Read This Book : Shirley You Jest Edition

Dean and Halley say, "Read this book:"

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Well, Jackson did it again! This beautiful strange novel leaves quite a distinct and lingering impression. In this tale of mystery and isolation we are met by two sisters cut off from the world. They live alone, happily and ferally in their dilapidated family home in an almost mundanely mystical lifestyle a la Grey Gardens. Delivering and effortless sense of unease, this captivating and understated story will leave you in a satisfying state of unknowingness.

-Dean

Merricat lives with her older sister and uncle after her family is killed due to the mysterious appearance of arsenic in the sugar bowl. After her sister is acquited of the murder, she and Merricat are ostracized by the village. For a time, they are content in their isolation...until a visitor comes to stay. Strange and haunting, this novel stayed with me long after I finished it. Shirley Jackson managed to tell a story without violence, gore, or horror and yet by the end you're left chilled to the bone.

-Halley

***

And speaking of Shirley Jackson, just now is a pretty good time to be an SJ fan (or to become one) as the queen of horror is experiencing a bit of a resurgence. And it's about time too. 

When Shirley Jackson was first introduced by The New Republic, it was as, "Shirley Jackson, the wife of Stanley Hyman... living in New Hampshire and writing a novel." Not as she should have been, "Shirley Jackson the bad*ss writer of truly haunting and creepy short stories is writing a novel and lives in New Hampshire where she has to drive Stanley Hyman (the husband of Ms. Jackson) around because she knows how to drive and he doesn't." Not that not being able to drive is a reason for ridicule.

All I'm trying to say is it's time to give this author and licensed driver the appreciation she deserves. And with a new biography, last year's novel based on her life, and a soon to be released graphic novel based on one of her most well-known short stories, we finally are! -Erin

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery by Miles Hyman

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery continues to thrill and unsettle readers nearly seven decades after it was first published. By turns puzzling and harrowing, it raises troubling questions about conformity, tradition, and the specter of ritualized violence that haunts even the most bucolic, peaceful village. 

This graphic adaptation, published in time for Jackson's centennial, allows readers to experience The Lottery as never before, or discover it anew. The visual artist--and Jackson's grandson--Miles Hyman has crafted an eerie vision of the hamlet where the tale unfolds, its inhabitants, and the unforgettable ritual they set into motion. His four-color, meticulously detailed panels create a noirish atmosphere that adds a new dimension of dread to the original tale. Perfectly timed to the current resurgence of interest in Jackson and her work, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery: The Authorized Graphic Adaptation masterfully reimagines her iconic story with a striking visual narrative.

Shirley Jackson : A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Placing Jackson within an American Gothic tradition that stretches back to Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror." Almost two decades before The Feminine Mystique ignited the women's movement, Jackson stories and nonfiction chronicles were already exploring the exploitation and the desperate isolation of women, particularly married women, in American society.Franklin's portrait of Jackson gives us a way of reading Jackson and her work that threads her into the weave of the world of words, as a writer and as a woman, rather than excludes her as an anomaly (Neil Gaiman).

The increasingly prescient Jackson emerges as a ferociously talented, determined, and prodigiously creative writer in a time when it was unusual for a woman to have both a family and a profession.A mother of four and the wife of the prominentNew Yorkercritic and academic Stanley Edgar Hyman, Jackson lived a seemingly bucolic life in the New England town of North Bennington, Vermont. Yet, much like her stories, which channeled the occult while exploring the claustrophobia of marriage and motherhood, Jackson's creative ascent was haunted by a darker side. As her career progressed, her marriage became more tenuous, her anxiety mounted, and she became addicted to amphetamines and tranquilizers. In sobering detail, Franklin insightfully examines the effects of Jackson's California upbringing, in the shadow of a hypercritical mother, on her relationship with her husband, juxtaposing Hyman's infidelities, domineering behavior, and professional jealousy with his unerring admiration for Jackson's fiction, which he was convinced was among the most brilliant he had ever encountered.

Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell 

In this darkly captivating novel, Susan Scarf Merrell uses the facts of Jackson's life as a springboard to explore the 1964 disappearance of Paula Weldon, a young Bennington College student. 

Told through the eyes of Rose Nemser the wife of a graduate student working with Jackson's husband, Bennington professor Stanley Edgar Hyman Shirley reimagines the connections between the Hymans volatile marriage and one of the era's great unsolved mysteries.

This One's for the Ladies

So, a few months ago I stumbled on a 50 Coolest Books of All Time list. The list comes from Shortlist which I admit, is something I've never heard of, so their expertise is maybe a little questionable. But, of the list of 50 books, there are only four books by women. And two of those books are by Ayn Rand (blech). Am I really supposed to believe that of the 50 coolest books of all time, 92% were written by men? Hmmmm. I may not be very good at math, (you know, because I'm a woman) but that seems a little off. I will say, that Shortlist also has a list of the 50 Coolest Authors of All Time. This one isn't quite as bad, they were able to list ten women. But that still means 80% of the list is men. I guess it was a nice try.

Flavorwire is another source of these top 50 lists, and they have several women centered lists:

• 50 Excellent Novels by Female Writers Under 50 That Everyone Should Read
• Girl Canon: 50 Essential Books About the Female Experience

And that's nice, but I wonder when did books by or about women become a genre. Chick lit, women's fiction, 50 Shades of Grey...it all makes me a little hysterical. Especially considering that readers are more likely to be women, and women read more than men. So, I made my own list. It's a mashup of cool authors, and cool books. Enjoy. It's longer than 50, and it's not at all comprehensive. Think of it more as proof that it is possible to name more than four cool books by women. Happy International Women's Day!

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Octavia Butler
• Kate Chopin
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson
• I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
• Iris Murdoch
• Virgina Woolf
• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
• Kyung-sook Shin
• Catherine Mansfeild
• Virginia Lee Burton
• Cunt by Inga Muscio
• A.M. Holmes
• Angela Davis
• Rebecca Solnit
• Joan Didion
• Lydia Davis
• Amor and Psycho by Carolyn Cooke
• Lorrie Moore
  
• Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
• Margaret Atwood
• Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston 
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• Beverly Cleary
• Alison Bechdel
• Susan Sontag
• J.K. Rowling
• The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton
• Sylvia Plath
• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
• Tove Jansson
• Annie Dillard
  
• bell hooks
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• Ursula Leguin
• An Unquiet Mind by Kaye Redfield Jamison
• A.L. Kennedy
• The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
• How Should a Person Be by Shelia Heti
• Unmastered by Katherine Angel
  
• Shirley Jackson
• Daphne Dumaurie
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• Dorothy Parker
• The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
• Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
• Audre Lorde
• I Rigoberto Menchu by Rigoberto Menchu
• Roxane Gay
  
• Xialu Guo
• Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
• Willa Cather
• Patricia Highsmith
• Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
• Speedboat by Renata Adler
• Donna Tartt
• Alice Walker
• Mary Renault

I really could go on and on and on.

Happy International Women's Day!

It's International Women's Day!  Yay!  What better day than this to pick up some exciting new reading material by a fabulous woman author.  Maybe something new, or an author you've always wanted to read.  Today's the day. AND 2014 is the year. In fact, author and illustrator Joanna Walsh has declared 2014 the year of reading women with her twitter campaign, #readwomen2014.  Read more about it here.

Now, I've known a lot of booksellers and readers, and a lot of these booksellers and readers are men.  And a fair number of these men seem to have self-restricted their intake of female authors. The number of male readers of my acquaintance for instance, who haven't read any Jane Austen is a little startling...and frankly embarrassing.  She's one of the English language's greatest novelists.  I find it pretty ridiculous to call yourself a lover of literature if you won't read Jane Austen, or at least give her a shot. It's a different story if you've tried her and didn't like her...but to flat out refuse?!?

Ok, soapbox rant over.  Well, mostly.  Here's a piece from NPR on the VIDA count which tracks leading literary publications and counts the number of women authors being reviewed, as well as the gender of those doing the reviewing.  It's pretty eye-opening stuff.

Anyways, it's International Women's Day!  Read a woman!  Here are some ideas:

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman.

A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.

Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh

Brosh has been an Internet sensation for years with literally thousands of fans following her scribbled illustrations on her blog. She has won over readers and stalkers alike with her honest and stark humor and her fun stories and rants. This book takes readers into not just the fun and fuzzy world of candied cakes and dumb dogs, but also into the brutally honest self-evaluation and exploration of its unique author. Always balancing the serious with the silly, the dark with the ridiculous, Brosh says the things we wish we could, admits the things we're ashamed of, and explores what we're afraid of, always with color and humor and, ultimately, with hope. And don't forget the scribbles! - Indie Next List, Jocelyn Shratter, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism by Jennifer Percy

In 2005 a Chinook helicopter carrying sixteen Special Ops soldiers crashed during a rescue mission in a remote part of Afghanistan, killing everyone on board. In that instant, machine gunner Caleb Daniels loses his best friend, Kip Jacoby, and seven members of his unit.

Back in the US, Caleb begins to see them everywhere—dead Kip, with his Alice in Wonderland tattoos, and the rest of them, their burned bodies watching him. But there is something else haunting Caleb, too—a presence he calls the Black Thing, or the Destroyer, a paralyzing horror that Caleb comes to believe is a demon.

There is an epidemic of suicide among veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, men and women with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who cannot cope with ordinary life in the aftermath of explosions and carnage. Jennifer Percy finds herself drawn to their stories, wanting to comprehend their experiences and pain. Her research leads her to Caleb, who invites Percy to Portal, where he has been bringing damaged veterans to a Christian camp that promises deliverance from demons.

As Percy spends time with these soldiers, exorcists and their followers—finding their beliefs both repellant and magnetic—she enters a world of fanaticism that is alternately terrifying and welcoming. With a jagged lyricism reminiscent of novelists Daniel Woodrell and Denis Johnson, Demon Camp is the riveting true story of a veteran with PTSD seeking solace in people who profess to be exorcists, a writer who falls under his spell, and the larger story of the battles soldiers face after the war is over. A mesmerizing blend of history, psychology, and reportage, Percy paints an unexpected and unforgettable portrait of the long lasting effects of war on our individual and national psyche and how people reconcile faith and trauma.

AND for good measure, my personal favorite Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Called a 'perfect novel' by Harold Bloom, Persuasion was written while Jane Austen was in failing health. She died soon after its completion, and it was published in an edition with Northanger Abbey in 1818.

In the novel, Anne Elliot, the heroine Austen called 'almost too good for me,' has let herself be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth, a fine and attractive man without means. Eight years later, Captain Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars with a triumphant naval career behind him, a substantial fortune to his name, and an eagerness to wed. Austen explores the complexities of human relationships as they change over time. 'She is a prose Shakespeare,' Thomas Macaulay wrote of Austen in 1842. 'She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.'

Persuasion is the last work of one of the greatest of novelists, the end of a quiet career pursued in anonymity in rural England that produced novels which continue to give pleasure to millions of readers throughout the world.