I haven't forgotten you, Matilda!!!

My Last Finals Ever are here.

In the meantime, I started a different blog of modern fairy tales, because I don't keep up on the blog I do have enough, so why not start a new one?

It is called Strange and Wicked Stories and can be found here.

Will get to this this week.

Random side note on insults

Found a Shakespeare's Insult Generator. I mean, the Bard was incredible at insults. You cannot go wrong.

Don't expect too much of the generator though. Nothing on there will get you up to the Marchioness's witty put down standards.

"shiver by shiver, we gain insight"

The quote is from Guillermo del Toro in his introduction to a Penguin horror imprint series that he edited. In his introduction he quickly traces the history of horror from the gothic novel through to H.P. Lovecraft. It doesn't necessarily run through anything new for those who have looked deeply at horror in literature, the idea being that horror is like fairy tales, it puts a face, creature to outright fear, on the things that we as a society fear.

For example: In the 1970s, an era when murder rates had doubled and rates for all crime had quadrupled in the past 10 years, you get the slasher flick--the stranger come to stalk and kill.







In the 1980s and 90s, we were coming to terms with HIV and AIDS and the idea that sex can kill. Vampires, sexy and deadly, were the horror. (Yes, vampires are still big in pop culture, but they are hardly horror now.)






With current fears of GMOs, science going too far, global warming, and an apocalypse of our own making, zombies are the horror motif of choice. (It may be running its course though. How long before we have The Zombie Diaries and True Rot? )










So when del Toro starts out his introduction with, "To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls," this isn't a mind blowing concept. What he traces is the line from gothics with their over-the-top imagery and emotions, to the more subtle and nuanced horror of the modern era, taking a brief look at the major authors and works along the way. It's when he come to Edgar Allen Poe that I paused and began to see parallels to our modern world and especially our modern political system. I thought of a Poe story del Toro didn't mention, but that fit what he was saying of Poe's writing and the way Poe saw the world, which was through the darkness in ourselves. Poe shows us inside the heads of monsters. Shows up why they do what they do. How they can resort to such evil.

"He knew that a rational, good-hearted man could, when ridden by demons, sink a knife in the eye of a beloved cat and gouge it out. He could strangle an old man or burn alive his enemies. He knew that those dark impulses can shape us, overtake us, make us snap--and yet, we would still be able to function, we would still presume to possess the power of rational thought.

"Why would anyone say we are mad?"

Later del Toro will give the overarching reasons for what turns Poe's protagonists into monsters, "that two thoroughly modern demons...: perversity and arrogance."

Which brought to mind the monster in a little known story of Poe's called, "The Devil In the Belfry." If you want to read it, here is a link. I'm going to completely spoil the story below.

The Dutch town of Vonderwotteimittiss believes it is idyllic. Each house is the same as any other, including the people in them. The artisans can only carve 2 objects, a timepiece and a cabbage, but they do so with incredible skill. Each person carries a watch, which they look at constantly. Even their pigs and cats have watches, tied onto their tales by the children. On their mantles are no less than 3 clocks bookended by carvings of cabbages. In each kitchen the same dinner is being made.  Each house has a small garden where exactly 24 cabbages have been planted. The narrator calls it, "the finest place on earth."

Life in this town is devoted to time. To keeping time. In the center of town is the House of the Town-Council on in the steeple is a seven-sided clock. It had never broken down. It and all of the other clocks and watches were exact to the minute so that when the big clock rang all the other watches and clocks, "opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo."

The Town Council have adopted 3 resolutions:

• "That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things--"
• "That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss"
• "That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages."

Obviously you know what is going to happen. 

Someone comes from over the hills. Someone "foreign looking" and "of a dark snuff color." Someone who is not dressed in the same clothing and is dancing steps that are not keeping with the time of the village. This stranger climbs the tower, kills the fat and lazy man meant to keep the clock in good order, and takes over the belfry. At this point the big clock sounds 12. And as it does all the citizens watch and count along with it. After it rings 12 times, the citizens start to put away their watches. But then the clock strikes 13.

And all hell breaks loose. (You saw all this coming of course.) The clocks cease to keep regular time and begin to dance. The cabbages turn red. "But worse than all, neither the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of the little [watches] tied to their tails, and resented it by scampering all over the place, scratching and poking, and squeaking and screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating altogether the most abdominal din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive." And to top it all off, the stranger in the belfry keeps ringing the clock bell with the rope between his teeth and on his enormous fiddle is playing Irish songs--foreign songs in a regular Dutch town!

Back to del Toro and his essay, and the quote that really set me off on this thought process. "It is in this arrogance that Poe's characters reveal their true nature: That they are not victims but executioners."

Which is how "The Devil in the Belfry" ends. With the narrator pleading for the reader and "all lovers of correct time and fine kraut," to descend on the town en masse to "restore the ancient order of things in Vondervotteimittiss."

To kill the stranger.

Which brings us to our own era, where we in America are facing the racism of this country through the current political campaigns of the Republican party and the amount of support Donald Trump has garnered.

This is a shock for white people. Many of us would have loved to believe that anyone who made the statements that he has made about Muslims and Hispanics and all people of color would be immediately excoriated. His political career would be over the moment he made those statements. And we're reacting in shock that it hasn't made his political career go splat. His supporters seem to be growing.

We've been protected from all this racial hate. We didn't see it unless we went looking for it. Even if we did go looking for it, it was hidden under social restrictions and "political correctness." Especially where I've lived for most of my life in the predominantly white farming country in the midwest. Trump has stripped away those restrictions and made it okay to say these things outright again. We're faced with the reality that it never went away.

It's not an easy reality to face as our friends, neighbors, family support this madness. People we thought were reasonable and kind. Our favorite uncle. A close friend. Where did this monstrous part of them come from and how did we not see it before? What were the signs we missed? What are they thinking?

Poe knew. Del Toro knows. Poe showed us deep into their minds. How they believe they are reasonable as they call for blood and deportation. As they declare some people are not fit to live in our country for the most stupid reasons possible.

I first read this story I was in middle school. I lived in a town of roughly 200 people in Wisconsin where black people were about as prevalent as unicorns and other races were nearly unthought of. We knew they existed somewhere. Somewhere being on Hawaii Five-0.

I read this story and didn't think it was scary at all. Predictable. Lame. But then I didn't understand who the monster is. I didn't understand that I live in Vondervotteimittiss. Nearly thirty years have passed and now I find it terrifying.

"My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings."

Mary Shelley quote.  And about the best excuse I have for why I stopped writing this blog, because I was really having a great time reading the books and writing on them here.  And busy is really no excuse for anything.  In other words, why did I stop?

Okay. My world did look a bit like this...

But that's really no excuse either, since that's what I'm always like.

And wow this post is boring. It feels like a necessary thing to do as far as getting started, but still.

Yeah.

Long story longer... I'm starting this sucker again. I'm going to keep at it come hell or high water because I've largely given up on things in my life and even if it is just reading old books and writing about them, this is something I can do.

Let the horror return!

The blood! The torment! And of course, the fainting!!

I'm going back to Castle of Wolfenbach tomorrow.

"He has been bludgeoned..."

Started new job! Yay!

Took a spectacular fall onto concrete on July 4th. Skinned knee, twisted wrist and ankle, my left palm looks like I took a grater to it, and I skinned the tops of my feet!  That's the one that amazes me. Yes, it was a total faceplant.

So, right. Book! Death Comes to Pemberley.

Tiny spoiler alert (sorry):

But I am upset that it isn't Wickham who bites it.  I would have cared more about him.

For that matter I would care about all of them a lot more if they were the characters I love and not just a story of people with the same names as characters I love.

Elizabeth isn't witty. Darcy isn't scathing. Jane and Bingley have no personalities at all.  Neither does Lydia, who we don't see much of and has lost all spark, made into this screaming, unreasonable, but still vain caricature.  And Colonel Fitzwilliam, the almost other contender for Elizabeth in P&P, is now the creepy guy with no alibi.  I smell red herring.

I feel I'm like those fans who are always upset that the movie version doesn't exactly fit the original.  Or the remake is wrong.  Or something.  There had to be changes in the characters.  Of course there had to be.  But without the sparkling wit those characters had in P&P they don't work as characters.  James does mystery, which is interesting and I am continuing to read for that story.  But the characters have none of the intelligent spark.

Aaaaand, horror of horrors, there has been no fainting to keep count of! Though I guess that part does fit the original characters.  Lizzie and Jane weren't the fainting sorts.

More Intermission and a lot of excuses

Sorry about this.  My quietness has nothing to do with World Cup obsession... Sure. Um...

I also really want to claim being back to school has caused this drop in reading, but it isn't true.  I've been reading.  Just not Castle of Wolfenbach.

I'm still reading all sorts of fun pulp.  I just have no ability to finish books I'm not fond of and I'm not fond of Matilda and her friends.  Hey!  I have an idea!

Oh.  Mark Gatiss thought of it first.  Oh well.

Instead I got the new re-release of Modesty Blaise from Titan Books and have been reading that.  More modern classic pulp and very worth it. She's been an obsession of mine since I started reading them in the 80s in the Detroit Free Press, the only place in the United States where they were printed.  I only got to read them when I went to visit my grandparents, so it is wonderful to actually read the full stories.  If you haven't read them, do so. NOW.

School did start again, so I have been nose deep in International Accounting.  And last night Andy and I went to see Neil Gaiman at Carnegie Hall.  It was amazing.

And there is the World Cup...

So that is all my excuses for giving up on Castle of Wolfenbach.  I'll choose something else this week and let you know.

"there are bloody floors, prison rooms, and scriptions on the windows to make a body's hair stand on end"

Woah it has been a crazy time. Sorry it has been so long since my last post.  My church (and the surrounding town) had its annual fair and I was part of that.

The bit about the tarot card reader---That was me. I'm generally quite shy about saying I read tarot cards, but after years of nagging, I finally got talked into it. Only had one guy who ranted about a tarot reader at a church charity and witchcraft and how I am EVIIIILLL.

 I always enjoy being evil. My greatest delight was the job where some of my coworkers would make the sign of the cross when I went past. Not kidding.

But all of this is not about Castle of Wolfenbach!

It starts off as all good gothic novels should. There is a storm, peasants who must take in a fine lady fatigued with weakening spirits. There is a haunted castle just up the way that is inhabited only by an old couple, left behind as caretakers of this otherwise abandoned place. The peasant wife tries to warn the fine lady of going there by telling terrible and vague stories. And the fine lady feels she must go there because obviously buckets of blood are preferable to a nice, safe peasant cottage with a bed on the floor.

It took Radcliffe an entire volume and too much poetry to get to this sort of scene.

P.S. No one has fainted yet though. C'mon Eliza. Hurry it up!

I owe you a back of book blurb for Leavenworth Case!

Which I will get to later. Spent morning moving shelving and tables for a local rummage charity sale and I'm going to Drunken Shakespeare tonight.  Tomorrow I do homework.  So after all the excuses, I'll give you the fun back of book blurb for The Leavenworth Case.

You've heard of Penny Dreadfuls, but have you read them?

Me neither. But I found some! Mysteries of London by G.W.M. Reynolds.

It's on the list. I'm beside myself. I can barely breathe I'm so excited. This is the trash lit of the Victorian Era!!! With all the lurid, sensational, gross, murderous prose you can get!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!

This is as big as finding the Northanger Horrid Novel Collection!!!!

I have nothing more to say but I'm too excited to stop typing because I want you all to understand how Utterly. Freaking. Awesome!!!!!

In the meantime

What I've been doing, besides homework, is discover a lot of other blogs on reading. I linked the ones I'm now following to the side. It seems there are a lot of readers of old books!! Woo!!

I'm looking forward to reading Leavenworth Case, but waiting until tomorrow. From Breadcrumb Reads I learned about the Bout of Books. I don't think I'll be doing it this time around having already made my plans and I'm not putting off Anna Katherine Green. Nope. Tomorrow I'm sitting down and having my own bout of book. But I'm telling you all about it in case you want to sign up. I think I might do the one in August.

The other thing is some of the other bloggers had a picture along the side of their blogs that is Which Austen Heroine Are You? I had to take it. And I FAILED!!!!!!!

I got this:

What is wrong with this picture? It's not Catherine! I didn't try to skew the answers or anything. But seriously, I have no idea how that one ended up like that. I'll have to retake it.

Okay. Back to homework for me so that I can guiltlessly read about murder tomorrow.

Other Weirdos! Woo! (An Introduction to the Classics Club Challenge)

Trolling about for discussions on books--as usual-- I followed a link to another link to another link and wound up here-- The Classics Club. They have a little challenge where you read a list of classic books-- a list of your own making-- within a certain amount of time and blog about them. And they are un-fusty about what constitutes a classic. (I had to make sure of this before I decided to join, since most of the books I like to read tend not to land on the official classics lists.) Their whole purpose is to get discussions going about classic books and my whole purpose is to get discussions going about horrid books and mysteries. Wee!!

In order to join I must put a list of at least 50 books I intend to read here and give a date to have them finished by. I'm going to go with 3 years. It gives me a lot of room and I can always add more books. Here is my list. I make no promises that this is the order I will read things in.

Northanger Horrid Novel Collection

1.      Castle of Wolfenback- Eliza Parsons

2.      The Necromancer- Ludwig Flammenberg

3.      Horrid Mysteries- Marquis de Grosse

4.      The Mysterious Warning- Eliza Parsons

5.      The Italian- Ann Radcliffe

6.      The Midnight Bell- Francis Lathom

7.      Clermont, A Tale- Regina Maria Roche

8.      Orphan of the Rhine- Eleanor Sleath

More Gothic-ish Sorts

9.      Phantom of the Opera- Gaston Leroux

10.  The Monk, A Romance- Matthew Lewis

11.  The Phantom Ship- Frederick Marryat

12.  The King in Yellow- Robert Chambers

13.  The Lancashire Witches, A Romance of Pendle Forest- William Harrison Ainsworth

14.  Catherine: A Story- William Makepeace Thackeray

15.  The Cloister and the Hearth- Charles Reade

16.  The Castle of Otranto- Horace Walpole

17.  Lady Audley’s Secret- Mary Elizabeth Braddon

18.  East Lynne- Ellen Wood

19.  Moonstone- Wilkie Collins

20.  The Haunted Hotel-Wilkie Collins

21.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Brontë

22.  Black Oxen- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

23.  The Wind In the Rosebush and Other Stories of the Supernatural- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

24.  A New England Nun and Other Stories- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

25.  Melmoth the Wanderer- Charles Maturin

26.  Dracula- Bram Stoker

27.  Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman- Mary Wollstonecraft

28.  Vathek- William Beckford

29.  House of the Seven Gables- Nathaniel Hawthorne

30.  The Parasite- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

UPDATE!!
Varney the Vampire Or the Feast of Blood- Thomas Preskett Prest
Wagner the Wehr-Wolf- George W.M. Reynolds
Mysteries of London- George W.M. Reynolds

Mysteries

31.  The Woman In Black- E.C. Bentley

32.  Mystery of Cloomber- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

33.  The Man in Lower Ten- Mary Roberts Rinehart

34.  The Circular Staircase- Mary Roberts Rinehart

35.  The Bat- Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart

36.  Lady Molly of Scotland Yard- Baroness Orczy

37.  The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective- C.L. Pirkis

38.  The Avalanche: A Mystery- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

39.  Monsieur Lecoq- Émile Gaboriau

40.  Dead Man’s Money- J.S. Fletcher

41.  The Paradise Mystery- J.S. Fletcher

42.  The Man Who Knew Too Much- G.K. Chesterton

43.  The Innocence of Father Brown- G.K. Chesterton

44.  The Red Thumb Mark- R. Austin Freeman

45.  The Mystery of 31 New Inn- R. Austin Freeman

46.  John Thorndyke’s Cases- R. Austin Freeman

47.  The Leavenworth Case- Anna Katharine Green

48.  That Affair Next Door- Anna Katharine Green

49.  The Circular Study- Anna Katharine Green

50.  Mystery of the Hasty Arrow- Anna Katharine Green

I am not by nature endowed with patience

Hello, Dear Reader.

I am returned to work in time for the busy time. (I do taxes.) But I'm still sick and really want to be curled up with Udolpho. I've also recently found that Lady Molly of Scotland Yard is available along with the original woman mystery writer, works by Anna Katherine Green. If only I could give up all profession and simply read I would be the happiest woman in the world.

But enough. Back to people's taxes.