Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth is about as gothic as it gets, if you like fantasy.

I read Once Upon a River. It was pretty good.

I see A Deadly Education recommended by many people on the Listopia but no one put a note as to why. Some Googling suggested it’s not Gothic but doesn’t suggest any elements it does have. Can anyone tell me what elements it has? It’s on my TBR but I don’t want to read it for this prompt if it doesn’t actually match it.

I read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Glass House or Haunting of Hill House

I read The Hacienda

I also read The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.

I read Rebecca. I recommend it! It starts slow but keep with it.

I read Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia for this.

So maybe a bit of an outlier, but I'm using The Devil and the Dark Water

Intense emotion - check
Terror with pleasure - well, certainly a lot of terror, but there are pleasurable moments.
Death - lots
Romance - one major one
Darkly picturesque scenery - a sailing ship trapped alone at sea
Macabre, and definitely eerie and gloomily atmospheric!

Jackie wrote: "Spooky is the name of the game in October, and this week is all about the gothic genre. Gothic literature places a strong emphasis on intense emotion, pairing terror with pleasure, death with romance. It is characterized by its darkly picturesque scenery and its eerie stories of the macabre, and often features really dark and gloomy atmospheric settings. Edgar Allen Poe popularized this movement, but some fan favorites are Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Have some fun with this prompt, and get spooky!"

I read The Raven Boys
It's got dilapidated church grounds, it's got ravens, it's got psychics. I think this definitely has gothic elements.

I read Wolfsgate by Cat Porter. A dark historical romance with gothic elements. Pretty good, but I was disappointed by the ending.

I'd recommend Mexican Gothic.

I will be reading A Storm in the Stars by Don Zancanella. It is historical fiction about Mary Shelley, and a good portion takes place during the summer when she writes Frankenstein, and there are references to the novel as it -- and the creature -- is coming to life. Those are the gothic elements. :-)

I loved The Secret Keeper by the brilliant Kate Morton, a suspenseful dual timeline novel set in England that flicks between a modern day setting and WW2. Laurel is trying to solve the mystery of a violent scene involving her mother, which she recalls from childhood but never understood. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here is my review

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is an enchanting tale with a gothic feel that weaves its way between fairytale and family secrets. In 1913 a child arrives on a dock in Australia with a suitcase and a book of fairytales by “the Authoress” but no recollection of her name or family. Years later her granddaughter goes to Blackhurst manor in Cornwall in search of answers, and unearths many of the secrets and darkness behind the wealthy Mountrachet family. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here is my review

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield is a gothic tale with touches of magical realism and other dimensions, set in the Victorian era, along the banks of the River Thames. On the Winter Solstice night a half-drowned stranger staggers into The Swann, an inn of storytellers, carrying a dead girl in his arms. Nurse Rita works on them both, and miraculously, inexplicably, the girl begins to breathe again. This triggers a series of events and mysteries. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here is my review

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. A gothic neo-Victorian tale with references and parallels to Jane Eyre. It centres around the mysterious Angelfield family, with the wilful Isabelle, the disturbed brother Charlie, the wild, untamed twins Adeline and Emmaline who communicate with each other in their own special language, a ghost, a Mary Poppins style governess, and a doctor bent on researching the twins. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here is my review

I read Gallant for this prompt. It has a lot of gothic elements; ghosts, a creepy old house, nightmares, gloomy setting. It's a quick & easy read (YA) if you're not looking for anything too in-depth.

I used The Stranger Diaries for #34 academic setting but it would also be a great fit for the gothic prompt. The writing fits the gothic vibes but because the MC teaches Gothic Literature so I also ended up learning more about the genre and picking up some book recs (i.e, The Woman in White / Wilkie Collins) while reading.

The Sun Down Motel has all the gothic elements. It is a rundown motel that changes after dark, in a small town where women have disappeared.

I wound up reading Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Also listened on Audible, a version released earlier this year. The readers were terrific, and it helped that was stormy out the two nights I spent with this classic. Moody.

Barbara wrote: "I wound up reading Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Also listened on Audible, a version released earlier this year. The readers were terrific, and it helped th..."

It is so much more fun when the weather suits the mood of the book. :)

I read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I've been wanting to read this for years (can't even remember why at first exactly). Not a big gothic reader — like I was in high school — so I was glad this one fit the prompt. Ended up enjoying it, but mostly in the very start, and the last third or so. Lots of twists and turns, both figuratively, and while you were taken on various journeys through Barcelona. I enjoyed his writing style, so I would try the next in the series, but I wonder if the slow spots are just part of gothic novels? Even though there were those slow spots, and it's not a genre I gravitate toward, I still gave the book 5 stars — although if partial stars were available, I may have given it 4.5 or 4.75 stars.

I read The Sign of the Devil by Oscar De Muriel. Which was a crime novel set in Victorian Edinburgh, that had a lot of wonderfully gothic elements to it. Is number 7 in the series, though, so may not be the best jumping on point! 5/5

Dracula - a Graphic Novel by Fiona Macdonald
Gothic is not my thing at all, so this was perfect

I was dreading this prompt and I don't really understand what gothic is so I just looked at the listopia and book tags for something on my list. Ended up reading The Binding by Bridget Collins. I really liked the parts about book binding but not as much the other parts.

I read The Fall of the House of Usher: An Edgar Allan Poe Short Story

I read Don't Look Now and Other Stories shor t stories by Daphned Du Maurier Gothic MPG

As many others I am reading Frankenstein for the gothic read and it is a very interesting book but Wow, I have never disliked a protagonist this much before!

I read Doll Bones by Holly Black. There's a haunted porcelain doll, which seems quite gothic to me!

I'm less clear about what's gothic for recommendations, but there are some books I love on the listopia - The Roanoke Girls, A Darker Shade of Magic, The Sun Down Motel, The Graveyard Book and The Night Circus.

I participated in Dracula Daily (this was basically an email newsletter that sent you sections of Dracula — the events of Dracula take place from May to November of one year, so you would receive the sections of the novel that took place on that particular day) and now that it's over, I decided to use it for this prompt. I had read Dracula before in regular book form, but not since 2015, so it was really fun to return to it in such a different form!

I don't read a lot of gothic fiction, really, but I did consider using my favorite book of the year for this prompt: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. This could be described as a "gothic memoir" — it's Machado's memoir about her past abusive relationship, but she uses gothic tropes both as a way to tell the story and as a way to reflect on and analyze the story. It was unlike anything I've ever read before and I was completely obsessed with it.