Robert M. Williams Jr., Ned Martel, Lou Eyrich, Evan Peters, American Horror Story, 20th Television, United States, 2011-present. Dan Kaplow, Kathy Gilroy, The Haunting, Amblin Television, Paramount Television, Intrepid Pictures, United States, 2018-2020. Michael Rymer, Larysa Kondracki, Amanda Brotchie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Freemantle Media Australia, 2018.

[books-and-strawberry-tea]

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed honestly. I want to read so so so much that my brain is struggling to concentrate. I’m just so excited but I can’t just….read.

Thankfully my audiobook trick worked yesterday. So hopefully that will help me continue.

But man my brain is a nightmare rn.

Speaking of, what’s some things that help you read? Leave some comments because your girl is struggling.

Anyone have any tips also for reading when people are around??

[desdasiwrites]

– Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

[bdapublishing]

👻🎃 25+ Subversive Dark Halloween Books You Need for Spooky Season 🎃👻

If you’re tired of predictable haunted house stories, we’ve got just the thing. 🖤

Our latest blog post dives into dark and subversive horror books perfect for those craving something eerie, unexpected, and just a bit unsettling. (Did we mention… mold? 🍄)

📚✨ Explore the full post here ✨📚

From disturbing tales with unconventional creatures to spooky reads that challenge norms, this list will keep you hooked all October long.

Seen anything that needs a spot on your bookshelf? Tell us what you’re adding to your TBR in the comments—because the best Halloween reads deserve to be shared! 📖

[hannahs-quirky-moments]

Currently reading 📖

[freckles-and-books]

Current read

[franticvampirereads]

I might not have gotten a lot read this month, but I loved the books that I did read! Here’s what I read in October:

You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight 5⭐️ {review}

The Scratch Daughters 5⭐️ {review}

Hunt Me! 4.5⭐️ {review}

The Dangerous Convenience Store 4.5⭐️ {review}

There’s A Monster In The Woods -currently reading

Vespertine -currently reading

My favorite book this month was The Scratch Daughters! It was so queer and witchy and it was a perfect read for Halloween. 🎃

[bigheartedbibliophile]

🎃 Happy Halloween! 🎃

I got a bingo! Did you play?

@thereadingchallengechallenge I remember you saying you might do this! I'm curious to see where you ended up.