Books like The Philosophy of Horror

Although I don’t always agree with Said, and he doesn’t really address the United States specifically, I find myself turning to his book again and again because he asks the crucial questions about western interaction with the Islamic portion of the Mediterranean region.

His questions can also be applied to Mark Twain’s interaction with Catholics on the European shores of the Mediterranean. Anyone discussing the Middle East seriously needs to be familiar with his approach.

This is the most important book people have never heard of. It was immensely popular in the Middle Ages – 300 manuscripts survive in nine languages (Beowulf, another monster tale, survives in one copy). The probably-fictional “John Mandeville, knight, though I am not worthy” sets out from England in 1332, travels the known world on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and continues all the way to India. He encounters wondrous places, people, and beasts. The book is fundamentally flawed, with rampant racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, sexism, and on, but this is why it matters. Mandeville was Columbus’s reading on his voyage to “the Indies,” and encouraged him to see indigenous populations as monstrous. It is terrible, and terribly important. Bale’s excellent introduction and translation are the best of many versions.

This is a brilliant, wide-ranging, deeply-sourced study of the dynamics that underpinned and justified early modern colonization of the Americas. Mandeville’s Book of Marvels and Travels is the prehistory of the horrors of colonization; the sources at the heart of Davies’s study are colonization’s architecture: maps, book illustrations, freestanding prints, published texts, letters, journals, and on. With nuance and care, Davies rewrites the intellectual history of this period, confronting the dehumanizing, demonizing, monsterizing visual and textual rhetoric of colonial enterprises (which directly contributed to large-scale violence), but also looking carefully at nuances, differences, and shifts in this rhetoric over the course of the Renaissance.

This one is the closest to my own areas of research. Strickland and I are both medieval art historians interested in how images not only reflect cultural ideas about othered peoples and the production of otherness, but also how images are central to the generation of these ideas. In this well-illustrated book, she examines a wide range of medieval Christian images that demonize groups—particularly Jews and Muslims, but really, all those who were not normative European Christians. I’ve returned to this book’s arguments many times over the years, and every time, I learn something anew.

If you enjoy Star Wars but wish it had more Han and more heists—this is for you.

Destroying the Death Star doesn’t rid Han Solo of his debt to Jabba the Hutt, so, in this book, he signs up to a dubious con job and finds himself deep over his head. I loved that in addition to fan favourites like Han and Lando, the heist crew features several new and interesting female characters.

The plot is full of twists and betrayals. And the tone balances Han’s trademark charm, cynicism, and optimism. The audiobook narration was great.

For me, the ’60s & ’70s were the hay day of Bigfoot research. Along with Coleman, Moorehead, Green, and Dahinden, Peter Byrne was deep in the woods searching for the elusive creature. What I love about Byrne’s, The Search for Big Foot, is the authenticity of his quest. As I turned each page, I felt as if I was sitting by the campfire with Byrne as he shared his thoughts and compelling evidence for the elusive creature.

Oliver, a financial analyst befriends a stray cat who begins talking to him one night. And then things start to get really strange.

This is an ‘all the myths are true’ adventure fantasy set in modern-day San Francisco, where absurd things just keep happening while Oliver runs for his life from an inhuman assassin, and finds himself allied with a werewolf with excellent baking skills and a grumpy gunslinger who take orders from an (apparently) immortal child.

I love this story not only for the talking cat (though admittedly it’s what made me start reading), but for the way Oliver is forced to rethink his perceptions of both the world and himself. 

If any contemporary detective writer is the heir to Dorothy L. Sayers, it has to be Fred Vargas.

Trained as a historian and archaelogist, she writes well-plotted mysteries with complex, flawed characters. But most of all, her books are bristling with fascinating, arcane facts. In this novel, the inhabitants of a rural, mountainous region of France are being terrorized by what seems to be a huge wolf – or is it a werewolf?

The resolution is entertaining, but what I really loved was learning about everything from medieval legends to the contemporary politics of reintroducing wild wolves in Europe – not to mention sheep-farming, wildlife photography, and plumbing.

For anyone who loved Sayers’ deep dives on bell-ringing or the advertising business, Vargas is for you.

Howard's style is compelling, dragging you through the story with an inescapable inevitability. His characters possess stark, almost brutal qualities, sure of their place in the world they inhabit, even when facing the unknown. With mighty warriors such as Conan, we know they cannot lose but when it comes to Howard's horror stories, success is not so certain.

Patricia Briggs is a huge name within urban fantasy, and I’m sure many people who recognize her will wonder why I’ve chosen Alpha and Omega and not her Mercy Thompson series. The reason is Alpha and Omega are seriously overlooked! Charles and Anna are a powerful couple within their own right. Essentially forced into a mating by their wolves, Charles and Anna have to quickly figure out their relationship dynamic at the same time as Anna deals with the trauma of her old pack. This book is the short story prequel that introduces the characters, but the series, in general, is full of calming patience that slowly builds their deep love for one another. Heat level: 1/5