Ghost Stories

#SinisterArt Day 20 (catch-up post)
Franz Sedlacek's Ghosts on a Tree
Link, with zoom option:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/franz-sedlacek/ghosts-on-a-tree-1933-0

BarbaraBB Another wonderful spooky find! 2y

WJCintron WOW! LOVE IT!! 😃🙌 2y

Megabooks That little bit of sunshine is just terrifying! 2y

vivastory @Megabooks I agree! It would have been too dark without it & some of the details might have been lost 2y

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vivastory

Ghost Stories | Peter Washington

📚 The tagged book. There's something in it for everyone!
🖋️ Ernest Gaines*N. Gogol*L. Groff
🎬 Godfather*The Game*Get Shorty*Girl w/ Dragon etc trilogy*Get Out*Grand Budapest Hotel
🎙️ Gillian Welch*GZA
🎧Go Home (A. Olsen)*goonies vs ET (RTJ)*Go to Sleep (Radiohead)*Girl in Amber (Nick Cave)*Ghosts (Head & the Heart)*Gold on the Ceiling (Black Keys)*Good Grief (Dessa)
#manicmonday #letterg @CBee

CBee Ohhhhhh I love Gillian Welch ♥️ 2y

vivastory @CBee Hell Among the Yearlings is brilliant 2y

CBee @vivastory you‘re reminding me of music I love that I haven‘t listened to in a while, so thank you 😊 2y

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vivastory @CBee My pleasure! I listen to a lot of music bc of my job 2y

CBee @vivastory that‘s super cool! Sounds like a fab job to me 👏🏻👏🏻 2y

AmyG @CBee Ha, I just thought the same thing about Gillian Welch. Haven‘t listened in a looooong time. 2y

kspenmoll Gillian Welch! ❤️ 2y

vivastory @kspenmoll 👏🤘 2y

CBee @AmyG the playlist is huge. Lots of music I‘d never heard before and lots of forgotten favorites. 2y

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vivastory

Ghost Stories | Peter Washington

pick

I have written two previous posts about Henry James' The Friends of the Friends & Maupassant's The Horla, both featured in Ghost Stories edited by Peter Washington. The range of stories in this anthology is astonishing. They range from the hilarious (Wodehouse's Honeysuckle Cottage) to the unsettling (LP Hartley's W.S.) to the visionary (Borges' The Circular Ruins) & beyond. With innovative approaches to the ghost story, there's👇

vivastory something here for everyone. I greatly enjoyed reading this throughout the month in 2-3 stories at a time when I was in between books. I will def be revisiting several of these pieces in the future. 3y

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vivastory

Ghost Stories | Peter Washington

I've never read Wodehouse, but at the halfway point this was by far the most humorous story yet. What is a good starting point for Wodehouse? I know about the Jeeves novels, but I'm not sure where to start...

KCofKaysville @vivastory There are a lot and I am not an expert but you may want to try Carry on Jeeves to start 3y

vivastory @KCofKaysville I had my eye on that one. Thanks! 3y

Palimpsest I‘ve been wondering the same thing about where to start. @vivastory 3y

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BiblioLitten Oh Wodehouse has all my heart! Try Blandings Castle, Full Moon, Pigs have Wings. These were the first ones I read and reread multiple times. 3y

quietjenn I think I started with the Psmith books and it was a good intro. For Wooster and Jeeves, I think I really is a bit of a toas up, but either the aforementioned Carry On, Jeeves or My Man Jeeves? 3y

vivastory @BiblioLitten Are the ones you mention Jeeves novels? I am planning on reading the Jeeves works, but I was curious... (edited) 3y

vivastory @BiblioLitten @quietjenn Looking online I think that I will start with “Leave it to Psmith“ & then move onto “Blandings Castle“. Thanks for the input! 3y

vivastory @palimpsest I think I'm going to start with the ones I mention above. I get the sense that there's no bad place to start, it's just really intimidating due to how prolific of a writer he was 3y

LeahBergen I started with the first Jeeves novel (Thank You, Jeeves) but then I realized that the short stories actually came first so I went back and began with

The Inimitable Jeeves

vivastory @LeahBergen Thanks! I just googled & he wrote 71 novels & over 300 short stories?! I knew he was prolific, but wow! 3y

LeahBergen Yes, it‘s crazy! It took me a while to settle on my reading plan. 😆 3y

AlaMich If you do audiobooks, I‘ve found some of them to be quite good. There are a number of different narrators, and you might have to listen to samples, but the audio really added to my enjoyment. 3y

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vivastory

Ghost Stories | Peter Washington

Day 7 of #21DaysofHorror
I missed posting last night due to binge watching the final few episodes of Midnight Mass. Guy de Maupassant's The Horla is the work that I have read most recently on this list. Published in 1887, the short story is told in epistolary format as journal entries. The entries start out in a pleasant mood but soon become slowly disturbed & uncertain as the narrator describes feeling unwell & also noticing objects misplaced👇

vivastory & food & drink missing when he wakes in the morning. These strange occurrences are often conveyed in memorable phrases (I quickened my pace, uneasy at being alone in this wood, unreasonably, stupidly, terrified of the profound solitude. Abruptly I felt that I was being followed, that someone was on my heels, as near as near, touching me.) Several things struck me when I read this story: the ambiguity of the events (I read this story 3y

vivastory in an anthology of ghost stories, but Lovecraft himself interpreted the horla as “the vanguard of a horde of extra-terrestrial organisms“); how timeless some of the methods in detecting unusual presences are (one scene made me think of the powder on the floor in Paranormal Activity 1) & how ruthless Maupassant was when it came to the ending. 3y

Suet624 Fascinating review. 3y

Reggie Wow!!! 3y

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vivastory

Ghost Stories | Peter Washington

I'm not planning on starting a binge of James' work, but I had a mini revelation about his convoluted later style & thought I'd share:
Beginning this week, I have been reading two stories from Ghost Stories pub by Everyman in between my regular books. Yesterday I read a James story, whom I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with. “The Friends of the Friends“ uses ghosts as a metaphor for infidelity. What immediately made me sit up & take👇

vivastory notice of the story is some of the humorous commentary deployed by James, as when he notes that in the social circle in which separations is so common what distinguishes one of the characters is the fact that she had once seen a ghost. Part of my difficulty with certain James works has been what critic R.W. Short called, “the rangy, convoluted sentences.“ It struck me while thinking about the story how true to life his style feels. All of us live 3y

vivastory remarkable lives, yet how many of us tell interesting anecdotes that involve people far removed from the source of the story? This is James. By the time you reach the core narrative, it's often difficult to remember who the source of the story is, but that is not the point. He seems more interested in dissecting the society in which the narrative happens (how people react to the events in the story etc) & the psychology of those involved. 3y

vivastory This feels very relevant today & I can see why he is considered such a difficult master of realism. As Charles-Adam Foster-Simard writes in an essay on The Millions, “His works are deep, long, airless dives into the complexities and multiplicities of the self. It‘s not an easy subject to write about. His stories, lacking in plot, are simple accounts: mere turning points in the lives of characters or revelations of social organizations. Yet in 3y

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vivastory their self-consciousness and ambiguities, and even in the circumlocutions of James‘ language — which in truth is closer to the fragmented consciousness of modernism than to Victorian verbosity — they reveal something irresistibly true about life.“
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk “How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Henry James“ 3y

Lcsmcat 😂 3y

Reggie Lolol 3y

Centique I needed this TED talk! I have never read Henry James but I have just put together a book list for next year‘s reading and Portrait of a Lady is at the top. Do you think that‘s a good place to start? 3y

vivastory @Centique I haven't read Portrait of a Lady. I was thinking of reading it next year. I've read several stories, What Maisie Knew (disliked) & Daisey Miller (loved) 3y

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