rec me books, o reading page?

[fiachairecht]

I like disastrous obsessive girls and unreliable narrators and settings-that-are-characters and psychological horror, among other things. non-dude authors preferred. the last book i finished was the haunting of hill house (shirley jackson), am currently reading the bear and the nightingale (katherine arden), next will probably be the traitor baru cormorant (seth dickinson).

also if you're wondering if i type the vast majority of my book-question posts on my phone while lying on the floor of my favourite indie bookshop you would be correct, excuse the typos my screen is too small to show me and autocorrect may catch and may make worse.

(the problem, you see, with dreamwidth moving so quickly these days, is that i keep forgetting who mentioned excellent-sounding books and then because i am bad at remembering to add them to my memories, i also forget where they are! and the last four pages of my reading page are all today!)

ETA: wow yes you all have super great taste and also apparently strong feelings on twin peaks? i have never seen the show but i am delighted by that spinoff discussion. i am definitely set for my next few library trips now :D

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Recommend Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree highly for disaster girl, nightmarish plants, and creepy islands.

I also recommend Lara Elena Donnelly's Amberlough, which, while not horror by genre, certainly felt horrifying to me. Unreliable narrators galore, all of whom are disasters and hella obsessive, though they are variously gendered. It's also set in a gorgeous city.

And a little YA-y, and full of Horror Terror Horses, Personified Islands, and the obsessive disaster girl who loves them, is Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races, which I loved despite rage-quitting her Raven Boys series before the end of the first book.

[fiachairecht]

Ooh, I hadn't heard of the first two but now I Need them! I read the first ... two? I think? Raven Boys books and can't remember why I never finished the series. Got bored waiting for the next book, probably. I always meant to check out her other stuff and never got round to it, I'm glad it comes well-recommended :3

[vae]

Seconding the first two there! I love anything by Frances Hardinge.

Amberlough is gorgeously written with great worldbuilding but it very closely mirrors rise of the Third Reich, so if that's a triggery thing for you, go into it with care and being prepared. It blindsided me a bit because I wasn't expecting it.

[fiachairecht]

Ahhh yeah that's not triggery for me but it is a very nice thing to know going in, ty!