Recommended Reading List: March 2025

I had some strange experiences in my March reading. I taught a Gothic class in May, with an emphasis on Gothic romance. I loooove Gothic romance, and am not horribly fond of Gothic horror. But I chose a couple of books I hadn’t read before…and one of them! OMG! It started okay, had great sentence by sentence writing—and baby-eating cannibals. Yuck. No. I don’t read that stuff. I felt betrayed. There was nothing in the blurb or the comments about this before I bought the book.

After the workshop, I gave the book to a friend who thinks it is brilliant, as well as the other two books by the same author (whose short fiction I kinda liked). I will never read that writer again. Ever, ever, ever. My friend and I agree to disagree on this author, which is good. I was glad to give the books a home…that was far away from mine.

The other book that I had chosen for the Gothic workshop was labeled a Gothic, but wasn’t at all. It was a send-up of The Great Gatsby. Had the book been properly marketed by the publisher, who just slapped the wrong label on it, I would have loved that book. But since I was expecting Gothic of any type…well, no. No. No. Not at all what I was promised. (This is, indie writers, why you have to make sure your marketing is on point. You trad-pubbed writers, you get what the publisher gives you. So sorry.)

I reread some old books for the class, and was relieved that they held up. More on that below. But the new books were sorry failures, for me at least. 

Here are the things I found to recommend from March.

March, 2025

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, “The Lost Cause,” Vanity Fair, November 2024. Ta-Nehisi Coates has one of those dubious distinctions: His work is often banned, particularly in the American South. He wrote a book about politics and writing, called The Message, which he was thinking of as an update of Orwell’s book on politics and writing. But it is so much more. Vanity Fair published an except, from Coates’s visit to South Carolina and listened/watched as a school board was voting on whether or not to ban his books. He wrote:

The danger we present, as writers, is not that we will simply convince their children of a different dogma but that we will convince them that they have the power to form their own.

I underlined a lot in this excerpt…and then I bought the book. Of course, life was too fraught to read something challenging. I just picked it up as I’m writing this piece and thought, Hmm. This should be next….

We (maybe just I) sometimes forget that writing is an act of courage, that it’s important and can be dangerous. This piece reminded me of that twice—first when I read it and now, it reminded me anew.

Holt, Victoria, Mistress of Mellyn, originally published in 1960. As I mentioned above, I taught a Gothic romance class this year. One of the books I assigned was Victoria Holt’s Mistress of Mellyn which I first read when I was 11 or so. I don’t know exactly, but I remember this: I went to visit my adult sister in the summer of 1972, and we went to the library, and she let me take out a bunch of Jean Plaidy and Philippa Carr books, which were Holt pen names. (Holt was a pen name too.) Since Mistress of Mellyn was the first Holt I read, I knew it had to be before that summer, the summer I turned 12. I have a great memory of reading this book in the summer heat, while I’m in the hammock my father bought and struggled to assemble. That was me then: a little girl (about to have the worst experience of her life) who rode her bike to the library every day, took out 4 books, brought them home, read them, and went back the next day. Still sounds like a perfect way to spend the summer to me.

I assign historical books for my students so that they know where genres originate and what the main books in a genre are. The class included Daphne du Maurir’s Rebecca, and Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre among other older books, but I wanted a representative of the Gothic revival of the late 1950s-1970s. And then I prayed that the Holt book wouldn’t be too racist and would hold up.

It held up. It was a marvelous read. Holt is a wonderful writer, and even though there’s a child in jeopardy in the middle (oh, man!) I didn’t quit. I figured if my 11-year-old self could handle it, my adult self could too. And I did. It was fun to reread something I had loved so fiercely. And now I’m considering a reread of all of her Gothics. I’m not sure I have the time, but I might make the time. You never know…

Huver, Scott, “The Party That Was Stranger Than Fiction,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 26, 2025. Sometimes I’m startled that 1995 is 30 years ago. Okay, I’m often startled that it was thirty years ago. Huver writes about an Oscar party filled with now-familiar faces who were just trying to get started, some creepy dudes trolling (Weinstein), and an actual hold-up man trying to escape the cops. This one is fun, and really does fall into the stranger than fiction category.

Neville, Katherine, The Eight, Ballantine Books, 2008 edition. I love The Eight. I read it in 1989, shortly after it came out. I have a vivid memory of reading it at a roller skating rink in Eugene, Oregon, while Dean and Debra Gray DeNoux were showing off their skating prowess. I tumbled along, gave up, and told them I’d guard the drinks while reading the book. I enjoyed the book more than the rink.

In 2009 or so, Dean and I were guests at a small literary conference in Boise, Idaho. Katherine Neville was there, and I gushed at her. Just gushed. I really love this book. I bought the sequel and she signed it for me, and I had it on my shelf for almost twenty years, afraid to open it.

Well, in the middle of this insane winter, I opened it. And realized I did not remember the fine details of The Eight. So, with great trepidation, I reread The Eight. I rarely reread. I’m worried that a book won’t hold up to the amazing first read.

But, oh, this one did. I loved it just as much the second time. It’s wonderful. I haven’t seen much about it in recent years, so I assume that it’s being forgotten. This book is soooo much better than The DaVinci Code, and it came out long before there was even a genre for this kind of adventure fiction with a touch of magic. The book was so brilliant that her publishing team made it work. Back in the good old days, when publishing occasionally did something right.

If you haven’t read The Eight, I envy you. You’re in for an amazing treat.

Weprin, Alex and Kit, Borys, “Goodbye to Hollywood’s Last Family-Owned IP,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 26, 2025. I’ve been meaning to delve into the sale of the closely guarded James Bond estate to Amazon for a while. It fascinates me that after the Broccolis said they wouldn’t sell, they did, and suddenly. But I’ve been busy with my own business, so I’ve only had tidbits to look at. Here’s one of them, from right after the sale. (And there’s another here.) Take a look at estate and IP management. It’s fascinating stuff.