The Classics Club Gothic Book Tag coincides with the clubs #CCdare challenge for October to read a classic book that scares you, thrills you or challenges you somehow. I’ve been reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the very first time, in tandem with a bio by Charlotte Gordon about Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, Romantic Outlaws.
The Gothic Book Tag is a fun way to face your bookish fears although it feels odd to be contemplating Halloween-style posts about dark nights, harvests and the dead (walking or not) as we in the Southern Hemisphere embrace new life, spring blossoms and longer days. Not that you would know it right now. After the driest winter in a long time, we have now had nearly three weeks of non-stop rain. Daylight savings started a week ago, not that you would know it, as we wake up to yet another grey, damp day that eventually peters out into more rain and gloomy evenings.
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| Anzac Bridge, Sydney (I was a passenger, not driving!) |
Perhaps this is the perfect time, after all, for me to tackle this gothic tag!
It would be very easy to fill this book tag with Stephen King books and characters, but I’m not sure he qualifies for all my rules about what is a classic and I want to challenge myself to look deeper and further back for some of my personal scare factors.
Charming and enticing to start with, but evil personified once you get to know him.
A complete bad ass, with no rules, no compunction and no empathy.
Deliciously creepy from start to finish.
But that cover!
The Day of the Triffids
The Bloody Chamber
Picnic at Hanging Rock
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| Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost |
This is not meant to be a disturbing poem, I believe, but ever since the episode of Roswell where Alex dies and leaves behind a cryptic message that references the final lines in this poem, I have imbued it was a sinister meaning. It gives me goosebump shivers every single time.
#CCgothicbooktag
This Reading Life 
Tess has the same effect on me… still haunting, but I loved it. Fun post!
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I agree on Stephen King's work, the man and his novels are haunting me. As for Coraline, it's so disturbing novel. The scariest poem of yours sounds amazing, I will try to find the rest of it.
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That's because Judy's death is awful!!
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How funny that your scariest poem is that one (whole thing is here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening) when you posted a while back about poems by heart this one popped immediately to mind as it is one of the ones I know by heart. It isn't a scary poem at all, but once you have an association with a line you never see it the same way.
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I agree with so many of these! I listened to 1984 just this week, pressed fast forward past the rats in the mask bit. And 10. Yes! Haven't (and won't ever) read LotF since high school. And yes, Chocky, Judy, Picnic. My only disagreement Ulysses which I love. Don't worry about not understanding it -you will – but immerse yourself in all that wonderful language.
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This is the first time I heard someone disliked Lord of the Flies. It's actually one of my favorites.What aspect of it that you disliked?Now you have scared me with 1984. It's on my CC list, and for some time I have been considering whether I should swap it with another book. Now I'm almost convienced…
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Tess is my favourite Hardy (to date) even though it's a book that makes me so very angry.
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There was something about the button eyes in Coraline that was truly disturbing, but I can't get enough of it at the same time!
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So awful. And Turner writes about the after effects of it on her siblings and parents so beautifully that it wrecks me!
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It's weird how it happens isn't it Mary? I 'studied' this poem on my blog a few years back when our boys were studying it for their final school exams, but I'd already seen the Roswell episode in question several times by then and only knew the lines in that context. I wonder what Frost what think about his poem being mixed up in an alien murder conspiracy in early 2000 TV-land?
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Thanks for the Ulysses encouragement Bill. I'd like to tackle it one day – probably a readalong or annotated version or both would work for me I think.Mr Books & I saw 1984 at the STC a couple of years ago – the rat mask scene was the most disturbing for me and I couldn't skip over it either! Implied violence is often so much more ghastly than actual violence in books/stage shows etc.
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1984 is not an easy read (or show to watch) but it's so thought provoking that I think you really should give it a shot. It actually shares a number of themes with LoTF – group think versus individualism, civilisation and government, violence and war.But those awful awful boys in LoTF running around, running amok, where too much like the bully boys at school. I simply didn't want to be in that male-run world. I've wondered in recent times, whether an adult reread is required, except I'm not sure our world has moved on enough to make me feel any more kindly towards the story.
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Of all the alien stuff he would have to come to terms with in the early 2000s I doubt that would even concern him. He taught middle school so I would have to think he had a healthy understanding of pop culture.
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Your list gives me hope that I can actually do this tag. Since I rarely read scary books I couldn't think what I'd add. Let's see if I can get one together.
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