Rigatoni

I like horror and lit mainly with some scifi, history, and anthropology scattered about

746 points

0% overlap

My Taste

Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell

Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three (Books of Blood, #1-3)

Reading...

After Midnight: Thirteen Tales for the Dark Hours

68%

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

37%

Rigatoni is interested in reading...

Nocticadia

Keri Lake

A dark, atmospheric tale of deadly secrets and forbidden love.Mortui vivos docent.The dead teach the living.After watching my mother succumb to a mysterious illness, I promised myself two things. I’d find the cure for what ravaged her. And leave the godforsaken city where she abandoned me.Four years later, I receive an acceptance letter from Dracadia University, one of the oldest, most prestigious schools in the country. Nestled on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, it’s rumored to be haunted by the souls of the mental patients exiled there centuries before. Those whose bones are said to make up the island’s white sandy shores.And restless ghosts aren’t even its most daunting peculiarity.Devryck Bramwell, known on campus as Doctor Death, is a brilliant pathologist in charge of the midnight lab. He’s also my devastatingly handsome professor, who seems to loathe tenacious first-years, like me. Except, his dark and enigmatic gaze tells me all the ways he’d devour me if given the chance, and his stolen kisses burn my lips with forbidden jealousy.I crave his authority.He aches for redemption.Together, we’re toxic. Delicious fodder for the prying eyes hellbent on exhuming the rotted skeletons of our pasts.For the dead have much to teach, and it’s only a matter of time before Dracadia’s most depraved secret is resurrected.Nocticadia is a standalone dark academia gothic romance.

Rigatoni is interested in reading...

Scanlines

Todd Keisling

In 1987, Congressman Benjamin Hardy III died by suicide on live television amidst accusations of political corruption. Years later, rumors of a recording surfaced among VHS trading groups and urban legend chat rooms. Dubbed the “Duncan Tape,” after the deceased cameraman who attempted to sell the video, the rumors allege that anyone who watches the tape is driven to suicide. Or so the story goes. In truth, no one has ever seen the supposed Duncan Tape, presumably because it doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost story perpetuated on the forums and chat rooms of the internet, another handful of bytes scattered across the Information Superhighway at blistering 56K modem speeds. For Robby and his friends, an urban legend is the last thing on their minds when a boring Friday night presents a chance to download porn. But the short clip they watch turns out to be something far more graphic and disturbing, and in the coming days, they’ll learn even the most outlandish urban legends possess a shred of truth…

Rigatoni is interested in reading...

The Necromantics: Reanimation, the Historical Imagination, and Victorian British and Irish Literature

Renée Fox

The Necromantics dwells on the literal afterlives of history. Reading the reanimated corpses—monstrous, metaphorical, and occasionally electrified—that Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, W. B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, and others bring to life, Renée Fox argues that these undead figures embody the present’s desire to remake the past in its own image. Fox positions “necromantic literature” at a nineteenth-century intersection between sentimental historiography, medical electricity, imperial gothic monsters, and the Irish Literary Revival, contending that these unghostly bodies resist critical assumptions about the always-haunting power of history. By considering Irish Revival texts within the broader scope of nineteenth-century necromantic works, The Necromantics challenges Victorian studies’ tendency to merge Irish and English national traditions into a single British whole, as well as Irish studies’ postcolonial efforts to cordon off a distinct Irish canon. Fox thus forges new connections between conflicting political, formal, and historical traditions. In doing so, she proposes necromantic literature as a model for a contemporary reparative reading practice that can reanimate nineteenth-century texts with new aesthetic affinities, demonstrating that any effective act of reading will always be an effort of reanimation.

Rigatoni is interested in reading...

Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters: Feminist Adaptations of Traditional Tales in Chinese Fantasy (The Donald Haase Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)

Cathy Yue Wang

Contemporary Chinese film and literature often draw on time-honored fantastical texts and tales which were founded in the milieu of patriarchy, parental authority, heteronormativity, nationalism, and anthropocentrism. Author Cathy Yue Wang examines the processes by which modern authors and filmmakers reshape these traditional tales to develop new narratives that interrogate the ingrained patriarchal paradigm. Through a rigorous analysis, Wang delineates changes in both content and narrative that allow contemporary interpretations to reimagine the gender politics and contexts of the tales retold. With a broad transmedia approach and a nuanced understanding of intertextuality, this work contributes to the ongoing negotiation in academic and popular discourse between past and present, traditional and contemporary, and text and reality in a globalized and postmodern world. Snake Sisters and Ghost Daughters offers an engaging interdisciplinary investigation of issues at the heart of these traditional tales such as gender and status hierarchy, marriage and family life, and in-group/out-group distinction. Beyond the content of these individual stories, Wang ties these narratives together across time using cognitive literary criticism, especially affective narratology, to shed new light on the adaptation of literary and cultural texts and their sociopolitical contexts.

Rigatoni is interested in reading...

Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror

Lee Murray

From hungry ghosts, vampiric babies, and shapeshifting fox spirits to the avenging White Lady of urban legend, for generations, Asian women’s roles have been shaped and defined through myth and story. In Unquiet Spirits, Asian writers of horror reflect on the impact of superstition, spirits, and the supernatural in this unique collection of 21 personal essays exploring themes of otherness, identity, expectation, duty, and loss, and leading, ultimately, to understanding and empowerment.

Rigatoni started reading...

After Midnight: Thirteen Tales for the Dark Hours

Daphne du Maurier

Introduced by international bestseller Stephen King, a stunning new hardback collection of Daphne du Maurier's darkest stories Amid the reflections and twisting alleyways of Venice, a grieving couple are haunted by the past. On a sharp December day, the wind changes - and the birds begin to gather. A group of wartime scientists attempt to capture the power of death, an eye operation reveals a monstrous reality, and a woman returns home to find she doesn't exist. From murderous desires to supernatural forces, du Maurier's masterful short stories stare into the dark heart of our between men and women, humanity and nature, love and obsession, the future and the past. Whatever you do, don't look now . . . This brand new collection brings together thirteen of du Maurier's greatest uncanny stories for the first time - including 'The Birds' and 'Don't Look Now'.

Rigatoni commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

teddydee

Funniest/most unhinged comps?

What's the weirdest comp you've come across? Funny, inaccurate, or just wild. Here's a couple that made me go 🤨🤔

— She and Her Cat (Makoto Shinkai) "For fans of Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs and Murata Sayaka’s Earthlings, this Japanese bestseller from renowned anime director Makoto Shinkai features four inspirational and heartwarming vignettes following women and their cats in their quests for love and connection."

I mean I haven't read this so maybe? What do I know? But "inspirational" and "heartwarming" aren't exactly how I'd describe Earthlings so I'm.....curious, lol.

— The Curse of Hester Gardens (Tamika Thompson) "We Need to Talk About Kevin as if written by Jason Reynolds and Tananarive Due meets Model Home by Rivers Solomon in an innovative twist on the haunted house about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project."

Talk about a mouthful.

Rigatoni made progress on...

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Peter Hessler

37%

Rigatoni commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

amandatothewall

Tracking books you know you won’t complete

How do you all handle tracking books that you know from the outset you’re not going to read in its entirety? For example, I have been reading big chunks of a book for research. However, I’ll only be reading certain chapters. I’d love to be able track it (for the streak ofc) but I don’t want to eventually move it to DNF since that feels like a judgement…

Rigatoni commented on a post

MumOf3Cats

Revolution - Male vs Female

spoilers

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Rigatoni made progress on...

Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

Peter Hessler

25%

Rigatoni commented on a post

hayleyboyce93

Unsatisfied

spoilers

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Rigatoni commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

Eusebia

Small fonts in e-books

More and more I find e-books where the text can't be set to fit a page and have a reasonable size, too. Not only science books, so many fiction books have this issue and take me ages to read, because I get such a headache from small fonts and it is impossible to read well when the text doesn't fit on the page. Especially because dragging the text around always causes the e-reader do show a useless overlay blocking my reading. I usually read by my brain taking pictures of whole pages

I might have to go back to the computer for these books, unfortunately I can't read well there either because of the way I have to sit which causes health issues. It's why I got an e-reader after all.

I wonder if anyone has tried to convert such books to PDF or MOBI and if that helps. or if the unfortunate font size still causes problems.

Rigatoni is interested in reading...