October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Creatures. Today's topic: books about witches (see the full list of discussion topics here). I haven't read very many at all, but now I'm trying to correct that! Basically I just want The VVitch (amazing horror movie) to be in book form and then I'll be happy.
WYTCHES BY SCOTT SNYDER
The art and color in this comic are SO BEAUTIFUL. It's not horrifying, but it's definitely creepy. If you want an original take on witches, this is definitely one.
Everything you thought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are much more horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry.
LOLLY WILLOWES BY SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER
I've only just started this one, but the writing is SO GOOD. This book about witches was written in the 20s by a woman, which is badass. About a "spinster" who opts to become a witch instead of getting married.
In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.
HEX BY THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT
I'm going to be very real - I'm trying this book again right now, but I bailed on it the first time. The writing about technology and the internet is SO cringey. And how the teenagers talk is utter nonsense. But I really really love the idea of this witch, so I'm giving it another shot.
Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.
What are your favorite books about witches?
Tomorrow's topic is Books With Monsters From Folklore - see you there!