One of my favorite things to do here is to ask you guys questions, because I love hearing your answers. Only, no one ever wants to comment on the actual blog...it's fine, really. Not irritating at all....Anyhow, I went back to Facebook and picked some of my favorite answers of yours to share. The first is your personal (comedic) hell:
Next is your favorite and least favorite book-to-film adaptations. Some of these surprised me, and they really seemed to cover a wide range!
Now, I've got a new question for you: what is a story that's haunted you? I realized after coming up with this idea that "haunting" could mean such a wide variety of things. My initial reaction was to think of something disturbing, but then I remembered being haunted by subtle family dramas, like Heat Lightening. So it could be something upsetting or scary or not, just something that sank into your bones and stayed there, something that affected your mood even after you walked away from it.
The book that first pops into my head is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's a story within a story about a young man who finds the work of an older man who was writing about documentary about a family who lived in a house that kept growing from the inside out. (It's so weird, I have no idea how this guy pitched it or how he got an agent.)
There are many interesting aspects of this book, one being that the author seems to be poking fun at academia-- there's a plethora of pointless footnotes, some real and others fake. (As someone who spent a lot of time reading and writing about lit theory as I wondered if it was all bullshit, I really appreciated this element.) Another unique factor is the visual layout and how that affects your mood. Some sections are written in shapes while others look like text has been stamped over text. You have to turn the book around to read certain parts. It's alive!
What really haunted me though were the sections about that house. See, there's an endless closet that keeps growing, and this family goes in deeper and deeper to see what's at the end. And... that's kind of it? But also not? Just trust me, it's compelling.
While I wasn't in love with every section of the book (like all the stuff about the young guy?? Pass), I did not want to stop reading the sections about the house, and as the story should have started to feel monotonous, boring, or exhausting, it didn't. I was completely drawn in, surrounded by the endless black walls, wondering what I would find at the end and what it all meant. Once I finished, I just HAD to talk to someone about it...but no one else I knew had read it. It was torture!
So, now I turn to you. What story haunted you to the point where you couldn't turn away from it and couldn't shake it, where you needed to talk about it? Regardless of where you post your answer, I want to hear it!
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Christine (Harm) (Tuesday, 31 July 2018 18:33)
I was haunted by The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I couldn’t believe there was a time where children born with Down Syndrome were considered a lost cause, and that a man could just give his baby up because she was born with DS. I understand the context of history, but I still can’t imagine what that does to a person. Then he lies to his wife and says the baby died. I just had a really tough time wrapping my mind around that concept. I have loved my children obsessively from the moment they were born and I couldn’t imagine giving them up. Well, now that they’re older I could see it ... haha. Kidding. Sort of.
Brigette (Wednesday, 01 August 2018 12:59)
That sounds so disturbing! Ah! Glad I never exposed myself to it.