I just don’t see how the person who wrote the pretty darn good The Secrets of Drearcliff-Grange School could write this mess. I only half read Anno Dracula. At page 152, I realized I was starting to hate all the characters, started skimming to see if/when things might improve. They do not; I got to the end, and never took a liking to anyone or anything going on. It’s kinda too bad, since the premise isn’t bad. Basically, most of the crew of Stoker’s original […]
Can slasher flicks be feminist?
Have you ever wondered about the gender representation of character types in horror flicks? How about the existence of female empowerment in rape revenge flicks? Does watching a rape or murder from the from the right perspective force men to identify with women? This book may help you answer those questions. I like most people had the preconception that horror films and their sub-genre slasher flicks were just escapism. In her book Men, Women, and Chain Saw: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover […]
Not at All Magically Realistic
Y’all. Y’all. Maybe I wasn’t the target audience for this book but it was so bad.
As Spooky As Ever: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an amazing, unsettling book. It is a tale told by a fanciful and unreliable but fascinating narrator, Mary Katherine Blackwood, or Merricat, as her older sister Constance calls her. Merricat and Constance and their Uncle Julian and Merricat’s cat Jonas live in Blackwood House, on top of the hill overlooking a small and small-minded village. The author Shirley Jackson was a master of the macabre and creepy. Her short story “The Lottery” continues to haunt schoolchildren every year, […]

