Okay, so in honor of Halloween coming up, today we are going to talk about spooky, creepy, books.
On this list i'm not going to have very many outright horror books. We're not going to have
like, this is going to give you nightmares... i guess it depends on what your threshold is.
I don't know. They're not going to be terrifying. I don't read a ton of thriller and horror,
but of what i've read i don't think i've ever actually been scared while reading,
so maybe my threshold is high. But i really love books that just have a
creepy tone and environment to it. So that's what i'm gonna be recommending. If you want some creep,
stick around (in the books, not me). But before we get into the list, a shout out to
today's sponsor: Squarespace. From websites to online stores to marketing tools to analytics;
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but we'll talk more about them at the end of the video. First book is going to be a short story, so
i'm already a liar. First short story is going to be The Yellow Wallpaper. I think this is only 16
pages long. You should definitely read it. It'll take so little of your time and it's so great.
So this is a story about a woman who is diagnosed with some mental health issues (i don't think it's
ever specified in the book) and her her treatment; issued by a doctor, is to have self-isolation. She
has to sit in an attic with yellow wallpaper and she can't hang out with other people.
She can't really have conversations outside of her caretaker, who happens to be her husband.
She isn't allowed to draw, read, write, have any sort of artistic ability or any sort of outlet.
She just gets to sit and stare at wallpaper and it is her mental descent because of this
treatment. I love this book because it's creepy the whole way through and i LOVE the way it ends,
but i also love this book for the impact it had. This is a treatment that doctors genuinely used to
diagnose when people had mental health issues and it generally did a lot worse than it did help.
And this author, this short story was inspired by her personal experience of being diagnosed
and treated this way and how it made her worse. And it actually had a great impact where doctors
(certain doctors, not all doctors) read this and then stopped treating people this way because of
it. So it's really great for the actual impact it had on society, but it's also just stand-alone a
really creepy, great story. And highly recommend. Next book if you want just a little bit of creep
vibes um... And Then There Were None is an Agatha Christie book and it's about 10 people
put off into an island for different reasons. They've been put into this island and then once
they get there they find out that they're actually just going to be picked off one by
one. And basically they've all done something bad and someone has decided that they're going to do
justice by killing them all. But it's all wrapped around this old nursery rhyme about 10 little
soldier boys and how they're all picked off one by one in different ways and then that that rhyme
is like haunting them on this island. It keeps playing and and then the people are being picked
off in ways that match the rhyme. And it's so good! It was really great. It was really engaging
and i was on the edge of my seat and it had that little creep factor because of that rhyme that
tied everything together. It was really good. Next one is probably one that you've heard me mention
a couple times and it's called Rebecca. This is a classic, gothic thriller. Think domestic
thriller. I actually am also going to recommend My Cousin Rachel, which i'm still currently reading
so i can't guarantee it's going to have a great ending, but i will have finished it by the time
you get to this video, at least. Watch my reading vlogs to find out what i thought about the ending!
I am coming to love this author's work. Daphne Du Maurier. I love gothic fiction in general, whether
it be gothic thriller, gothic horror, or even just gothic contemporary literary fiction. I just love
gothic books. Gothic fiction has this this very creepy feel to it. It has these undertones that
are very unsettling and i think that this author is a master at taking these simple scenarios,
but making every element of them unsettling and that's what i want, man! That's what i
want! i love it so much! It's all wrapped around these families that seem a little
bit odd and it's wrapped around these big estates and mansions that have like, hidden areas and that
don't seem quite right and might be a little bit haunted, but probably not. And i just...
i love gothic fiction so much. I think that this author is incredible. Little Secrets is
another one that would be more on the mild side if you, if you don't really like anything too
spooky this will be a good one for you. This actually starts off with a child abduction so
if you're not into that, probably don't... and who's into that? If you're not, if that
would be sensitive to you probably don't read this because it is a big focus of the book. But
it's about this woman whose son is taken and then her whole life basically crumbles
because of it (understandably so) and she's just still bent on finding him even after the police
investigation runs dry. It's a domestic thriller which automatically means there are boring parts.
I don't know why that's the case for so many domestic thrillers,
but uh i loved the beginning and i loved the ending. It was very unsettling and very um...
maybe creepy isn't the right word, but unsettling works. Next book on the list is going to be Pet
Sematary. So i love this book. It's a deep exploration of grief with horror as kind of
the tool to explore that and i love this book so much. That said, i've recommended this a lot and a
lot of people come back saying: "Uh, it was pretty predictable." Okay, so yes. Know that going in.
Yeah, it's gonna be predictable, but that's not really the point of this book. It's not
meant to surprise you. It's supposed to be a deep exploration of real life stuff and then at the end
it actually turns horror. So keep that in mind. It's very slow build, it's very character build
and it's a very nuanced interesting discussion with very much horror at the end. It's a really
creepy ending and it's just also a really meaningful book so i highly recommend it.
Oh and the focus around this whole thing is death and it does explore it in pretty difficult ways.
Next is going to be H.P. Lovecraft. I'm fairly new to Lovecraft's work, but i've been reading some
of his short stories and if you want unsettling vibes, creepy undertones... man! Lovecraft can
deliver. In his short stories he's able to create an environment and set a tone that overall just
feels very uncomfortable and nothing really feels safe in so few words and i love that. And then i
found that pretty much every short story that i've read so far has a really satisfying payoff. So you
get these creepy, unsettling, uncomfortable vibes and feelings from it throughout the
entire thing and then in the end it's all worth it. It delivers. They deliver and i love it.
Last book on this list is going to be The Troop. This is a horror novel about a group of boy scouts
that get stuck on this island. And on this island there is a parasite. This parasite is going to
get into, it can get into their bodies through any sort of cut that they have. And this parasite,
what it does is; it eats and eats and eats and eats until you are basically starving to death
and the person kind of goes crazy with this hunger and they'll do anything to eat anything.
Oh, also it reproduces like mad so it just keeps filling you to eat you. It's actually really cool.
There's a lot of gross scenes in it. There's also, i think three scenes of animal cruelty,
which when they came up i would just skim those pages so that i can move on to the story,
but i know several people have DNF'd because of those scenes and i don't blame them. They're
not happy scenes, obviously. But the parasite, i enjoyed reading about so much, which is a weird
thing to say because it is very gross. But i, oh my gosh. I just thought it was such an interesting
concept and i loved the tension in this book that these kids had to face as they are trying to deal
with this very upsetting scenario they're in, but they have to deal with it calmly because if they
get into fights then they're now in danger if they have any sort of cut or even if they don't
get into a fight if they just, i don't know; Scuff something then they could potentially be infected.
And then what happens when people among your group are infected? What do you do? Now you have them
this difficult decision of: "Do we just chuck you out?" and "Shucks, you're dead." Or do we try to
hope that you won't try to kill us soon if you do get infected? It's just, it's such an interesting
concept and i really enjoyed the execution of this so much. And now that you've got your list, an
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Go sign up, now. So there you go. That's my recommendations of some books that are very
unsettling. I would love your recommendations. What kind of environmentally unsettling
books can you recommend to me? I don't i don't think i love horror that's just like, full on
horror. I think i like undertones a lot more i'm learning. So, do you have recommendations for me
in that category? Have you read any of these books and would you like to discuss them with me more?
I post videos every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I'll see you guys again soon,
bye.