Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Goth Me, Please!

I have a book life list. I have a bird life list. I feel pretty good about those two things. If you don’t know what those are, well, it’s not complicated. I have written down every book I’ve ever read. I have written down every species of bird I’ve ever seen. I’ve read more books than seen new species, but they aren’t as far off as one might imagine. My favorite bird? Probably the simple red-winged blackbird. My favorite book? Oof.

Okay, so these lists are not complete, because I started them in high school, at the urging of a very smart woman. My mom. She can’t read now, but I read to her. And I tell her about birds I’ve seen recently. So I’m missing the Curious George books, etc.

Stick with me for a minute. I was “down the shore” this weekend as they say in New Jersey, and saw the actress Jane Seymour, or Dr. Quinn as I think of her. She was showing her artwork. Um, no comment on that part. In the gallery, as I watched her all beautiful and famous and perfect, it came to me she was in a movie I really, really liked, and that it was based on a book I really, really liked. But it was years ago. Drove me nuts, and I actually said to her “You were in a movie I liked.” Duh. I backed away rather quickly.

So I went to my book list. Jamaica Inn, by Daphne du Maurier. On the coast of Cornwall, danger and flowing gowns and more danger and falling in love. I scanned the list a bit more. Gothics. Tons of them. Young woman goes off to mansion-inn-ship-city-country because she’s a widow-orphan-poor and falls in love with the master-brother-innkeeper-shipcaptain but isn’t sure if he’s good-married-dangerous-killed the wife who lives in the attic. These books got a tight hold of me in high school, and I realize now that they colored so much of what a romance is to me. Later came Nora Roberts and Elizabeth Lowell. But deep down, I crave that suspense, that setting, and that writing. If you never read Rebecca or Jamaica Inn by du Maurier, put one or both on your summer reading list. If you know a modern writer who can pull off that magic, please let me know!