Episode 086 - American Gothic

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This month we’re discussing American Gothic! We discuss old creepy houses, weird families, cultural context, potential supernatural, the sense of unease, and media that makes you feel emotions. Plus: You’ve inherited a haunted decaying space station.

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In this episode

Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards | Jessi F

Things We Read

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
• Bonavere Howl by Caitlin Galway
• Florence & Giles by John Harding
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
• Vlad by Carlos Fuentes
• Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
• • the Mountain Goats (Wikipedia)
  • This Year (music video)
  • Sax Rohmer #1 (music video) (this is the one sampled in the episode)
• Poe: Stories and Poems: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Gareth Hinds
• Gothic Tales of Haunted Love by Hope Nicholson and S.M. Beiko
• • Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures (Kickstarter)

Other Media We Mention

• Hellboy by Mike Mignola
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
• Vampire: The Masquerade (tabletop game)
• American Vampire, Vol. 1 by Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• • The real place!
• The Addams Family by Charles Addams (Wikipedia)
• Scooby-Doo
• Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men - 261 – Out of the Subtext, Live from FlameCon with Vita Ayala!
• Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
• Edgar Allan Poe (Wikipedia)
• • The Black Cat
  • The Cask of Amontillado
  • The Fall of the House of Usher
  • The Masque of the Red Death
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue
  • The Pit and the Pendulum
  • The Raven
  • The Tell-Tale Heart
• Ghosts of Mars (Wikipedia)
• Betrayal at House on the Hill (Wikipedia)

Links, Articles, and Things

• Episode 002 - Gothic Literature
• Episode 049 - Southern Gothic
• Southern Ontario Gothic
• Wuxia (Chinese martial arts novels)
• The Providence Athenæum

New genres we made up

• Latin American Gothic
• Space Gothic

Suggest new genres!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

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Join us again on Tuesday, October 15th we’ll be discussing suspending our disbelief when it comes to fiction plus we’ll talk about literary-themed Halloween costumes!

Then on Tuesday, November 5th we’ll be talking about the non-fiction genre of Psychology!