The Terror of Knowing

Another quick update post for the Bout of Books 11 Read-a-thon, day 4 dawns *cue dramatic music*

Updates:

2pm – I have officially read… precisely no more pages since yesterday on account of taking care of a very squirmy toddler who demands attention. I’m going out for a meal tonight which once again means reading will possibly be very limited today. I did, however, go to my local library and get my account reactivated so in terms of getting useful errands done, today has been great haha.

6:30pm – this video pretty much sums today’s progress up. I’m clearly quite bad at read-a-thons, but hey, at least the challenges make me think about books some more every day?

Challenges:

Like This, Try This @ Writing My Own Fairytale

• You must recommend a book based on another book, movie, tv show, etc similar to this: “If you liked _____, you should try _____ because _____.”

If you liked Dracula by Bram Stoker, you should try Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and/or The Monk by Matthew Lewis because:

• Frankenstein mixes Gothic, thriller, romance and science into one fantastic tale of Dr Victor Frankenstein, a science student who meddles in the very business of creating life itself until, on being confronted with his creation, he backs away from what he has done in horror. It’s one of the most thrilling stories I have ever read and is a keystone of the Gothic genre which is the forerunner of the horror and science fiction genre as we know them today. It raises questions of life, what it means to be human, what consequences might be inflict by trying to play the creator, and what responsibilities do we have to our fellow man? And to think, Mary Shelley was only 18-years old when she dreamt up this novel!
• The Monk is interesting, to say the least. It’s a tale that mixes a sinister Spanish monastic setting with murder, ambition, and incest. The monk of the title, Ambrosio, finds himself caught between his moral duty/vows taken and temptation/obsession which leads him astray. It’s a dark horror novel that is not only part of the Gothic genre but also somehow simultaneously parodies it in an almost ostentatious fashion. Salacious is another word that could reasonably be attached to Lewis’ novel – quite worrying, really, considering he too was a young author and wrote The Monk at age 19!

Are you participating? How are your weeks faring? Comment below, I’d love to have a bit of a chat.