Reading Wednesday

[yuuago]

Been a while since I last did one of these... :V

Last Finished: Little Sister Death by William Gay. If you like southern gothic + ghost stories, try this. If you're interested in the story of the Bell Witch in particular, this one's for you, as it's inspired by it. Also, if you enjoy Cormac McCarthy's writing, you might also like this, because Gay has a somewhat similar style. Not sure if I would read this particular novel again, but I do want to check out more of William Gay's work.

Currently Reading: Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell. This one is a collection of magical/supernatural short stories, and it's pretty damn good. Pick it up if you're able. You've got melancholy lemon-sucking vampires, seagulls that slip through time, girls who turn into silkworms... I dunno, it's just really neat. I like the author's way of introducing the magic - everything seems ordinary at first, but then the supernatural sidles in, and it clicks really nicely.

Also Reading: The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. This one's a big fat book, which means I haven't been able to bring it on the transit with me, which means I'm not very far into it yet - but I'm looking forward to getting deep into it (currently, I'm just toward the beginning, which mainly discusses spring fertility rituals). My local library doesn't have a lot of books that cover EE folkloric traditions, so it's nice that there is this book, which discusses that area in detail.

Reading Next: Undecided, but since it'll be a while before I get through the nonfiction, maybe one of the books stuffed in piles around my bedroom... Perhaps A Discovery of Strangers by Rudy Wiebe; this one is a historical fiction novel set during one of Franklin's expeditions. (Not his final, fatal one, but one of the earlier ones.)

Or maybe I'll just pick up whatever looks halfway-interesting on the library's Feature shelf, as usual. ;p ;p