We have absolutely loved reading your responses to our challenges over on our Patreon this summer. You gave us a TON of new, wonderful books to check out, and continually inspired both us and your fellow readers. Thank you for joining us this year!

As promised, we do have a winner for our book-themed care package… but first, here are our final wrap ups!

Brittany:

Okay, here is my final list (I won’t elaborate on the title if I already did in our mid-challenge update post!) I switched some out from last time to try to get a different book for each of the challenges and, as you’ll see, I was ALMOST successful this year! 

A Book with a Pink Cover – I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton – Wrote about this one last time!

A Book by a Debut Author Whose First Book Comes Out This Summer – The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King – I’m really not sure how I ultimately felt about this one. I mostly enjoyed it, and it was certainly a brisk, easy read. I loved the slight, quiet magic of the story and the intergenerational perspective flipping too. The basic premise is that the women of a certain family have the magical ability to bleed out the hearts of pencils, essentially copying out everything that particular pencil has ever written. Along with the actual words, drawings, etc, they also receive the feelings that person felt as they were using the pencil. This ability can obviously be used for good (as when one of the women is able to give another women fleeing persecution the last poems of her late husband), but it can also be used for evil (as when one of the women is forced to act as a spy and bleed out the conspiratorial writings of enemies of the state for those in charge, who then meet fates often not explicitly mentioned but easily imagined.) The message frequently pushed, because of this, is that stories can be dangerous and not all stories should be shared with everyone. As a folklorist, I was very conflicted about this, as you might imagine! In fact, the character who wants to archive stories is painted as short sighted, even problematic, as if archiving stories is a project that isn’t well thought out enough yet. She is portrayed as pushy, as if she is almost stealing from people by wanting them to share their stories with her and the world. Honestly, I’m not sure I’m being quite fair to the book by saying that, but that’s how I felt throughout, so overall it was a complicated read that I’m still grappling with.     

A Book by An Author You’ve Already Read and Loved – Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste – A book that starts with the premise that Lucy Westenra of Dracula and Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre are BFFs living in late 1960s Los Angeles? Where do I sign?? This book was a LOT of fun. I don’t think it 100% lived up to its potential, and it dragged a tiny bit in spots, but I still had a blast reading it. Totally perfect atmosphere with a bizarre but wonderful mashup. I’d read Gwendolyn Kiste’s first collection of short stories, and loved it, so I was really excited to read a novel from her. I wasn’t disappointed. This one also fits the “Twist on a Classic” and “Something Gothic” categories!

A Short Story – “The Knight and the Butcherbird” by Alix E. Harrow – Wrote about this one last time! This one could also fit the “Something Science Fiction” category. 

Something Gothic – The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – This one more precisely fits into the witches category, I guess, but they’re not really the kind of witches I like, so I’m reluctant to put it there. These witches are the hardcore, Gothic, scary witches, so I’m putting this book here instead (if it doesn’t read as quite Gothic enough to you, you can sub in But Not Too Bold here, which is very obviously Gothic.) This was a really, really hard read for me. There was a lot I loved about it (the college/academic setting, especially the focus on someone writing about a lesser known female speculative fiction writer, the three different perspective switches, the emphasis on story and the power of folklore, and the slow-build of completely Gothic, unsettling, and uncanny vibes, for example.) However, again, this book was not about my kind of witches, and nothing proved that more than the consistent animal death throughout the whole thing. Most of them weren’t strong parts of the story (a dead rat is found on a bed, for example), but there was one death in particular, which, if you know me, you will know almost stopped me from finishing this one. Yes, even despite the fact you can see it coming a mile away. In fact, when I did start to sense it was coming, I almost stopped reading then, but I remained hopeful Moreno-Garcia would choose a different path. She did not, though there IS a twist that makes it slightly less awful. I absolutely cried though, and I am sure I’m not the only one, and it really ruined the whole thing for me. I did finish it, because I wanted to know what happened, and I’m glad I did because of the twist about the death that is revealed, but overall I’m just not pleased and very sad that I’m not.   

A Twist on a Classic – Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu AND The Classic It Was Based On – “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Reread!) – Sara already wrote about these last time, so I won’t go into either again except to say that both are just as excellent as she said they were!

Something Science Fiction – Starter Villain by John Scalzi – This was an absolutely ridiculous and delightful read that Josh and I listened to on a series of long car trips. I don’t want to say too much about this one, because it was so funny and weird, but basically a random guy inherits his estranged uncle’s super villain organization and shenanigans ensue. Also there are brilliant cats serving as high-level spy operatives and foul-mouthed dolphins trying to form a labor union. It’s a good (and surprisingly heart-warming) time. I think that this one could also fit into the “Romp” category! 

A Book About Witches – The White Hare by Jane Johnson – As mentioned, The Bewitching could go here, but I instead opted for The White Hare. The “witches” of The White Hare are more of the subtle, witch-Y variety, but I loved them, best part of the book. This was one of the books where the atmosphere and the vibes easily won my heart, even if the story didn’t 100%. As I said, the witch-y side characters were utterly delightful, I loved the women overcoming the patriarchy via vaguely pagan worldviews themes, and Cornwall itself was an amazing, evocative character here. This book left me desperately wanting to visit that part of the world, where craggy cliffs look over white-tipped waves and the misty chill of magic haunts the fields (maybe it’s because Brittany is just across the sea and very similar in many ways?)

A Memoir – Just Kids by Patti Smith – This memoir has been on my TBR list for a long time and, even though Madeline Pendleton’s book was technically a memoir too, I decided I wanted another one. I’m so glad that I did. This isn’t my usual kind of read at all, but Patti Smith is such an evocative writer, and I found myself underlining things to look up practically every other page (side note: I love it when books make me do that!) and/or underlining phrases that were just perfectly said. You can tell Smith is a poet, even though she’s writing prose here, and the NYC of her memories is so enticing (despite the poverty and sadness) that I want to jump back through a time portal to experience it myself, just for a little while. It’s a world where art is paramount, and it seeps into everything these “kids” touch.  

A Romp – Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis – I’ve already gone on and on about this one at book club (if you join here you can catch the recording, it was one of our best conversations I think!) so I won’t go too much into it here. I haven’t read a lot of Romantasy, and most of it isn’t my thing, but I really enjoyed this one and the way that Burgis was so consciously playing with and reversing some of the most deeply baked in stereotypes about women. It’s definitely a “romp,” very light and funny, but heartwarming too. Also, a book will always get bonus points from me for adorable crow minions.

A Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling – But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo – Again, Sara wrote about this one last time, so I won’t go into it again, except to say that I actually did totally believe the romance despite, you know, spider lady munchies. This one obviously also fits into the “Something Gothic” category! 

Something Illustrated – Night Flower: The Life and Art of Vali Myers edited by Gemma Jones and Martin McIntosh – Ah, another one that’s been on my shelf forever and, despite the fact that I had taken it down and admired the illustrations over and over again for years, this time I actually sat down and read the whole thing cover to cover. And it was delightful! I always loved all the bits and pieces of Vali Myers’ life that I’d picked up from the Internet, but seeing her through the eyes of those who loved her, coupled with her beautiful artwork, just made me more dazzled by her weird and wonderful life. Her actual finished art isn’t my favorite, but her diaries, oh my God, they are incredible. They have all been digitized by the State Library of Victoria here, and it’s well worth an afternoon clicking through the images. I am endlessly enchanted and inspired by them.

Something Hopeful – Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie – Another book club pick, but I’m so glad we did this one! Not only is Maria just a fabulously magical person, she is also incredibly kind and brilliant – all of these qualities show in her writing. I will forever associate lemon balm soap with a brightening, hopeful feeling because of this book (in fact, I went out and bought some right after I finished it!) This one could also fit into the “Something Gothic” category (it surprises no one that many of these books could fit into that category, right?) 

Okay, you might have noticed that I skipped “A Tome” in the challenge list. That is because, technically once again, I have failed to complete the challenge, as I am only about halfway through my tome book, The Courting of Bristol Keats by Mary E. Pearson. It is 550 pages, and I think I may have psyched myself out thinking about it as “a TOME” because I am really struggling to finish this one, despite really enjoying it overall! I will get there, but sigh. I still think that, overall, I was VERY successful this year though, so I will give myself a small gold star. A silver star? Yes. 

Sara:

I had a very weird book summer. In mid-July, I caught bronchitis, which is my absolute kryptonite, and I proceeded to be disgustingly, drastically ill for 2 full months. Reading is my coping mechanism for reality, and it turns out that when I get no sleep for actual weeks on end (and go through four rounds of steroids), I struggle to read, especially anything new. Go figure. So I’ve been actively salty about most of my new reads for most of the summer, which is a wild and deeply uncharacteristic mood for me. Mercifully, the spell has been lifted (I devoured a new book in 24 hours over the weekend and loved it), and I somehow completed the challenge anyway! Here’s how it went down:

A Book with a Pink Cover – But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo. I wrote about this last time, but I’ll add that it was truly one of the most original, bizarre, and memorable books I’ve read so far this year! (I also read I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton on Brittany’s recommendation and enjoyed it, too.)

A Book by a Debut Author Whose First Book Comes Out This Summer – Immortal Consequences by I. V. Marie. This book was billed as dark academia Hunger Games in purgatory, and thus I had to read it. The concept was really fun, but it definitely had some significant issues with execution.

A Book by An Author You’ve Already Read and Loved –  Looking for Group by Alexis Hall. Covered in our previous post. I’ll add that I also read The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam by Megan Bannen (the author of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy) and thought it was a delightful conclusion to the Tanria trilogy. 

A Short Story – “Shimmering, Warm, and Bright” by Shveta Thakrar. I’ve read this one probably a dozen times, and I still think it’s one of the best, most honest discussions of depression I’ve seen in art. Even more admirable, it literally uses magical creativity as a metaphor but without ever crossing that dangerous line into suggesting that depression is a necessary factor or cost to having magic or being a creative person (which is a trope that needs to go die in a fire.)

Something Gothic – The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall by J. Ann Thomas. This one was strongly recommended to me by Carterhaugh student Morag, and girl was on point. This book does a lot of things absolutely brilliantly, from adapting and fictionalizing a real location to imbuing ballads with magic to being Gothic AF. I don’t want to say too much more about it now because we are 100% going to use it in a future course. But ahhhh. So much good stuff. (Other books I read that would fit here include But Not Too Bold, Not Quite a Ghost, Weep, Woman, Weep, Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninth.)

A Twist on a Classic – Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu. Wrote about this one previously, still stunned by what Ursu was able to pull off in this middle grade novel. 

The Classic It Was Based On – “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Wrote about this one previously, still bow down before the utter genius of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Something Science Fiction – Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. One of my favorite books of all time. When I was at my lowest with bronchitis, I re-read this. Twice. And then I re-read Harrow the Ninth. Twice. I have no regrets about what I have done.

A Book About Witches – Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis. I won’t rehash this one too much since Brittany already wrote about it above. It wasn’t super my cup of tea, but I appreciate the way that Burgis was interested in exploring, reversing, and questioning very standard romance tropes.

A Memoir – All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert. Since everyone and their mother was talking about this one, I picked it up, kind of on a whim, and devoured it in about 24 hours. This was my first time reading Elizabeth Gilbert, although I knew who she was because Eat, Pray, Love. Damn, this woman can write. This book is gripping and compelling as hell, and it is harrowing. I couldn’t put it down – this was actually the new-to-me book that finally broke my reading rut – and I’m floored by Gilbert’s bravery and vulnerability. I honestly can’t believe she published it.

A Tome – We Can Do Hard Things by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle. I feel weird calling this one a tome (it certainly doesn’t read like a tome!) but at 512 pages, it’s exactly as long as the other longest book I’ve read this summer (Immortal Consequences). I’m a massive fan of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, and I adored Glennon Doyle’s most recent memoir Untamed. As a lifelong devotee of US women’s soccer, I’m also a decades-long fan of Abby Wombach. If you like the podcast – where the three hosts and their guests talk about everything from boundaries to poetry to what success even is and so much more – you’ll love the book, which is a distillation of some of the wisdom from the show. It’s literally a guidebook for survival – how to do hard things when the world is crazy – delivered with so much heart, humor, and honesty, and I am very happy to have it.

A Romp – ZomRomCom by Olivia Dade. This book is extremely silly, and this is not a complaint. If you call your book “ZomRomCom,” that’s kind of a given. Edie attempts to save her sweet but dim neighbor from a zombie attack only to discover that he’s not only an ancient, wealthy, and superpowerful vampire but also a famous but mysterious fashion influencer. They proceed to save their neighborhood – and then THE WORLD – from the zombie outbreak and then from the politics that kicked off the attack, while occasionally pausing to have sex. Like I said, very silly, sweet, zany, and, as always, reflective of Dade’s signature body positivity.   

A Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling – The Thorn Key: Fairy Tales in Verse by Jeana Jorgensen. Discussed in the previous write-up.

Something Illustrated – Masters of Death by Olivie Blake. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t been quite so sick with bronchitis when I was reading this one. It’s very Good Omens by way of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and I love Blake’s sense of humor. Unfortunately, my sleep-deprivation and coughing kept jolting me out of it. Definitely merits a re-read. 

Something Hopeful – A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow. I know everyone loves The Once and Future Witches, but my favorite Harrow book so far has been A Spindle Splintered, a hilarious critique of the dying girl narrative executed through a Sleeping-Beauty multiverse (which Harrow did her folklore homework to create.) A Mirror Mended is the continuation of Zinnia’s story as she accidentally falls into another sleeping princess story, Snow White. At one point Zinnia sends her best friend a single desperate text that reads “ATU 709 SOS,” and I laughed until I cried.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the winner of the challenge!! Our winner for 2025 is Melissa Butler!! Congratulations, Melissa! Look for an email from us very soon, and, again, THANK YOU to everyone who participated this year (there were so many of you!!) We hope you enjoyed the challenge as much as we did.

What was your favorite read of the summer? Reply in the comments and tell us! We always LOVE to add to our TBR piles! 

P.S. There is still time to sign up for the FREE “Dirty, Messy, Alive” series of writing workshops! We cannot stress to you enough how these workshops are going to be. Plus, if you add the optional All-Access Pass after signing up, you get over $1000-worth of additional materials for a TINY fraction of their usual price (including our full “Find Your Fairy Tale” mini course!) This is an amazing deal, and we’re thrilled to be part of it. If you’ve ever even toyed with the idea of writing creative non-fiction, personal essays, a memoir, or anything even remotely close to those things, you absolutely MUST get in on this.

P.P.S. Enjoyed the summer reading challenge? You will LOVE our Patreon-based book club! It’s been going strong for 68 months straight (that’s over 5 years!?) and our 69th book is T. Kingfisher’s incredible A Sorceress Comes to Call. If you love an excellent fairy-tale retelling, this is seriously the month to join us and start taking part in our wonderful discussions!

P.P.P.S. Ah, one last thing! We had a poem, “Janet to the Fairy Queen,” published in the brand new fairy-tale and folklore magazine, The Otherworld! It’s a GORGEOUS issue, created by two amazing women, and you can grab it for just $5 right now! We’re so excited that this new folklore-inspired creative outlet exists, and we highly, highly encourage you to go support it! 

_{Disclosure: We are affiliates of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through any of our book links and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!}

The post The 2025 Summer Reading Challenge Wrap-Up appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Giving you stuff that will delight you, up your creative output, and make you feel like you’re the witch who rules her castle/ bog/ apartment with power, glee, and joy. 

Especially when it’s FREE.

That’s why we’re so tickled to send out this particular email… because there’s so much absolutely spectacular free stuff in it, it’s kind of ridiculous.

Take a look at all the goodies below!

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First, we’re so excited to tell you that we’re taking part in The Polished Page Pack!!

For the next four weeks, we’re collaborating with 12 coaches, editors, and experts to give you a collection of FREE resources to finally, FINALLY finish your book. We contributed one of our most popular resources, The Chicken Poem Principle, but here’s just a sample of what else is inside →

5 Secrets of Story Structure
Build a strong foundation so your story holds up from start to finish.

The Most Important Part of Your Novel (That You Are Probably Missing)
Uncover the emotional core of your story so you never lose your way.

Worldbuilding Simplified
Especially for fantasy writers—plan your world without getting overwhelmed.

One Month Free in a Self-Editing Group
Don’t revise alone. Get expert feedback and accountability during revisions.

Social Media Content Pack for Creatives
Start building your author platform before you even hit “the end.”

And these are just 5 of the 12 resources —and they’re all FREE until September 15, 2025!

Grab it here!

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Second, the lovely journal Worlds of Possibility, edited by Julia Rios, just published a collection of the poetry they’ve featured in their past issues and 1) our poem “Reliable Girls” is in it, and 2) it’s available to download for FREE here until August 20th, 2025! It’s absolutely beautiful, and Julia has the most wonderful editorial eye for poetry. We can’t wait to finish savoring it. 

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Lastly, just in case you missed it, we’re doing a FREE 5-Day Main-Character Magic Challenge next week! Every day, August 25th-August 29th, we’ll be going LIVE at 12PM ET to give you five practical, doable, MAGICAL steps to move from side character to STAR. Why? Because yeah, it’s incredibly easy to lose your playfulness, your sense of self, and your sparkle when you’re just trying to get through the week… but we firmly believe it’s just as easy to take the first steps into re-enchanting your life and becoming your own main character again.

Click here to join us!

(And yes, all the live videos will be recorded, so if you can’t make it at 12PM ET each day, you can absolutely still participate!)

So yes – that’s like 18 free things FOR YOU!

Be sure to take advantage of this stuff asap though – it all disappears soon!

The post So Many FREE Things!! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

We want you to believe in magic again.

Again, 100% free and nerdy as hell. We may have surpassed ourselves this time.

Here’s the crucial question. When did we decide the world wasn’t magical? That we weren’t magical?

Maybe, for you, it was the 734th day at your office job. Or maybe it was when you showed up to your cousin’s baby shower in your favorite velvet dress and combat boots, and your mom asked you, “Is THAT what you’re wearing?”

It’s so incredibly easy to lose your playfulness, your sense of self, your sparkle when you’re just trying to get through the week. And let’s be real, a lot of us have been just trying to get through the week for actual years at this point.

It’s SO easy to feel more like the toad than the witch lately.

But the truth is, it’s just as easy to take the first little steps into re-enchanting your life and becoming your own main character again.

Look, we can’t single-handedly stop the relentless news cycle or cure the Cough That Won’t Quit, but we can help re-energize you, show you how to excavate that elusive sparkle, and get you feeling a little more Glinda (who was, after all, based on a real-life suffragette and feminist badass) and a little less Molly Grue.

All by using fairy tales and folklore.

For real.

1 Week. 5 Challenges. 5 practical, doable, MAGICAL steps to move from side character to star.

Oh, and 1 person will win a FABULOUS PRIZE sent to them in the mail (USA only!)

You’ll get live videos (plus access to recordings posted on Teachable) every day next week, with actionable prompts that will light you up and get you out of toad-mode and back into witch-mode.

And each day of this challenge is themed after a motif outlined in seminal folklorist Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. Yes, we’re dead serious 

We’ve loved running versions of this challenge in the past, and this is bigger, sparklier, more impactful, and weirder than ever before. Whether you already participated in a previous version and crushed it, meant to show up and then life happened, you started but lost momentum, or you’re brand new around here, YOU’RE INVITED!

Are you ready?

Click here to sign up – we start August 25th at 12PM ET! See you there!!

The post The Main-Character Magic Challenge! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

A book-themed care package sent to your door!

The challenge runs until September 1st, and many of the challenges can be completed simultaneously with a single book. YOU CAN DO IT!

You can officially join the challenge by supporting us on Patreon at any paying level and commenting on each challenge thread with what you’ve read to complete it.

You can also read along for free! But our Patreon community is absolutely lovely (we have a book club!), book care packages are on the line, and we are so, so grateful for your support, so please do check it out.

Want to know how we’ve been completing the challenge so far (and add to your never-ending TBR pile)? Read on for our picks so far!

Sara: 

A Book with a Pink Cover – I picked up But Not Too Bold, a novella by Hache Pueyo on a whim, read it in one sitting, and immediately talked Brittany into having this be our book club pick for the month of July. (We’ll be talking about it on July 10th, so, seriously, JOIN OUR BOOK CLUB and come dish about this absolutely wild book.) But Not Too Bold is the sapphic Bluebeard retelling that happens when you throw Angela Carter, Mexican Gothic, Gaudi, and a bunch of spiders into a blender. It was originally written in Brazilian Portuguese and translated into English by the author, which is delightful! It’s an incredibly creative, lush, compelling little book. I personally don’t buy the romance one tiny bit (SPIDERS, OKAY? Brittany found it more believable, and we will definitely CHAT about this at book club), but I enjoyed the hell out of the weird world. (This one could also count for the Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling category and the Something Gothic category, but I like completing each of the challenges with a separate book!)

A Book by An Author You’ve Already Read and Loved – For this one, I re-read Looking for Group by Alexis Hall, who I have raved about before and who remains one of my favorite living authors. He writes with incredible emotional complexity and nuance and always, always makes me laugh out loud when reading, which is really all I want in a book if I’m being perfectly honest. Looking for Group is an incredibly hilarious, sweet little romance about two people who meet playing an online game. While I’ve never played an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, like World of Warcraft) like the one in the book, I have played a lot of D&D in my day, and this book is a love letter to what games can mean to people and to spending your days doing what you genuinely enjoy. (Also, the description of an incredibly sexist boss fight inside the game made me laugh until I actually cried.)  

A Twist on a Classic – I finally, finally got around to reading Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu, based on the strong recommendation of a couple of our salonnier folks, and I was absolutely blown away. Inspired by the iconic story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Not Quite a Ghost explores what it’s like to live with a chronic, invisible illness (like long covid or chronic fatigue or other things medicine is still trying to catch up on) and also what it’s like to live in a haunted house. It’s middle grade, so it’s not too bleak or heavy, and it’s done with a deft, compassionate touch. I gobbled it up in less than 24 hours.

The Classic It Was Based On – Obviously, once I was done, I went back and re-read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and published in 1892. The story, about a woman who has been prescribed a “rest cure”/ imprisonment after the birth of her child, is often considered to be a key early feminist work. It’s terrifying and brilliant and absolutely worth a read. “The Yellow Wallpaper” could also complete the Short Story and Something Gothic categories!

A Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling – After getting distracted, I rediscovered my copy of The Thorn Key: Fairy Tales in Verse by our friend and colleague Dr. Jeana Jorgensen, and WHEW. Jeana is a fellow fairy-tale scholar as well as a creative writer, and it really, really shows. This collection could have only been written by someone with a deep understanding of the tales and what makes them tick. They also pack a massive emotional punch while being beautiful to read. The collection deals with very heavy topics like trauma and abuse while also celebrating women, queerness, and fortifying relationships of all kinds. Honestly, it was a complete joy to read. 

Brittany:

A Book With a Pink Cover AND A Memoir – Okay, I am DETERMINED to actually finish the whole challenge this year, which means I had to get strategic. With this in mind, I am packing my summer TBR with books that fill at least one category, and I’m doing pretty well so far! To fill the Book with a Pink Cover category and the Memoir category, I read I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton. This one really doesn’t pull any punches, but it wound up being surprisingly hopeful and inspiring by the end, especially concerning debt and running an actually ethical business under capitalism.  

A Short Story AND Something Science Fiction – For these two categories, I read “The Knight and the Butcherbird” by Alix E. Harrow (as recommended by Carterhaugh student, Deborah!) I’ll be upfront and say sci-fi post-apocalyptic/dystopian futurescapes are not usually my thing, but I wound up being really moved by this one. As Deborah put it when she was talking about it, there’s just so much beauty and sorrow and yearning here. Harrow’s short stories are always great, but what really, really impresses me about them is that they consistently stick the landing SO well. Her final paragraphs are always just… perfect in that leave-you-staring-into-space-and-contemplating-life-but-in-a-good-way way.  

A Twist on a Classic AND Something Illustrated – I may have another one for both of these two by the end of the summer, but for now both of these categories can be filled by Little Witches by Leigh Dragoon, a graphic novel retelling of Little Women in which they’re all witches! This one was definitely aimed at a younger audience, and I found it a little thin overall, but the concept was just too good to ignore. Now, this said, I’ve read Little Women before (and it’s REALLY long if you don’t remember), so I probably won’t read that one again for the “Classic It Was Based On” category, BUT I am planning on reading another Louisa May Alcott book that I just discovered, A Rose in Bloom, instead? (Sara, who is proofing this doc, is laughing and laughing because she was obsessed with Rose in Bloom as a tiny child and has THOUGHTS. She also says that no this will not count for the “Classic It Was Based On” category, I actually have to read the proper pairing :P.) My Mom read A Rose in Bloom and really enjoyed it though, so I was already very curious (and now even more so upon realizing tiny Sara was obsessed with it!)

Again, there’s still tons of time to join us for this reading challenge, so click here and commit to reading some truly awesome stuff this summer! What have you been reading so far? We want to know!

_{Disclosure: We are affiliates of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through any of our book links and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!}

The post Summer Reading Challenge Update #1 appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

You start reading the classics somewhere in middle school (everybody remembers being traumatized by “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury around 8th grade, right? Or maybe “Cannibalism in the Cars” by Mark Twain? Or “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson?? Why are the classics like this?) 

Well, we went on in school for about 18 years after that, during which we were exposed to a lot more stories in pretty much every genre you can think of.  

We’ve noticed, however, that even though we’re taught early on that short stories matter and can be absolutely life-changing/ wildly memorable/ scarring, most people tend to stop reading them as they get older. You no longer have a teacher dispensing them at you, and far fewer short story collections are published than other kinds of literature. They also don’t often pop up in book clubs, which tend to be all about novels. If you’re not deep in a literary scene, you just don’t see them around as much.  

But y’all… short stories can be so so good. This is why we made reading one (at least one) part of our 2025 Carterhaugh School Summer Reading Challenge. We already recommended Cat Valente’s “The Lily and the Horn,” “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar, and “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker, but here are four more from each of us that have really stuck with us (and that you can read for free online right now!) We each did two modern ones and two classics!

Brittany’s Picks:

“For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll – I don’t even know how to express how much I love this story. Carroll takes the cat of the delightful 1763 poem “For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry,” which was written by Christopher Smart when he was confined to St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, and builds an entire story around it. Jeoffry’s voice in the tale is so perfectly cat-like that I can’t stop smiling the entire time I’m reading – oh, and did I mention he and his cat buddies defeat the Devil who is trying to take Smart’s soul? Yep. Cats are amazing. Also there is a terror of a kitten named Nighthunter Moppet who is even more delightful than you think she’s going to be. 

This one was actually recently adapted into a short film for the Netflix series Love, Death, and Robots! It’s not quite as good as the short story, but it’s pretty great (and also written for the screen by Tamsyn Muir of Gideon the Ninth fame!) 

“The Witch of Duva” by Leigh Bardugo – Also first published by Reactor, interestingly enough, “The Witch of Duva” by Leigh Bardugo is just so well done. It draws on “Hansel and Gretel,” but takes everything in a completely different direction. The twist is masterful. The other thing that I really like about this one is that it ultimately inspired Bardugo to create a whole book of short folk stories set in her imaginary world of Ravka, The Language of Thorns, which I loved. Sara and I are always saying if you want your speculative world to feel really, really real, give it some folklore, and that’s exactly what Bardugo does. Witchcraft, fairy-tale reworking, hex the patriarchy solidarity vibes… yep, where do I sign?

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin – For my first classic story, I want to share “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin. I’m picking this one at least partly because it doesn’t seem like a story I would pick, as it’s totally realist, but I absolutely adore it (I also love teaching this one in particular, there is so much to talk about.) Set in 1950s Harlem, it’s the story of two Black brothers, the unnamed narrator and Sonny, who has addiction issues but is an amazing musician. It’s about music and injustice and forgiveness and pain. It has some of the most profound insights and perfect descriptions of art I’ve ever read. It makes me tear up just to read certain paragraphs, they’re just so deeply true. If you’ve never read anything by Baldwin before, give this one a shot. It’s absolutely one of those stories that will stay with you long after you read the last paragraph.      

“The Dead” by James Joyce – For my second classic story, I’m going to go with Joyce’s “The Dead.” I first read it in high school with a great teacher, and I will always have a soft spot for it because it was one of the first things I read that showed me how incredibly beautiful and powerful literature really can be. It was a key inspiration for my going on to study for my PhD. It’s a love story, a ghost story, a story about how well and how little we really know those we love. It also has one of the most beautiful final paragraphs of anything I’ve read ever. I think of it whenever it starts snowing – 

“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” 

Sara’s Picks: 

“The Mad Scientist’s Daughter” by Theodora Goss – I love this one for so many reasons. I love that it’s a feminist reimagining of the greatest science-fiction hits of the 19th century: the main characters are all daughters of those pesky scientists in Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and many more. And they’re all super weird and powerful, in complicated ways. I love that this story came out of Dora’s dissertation research. And I love that it was the seed of her first novel…and her first trilogy. “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter” shows, in so many ways, the interconnectedness of literature and creativity, spilling from one work to the next, moving between scholarship and fiction. It just doesn’t get cooler than that.

“Shimmering, Warm, and Bright” by Shveta Thakrar – Honestly, I debated between this one and “Krishna Blue” (a vampire who loves to paint and eats COLORS! It’s terrifying! I love it!), but I went with “Shimmering, Warm, and Bright” because it’s such a beautiful, important, and compassionate depiction of depression. I deeply appreciate that it avoids the super toxic, super common idea that suffering = art and that depression or being miserable is a necessary condition of making good art. (Spoiler: being incredibly ill makes it HARDER to make art!) Nope, what Shveta does here is gentle, beautiful, and profoundly magical. Also, there’s a sunshine closet. 

“The Machine Stops” by EM Forster – Forster wrote this nightmare fuel in 1909, and it has haunted me ever since I read it in a graduate seminar on the fin de siecle (turn of the 20th century), a time of rapid technological change and anxiety (sounds RELEVANT, no?). The story tells of a world where humans no longer live on the surface of the planet, instead dwelling in physical isolation underground in standardized rooms where all their needs are seen to by a giant machine. People are connected by technology that gestures towards instant messaging and the internet, and they pass all their time discussing second-hand “ideas” but almost never meet in person. It is SURREAL to me that Forster wrote this absolute banger more than 100 years ago. 

“The Lady of the House of Love” by Angela Carter – Possibly my favorite short story of all time. Carter is at her most Gothic in this reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, in which Sleeping Beauty’s “sleep” is the curse of vampirism:

“Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.”

Yes. Just yes.

So there you have it! What’s your all-time favorite short story? What story has stuck with you the most? What story totally traumatized you in middle school, causing you to now hate us for making you remember it again? Head to the comments and let us know!!

P.S. Remember, if you want to win a massive book-themed care package from us, don’t forget to join any paying tier of our Patreon (again we recommend the $7 tier because that’s the BOOK CLUB TIER!) and comment on each weekly challenge thread! Special note because there has been some confusion: commenting on the threads will remain open until the end of the challenge (the first week of September.) We’ll be posting them in the order we listed in the post announcing the challenge, but don’t feel like you have to read in that specific order to participate in the challenge!  

P.P.S. DO NOT sign up for our Patreon through the Apple Patreon app on your iPhone! They’ve added massive fees, and they now charge patrons more if they purchase a membership through the Patreon app on iPhone. You can avoid this fee simply by signing up through your web browser instead (you can still use the iPhone Patreon app to LOOK at Patreon, just don’t buy anything there.) Please join through your web browser and save your $!

The post 8 Beloved Short Stories appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Ready to stretch your brain, find amazing new-to-you authors, return to beloved favorites, and feel accomplished AF?

Let’s do it.

All are welcome to enjoy the challenge and read your hearts out.

HOWEVER. If you’d like a chance to win a fabulous prize (spoiler: it’s a box of books) and support our work, you can enter by:

1. Joining our Patreon at any paying level and
2. Commenting on each weekly designated challenge thread with what you’re reading

One lucky winner who comments on all 15 threads will win THE GRAND PRIZE – a care package shipped to your door full of folklore-y books, stickers, and some additional surprises! (Please note we can only ship to the US!)

As always, we have 15 challenge categories for you all.

Please note that that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to read 15 different books, though you certainly can! If you, say, read a Gothic retelling of Jane Eyre with a pink cover, crafty friend, you have checked off three categories in one fell swoop, and we salute you. 

We’ve kept the categories pretty broad so that you can choose books that speak to you. And if you’re one of those people who just wants to be given a list or a place to start, we’ve also included specific recommendations from us so that you’re never stumped!

Without further ado, behold our challenge categories!

A Book with a Pink Cover
This is on our list solely because we feel like it’s the kind of request that a fairy would make during a challenge like this, and we happen to be in our pink era. Find your pink-covered book while browsing your local library or book store or pick up one of these pink-clad books that we love: Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney, Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, The Pink Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, or Meaty by Samatha Irby.

A Book by a Debut Author Whose First Book Comes Out This Summer
As authors who will be debuting our first book (!!!!???!!!!!) next year, we wanted to do a solid for other new authors and also discover some new voices! Obviously, we haven’t read these ourselves yet, but we’re especially excited to check out Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil (a fantasy based on the history and mythology of the precolonial Philippines), The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King (a generational tale with a touch of magic), and Immortal Consequences by I. V. Marie (dark academia Hunger Games in purgatory?!)

A Book by An Author You’ve Already Read and Loved
The counterbalance to the previous entry and your excuse to dip back into the work of an author that you absolutely adored. We’re both going to read another book by Olivie Blake – maybe finally The Atlas Six! Or possibly Terry Pratchett (we’ve read maybe 10 of about 40!)

A Short Story
We both genuinely love a short story and a quick win. There are SO MANY lovely, wonderful, mind-blowing short stories out there, many of which can be read online for free. We’ll have more to say about our love of short stories in an upcoming post, but if you need a place to start, some of our favorites include “The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente, “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar, and “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker.

Something Gothic
Short story, novel, novella, anything Gothic goes. (If you need a refresher, the Gothic is dread glamor, ghosties haunting ruined manors, decaying grandeur, and the folkloric past returning to haunt the present, among other things.) We’re especially excited to read The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall and to check out some other works by Christa Carmen who wrote the wonderfully Gothic The Daughters of Block Island.

A Twist on a Classic 
For this category, take on a reimagining of a classic work of literature, like Angel of Crows by Sarah Monette/ Katherine Addison or A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas, which are both reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which reimagines Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Or Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan, which retells A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

The Classic It Was Based On
For we are comprehensive nerds here at Carterhaugh Enterprises. So if you read Tell the Wind and Fire, it’s time to dig out A Tale of Two Cities. If you read A Study in Scarlet Women, it’s time for “A Study in Scarlet.” YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. 

Something Science Fiction 
Confession: we both used to read TONS of science fiction when we were children. Madeline L’Engle, Star Wars books, Animorphs, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, WE READ IT ALL. We don’t read it as much anymore, but there’s absolutely incredible sci-fi being written all the time. In particular, we recommend This is How You Lose the Time War, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (really any Becky Chambers will do), All Systems Red, and A Wrinkle in Time.

A Book About Witches
Lest we drift too far afield from our bread and butter, we invite you to read a book about witches. History, fantasy, memoir, folklore, graphic novel – the sky is the limit, as long as the sky is full of witches. We adore Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells by Barbara Rieti (a straight-up folklore book), Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (need we say more?), and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (cozy found family novel.)

A Memoir 
We usually read a handful or two of memoirs a year, and every time we do, we’re like “why don’t we read these more often?!” We love these glimpses into people’s lives and insights they share about their own experiences – and the ways they so often relate to us, too. A few that we’ve absolutely adored include Untamed by Glennon Doyle, The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell, and Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies by Tara Schuster.

A Tome
If the classic you picked was a nineteenth-century novel, there’s a good chance you already have this category covered! When we say “tome,” we mean a big, majestic book that could double as a doorstop, but for the sake of clarity, we’re going to say it’s a book over 400 pages. Will this be the year that we finally read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? The odds aren’t good when we could just read Gideon the Ninth again, but you never know! Other possibilities include The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

A Romp
We feel that the Romp is the spiritual opposite of the Tome, but of course there’s no reason one book couldn’t be both! For our purposes, a romp is something playful, swashbuckling, or adventurous. We’ve had our eyes on The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafil by S. A. Chakraborty for a while, but some other excellent options include Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine, Cotillion by Georgette Heyer, and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

A Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling
Another Carterhaugh Summer Reading Challenge staple. Recent feminist fairy-tale retellings that we’ve read and loved include Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter, The Thorn Key by Jeana Jorgensen, and Thornhedge by T.K. Kingfisher. Old favorites include Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron and The Girls of the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. And if you need MOAR, we also have this blog post we wrote with a list of queer fairy-tale retellings for you to investigate.

Something Illustrated
Look, we appreciate a holistic aesthetic. (Also, our book is illustrated to within an inch of its life, which makes us SO HAPPY.) You can fulfill this category with a graphic novel or children’s book, but there are also many gorgeous books that just happen to have lovely illustrations. Some of our favorites include The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne.

Something Hopeful
We need hopeful things in our brains. Enough said. In particular, we recommend Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie (which we will be talking about LIVE in our book club in June with Maria herself – join our Patreon at $7+ for the month of June to join us!), or literally anything by Cat Sebastian (queer historical romance).

As always, we’re looking forward to expanding our already ridiculous TBR piles, too… so be sure to tell us all about the books you pick!

And if you want to win a massive, lovely book-themed care package, don’t forget to join any paying tier of our Patreon (though we recommend $7+ because that’s the BOOK CLUB TIER!) and comment on each weekly thread for a chance to win!

P.S. Here’s a bookmark-sized version of the list if you’d like to print it out and cross things off as you go!

_{Disclosure: We are affiliates of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through any of our book links and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!}

The post The 2025 Carterhaugh School Summer Reading Challenge appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

By which we mean that Brittany is at the height of her ADHD powers.

And Sara is being extra resolute and imitating a swan (projecting serenity but with TURMOIL kicking furiously beneath the surface.)

We are sweating heavily.

But also, it’s happening. The book will be finished on 10/10.

Here’s where you come in:

Would you like to borrow our terrifying energy and power to smash through your own big goal?

Behold: The Carterhaugh Writers Society WRITING SPRINT.

Maybe you have a project of your own that you really want to finish – or start!

Or maybe you’ve been putting off something deeply important to you because it feels too heavy and hard to attempt on your own.

Maybe you’re staring down the barrel of your own deadline.

If you have a goal, a horizon you’re aiming for, the CWS SPRINT can help you get there. We are bringing you with us!

Take it from us: it’s SO much easier to accomplish a big goal with others by your side. 

This is the leanest, simplest program we’ve ever run. No frills. Just dedicated writing time.

We’re offering a TON of different Zoom co-working times, giving you an enormous amount of flexibility.

Our writing students have told us over and over again that co-writing with us is ridiculously powerful, that they got more done, felt supported and encouraged by us and the community, and that our structure “took all the self-imposed drama” out of writing.

This is your chance to get in on the magic for just $99, the lowest price we’ve ever set for a live program.

Please note: We are NOT expecting you to show up to every block! We’re doing this to offer you flexibility and abundance (and also because we’re going to be doing an enormous amount of writing anyway.)

We know that writing with us can move you faster than you ever thought was possible – we’ve been told this actual dozens of times. And the community that happens in our writing programs is like nothing else.

Come join the writing sorcery!! Doors close next Monday, September 30th.

The post We’re Doing a WRITING SPRINT! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

(Click here for our first update, here for our second update!)

Here’s Sara with her wrap-up –

In my last update, I mentioned that I’d been reading a ton but not to the challenge specifically and that I’d have to be a little more strategic if I was actually going to complete it. 

Mission accomplished.

How? Mostly by reading Nimona by ND Stevenson. 

Behold:

“Read a book by an author that you’ve always meant to read but haven’t gotten around to yet,” “Read a Graphic Novel,” AND “Read the Book Behind a Movie You Love” – Um, thank you, ND Stevenson, for saving my bacon on this challenge. I’ve been a fan of his work ever since the magnificent She-Ra reboot that he helmed, and his film Nimona absolutely knocked my socks off earlier this year, but I’d never actually read any of his books. Unsurprisingly considering his other work, Nimona the graphic novel is somehow both extremely adorable and extremely powerful. It’s full of humor and frenetic energy and heart and transformation. It’s not tidy. It’s a little feral. It’s pretty perfect. It’s also our book club read for September (and if you’re not a member of our book club by this point, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, GET IN THERE.)

“Read a Banned or Challenged Book” – I thought that Nimona might get me through this one, too, but I couldn’t find a record of it actually being banned or challenged. Luckily, I recently re-read Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, which definitely has been (which is ridiculous because it’s the cutest, sweetest, most optimistic book known to man.) In case you have somehow been living under a rock and haven’t read it yet, please let me send you good tidings under your rock: it’s the story of the son of the first female president of the United States falling in love with the prince of England, and it’s completely hilarious and delightful. They had me at Alex (the president’s son) insisting on storing the pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys in his bedroom in an effort to save the taxpayers the money of keeping them in a hotel room and then freaking out when he realized how gigantic turkeys actually are and envisioning them reenacting Jurassic Park on him. Shout out to McQuiston’s newest novel, The Pairing, that I also read last month as soon as it came out.

“Read a Poetry Collection” – I FINALLY read Deborah Sage’s completely delightful Sherlock Holmes-themed poetry collection, Doggerel in the Night-Time, and I feel like the title tells you everything you need to know. It absolutely radiates love for Sherlock Holmes literature, has a wonderful sense of humor, and is such a fun and whimsical way to engage with the fandom. As always, Sage’s poetic skill shines. But what I keep coming back to is the sense of playfulness and whimsy! It’s so hard to find funny poetry – a lot of places just won’t publish it, which is a real shame. I loved reading a full length poetry collection that leans unabashedly into humor while also being whip-smart and nerdy. A+.

And here’s Brittany’s –

Okay guys. Behold, once again, my shame. Sadly, I have not yet finished the challenge, but this year I got a LOT closer than I did last year. In fact, I’m only missing one category, and I’m hoping to finish that one by September 21st, so TECHNICALLY I will still finish before summer ends? That said, I did read a LOT to (almost) finish the challenge, so here we go. 

“Read a Book by an Actual Folklorist” – As Sara and I finished the first drafts of scripts for our upcoming Great Courses series on urban legends, I too finished Too Good To Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand, and let me tell you, it is truly COLOSSAL! It’s a compendium of many of the legends Brunvand collected over several separate books, so it took a while to get through, but it was well worth it. We were able to use his observations about some well-known legends in several of the episodes, and we also incorporated some new-to-us legends that were just downright fantastic. Our favorite new one? “The Flying Kitten,” in which a kitten is accidentally launched through the air, but winds up safely dropped into the arms of a person who was just musing he’d like to adopt a cat!

“Read a Graphic Novel” and “Read the Book Behind a Movie You Love” – So, like Sara, I finally read Nimona by ND Stevenson, and it was just as charming as the movie (I LOVE SHARK NIMONA.) Seriously, come join us the book club this month to talk about it – it’s a quick read, and well WELL worth your time! 

“Read a Banned or Challenged Book” – So for this one I actually read another graphic novel, Drama by Raina Telgemeier (who also recently did comic versions of the first few books of a series I loved when I was little, The Baby-Sitters Club!) This one was already on my radar because it’s about a middle-school drama club, which was basically my life in middle school/high school, but I was shocked to see it when I was looking for a banned book to read. Apparently it’s on several banned books lists around the country. Why? Well, as far as I can tell, it’s popular and one of the main characters is gay and nobody blinks an eye about it. It’s just… a non-issue, aside from the fact the main character briefly has a crush on him and is slightly sad that he’s just not going to be into her. Literally, that’s it. Ugh. It’s a lovely little story that brought back some fond memories for me of theater-kid shenanigans and also just the, ahem, drama of being a young teenager. My only complaint was that it was mostly from the tech kids’ side, and I was a stage kid, so I did wish there was more about the acting side of it too!

“Read a Book Set Where You Live” – So I was hunting around for, like, a CIA fantasy book or something to fill this challenge category, but I wound up remembering that there was a light mystery series set very nearby that I’d been meaning to check out forever – one “written” by a cat! Wish You Were Here by Sneaky Pie Brown (and Rita Mae Brown) is the first book in an absolutely ENORMOUS series that follows the mysteries that arise in the Virginia town of Crozet. Mrs. Murphy, a very smart cat, and her corgi sidekick, Tucker, help their owner solve these mysteries (and are also mostly the POV characters.) I’m not going to lie – it’s hilarious and super, super cute. I’m pretty much endlessly amused at how smart the animals are and how dumb all the humans are. That said, this is a pretty old series (my Mom and sister read it years and years ago, I think they even went to a few book signings because the author(s) live around here too) AND it’s set in rural Virginia, so parts of it haven’t aged super well. Nothing terrible, but a few not so great things from today’s perspective for sure. Fun fact though: Rita Mae Brown, the human co-author, is actually a very well-known feminist and civil rights activist who, as a lesbian herself, spoke out frequently against the way lesbians were marginalized in early feminist circles. I kinda love that she was like “okay, I did that, I’m going to write as/with my cat now”! 

“Read a Book a Friend Picks for You” – I finally did finish Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles and it was, as predicted, awesome. By the end I was like I MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS and once all was revealed I was… what are the kids calling it these days? Shook? :P. It’s a great read, highly recommended. After I finished, Sara and I were talking about it and agreed it was pretty clear that the author had read The Secret History by Donna Tartt and was like “what if I did this but all the super problematic stuff is actually resolved in a much more satisfying way at the end?” Yep. Nailed it. 

The one category I’m still missing? “Read a Tolkien-Esque Book.” I have, however, taken The Adventures of Tom Bombadil out of the library, and darn it, I’m going to finish it. So if you’re like “OH NO, I am not done yet,” there is still time, my friend! You can do it!!

We hope you enjoyed this year’s Carterhaugh Summer Reading Challenge! We love doing these, so drop us a note and let us know what categories you’d like to see next year. “Read a book with a Byronic heroine?” “Read a novella based on a myth?” “Read a book about a book?” So many possibilities!!

_{Disclosure: We are affiliates of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through any of our book links and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!}

P.S. Speaking of the book club/Patreon, tonight is our September Fairy-Tale Salon! We’re going to be helping each other get unstuck in our various projects – one of our favorite salon topics – so click here and join at the Salonnières tier if you’d like to come!

The post Summer Reading Challenge – Month #3 Update (Final!) appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

We wanted to update you last week, but we were knee-deep in festival prep, so our missive comes today, when we are exhausted but still on a festival high. Also, conveniently, after a lot of time to read on planes. (Btw, the Dublin Irish Festival in Columbus, OH is the best thing ever, and you should absolutely come hang out with us there next year!!)

But now, here is update #2! (If you missed update #1, click here​!)

(If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late! Head over here to grab all the free stuff and start reading – and if you want some extra community fun, our Patreon is totally the place to be!)

Sara:

So, I have a confession. I haven’t been reading to the challenge at all, even though I’ve been reading a ton. So, uh, I guess I’ll find out while writing this update how much I’ve actually done of the challenge?  

“Read a Novella” – I actually read several! I love me a novella. Two especially fairy-tale-y ones that I’ve read in the last month are A Conspiracy of Roses by Trip Galey, which was included in the benefit collection All in Among the Briars, edited by Julia Rios, and The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw. A Conspiracy of Roses had some really lovely and creative botanical magic. The Salt Grows Heavy was an interesting continuation of Khaw’s very sinister “Little Mermaid” short story “And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice.” Pro tip: I highly recommend reading the short story before reading the novella, which I did not know about until I found it at the end of the book. The Salt Grows Heavy is gorier than I tend to prefer, but it was beautifully written.

“Read a Book by an Actual Folklorist” – Turns out that when you’re a folklorist writing a tv series about urban legends, this kind of reading is already baked in. One of my favorite research books this month was Gary Alan Fine’s Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends. It’s an older book (published in 1992) but it has incredibly valuable groundwork about a bunch of extremely iconic urban legends and some really useful, fairly accessible theory. I also inevitably read a bunch of Jan Brunvand, including his landmark The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, which is probably the best place to start if you want to read an academic book about urban legends.

“Read a Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling” – There were so many great ones in All in Among the Briars! I personally loved “Oracle Gretel” by Julia Rios (I’m just an enormous fan of their work in general, it’s always ) and “we fairytale girls are growing older” by C.S.E. Cooney (another extremely consistent generator of said ). Christa Carmen’s “The Witch of Coywolf Woods” has also absolutely haunted me with its depiction of the fraught relationship between art, self, and family. I’ll also shamelessly add that Brittany and I’s co-written poem “Twelve,” a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” is in there, and it’s one of my favorite poems we’ve ever written. Of course, Khaw’s novella and short story mentioned above count, too!

“Read a Book with a Purple Cover” – Because I mostly read on my Kindle, I never have any idea what color my covers are, which is a real pity! But I was delighted to see, when I was wildly googling what I’ve been reading, that A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske has a beautiful purple cover. This book had been recommended to me at least 4 times by the time I picked it up, and it lived up to the hype. Beautifully written, snappy, creative magic system, fun historical setting, queer romance, great characters. Loved it. I’m currently halfway through book two in the trilogy, and it’s just as wonderful so far.

“Read a Book that Makes You Laugh Out Loud” – So, you know how last month I told you that Jared and I were reading Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer, which is literally just gender-swapped Twilight? Well, when we were on a road trip earlier this month, we finished it, and, y’all, it goes off the rails. I don’t want to spoil it too much, in case you decide to undertake reading this whole situation on your own, but the ending is real different, and some choices are made, and Jared and I were actively howling. Well, I was howling, and Jared just kept saying variations of “what?” and “…did I hear that correctly?” and “WHY?” while I cackled. A+ reading experience. 

Well, hey! This worked out better than I thought! I think to complete the challenge, I’ll have to be a little more deliberate, but honestly this month’s reading worked out better than I thought it would!

Up Next: I’ve got a copy of Deborah Sage’s Sherlock Holmes-themed poetry collection Doggerel in the Night-Time, which I’m SUPER excited to finally read. I also definitely want to read Nimona by ND Stevenson, which is both a graphic novel AND the basis of the movie of the same name, which I completely adored. OH, and how much do you want to bet that it was banned somewhere? Y’all, I think I found the 2024 Carterhaugh Challenge Reading Book of POWER! 

Brittany:

So, I have a confession too. I haven’t been reading as much as I would like to be at all, and certainly not to the challenge as much as I need to, so my list will be woefully short. But, if you’re like me, know that you STILL HAVE TIME! We can crush this!!

“Read a Novella” – So since it was our book club book last month, I obviously also read A Conspiracy of Roses by Trip Galey in the benefit collection All in Among the Briars edited by Julia Rios, yay! I too thought it was a delightful take on botanical magic, but my favorite part, of course, was that it was a fascinating twist on the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale. The idea of a curse that forces you to stay awake is so sinister and interesting – I also really liked the pseudo-Victorian/Edwardian magical England setting!

“Read a Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling” – It’s a YES from me to all the beautiful feminist fairy-tale retellings in All in Among the Briars as well (I love all the ones Sara mentioned, but I’ll also throw in Theodora Goss’ poignant story “Conversations with the Sea Witch,” as I really like that it deals with women in an older stage of life – we need more fairy-tale fiction that does this!) I do still really want to read Kalynn Bayron’s new Snow White retelling, Sleep Like Death before the end of the summer too though!

“Read a Poetry Collection” AND “Read a Book by an Author that You’ve Always Meant to Read but Haven’t Gotten Around to Yet” – So a few months ago I backed a kickstarter for a beautiful photobook by Kyle Cassidy and Trillian Stars called This is Only Earth, My Dear and inspired by the poetry of Elizabeth Siddal, one of the main muses of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and an artist and poet in her own right. If you backed at a certain level, they also included a book of her (mostly) complete poems that has one of the best covers I’ve ever seen – totally inspired by Victorian style in the best way!

I mean look at both of these!

I had read a few of Siddals poems here and there, but I always meant to read more and really get into it, so I’m counting these two toward that challenge as well – and I have to say, I have fallen in love with her work. She’s not the most technically advanced poet, but her words are deeply moving and sad and clear and honest. My favorites were “O Silent Wood, I Enter Thee” and “O Mother, Open the Window Wide and Let the Daylight In” (so folklore-y!), but I could NOT get over the sadness of “I Care Not for My Lady’s Soul,” which seems to perfectly depict the fears she had regarding Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “love” for her (and his failure to acknowledge her immense talents beyond her beauty.)  

Up Next: I’m in the middle of Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles, which I’m reading for the “Read a Book a Friend Picks Out For You” challenge, and I am absolutely loving it so far! I admit I also love Sara’s idea of reading Nimona by ND Stevenson, so I might do that too (can you tell I get a lot of my reading from Sara? She’s just always so on it!)

Again, there’s still tons of time to join us for this reading challenge, and to READ, so click here and commit to reading some truly awesome stuff! What’s your favorite book of the summer so far? Let us know in the comments!!

P.S. Tickets are now on sale for our next Smithsonian talk – “Witches in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales” – on September 30th at 6:45PM ET! Click here to get yours!

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The post Summer Reading Challenge – Month #2 Update appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

(And hey, if you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still plenty of time to knock it out of the park. Head over here to grab all the free stuff and start reading – and if you want some extra community fun, our Patreon is totally the place to be!)

Brittany:

Okay, because I am SUPER motivated by little rewards and tracking, I’ve been keeping track on my phone with little emoji stickers! Here’s my current standing –

Pretty! (Just let me have this )

So far I have completed these challenges:

“Read a Mystery” – I read The Daughters of Block Island by Christa Carmen, and I totally loved it. It’s definitely a meta-Gothic novel (i.e. a Gothic novel that is also a commentary on the Gothic novel itself), but it’s also just a really good mystery that kept me guessing and flipping pages wildly to get to the answers. I highly recommend this one (and frankly it made me want to read more mysteries again!)

“Read a Book With a Purple Cover” AND “Read a Book That Makes You Laugh Out Loud” – I’m counting Do I Feel Better Yet?: Questionable Attempts at Self-Care and Existing in General by Madeleine Trebenski for both of these! It has a very nice, soft purple cover, and it’s also pretty hilarious (though I admit that some of my laughing was out of horrified self-recognition!) The book is filled with short essays on things people try as forms of “self-care,” as in “well, have you tried X?” (fill in the X with whatever thing people are recommending now for all that ails you – yoga, sleep, cleanses, face creams, etc, etc, etc.) Some of my favorite bits were her entire essay about how drinking more water will heal absolutely anything wrong with you (I am notoriously bad at water consumption, but have been trying REALLY hard to be better this year), her thoughts on how buying overlapping antique Persian rugs might make you the “mysterious yet scholarly” Gothic heroine of your dreams (omg, I have had this exact thought), and pretty much anytime any kind of supernatural being (sea witches, space monsters, evil wood nymphs, sentient roombas taking over the world) is involved in the joke (obviously.) A small caveat though – I was a little frustrated with a few of the essays that just seemed a bit “done” to me. Her one on being annoyed at the perfection of her yoga teacher, for example, was almost exactly the same joke as the “I’m So Good At Yoga” song from the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (which the author even admitted she was inspired by!)? But overall I still enjoyed it and found it super funny, so I was willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt. I figure none of this riffing against the self-care industry is all that original when it comes down to it, but that one really bugged me for being glaringly similar.

(Side Note: You can read some of Madeleine Trebenski’s essays on McSweeney’s, where I’d actually read a few of them before! If you want one that’s in the book that I absolutely love, definitely try “I’m Your Outdoor Dream Girl, And Not An Evil Wood Nymph Who Wants To Steal Your Soul”.)

“Read a Creature Feature” – Our last book club pick, The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison, involves many, many creatures!! I guess it would also count for mystery, but, as mentioned, I had another one for that category already (plus I’d like to only count a single book twice at most if I can! No promises on this though….) I had a few little issues with this one, as mentioned in book club, but overall I really enjoyed it and would totally read more books set in this Sherlock Holmes-esque world if Addison wanted to write them!

Next Up –  I’m looking forward to reading All in Among the Briars edited by Julia Rios as our next book club pick (for a good cause and also likely countable for the “Read a Feminist Fairy Tale” category, as I know a lot the pieces included fit that description nicely!) That said, I’m also very excited for Kalynn Bayron’s new Snow White retelling, Sleep Like Death, which just came out a few days ago, and I’m also planning to read Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles for the “Read a Book a Friend Picks Out For You” challenge, as Sara’s been wanting me to read that one for ages!

Sara:

Since January, I’ve been tracking my reading for the first time ever, so I actually know exactly what I’ve been reading for once! I read a truly ridiculous amount, and it’s been really satisfying having a record instead of blanking when I try to remember back past the last 2 or 3 books. Also, I’d like it to be known that I’m very angry that, no matter how much I read, I will never be able to read all the books. Disappointing. 

“Read a Tolkien-Esque Book” – While Brittany and I were teaching our Fellowship course last month, I re-read Tolkien’s The Hobbit for the first time in about 16 years, and it’s just so enchanting. I’d forgotten how very tonally different it is from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and even how differently some of the characters are portrayed. It’s pretty much just a delightful romp without wildly high stakes, and none of the characters struck me as especially heroic, even Gandalf. In fact, I remembered vividly how horrified I’d been when I read The Hobbit as a child and read how unbelievably rude Gandalf and the dwarves are to Bilbo when they take over his house at the beginning! It has a lot of charm, moves at a pretty good clip, and was a fun, nostalgic read. I also completed this challenge by reading Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth edited by Catherine McIlwaine, which I cannot recommend highly enough for the Tolkien nerds among us. It was a monumental piece of work undertaken by the Tolkien archivist at Oxford, among other scholars, and it really is a treasure trove, with beautiful illustrations and photography.

“Read a Mystery” – I have apparently been on a mystery kick, because most of what I’ve been reading this month goes here. Two of my favorite books of the year (and my only two re-reads so far this year, both in the last month) are Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles and The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison, and they are both exquisite. Death in the Spires is basically everything that I personally want in a good mystery (or, you know, any book.) It’s set in Oxford, where I spent a year in undergrad, has wonderful twists and turns, and I absolutely adore the characters (except when I HATE them). It’s very Dark Academia and shares some things in common with R. F. Kuang’s Babel but is significantly more hopeful. The Angel of the Crows is basically Sherlock Holmes but where our protagonists are supernatural, and also gender. Katherine Addison/ Sarah Monette is at the top of her game with this one, and I think this book should get WAY more love because it’s doing a lot of quietly brilliant work. I also read another excellent gender-swapped Sherlock Holmes-related mystery called A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas, and it was fresh, feminist, and a complete delight.

“Read a Book a Friend Picks for You” – So, Jared and I have been profoundly obsessed with Contrapoint’s latest video on Twilight, which is about the novels and films but also about the history of romance as a genre, gender, desire, power, and A LOT more. The completely predictable outcome of this? Jared suggested that the next book we read together should be Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer, and which is literally just Twilight but about Beau Swan (average human boy) and Edythe Cullen (smokin’ hot vampire superhero.) Y’all, it is a TRIP. All of the characters are gender swapped, not just the protagonists, and I have to say it vastly improves the story because all the subtle assumptions about gender that the story is built on are reversed. It’s genuinely been a really fun read.

“Read a Book Set Where You Live” – For this one, I decided to finally read The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling, which is set in a fictional town in the Georgia mountains. (I live in Atlanta and spend a fair bit of time in the north Georgia mountains!) This one was cute, and there were a lot of things I liked about it (especially the protagonist’s spicy, sweary cousin) but I found some of the lack of urgency around the curse a bit frustrating. If you’re looking for a beach read with a supernatural, autumnal twist, this might really be your cup of tea.

“Read a Creature Feature” – Most of the books I’ve listed so far! The Hobbit (dragons!), The Angel of the Crows (angels, vampires, hellhounds, and MORE), Life and Death (vampires), The Ex Hex (witches). What can I say, I like it when the creatures are featured.

Next Up – I’m really looking forward to The Salt Grows Heavy, a novella by Cassandra Khaw, and I just picked up a copy of Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin, M.D. I also have a backlog of K.J. Charles that I now want to read, because Death in the Spires is so in my head!

Again, there’s still tons of time to join us for this reading challenge, so click here and commit to reading some truly awesome stuff this summer! What have you been reading so far?

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