the butchering art by lindsey fitzharris

It's no exaggeration that you weren't allowed to write LGBTQ characters in that era (Oscar Wilde was arrested for it, and he was actually more subtle than Le Fanu is). It's no secret that Carmilla is famous for being two things, and 'a vampire' is the other one. That's the sort of thing you expect from vampire prose these days, in a post Interview With the Vampire world, whereas Dracula in his debut was purely a villain with any nuance to his character added by future adaptations. For a vampire story, the vampire is rather sympathetic, showing signs of guilt and affection for her victims. No padding and Victorian fluff.īut its attitude feels surprisingly modern as well.

Because it's so short, it's very to the point without a lot of the window dressing you might expect from a book of its era. Which is interesting because in many ways Carmilla feels a lot more modern. It predates Dracula by about 26 years, and was an influence on it. Sheridan Le Fanu that clocks in at 108 pages. The movie isn't bad either, but it's definitely a love it of hate it kind of thing, imo. I think JG Ballard is probably one of my favorite authors at the moment, and he has a lot of sub-200 page books, like Crash and Concrete Island, but High-Rise is my favorite so far. I still like a door stopper of a book, but seeing this list was pretty eye-opening to me. I think I used to think reading longer novels was more impressive, but now I realize that it doesn't necessarily take a long time to make a big impression or to say what needs to be said. Looking at this list, my favorite books of all time are all here - A Clockwork Orange, High-Rise and Siddhartha.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - 195 pages.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - 192 pages.

A Mirror for Witches by Esther Forbes - 215 pages.

The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima - 185 pages.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - 192 pages.

The butchering art by lindsey fitzharris