HRHTish's Combined and ROOT and Category Challenge for August: Autumn Gothic Immersion, Off the She

There are a few group initiatives that I plan to combine into one, starting in August.

First, there's the "off the shelf" group - some from Green Dragon - who've accepted the challenge NOT to acquire any new books (library or otherwise) during the month of August, instead choosing to focus on the books already on their book shelves (or on the piles next to their beds). I signed up for the challenge.

The Root group appears to do a version of "off the shelf" all the time, so I also just joined ROOT. Hello everyone!

So here's where I make the challenge my own, and invite anyone to join me: As the leaves begin to turn and that "smell" fills the air my mood turns Gothic. To get a head start on my Autumn Gothic Immersion, my August Off-the-Shelf Challenge will be to NOT buy more books, but to Read My own Gothic Tomes instead.

(August in New Jersey is a little early for Autumn, but it's the beginning of the school year, it smells like football, and that's good enough for me!)

I traditionally re-read the introduction to Bram Stoker's Dracula in October, so that one will need to wait. For August, I plan to read Peake's The Gormenghast Trilogy and Oates' The Accursed. If by some miracle I get get through those four books - I've had four eye surgeries but eye strain is still an issue - I'll move to the Hawthorne and Bronte works that are in my "meaning to get around to" collection.

Is anyone else out there moved to read Gothic in the Autumn?

Edit: I suppose I should be putting my reads in the first post, as I finish them?

1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Done! To think I stood in line for HOURS at the bookstore with my daughter about a DECADE ago, only to read it now!

2. The Accursed Almost done. Oates demonstrated she can write a gothic novel with all the tropes, but other than that, meh. I didn't care enough about the characters to be invested in outcomes. However, begin in NJ close to Princeton, I was intrigued by the historical aspects.

3. Gormenghast I started the first of this trilogy. So far, so good! There's a group read going on this month, on another thread.

Oh dear . . . How can I fix the subject title?

Welcome to the ROOT group, Tish. What would you like to change in the title. She(LF). Perhaps your title is to long. And I don't know if you can change that.

Hi - I'm not sure how it got so long and screwy in the first place!

I just wanted to announce a 'combined' challenge and invite others to join, and keep the thread alive for accountability.

"HRHTish's combined ROOT and Category Challenge - Autumn Gothic Immersion" would suffice, I suppose?

Here's the Goodreads list of the all-time best gothic reads:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1230.Best_Gothic_Books_Of_All_Time

These are the all-timers on my bookshelf:

1. Jane Eyre (Bronte)
2. Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
3. Dracula (Stoker)
4. Rebecca (DuMaurier)

6. Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
7. Poems of EA Poe

12. Northanger Abbey (Austen)

14. The Historian (Kostova)

38. House of Seven Gables (Hawthorne)

53. Anne Rice's books about the Mayfair witches

61. Gormanchast Trilogy (Peake)

127. Clarissa (Richardson)

158. Thornyhold (Stewart)

268. The Blind Assassin (Atwood)

I've read #4, #158 and #53, and I'm in the middle of #3, #14, and #61.

My goal is to read as many on the list as possible before December 21, not necessarily get through the list, mostly due to the fact that Clarissa is on it. Have you ever seen Clarissa? Yikes! That will be it's own ROOT challenge . . .

I have read a few of that list, (10 out of the first 100) Trish.

I tried to find you on GR, but I don't know what name you are using.

Connie53, I'm not actually on GR, I just like their lists :-)

ahh, okay. I like their lists too!

Good luck with Clarissa, I tried that a couple of years ago and gave up halfway through. Too sanctimonious. BTW, on what grounds does it count as Gothic?

Not sure about Clarissa, why it's on the Gothic list. I was surprised to see it there. I think the criteria for gothic include gloomy architecture, dank environments, doomed relationships - maybe that's it? - - the "Romantic" period of literature - which Clarissa is from - - mysteries/secrets, hidden motives, and a veil of the supernatural, whether or not that veil is warranted given the facts in the story.

(mold spores --> altered states - -> gothic styled imagination is a theory I've been muddling over for the past few years. I've noticed my interest in Gothic lit is seasonal.)

Dear me, I always thought it was about a libertine raping and destroying a virtuos maiden, told in rather boring letters. It was first published around 1750, so doesn't that predate the Romantics by a long shot? Anyway, the way wikipedia summarises the plot, it certainly contains lots of elements that would qualify it for Gothic. Obviously I never got around to those!

> 11 Does Clarissa predate the official time window for Romantic period in literature? I'll have to look that up because I'm not sure!

This site puts the window for Gothic from 1764-1820: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~rviau/gothic.lit.html (it's a shame the Romantic Chrology link there is dead).

This link discusses the reception the book received - seems it was very popular during the Romantic period, although the actual writing of it may have predated that period (?)

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/richardson/

My own memory is a little hazy, too, but I associate Romantic literature with Werther in Germany and Wordsworth and Byron in England, both of which were published around the 1790s. But in the end these are only labels: I think many of the stylistic elements ascribed to the Romantics can be found in other works, just not in such high concentration as at the turn of that century.

>5 HRHTish:
There is a typo in Gormenghast (oh, the horror!), which pains me because they are such good books. :) I haven't read the 3rd one yet, but recently a 4th one came out with bits compiled by the author's widow. Peake's descriptions and knowledge of people is perfect. I really hope you're in the middle of it for other reasons and not because you've stalled.

>10 HRHTish:
I think an important aspect is a darked and decayed past encroaching on the present. The plot of a traveler sheltering in an old castle represents a person's journey from the present into the past, and when they see a ghost or read a found document they encounter the horror of the past. Gothic literature is hard to pin down though. For example, although key scenes in The Monk are in catacombs, the danger is from the present. In Frankenstein you have the dead being brought back to life, but I don't remember if this is played as the past being brought into the present or not.

Skimming the wiki page and the list, I've got The Blind Assassin and The Historian. I started The Historian once, but then I forgot about it and stopped reading. That's rretty sad because I read Dracula specifically so I could read The Historian. I also have some Faulkner novels and Let the Right One In, and then I think that's it. I used to avoid public domain works at library sales and so I don't have a good collection of older classics.

I read Clarissa many years ago (and in fact loved it), but I've also read a lot of early Gothic and don't see much similarity. Maybe a bit at the end, where it becomes really dark, and i guess Lovelace is a prototype of the Gothic villain. But Gothic? I would vote no.

If you want a good substitute, you might be interested in The Monk by Matthew Lewis, or Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin.

> 14 A typo? In Gormanghast? Say it's not so!! :-0 I haven't stalled: It's normal for me to be in the middle of several books at a time. I'm a mood-reader.

Funny, I stopped partways through The Historian, too. Not because it was a bad book, but because I got distracted by life, or perhaps another book. I suppose that means The Historian fails my "can't put it down" test for five stars LOL . . .

>15 ipsoivan: I don't mind kicking Clarissa off my gothic reads list. The other two you recommend look interesting. They're not on my shelves of course, so they'll need to wait until I'm done with my ROOT ;-)

The Harry Potter books, interestingly, appear to meet the criteria for modern Gothic:

http://www.academia.edu/434528/The_Diffusion_of_Gothic_Conventions_in_Harry_Pott...

The setting and tropes are all there, though it's a little short on romance IMHO. I'm in the middle of the 4th book of that series so will keep it on my autumn reads list.

Here's a question for anyone: My fiance just picked up Return to the House of Usher by a relative of EA Poe. It's not exactly a sequel to the Fall of the House of Usher, more like a riff. But do you think the book might qualify as gothic?

I'm finally making progress, and listing my books in my top post. Onward . . .

Not ROOTs so it's cheating just finished The House on the Borderland and The Great God Pan, two short ones that are kind of gothicish. Both of them were enjoyable, but not phenomenal. I got a nice cross-stitch to do and I've been listening to audiobooks on Librivox. I'm listening to Vathek, and trying to decide between She, Melmoth the Wanderer, or Uncle Silas for next.

I have no idea about Return to the House of Usher since I haven't read it, but I'm not sure if it counts as a ROOT if you acquire it during the challenge. Depends on what each person decides the rules are.

Oh it wouldn't count, I was just wondering ;-)