100 books like Candy Story

I am a huge fan of the very-brief gothic. It’s so hard to do well; trivial jump-scares are easy, but to produce a meaningful effect in only a few pages takes real precision. Shirley Jackson holds the crown with "The Lottery," but my second favorite instance of a surprisingly quick read that produces a real gasp is Angela Carter’s mini-treasure, "The Werewolf."

It manages to be a fairy tale, feminist critique, a witch, and a werewolf story all at once—and, like the beast in the title, it may not be what it appears. Also wonderful to me are "The Company of Wolves," "The Snow Child," and the eponymous "The Bloody Chamber," that one a revisioning of "Bluebeard"—essentially, Carter updates all kinds of dark fairy tales, bringing out their subversive shadows for a savvy reader. Still so fresh to this day.

I revere writing that doesn't cling to the ridiculously sacrosanct principle that conflict is essential to stories—especially conflict between good and evil. If any writer’s work completely sidesteps the convention of plot, it’s Lutz, who also publishes under the name Garielle Lutz. These voice-driven stories—of nameless folk seeking small comforts where they can find them—are nearly undescribable. Stomach-dropping little language surprises abound, and Lutz has a penchant for preserving American English heirloom words and phrases such as “Car-coat,” “shoehorn,” and “frankfurter shack". Many of the stories describe transient, uneasy relationships, yet laugh-out-loud humor is present, too. Some of the stories seem less to move forward narratively than to rock to and fro. Those interested in pure language-forward narratives by a master of sentences should read Lutz.

Just like life, this supple narrative about a village in Warwickshire, England is full of beauty, gruesomeness, and sudden death. Without manifest plot points as such, the narrative seems to float past the range of eccentric townspeople after a destructive flood and later an epidemic of poisonings. Comically, none of the characters seem to take that death seriously. Comyns’ tender gift for describing humans in intimate communion with nature will make you long for flowers, forests, and abounding nature-amid-towns which we no longer experience in today’s world. This writer is neither optimistic nor pessimistic about humanity--but observationally brilliant. In their wild, hilarious ranges of behaviors, her characters too are lovely specimens living at the marshy banks of an omnipresent river.

Constructed nonlinearly, this funny, playful, and complex novel concerns our culture’s pressure on men to “be” something; it’s also about the human sense of self in general. It has no conventional plot, though Kalich has created a perfectly workable structure: a kind of index that builds in intensity. Without giving particulars as to geography, age, family, or employment, the paragraph-length descriptions of Charlie P reveal him as hyperbolically great or defeated. Charlie P has accomplished both everything and nothing.

The character is an iconographic blank, perhaps an engineer or former bitcoin-seeker who, for all his striving, suffers an inability to engage with the world; perversely, he views that as “giving in.” It’s no understatement to say that readers of Charlie P, sometime in their lives, will have met a Charlie P.

In Westward Expansion, Ray Allen Billington takes up the story of the American West where Morison left off. This is a sweeping narrative with Billington acting as a travel guide across the successively moving frontiers beyond the Atlantic Coast. He leads us to the crest of the Appalachians, and then over Ohio and down to Tennessee toward the Mississippi. Next, we race to the Pacific and then come back over the Rockies before finally heading onto the Great Plains west of the Mississippi. Yet Westward Expansion is more than a travelogue. In its pages, we travel with everyone who ever lived on these many frontiers: farmers, workers, soldiers, Indians, immigrants, townspeople. The list goes on and on. It’s America’s story with every triumph and tragedy bound up in constant motion. 

Aside from the Colorado landmark, Pike’s Peak, most of us know little of Zebulon Pike. A relative passed along the tee-shirt, but that’s as close as I got before reading Jared Orsi’s account of Lieutenant Pike’s 1805-07 fascinating expeditions to the headwaters of the Mississippi and to the Rockies. Pike strives to establish friendly relations among the Ojibway and Dakotah and later among the Osage and Pawnee while introducing the tribes to their new landlords, the U.S. government under President Jefferson. In attempting to ascend the peak, Pike and his men suffer near starvation and death in bitter cold and waist-deep snow, only to be rescued and arrested by the forces of New Spain. Orsi approaches the expeditions from an environmental perspective.

This book was a frolicking gallop through 19th-century New Mexico and points west–places I know well. Based in Austin, me and my family often go skiing in Santa Fe and Taos, oblivious to the history lurking there. Reading Sides’ description of the frontier during that era transported me to those places from an entirely different perspective. And few people in American history have had more vivid adventures than Kit Carson, whether fending off warring parties of Comanches and Utes or leading military expeditions across the Sierras.

I loved how Hides writes with empathy about the final free days of Indians before they’re rounded into destitute reservations. Gave me an entirely new perspective on this gorgeous corner of the world. 

Mollie was 18 years old and a new bride in 1860 when she and her husband left eastern Nebraska for the gold diggings of Colorado.

The 7-week journey across the plains tested her strength and endurance, but Mollie battled the hardships and isolation of pioneer life with humor, intelligence, and honesty. She never intended her journal to be published, but it was, and I found it inspirational.

This is Hogan’s account of her road trip in search of famous, almost mythical, land art pieces, such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels. Travelling on her own she found some of the artworks – and a lot out about herself. Brave? Foolish? Probably both. But for the reader, certainly an entertaining and informative chronicle of her travels and discoveries.

Evocative and clear-eyed introduction to the western landscape; this compelling read orients readers firmly in place and time. It’s carefully researched nonfiction that reads like a suspense thriller; you’ll spend many nights reading it past your bedtime.