#gothic challenge

[palizinhas]

Finished Castle of Otranto

I can definitely see why it's considered the first gothic book, and it's overall an interesting read. I dislike calling some classics cliche for. Obvious reasons. And I saw a lot of people doing so for this one - I can somewhat understand why, but I'd say it's more cliche in a medieval story way than a gothic way

HEAVY Hamlet inspiration in this one, and when I looked it up the author said he was inspired by Shakespeare. It shows!!! Not a bad thing, but it's pretty clear

[palizinhas]

Spent a while not doing any challenge reads due to. Well. How much I disliked The Turn of the Screw. Which was a bit easy because my deal with myself was until October and I went through almost all the list already. pretty sure I'm only missing Rebecca now

So. The Yellow Wall-Paper. Something I really enjoy about horror stories is how many ways there are to interpret them, and I've spent about an hour reading interpretations of this one. I always do this a bit after I finish the challenge reads, but this time was a lot more than usual.

It's a short story, obviously, and a bit maddening to read. I was completely baffled by the end the first time I read it so went back a couple pages to read it again to see if I missed something, but it is just meant to be confusing lol

My own interpretation is that the damage of the room is her own doing. But I really couldn't decide my view of the ending itself. I think some things you just experience without trying that hard to figure out!

I also read, recently, The Body Snatcher. Which wasn't part of my original challenge reads but fits quite well into it. I have less to say about this one. It's pretty straightforward until it's not and I'm not sure what to think of the ending? It's more fun if the two of them were just so freaked by the situation that they simply hallucinated that, but I'm not sure that truly makes sense to the way it's told

[palizinhas]

Didn't do updates to the whole challenge thing in a while so I'm gonna do two together, especially because I had similar thoughts about both but found one more enjoyable than the other. We Always Lived in the Castle and The Turn of the Screw

We Always Lived in the Castle does this thing where it has the kinds of weird dialogues and absurd main character having absurd narrations that Haunting of Hill House, from the same author, does, but it's a bit more direct about things. Takes a while to get going but does some fun things.

The Turn of the Screw, however, is my least favorite of the whole challenge. I was really underwhelmed by it. It's not uncommon for ghost stories to really be about the characters' psyche or whatever (Haunting of Hill House is also a bit like that), but the main character is extremely annoying. The narration is annoying. It's kinda absurd for such a short book to feel too long, but it somehow does. It's probably a good book for literary analysis and stuff though since it has all these sexual undercurrents lol

[palizinhas]

Finished The Haunting of Hill House and my first thought when I read the last chapter was "is everyone in this house stupid??"

Still trying to wrap my head around the idea of dispatching a woman (who they all thought was about to kill herself anyway) alone inside of a car. While she begged that she wanted to stay because it was the closest thing that she ever had to a home.

I'm a bit curious about Eleanor herself, actually, considering there's a bit of narration towards the end about the noise happening in her head, yet they all could hear. That + what happens when she goes knocking in everyone's doors + the reason the doctor called her there in the first place kinda implied she was the one causing everything.

At the same time, the house had always been not exactly well, so it was probably a joint effort somehow.

Something I really like about reading books like that is reading analysis afterwards. I also skipped the introduction because introductions written by other people tend to be very spoiler-heavy so I'm thinking of reading it now.

[palizinhas]

Finishing the fourth book on my list this month (the first was Wuthering Heights, but I only started posting stuff about the list here after that), I feel a bit silly I didn't realize how Dorian Gray was going to end, lol. As soon as I got to the end I knew what was about to happen but it was the only way it could have ended, so it's funny I didn't really stop to think about that beforehand

I feel like I was expecting something a bit different from this book, but outside of the chapter that was just several pages of talking about stuff he bought (which has some interesting things, but it's not really engaging), it was a really cool book. Likely my favorite out of the four this month (though I'd say Jane Eyre and Frankenstein remain my top 2 in the gothic classics challenge)

It's also fun because it and Castle of Otranto are the only ones I went in knowing basically nothing about the story, all people seem to say about Picture of Dorian Gray is that it's gay and that's clear within the first chapter

I'm a bit surprised by how fast I've gone though books this month. But I guess it's because I read most of the bigger ones last year so outside of the one I started last year, the ones I've done this month were all fairly short

For the record, I read the "Uncensored Version". I'm aware the two versions are fairly different, so I'm thinking that in a few months I'll read the other one.

[palizinhas]

Finished Carmilla (I should be sleeping)

I think the whole vampire thing as this mystical Other who comes to defile young and innocent women is always somewhat interesting. Carmilla is a more... sympathetic figure, I feel, than Dracula. The way their final deaths are described are pretty different in that sense, as well as the backstory. She does also get in bed with a child, but I don't think Dracula himself would be above that lol

Funnily, it was a bit less "sexy" than I expected. I thought the previous connection from when she was a child would make Laura a bit more inclined to respond positively to Carmilla, but she was always pretty confused by the overt affection. Which makes sense because even under manipulation and mind screwery, you can't make the innocent young woman too welcoming of the vampire's attention. It's something Dracula injects a lot of mental confusion on the girls to avoid doing as well.

I think an issue I have with a few of these gothic novels is the sudden presence of this random guy who knows everything about everything. It happens in Phantom of the Opera as well, outside of the vampire thing, and it's always somewhat underwhelming. Van Helsing is probably the best one of those because at least he doesn't show up out of nowhere

[palizinhas]

How was dr.Jekyll and mr.Hyde?

Oh, I really liked it!!! It's fairly short and it probably would be a VERY different experience if, like, the twist wasn't extremely well known, but it's great anyway

I'm generally not super into books where the POV character isn't directly connected with the story (that annoyed me in Wuthering Heights, which I also read for this), but obviously it makes sense that you're not directly following Jekyll and Hyde.

There's also this joke with Hyde's name that I think is the only reason his name was chosen (something like "if he's Mr. Hyde I'll be Mr. Seek) and I thought that was funny

[palizinhas]

The reading goal this year is crossing out these until October