'Tis the season! It's time for another Shelf Motivated end of year holiday extravaganza! Come for the time-tested classics… stick around for the Victorian Ghost Stories and Folk Horror adjacent seasonal reads. Sarah discusses a stone-cold Christmas Classic… and also a book by LM Montgomery that technically takes place during the winter for part of it. Sharon gets into the ritual of reading when it's cold outside, and like the Ghost of Holiday Podcasts Past, revisits some titles we discussed on early holiday episodes. So, grab a holiday cookie or two, a warm beverage, and hunker down with us for a Winter Holiday book chat!

Books discussed:

A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd
The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery
The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg
Advent by Gunnar Gunnarsson
The Valencourt Book of Victorian Ghost Stories Volumes 1-6
Twelve Nights by Urs Faes (translated by Lee Searle)
Rock Crystal: A Christmas Story by Adalbert Stifter (translated by Marianne Moore)
Cozy: A Totally 80s Christmas: A Holiday Novella (Totally 80s Mysteries) by D.A. Wilkerson

Happy Spooky Season! This year on the Shelf Motivated Spooky Season Spectacular Special we get into a few classics of American horror from the 1970s, some folk horror, some horror anthologies, and a few British books that are horror adjacent. Come for the horror, stick around to hear Sharon talk about literary fiction that has ghosts, and Sarah take one of her all-time favorite writers to task! Break out the candy!

Books discussed:
Hide by Kiersten White
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Cuddy by Benjamin Myers
When Things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson ed. by Ellen Datlow
Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan trans. by Janet Hong
Mother Naked by Glen James Brown
TBR:
A Dark Corner by Celia Dale
A Helping Hand by Celia Dale
House of Day and House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
Cozy Recommendation: Autumn Alibi (A Wiccan Wheel Mystery) by Jennifer David Hesse

Even if you aren't a comics reader, come for the graphic novel chat, stay for the dive into a hyper-local figure who changed the face of comics and publishing forever! This time on the pod we sit down with MLPL Clerk Chris Lutes and talk all things graphic novels and comics. Chris is a graphic artist and has had experience in comic shops and bookstores before coming over to Library Land… and he gave us homework!

We discussed a BUNCH of books this time around, but we really dive into:

Life Drawing by Jamie Hernandez
Friday by Ed Brubaker
Jim Shooter: Conversations ed. by Jason Sacks, Eric Hoffman, and Dominick Grace