Romancing the Gothic has a weekly book group. Although there’s a meeting every week, people are welcome to join us once a month, once a year, or just whenever there’s a book they’re interested in! Do get in touch if you’d like to join us. You can see upcoming reads here.
Every year I do a survey of regular attenders to see which books got the Romancing the Gothic seal of approval! It’s not an exact science as not everyone reads all the books and not everyone who joins us votes but it gives you an idea of some of our top recommendations. This year, I’ll be doing a TOP 5 list of 5 star reads (i.e. the books that got the most ‘5 star’ ratings from our regulars). The list is in order of votes with 1 receiving the most 5-star reviews!
1) David Demchuk – Red X
This year, I put out a call for authors we might not otherwise find to recommend their own books and David Demchuk was the find of the year for us. If you didn’t see his talk on queer horror, he joined us later in the year for a fascinating talk on the evolution of queer horror that you can watch here. Red X was our favourite book of the year and put Demchuk instantly on our ‘read everything he puts out’ pile. A genre defying read which is hard to describe, but expect nuanced queer horror!
2) David Demchuk – Bone Mother
Ok… so we really enjoyed David Demchuk’s books this year! We read this earlier work as prep for his talk on queer horror and weren’t disappointed. This is more like a connected series of short stories and dives into Slavic folklore tinged with horror and history. It comes highly recommended.
3) Bram Stoker – Dracula
What can I say? We love a classic here at Romancing the Gothic. One thing we all said (those of us who were re-reading for the nth time) was that we had forgotten so many of the weird little details of this book. Texan cowboys! Train timetables! Recipe Collections! Transcription! There’s so much more to Dracula than ever makes it to the screen and more than ever seems to stay in my head!
4) Karl Heinrich Ulrichs – ‘Manor’
This is one of my favourite short stories to introduce people to. Written in 1885, it’s the first queer vampire story. You might leap in to point to ‘Carmilla’ here but when I say ‘first’, I mean the first story where the vampirism isn’t part of a monstrous queerness. These two lovers are separated by death. The vampirism is a form of monstrous devotion but their love itself is depicted as a beautiful thing. Their loss is a tragedy. Their queerness isn’t monstrous. It’s short and available online so do go and give it a read!
4) Kathleen Jennings – Flyaway
Ok, so Romancing the Gothic has a type! Beautifully crafted prose with elements of folklore and magic. This was a gorgeous novella which dealt with folklore, family, history – all in small village in Australia. It’s another one that is a little hard to describe but you won’t regret reading it. This came in joint fourth with ‘Manor’.
Romancing the Gothic 