Five Books To Elevate Your Spooky Season, fun stuff edition

A bonus recommendation, our monthly playlist, a poem, and more

Hope II by Gustav Klimt, 1907-8. I think the presence of death in this painting makes it all the more powerful.

Welcome to this month’s Fun Stuff Edition of Five Books For, a newsletter for people who love great stories.

Over at Global Comment this month’s Great Adaptations column is on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights - a great book and surely one of the best atmospheric and spooky reads. I take a look at the 2009 TV adaptation starring Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Sarah Lancashire and Andrew Lincoln. Have you read it, or seen it? Is one of the (many) other adaptations better? Who makes the best Heathcliff?

As always for this edition, we have a bonus recommendation, a poem, a playlist and some reading links, all in keeping with this month’s theme of smarter spookiness. As ever, I hope you’ll find something here to surprise and delight you. If you’re not already subscribed, you can receive this newsletter directly to your inbox by clicking the button below. Everything is free although if you’d like to support the newsletter with a paid subscription, that option is right there too.

Let’s dive in!

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Bonus recommendation: The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

“Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”

So what’s it about? This classic narrative poem by Edgar Allen Poe tells the story of an unnamed narrator who is mourning a lost love one evening when he is visited by a talking crow. The premise is simple but belies how clever and engaging the poem is.

What’s great about it? I love this poem. It’s the perfect Halloween read: atmospheric without being overwrought, and with a musicality that makes it an absolute joy to read aloud. It’s short enough to be read in just a few minutes which is great when you want a little literature snack but don’t quite have time for War & Peace. It’s full of allusions and references to other bits of literature and culture which I always find very fun. Even better, it has gone on to inspire many more writers, artists and composers to include references to it in their own works, from Ravel’s Bolero to the Nevermore Academy in Netflix’s series Wednesday, which makes it an even more joyful piece of literary history.

You can read the full poem for free here or listen to it here:

Give it a try if: you love poetry; you don’t like poetry but are willing to give it a try; you love reading aloud; you love writing with atmosphere; you love corvids; you love self-deprecating narrators or writing about mourning lost love.

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This month’s playlist

I shared a Halloween playlist last year which honestly is so much fun that I really hope you might use it for your celebrations! I’m going to reshare it here for your listening pleasure. Great to cook to or for a Halloween party.

As I mentioned above, I talked about Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights over at Global Comment this month, and I love that it’s one of the relatively few novels to inspire a huge hit song, in this case by Kate Bush. Here is the rather famous video, which has inspired lots of tributes in popular culture since the song’s release.

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This month’s poem

The Witch Has Told You A Story

By Ava Leavell Haymon

I know we’ve had a poem as our bonus recommendation but there’s no such thing as too much poetry! Here’s a short poem to enjoy for Halloween - less fun and definitely more creepy, at least to my mind.

You are food.
You are here for me
to eat. Fatten up,
and I will like you better.

Your brother will be first,
you must wait your turn.
Feed him yourself, you will
learn to do it. You will take him

eggs with yellow sauce, muffins
torn apart and leaking butter, fried meats
late in the morning, and always sweets
in a sticky parade from the kitchen.

His vigilance, an ice pick of   hunger
pricking his insides, will melt
in the unctuous cream fillings.
He will forget. He will thank you

for it. His little finger stuck every day
through cracks in the bars
will grow sleek and round,
his hollow face swell

like the moon. He will stop dreaming
about fear in the woods without food.
He will lean toward the maw
of   the oven as it opens

every afternoon, sighing
better and better smells.

Source.

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This month’s reading links

The funniest take on Jane Eyre. Contains spoilers! (McSweeny’s, free)

When you’re reading Dickens and the other Victorians, how do you picture the clothes? This article explains why there was a lot more colour in fashion at the time than we tend to assume. (The Guardian, free)

Poet Dorothea Lasky talks about the power of horror in literature. (LitHub, free)

Author Sarah Seltzer talks about how Jane Austen inspired her own, very different book. (LitHub, free)

On the tender creepiness of dolls, just in time for Halloween. (Aeon, free)

On what the near-universal belief in witches across human societies says about our deepest fears. (Aeon, free)

And for those of you who fancy a change from reading about Halloween-related topics, here’s a round up of the world’s most beautiful libraries. (Conde Nast Traveler, free)

The Austen Connection

is a brilliant newsletter for fans of Jane Austen - full of insightful analysis and a really great read. (Substack, free)

Some podcasts for you in case you’re in the mood for listening this month:

The History Extra podcast explore the darker side of Charles Dickens.

The Victorians In Their Own Words explores Dickens’ own writings on his life.

A look at Dickens’ legacy and impact on In Our Time: Culture.

What The Austen take a look at the gothic literature so often mentioned in Northanger Abbey.

The Secret Life Of Books takes a look at Wuthering Heights:

An exploration of Edgar Allen Poe:

Exploring the locations of The Woman In White:

If you have Audible, there is an excellent podcast on the origins of Sherlock Holmes. A great listen.

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Thanks for reading!

As always, I’m grateful to each and every one of you who subscribes, free or paid. I know we all have such crowded inboxes these days and I feel so lucky to be sharing the joys of reading with you like this. I would love to hear from you - what have you been reading recently? What’s your favourite Halloween read? Let me know in the comments, or you can reply to me directly via DM or email. I’ll be back next month with a new theme and more reading joy.

Happy reading!

Kate

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