{"id":2966,"date":"2016-01-30T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=2966"},"modified":"2016-01-16T18:35:02","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T18:35:02","slug":"10-frightening-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/30\/10-frightening-books\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Frightening Books"},"content":{"rendered":"<ol class=\"ol1\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Inferno<\/em>, Dante Alighieri<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">What\u2019s scarier than Hell? Here, you have the honor of being led by Virgil on a tour of the nine circles and, in the end, you make the acquaintance of Lucifer. Find a version with Gustave Dor\u00e9\u2019s engravings\u2014they\u2019re beautiful.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>, James Joyce<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">Read it for Father Arnall\u2019s sermon on Hell (chapter three), which is almost as scary as Hell itself.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Nightwood<\/em>, Djuna Barnes<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">Like a good horror movie, half of the scares come from not knowing what\u2019s going on. The other half of the scares come from the extent to which obsession dominates the characters in this book. Bonus points for a final scene of hazy parallelism (possession?) between a woman and a dog.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>A Pale View of Hills<\/em>, Kazuo Ishiguro<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">Ishiguro\u2019s is a subtle horror, which navigates the terrain between the psychological and the philosophical fluidly. Ishiguro is sparing in his clues, leaving only enough to tantalize the reader in the not-knowing.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Steps<\/em>, Jerzy Kosinski<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Steps<\/em> is bizarre and sure to unsettle. At times, it seems that this slim volume is only a collection of perversion and violence, though to the discerning eye, it is always, if improbably, more.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>Nausea<\/em>, Jean-Paul Sartre<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">The weight of meaninglessness impinges to claustrophobic effect in <em>Nausea<\/em>, which, after 200 pages, lingers like the void that surrounds us.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Book of Revelation<\/em>, John of Patmos<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">The final book of the Bible features a cast of characters of immense mythological significance\u2014such as the Dragon and the Beast 666, and, of course, God\u2014doing immensely scary things.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>The Sense of an Ending<\/em>, Julian Barnes<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">This short novel relies on tenuous causal links to question the range of human agency. Did I cause this to happen, or is it just a coincidence? The not-knowing is consuming and a source of epistemological dread.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>1984<\/em>, George Orwell<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">An unlikely choice, but: Rats! Additionally, the vision of totalitarianism that the novel presents is as relevant today as it was in 1949 (the year of publication), what with contemporary concerns of surveillance and negationism.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>2666<\/em>, Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/span>\n<ul class=\"ol2\">\n<li class=\"li2\"><span class=\"s1\">I\u2019ve mentioned <em>2666<\/em> before, but it bears inclusion on this list, for it details one of the worst sprees of crime in recent memory, with an intentional dispassion that heightens the horribleness of the acts. Read it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inferno, Dante Alighieri What\u2019s scarier than Hell? Here, you have the honor of being led by Virgil on a tour of the nine circles and, in the end, you make the acquaintance of Lucifer. Find a version with Gustave Dor\u00e9\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2016\/01\/30\/10-frightening-books\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[543,118,117],"class_list":["post-2966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-10-frightening-books","tag-chun","tag-cody"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2967,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2966\/revisions\/2967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}