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Hello germs and ghouls, and welcome to my little seasonal update. I want to chat about what I’m reading and recommending for fall. It’s my favourite season and it brings me so much joy to lean in to the aesthetics and abundance of this time of year. I hope I can point you to some books you haven’t heard of before, or maybe you have but haven’t gotten around to yet.
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reading list
Babel - R.F. Kuang: my first fiction read of the season, and one of my favourite books of the year (so far). Set at Oxford in the 1830s, this is a story about the violence of the British Empire, from the perspective of four immigrant students.
Enlisted by the university’s Babel institute for their knowledge of foreign languages, these students are valued for their ability to work magic via translation. This novel is standard dark academia fantasy, but with a refreshing and explicit antiracist, decolonial moral. It’s unfortunate that Kuang is not subtle - this novel reads like your first year “intro to arts” course. But her innovative magic system, incredible research, and creativity with translation made this an engaging read. It’s adventurous and popcorny, very on the nose re: its message, and not for those looking for a novel with obscured philosophical meaning. Still, quite a fun read, and perfect for getting lost in a romantic art school daydream.
The Weird and the Eerie - Mark Fisher: this book is a bit of a deep cut, but if you’re interested in horror aesthetics, you absolutely must read. Fisher (rest in peace to a true genius) is the author of Capitalist Realism, a wonderful little text about the by-design feeling of capitalism’s inevitability. The Weird is a completely different kind of book, an investigation into the properties of what we call “the weird” and “the eerie” in art. Fisher offers dissections of both by diving into the works of occultist legends like Lovecraft and Lynch. A perfect fall read if you, like me, love to understand what makes something unheimlich.
☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °✩☾⋆。𖦹 °
And now, switching gears from what I’ve read so far to what I’m hoping to read the rest of this season:
White Teeth - Zadie Smith: maybe not the most traditional autumnal read, but one of my favourite novels of 2021 was On Beauty, Smith’s satire on academia and race in America. A hilarious and depressing family portrait reminiscent of Franzen (but with more heart), On Beauty is an ideal entertaining read for the disenchanted grad student. White Teeth, Smith’s debut, captures a similar air, and also treads similar territory to Babel, but probably with considerably more humanity and charm. Postcolonial literature is a theme this season, apparently - I think I’m embracing it because while I love academic aesthetics, they have deep fascist roots, and I make it a priority to disrupt the romanticism of it all. Still, I wish I was a freshman at some obscure college with a tight-knit chosen family of geniuses, bringing one another scones between classes and studying by firelight.
Girls Against God - Jenny Hval: I loved Hval’s debut novel Paradise Rot, a surreal sapphic sexual awakening that evoked some of Vandermeer’s Annihilation. Girls Against God is her second novel, apparently angry and messy, centering a punk Norwegian student who starts her own coven and is confronting the racism in the local scene. From The Guardian: “Most distinctive is her embrace of magic, ritual and blasphemy as tools to reimagine daily life […] By the close of Girls Against God, the boundaries between reality and film, the corporeal and the fantastic, the coagulated and the fertile have all dissolved. The novel has journeyed from melodramatic teenscape to horror-saturated social panorama.”
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury: a sci-fi classic that I’m honestly embarrassed that I’ve never finished. I read a number of stories from it during my undergrad, but what I love about this text is the device holding all the stories together: a mysterious man, covered head to toe in tattoos, recounts to you the tales depicted in each tattoo. Each story is a warning (the ones I read, anyways) about the future of humanity. Black Mirror and Twilight Zone fans will love it.
Listen, I know this list is getting long. I won’t finish half of these. But I have two more:
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch: Murdoch is a philosopher and novelist who writes haunting, reflective, gothic masterpieces. Someone is always staring over a cliff at the sea, or solving a mystery on a grand but neglected state. If you’re looking for something vibey with breathtaking prose, she is the way to go. I found this novel at Value Village and picked it up after being wowed by her novel The Unicorn a few years ago.
Songs of a Dead Dreamer - Thomas Ligotti: another half-finished but remarkable short story collection. The thing is, I don’t like short story collections, and I always get bored of them before finishing, but I would be kicking myself if I didn’t include Ligotti in my autumn reading recs. This is the best horror/weird fiction being written today. The text is ephemeral and elusive like one of Lovecraft’s monsters. It’s got vampires and serial killers and evil clowns. You have to work for it, but it’s worth it.
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
Some final, real-life autumn wishes for you all: if you get the chance, dig up a vegetable and wash it in your kitchen sink. That’s one of my favourite smells, scrubbing clean a potato or carrot you harvested yourself. Also, eat a lot of cinnamon baked goods, and share them with everyone you know. Make the best soup of all time. Listen to folklore and evermore by Taylor Swift, or my favourite witchy fall playlist. If you can afford a treat, order the Apple Crisp Oat Macchiato from Starbucks.
If you’re like me, you’re feeling the cost of living crisis hard right now. But luckily baking and soup-making are cheap, wool sweaters are abundant at the thrift, and it’s still warm enough outside to walk or bike. I hope you’re cozy and wrapped up in a book, or sharing food with your loved ones, or journaling and listening to a peaceful autumn rain.
This coming week I’ll be getting by with my community. That means a (very late) housewarming, supporting my friends’ poetry readings, and hosting Twilight and Halloween movie nights. Let me make you a coffee or lend you a book, and let’s look out for each other as it gets a little bit darker and colder each day.
🕸shan 🕸
Putting the Rad book into my list!