It has entered my mind to formulate a list of books which have been meaningful to me, both in the pleasure they offer and also in the effect they had. These are books which stand above.
The Monk
As with Dracula, I took a chance on this book when things had been growing stale. I heard it mentioned on a podcast in connection to Dracula, and it was described as an incredibly weird book. It is an incredibly weird book. It is like the author wrote in a nonstop fever, and it incorporates many horror plots into one insane narrative: You have a murderous band of innkeepers and a blood stained bed, a girl forced into a nunnery, a haunting, an exorcism, and a city which goes mad for blood. Also, it is hilarious. Also, it interrupts the narrative at times to remind you that a character you met at the beginning of the story will be raped by the end (This somewhat kills the joviality). Then the Devil shows up and monologues, bragging about the train wreck he initiated.
I have only read it once, and the whole time was torn between the humor and horror, laughing and cringing at the same time. It turned my stomach.
I think that as I read it, and after finishing it, I realized what power a story could hold. Somewhere I had forgotten, but this story was visceral. If it was insane and convoluted, it took you into that insanity and twisted you up with it.
So what did it do to me? I found it in a tough point in my life where I knew I had to make a change, but I couldn’t. I was trapped and immoveable in one of my first waves of deep depression. So, I retreated into its fantasy, and there I bound up my wounds and cleared my thoughts enough so that I could make a decision.
It was a comfort to me as it told me life was both a comedy and a tragedy, and it gave me hope as it described healing and newness in the wake of madness, death, and destruction.
Tale Told 