Best gothic & romance criticism books according to redditors

I've said it elsewhere here, but the genre purism in this sub is so inane. Humans being unable to comprehend the malevolent forces acting against them is the essence of what is horrifying, and is the central conceit of It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch, and others.

>Horror is not simply about fear, but instead about the enigmatic thought of the unknown. As H.P. Lovecraft famously noted, "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown." Horror is about the paradoxical thought of the unthinkable. - In the Dust of this Planet

If you're among those complaining about Horror not being like the height of the 80s, all I can say is that I lived through that, and this modern era is way, way better

Indeed. Must read.

I just ordered the readers companion and I have high hopes for it http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345511190/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?ref_=pe_309540_26725410_item_image

EDIT: Realized that was the mobile link. Fixed the link: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Readers-Companion-Star-Wars/dp/0345511190

UPDATE: An I received it. It completely lives up to my expectations.

> If God said rape was moral you’d agree.

No, i wouldn't. I can disagree with god.

I provide as evidence the fact that I disagree with god about beating slaves. So no.

You're also not answering the question.

> I chose to say god spelled with a small g as a proxy for all of every and any concept of god as it might exist in any way shape or form other than God

Yeah, that's going to get confusing. Just say christian god, vs gods or something.

​

I don't really care what Darwin thought about god.

​

> He exists outside of our physical realm, thus being our objective source for morality.

I don't see the connection between these two things.

​

> Since you are unwilling to conceive of Him or any other being as existing outside of the physical universe

I've never done this. You just decided that I think god is within the universe or something. You're just putting words in my mouth.

> in a reality where there is only the physical universe and what is contained herein, all that could ever exist is what is subjective and phenomenal

This is false. The fact that there is a chair under me right now is an objective fact.

> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005BRJWCO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_qjLTBbF83HQ01

In your own words please.

Radiolab recently did a show on how the phrase "In the Dust of this Planet" has gone viral.

Lily Jane Collins, an English-American actress and model, was seen wearing the phrase on a sweatshirt. It was turned into a shirt by Nordstrom. That sweatshirt is currently sold out: http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/blk-dnm-in-the-dust-of-this-planet-sweatshirt/3687639

It's a book by Eugene Thacker on the "horrors of philosophy" and nihilism that can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/184694676X/

Jay-Z was seen wearing the phrase in his and Beyoncé's music video "RUN". Here's a link to the spot in the video: http://youtu.be/lNcJg5svv9A?t=35s

Also, in an interview with True Detective creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto, Thacker's book In The Dust of This Planet is cited as an influence on the TV series.

I made it into a shirt because I couldn't find it anywhere else and I wanted the shirt. And, yes, it's just a ripoff of the design of the original book cover. But it's a cool design.

The newest Essential Reader's Companion is the best yet. So many original pieces of artwork in it, and the summaries are insanely well done. You could honestly read through just that and have a pretty thorough understanding of everything that has ever happened in the Star Wars EU.

Pick up this book as a reference guide to Legends:

The Essential Reader's Companion (Star Wars) (Star Wars: Essential Guides) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345511190/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_LqdWub0TSAMDG

The best place to start is the Thrawn Trilogy. I started with Darth Plagueis.

Ok, second stab (not at work... no interruptions): many excellent observations here, much appreciated. I've always harbored a deep prejudice against the horror genre, but I'm beginning to reconsider (I'd love to read Thacker's In the Dust of This Planet). Your comments on it are much appreciated.

>Cosmic Horror, and horror more generally, is often used to facilitate major perspectival shifts in characters who are trapped in a cyclical state of self-identification.

This is quite wonderful, thanks.

Supposing that the circle Ledoux speaks of and the spiral are indeed distinct symbols (a la Nabokov) I think we can assume the malignant circle represents the status quo and the spiral some form of transcendence. [SPOILER](#s "Errol Childress speaks of his imminent ascension") which implies transcendence of the flat circle – perhaps a conical spiral, not unlike the (inverted) one [SPOILER](#s "Cohle hallucinates in Childress' sacrificial dome.") Such a figure is not Nietzschean, as indicated in my previous post. I'm not sure what else to make of it, but between writing that last sentence and this one I've worked through the material at darknessbecomesyou and I am much gratified that the aspects I cared about most seem to have been front and center for Pizzolato and Fukunaga. (I'm so glad they've been so forthcoming.) I am content to let the mythology rest in an indeterminate state. That said, I do think the psychological lens you employ is the most productive: whatever else they may represent, the vicious circle and spiral of transcendence are useful models for conceptualizing the psychodynamics of Hart and Cohle over the course of the narrative.

So having stumbled upon your posts elsewhere, I noticed that you are working on an essay on the construction/subversion of masculinity in TD. I would love—love—to read it when you are finished.

Finally, I have to ask about your comment regarding the pertinence of commodity fetishism. This is a particular interest of mine (in fact I just returned to Taussig's The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America), but I was surprised to see it in this context. Please say more (or perhaps you were bluffing? No worries either way).

You should check out the Star Wars Reader's Companion

Relevant.

Just read about Uzumaki in a “philosophy” book. Sounds interesting.

Here is the book in case anyone wants to check it out. The central idea comes from, alludes to, and is about the horror genre.

I feel you, friend. The journey continues, the road goes ever on. My time is longer than yours, but I hope still to have a good handful of decades left. So maybe there are more insights further on—there always have been so far—but these days it seems to me that personal peace and the socio-mental disembeddedness of being an atheist do not mix will.

(By "socio-mental disembeddedness" I mean something like being in the world with people who perceive, categorize, and think both in and through a set of concepts that you not only do not share but actively reject.)

You responded to someone else in a comment that books have always helped. The same is true for me. It's difficult to place exactly why, but reading (from paper) helps. And it helps to read surprising things. A couple that have been especially enjoyable for me recently, in the sense that they hit not only the rational notes, but also the weird imaginative ones, are Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet and Starry Speculative Corpse. They play around at a connection of horror and philosophy, and I found them counterintuitively rejuvenating. There's a third in the series, but I haven't read it yet, so can't recommend it honestly.

And, of course, like many here on the non-theistic interwebs, I welcome conversation by private message. Everybody needs that sometimes.

I'm going to give you some ideas that are a little off the wall, but maybe fun. These are some of the books I really enjoyed in college. They're history, but not exactly. Instead of being the actual events of what happened, they're the larger than life tales that may also give some perspective.

The story of El Cid - the premier knight in Spanish history. It's a very fun story, and grains of truth reside in it.

This book is a historians attempt to find those grains of truth.

Civil Wars of Granada I did not read all of, but what I did read was very interesting. It's the tale of the Spanish defeating the last bastion of the Moors.

I couldn't find it in English, but if you read Spanish, El Abencerraje is a tale of Moorish chivalry. There's a theme of conversion of the "good" Moors that's also rather interesting, also found in Civil Wars of Granada. As an aside, all the books I've listed are translations and I have not found the best translations - just the titles on Amazon. If you can read Spanish, read the originals.

My final recommendation is not entirely germane to your interests, but a tangent to them. Shipwrecked or, in the original Spanish, Naufragios, is the biographical story of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador who was shipwrecked and spent years living amongst the natives before returning to a Spanish colony. This one is actually, I believe, an autobiography.

Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women

Read this. Explains appeal of romance lit. Rife with RP truths.

i recommend:
Constantin Floros's Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies
for a good general overview, and Seth Monahan's Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas for a more technical investigation

Though I've only read a few romance novels (I had read this book about romance novels...

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Men-Adventurous-Women-Cultural/dp/0812214110

and wanted to read some of the authors in it), I also get annoyed when writers throw babies into books (either as plot points or epilogues) when there's no real reason other than, well:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BabiesEverAfter

I think that one of the novels I read ended with the woman not (yet) pregnant... I can't recall... did you read this one?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GNFG56/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Anyway, yeah, agreed. They do it in movies, on tv, in books... feh.

Good timing. Just ran across this one in a book store the other day.

Horror: A Literary History

This book seems super relevant, looks like a pretty serious analysis of a lot of his work.

Well, as is usually the case for reference material, you can't go wrong with his entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Other than that I've only read a couple of essays by Novalis myself, Faith and Love and Christianity or Europe. And, while I'd much rather suggest the former, Christianity or Europe is the only piece I was able to find in full online. I'd definitely suggest reading that article on the SEP before tackling the essay though. Otherwise, I think you run the risk of forming a somewhat narrow view of what it was Novalis was attempting to say. As it says at the start of that SEP article:

> [Novalis] has been associated with an aestheticization of philosophy, an illegitimate valorizing of the medieval, and a politically reactionary program. This view of von Hardenberg, however, is to a large extent rooted in the image created posthumously by his increasingly conservative friends within the romantic circle.

You might be tempted to adopt that interpretation as well, especially if your first exposure to philosophical work by Novalis is Christianity or Europe which begins by saying:

> Those were beautiful, magnificent times, when Europe was a Christian land, when one Christianity dwelled on this civilized continent, and when one common interest joined the most distant provinces of this vast spiritual empire.

His positions have their subtleties, though, as is the case with most philosophers. That's why the SEP is probably your best first stop.

I've also come across a few resources that are either in French or not digital. This site has a couple of very brief extracts (in French) from the essay Faith and Love I mentioned earlier. It's not very helpful, but it's about the best I could find. It also looks like Gallimard publishes the complete works of Novalis in two volumes, so if you find yourself falling madly in love with his work that's probably a good bet. Then there's the book where I came across Novalis, The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics. If you find yourself interested in German Romanticism in general, that book compiles some works by Novalis along with those of a number of his contemporaries.

I disagree.

Here's some light reading to start. We can talk about the merits of the philosophy and theology developed between the 10th and 17th centuries when you're done.

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100273880&fa=author&person_id=266

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS706US706&q=Alfarabi%27s+Philosophy+of+Plato+and+Aristotle&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLUz9U3MDTPM85R4gIxk40rC8zytKSyk630k_Lzs_UTS0sy8ousQOxihfy8nMpHjMHcAi9_3BOW8pq05uQ1RhcuPIqF1LjYXPNKMksqhWS4eKUQtmkwSHFzIbg8ANMts4aLAAAA&npsic=0&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7tt3Ci5jVAhUq2IMKHUfwBCMQ-BYIJg

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo3614761.html

https://www.amazon.com/Madhumalati-Indian-Romance-Oxford-Classics/dp/0192840371

And it's worth looking into the Mughal dynasty, especially this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar

I took a French linguistics course and it helped my accent immensely. I agree with the person who suggestion phonetics lessons. The most notable things I learned that helped my accent were the way to use your mouth when speaking. You should think/learn about when to round your lips and when not to. I was surprised to learn about the different vowels. Here's a link with them to get you started. Look at phonetic transcriptions of words to see when these sounds are actually used.

I don't know if you're interested actually buying a book for it, but if you want to improve your accent consciously and faster than just watching French movies, this book is what really did it for me. So many ah-ha! moments. The author's kinda pretentious but he gets the job done. The few chapters on phonetics is the best. This comment is longer than I expected it to be.

If God said rape was moral you’d agree.

That’s my argument.

When I said you believe god is contained within our physical realm, I could have (should have?) said “the concept of god”, but I chose to say god spelled with a small g as a proxy for all of every and any concept of god as it might exist in any way shape or form other than God. I’m trying to stipulate exactly what you believe, a Darwinian version of god. I say Darwinian and not evolutionary because of my exposure to the Darwin, and the Evolution of God, (The Evolving God: Charles Darwin on the Naturalness of Religion https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I2MZNGO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_raLTBbSC832CC) a work detailing how his belief in god as I have described him is what has prevailed more than his Origin or Species (which was being chased by a variety of biologists just like so many contemporaries were chasing flight.)

My reason for claiming that you are mixing objective and subjective comes from my original argument that He exists outside of our physical realm, thus being our objective source for morality. Since you are unwilling to conceive of Him or any other being as existing outside of the physical universe, all sources of morality must proceed from within our own natural realm and must all be subjective. This is why I believe I say, “you’re being subjective!” but you say “oh yeah, well you’re being subjective too!” Well of course you say that, in a reality where there is only the physical universe and what is contained herein, all that could ever exist is what is subjective and phenomenal because the objective and noumenal aren’t just beyond our grasp, they’re not even conceivable. Here I am trying (with all my frail might) to follow the work of Eugene Thacker (In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy vol. 1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005BRJWCO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_qjLTBbF83HQ01).

Disclaimer: The works cited here do not represent my views. They are from renown atheists, but they’re rael smart.

Try playing Knights of the old Republic 1 and 2, it tells you a lot about the Second Sith War and the Mandalorian Wars. Also I would highly recommend all the new Essential guides, found in any Chapters store or Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Jedi-vs-Sith-Essential-Guide/dp/0345493346

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-The-Essential-Atlas/dp/0345477642/ref=pd_sim_b_1/184-0640685-6358056

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Warfare-Star-Wars/dp/0345477626/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Vehicles-Vessels-Star/dp/0345449029/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Weapons-Technology-Revised-Edition/dp/0345449037/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Alien-Species-Star/dp/034547760X/ref=pd_sim_b_3

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Droids-Star-Wars/dp/0345477596/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Chronology-Star-Wars/dp/0345449010/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Characters-Star-Wars/dp/0345449002/ref=pd_sim_b_4

This one is good for books.

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Readers-Companion-Star-Wars/dp/0345511190/ref=pd_sim_b_1

In the dust of this planet
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/184694676X?pc_redir=1410065416&robot_redir=1

This is all based on this book: https://www.amazon.com/Dust-This-Planet-Horror-Philosophy/dp/184694676X

Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound

Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour

http://www.amazon.com/Chic-Ironic-Bitterness-Jay-Magill/dp/0472116215

Season 1 opening to Initial D

Angel's Egg

Drawing On Tradition : Manga , Anime, Christianity, Buddhism

Confederation Poets -- Psychosis and the Wilderness, Ego Dissolution, as a National Literature

Gothic Canada - Reading the Spectre of a National Literature

Gothic Ireland : Horror And the Irish Anglican Imagination

…

My psychosis connects me to loved ones that the state has killed.

…

The air is heavy with Canadian topics,

And Carman, Lampman, Roberts, Campbell, Scott,

Are measured for their faith and philanthropics,

Their zeal for God and King, their earnest thought.

(check the wikipedia article for the context)

…

"Gothic Canada is a dazzling journey into the netherworlds of the Canadian literary and cultural imagination. From the wilderness of John Richardson’s Wacousta, through the haunted houses of Sinclair Ross and F.P. Grove, to the urban Gothic of contemporary writers and filmmakers, Edwards’ superbly researched book compels us to confront the ghosts, obsessions, and fears that lie dormant within the imaginative fabric of Canadian identity." —Irene Gammel, Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture, Ryerson University, and author of Baroness Elsa—A Cultural Biography

“Canadians have been searching for and discussing cultural identity since Confederation. According to Justin Edwards, our stories and literature might be showing us our greatest fear: perhaps we don't have one. In Gothic Canada, Edwards explores both the search for identity and the haunting spectral elements in Canadian literature. Analyzing literature from the nineteenth century through to the modern fiction of Atwood and Ondaatje, Edwards finds a common thread. ‘The thing that Gothic Canadian texts have in common is the question ‘who are we?’ and a source of fear and anxiety is generated from not being able to answer this question,’ says Edwards.” Lynne Stefanchuk, Prairie Books NOW

“This is another volume in the praiseworthy cuRRents Canadian literature series. Edwards explores the connections between the formation of identity and gothic, through analysis of discourses in Canadian culture.” Anne Burke, Prairie Journal Trust, July 22, 2005

"[Edwards] has written a much-needed, readable, and engaging account of the gothic in Canadian literature and cinema." Marlene Goldman, Canadian Literature 19, Winter 2006.

"Using various poststructuralist approaches, Edwards (Univ. of Copenhagen) produces a challenging analysis of selected historical and contemporary works ....Edwards's argument is a provocative challenge to the classic land-based approach of Margot Northey's The Haunted Wilderness: The Gothic and Grotesque in Canadian Fiction (CH, May'77)." Choice, Jan, 2006.