authors / books / short stories / etc i personally enjoy or take inspiration from, in approximately chronological order of when i first read them
admittedly this list is from ~middle school and onwards, for two reasons: (1) i read a lot when i was younger and definitely couldn't recall every single title, and (2) my taste was pretty different at the time from what it is now.
if you click on the little star (★) after some of the list items, you can see my thoughts on it.
particularly: "the black cat", "the fall of the house of usher", "morella", "ligeia"
probably the biggest influence on my writing to date – of course my middle school self absolutely adored the gothic style and the pervasive air of depression and despair, which sadly has not changed; in any case i find myself much more capable of appreciating his writing now than i was then.
particularly: "the thing on the doorstep", "the shadow over innsmouth", the case of charles dexter ward
really good prose coupled with really shit politics that make it hard to extol anything he's written.
not much to say aside from the fact that this book completely rewrote my brain chemistry when i first read it. ...
lesbian vampire ❤
well-written, absorbing, i like the structure of "before and after" the murder.. and that's not a spoiler btw bc it's mentioned in the introduction.
i didn't like the second half so much though. not to go on, but it started to feel very repetitive – in every other scene richard witnesses one of his friends do something strange, says nothing, and then goes to tell a different friend. and their response only is "damn that's crazy" like?? ok????
made me want to die
a modern retelling of carmilla, specifically focusing on the predatory undertones of the original. very good. very upsetting. 10/10
love when there's a neurotic protagonist but i need to bitch about the epilogue. imo it would've been better to cut that out entirely and (spoiler) end with raskolnikov confessing to the murders, leaving the rest up for speculation (obviously he's still going to prison though). dostoevksy hire me as an editor
^ that was the original thing i wrote and i have So Many Thoughts on this book still but i can't word them coherently so we'll leave it at that.