Southern Gothic Horror

2023 Reading Bracket

| Jessica Crawford

Here is my final 2023 reading bracket! (Hopefully I’m not jinxing it by posting it 3 days before the end of the year–I’m in the middle of reading a book that is fine but not a favorite, here’s to hoping I don’t finish it and then read something Earth shattering in the next 72 hours!)

I reconsidered and made a change since the last time I posted this bracket, but the final outcome would have been the same either way. I think this supports what I already knew: I love me some Gothic fantasy and science fiction, but not quite as much as I love some moving literary fiction!

Books included as some of my favorite reads of the year: “What Moves the Dead” by T. Kingfisher, “Trust” by Hernan Diaz, “Nettle & Bone” by T. Kingfisher, “The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Nayler, “A House with Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher, “Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries” by Heather Fawcett (I actually read an ARC of the sequel and enjoyed it even more, but decided not to count it as a 2023 favorite since it won’t be published until after the new year), “A Face Like Glass” by Frances Hardinge, “Chlorine” by Jade Song, “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, “If We Were Villains” by M. L. Rio, “North Woods” by Daniel Mason, and “The Seventh Bride” by T. Kingfisher.

Wow, that’s a lot of T. Kingfisher!

But the top honor goes to “North Woods” 🎉💯❤️

What was your favorite book you read this year?

Book Review: A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES by T. Kingfisher

| Jessica Crawford

It’s official: T. Kingfisher is now an autobuy author for me!

I adored the novella retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” that was What Moves the Dead, in all of its parasitic fungal glory; I greatly enjoyed Nettle & Bone, the rather original fantasy about a woman who aims to save her sister, relying on nothing more than sheer determination and her ability to gather a colorful fellowship to help her along the way. Now this Southern Gothic horror has clinched it for me. Take my money, Ms. Kingfisher!

A House with Good Bones follows Sam, an archaeoentomologist from Arizona, who goes to visit her mother in North Carolina in the house inherited from her real character of a grandmother. She is concerned because her mother has made some inexplicable changes to the house and is acting paranoid, as if someone is always listening. Plus there’s the committee of vultures (yes, that is the real term for it!) perched outside the house, watching. The handyman who takes care of her mother’s yardwork is a bit of a snack, but there’s something not quite right with the roses in the garden…

This book was so perfectly spooky with really wonderful characters (both the good and the bad), and it doesn’t hurt that the author and I clearly share some of the same social values. Not to mention I have a degree in anthropology, and so all of the archaeology bits were totally my jam. And the narration is very amusing! What’s not to love?

You have to drink a lot of coffee to cross Texas, but there are not rest stops nearly as often as there should be. Somewhere in West Texas, at the bottom of an off-ramp, a coyote is probably still wondering who left the strange mark in his territory.

Also, psychopomp is officially the word of the month, and the 1994 movie The Crow is the movie of the month, because both have come up in my reading/listening multiple times over the past few weeks (although it did hurt me when the 32 year old main character had never heard of The Crow…).

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