Reading Lists

A compilation of reading lists other people have recommended.

Body/Horror/Monster Reading List

Originally compiled by puredisgust @ tumblr

• Volatile Bodies - Elizabeth Grosz
• Unbearable Weight - Susan Bordo
• The Body in Pain - Elaine Scarry
• The Queer Art of Failure - Judith Halberstam
• The Monstrous-Feminine - Barbara Creed
• The Dread of Difference - Barry Keith Grant
• Men, Women, and Chain Saws - Carol J Clover
• Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters - Judith Halberstam
• Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film - Harry M. Benshoff
• The Medusa Reader - Marjorie Garber/Nancy J. Vickers
• Coming to Writing & Laugh of the Medusa- Helene Cixous
• Accursed Share - Georges Bataille
• Death and Sensuality - Georges Bataille
• Intercourse - Andrea Dworkin
• History of Shit - Dominique Laporte
• History of Sexuality Vol 1 - Michel Foucault
• Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault
• Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
• Bodies That Matter - Judith Butler
• Powers of Horror - Julia Kristeva
• Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine - Barbara Creed
• Horror and Male Masochism - Barbara Creed
• Illness as Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors - Susan Sontag
• Phallic Titty Manifesto & The Skin-Cloth - Jackie Wang
• Technologies of the Gendered Body - Anne Balsamo
• Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
• The Thirst for Annihilation - Nick Land
• Against Sex Positivity - negationparty
• Dictatorship of Postfeminist Imagination
• My Words to Victor Frankenstein - Susan Styker
• To Have Done with the Massacre of the Body - Felix Guattari
• Assuming a Body - Gayle Salamon
• The Absent Body - Drew Leder

• Dracula - Bram Stoker
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson
• Aliens & Anorexia & I Love Dick - Chris Kraus
• The Thief’s Journal - Jean Genet
• Blood and Guts in High School & Hannibal Lecter My Father - Kathy Acker

• My Body & Stitch Bitch & Patchwork Girl - Shelley Jackson
• Diamanda Galas interview in Re/Search
• Rhythm 10, Rest Energy, Breathing In/Breathing Out - Maria Abramovic
• Interior Scroll - Carolee Schneemann
• The Litanies of Satan - Diamanda Galas

Racism and SFF/Fandom

Originally compiled by anonymous on fail-fandomanon

• carrington, andré. Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
• Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. NYU Press, 2019.
• Mark C. Racial Worldmaking: The Power of Popular Fiction. Fordham Univ Press, 2017.
• TWC Editor. 2009. Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in fan communities. Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 3. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0172.
• Gatson, Sarah N., and Robin Anne Reid. 2012. "Race and Ethnicity in Fandom." In "Race and Ethnicity in Fandom," edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 8. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0392. [An attempt after RaceFail09 to start talking about race and fandom. Not many submissions, but Mel Stanfill's would get cited quite a bit: Stanfill, Mel. 2011. "Doing Fandom, (Mis)doing Whiteness: Heteronormativity, Racialization, and the Discursive Construction of Fandom." In "Race and Ethnicity in Fandom," edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 8. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0256.]
• Wanzo, Rebecca. 2015. "African American Acafandom and Other Strangers: New Genealogies of Fan Studies." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 20. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2015.0699.
• Pande, Rukmini. 2020. "How (Not) to Talk about Race: A Critique of Methodological Practices in Fan Studies." In "Fan Studies Methodologies," edited by Julia E. Largent, Milena Popova, and Elise Vist, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 33. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1737.
• Lothian, Alexis, and Mel Stanfill. 2021. “An Archive of Whose Own? White Feminism and Racial Justice in Fan Fiction’s Digital Infrastructure.” Transformative Works and Cultures 36 (September 14, 2021). https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2021.
• WC Editor. 2022. "What Is an Anti? Exploring a Key Term and Contemporary Debates." In "Fandom Histories," edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl and Abby S. Waysdorf, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 37. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2277.

Fantasy/Magical School/Wizard Books

Originally compiled by displayheartcode and pendragyn on Tumblr

something that pre-dates jkr

• young wizards by diane duane
• wizard's hall by jane yolen
• a wizard of earthsea by ursula k leguin
• the worst witch by jill murphy
• the dark is rising by susan cooper

something for adults that is darker and edgier

• the scholomance by naomi novik
• magic for liars by sarah gailey
• rivers of london by ben aaronovitch
• an unkindness of magicians by kat howard
• babel by rf kuang
• vita nostra by marina and sergey dyachenko
• ninth house by leigh bardugo

something for middle schoolers

• witchlings by claribel a. ortega
• the last fallen star by graci kim
• the school for good and evil by soman chainani
• the marvellers by dhonielle clayton
• charlie bone by jenny nimo
• maya and the rising dark by maya barron

something for young adults

• hex hall by rachel hawkins
• the old kingdom by garth nix
• the left-handed booksellers of london by garth nix
• the whispering dark by kelly andrew
• in other lands by sarah rees brennan
• the demon king by cinda williams chima
• how to succeed in witchcraft by aislinn brophy
• witch haven by sasha peyton smith
• legendborn by tracy deonn
• dark rise by cs pacat

other (recommended by pendragyn)

• Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey
• Nsibidi Scripts series (Akata Witch/Warrior/Woman) by Nnedi Okorafor
• Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett
• Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy
• the Mancer books by Don Callander (Pyromancer, Aquamancer, Aeromancer, Geomancer, Marbleheart)
• the Tiffany Aching quintet by Terry Pratchett starting with the Wee Free Men
• The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C Wrede
• The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey (500 kingdom series)
• The Elemental Masters by Mercedes Lackey
• Mairelon the Magician by Patricia C. Wrede
• The Cecilia and Kate novels by Patricia C Wrede
• the Glamourist Histories by Mary Robinette Kowal
• Riddle-Master series by Patricia A McKillip
• The Warlock of Gramarye series by Christopher Stasheff
• Wizard in Rhyme series by Christopher Stasheff
• The Dragon and the George by Gordon R Dickson