Inkwoven

Dear Reader,

Sing it with me now: It’s beginning to look a lot like summer!

As College 16 winds its way toward commencement at the end of this month, I can practically smell the most carefree season: the warm smell of freshly cut grass, the sooty ash of a bonfire, the way that salty ocean air seems to settle somewhere deep in your lungs.

Now, I’m not one much for the beach (or traditional “beach reads,” for that matter), but there is a certain magical quality a book you encounter in the summer possesses. It takes on some of that ethereal feeling that only summertime can bring: a narrative delight that, once completed, lingers in your bones and ignites you, makes you a little more alive. (Or is that just me?)

Plus, summer is the best time for ghoulies and ghosties, not to mention those long-legged beasties. Just deliver me a novel with something that goes bump in the night! After all, there’s a little extra light every day to keep any story from becoming too frightful. Nothing captures that quality of summer for me like reading, breathless and covered in gooseflesh, in a tent with a flashlight.

This is my first time in a long time creating a reading list for the summer. I normally go with that summery flow, reading whatever comes quickest to hand. But this year’s public library Summer Reading Challenge theme — not to spill spoilers here — is “Color Our World.” (At least that’s your theme if your library belongs to the Collaborative Summer Library Program.) I was trying to come up with a way to incorporate colors with my listed aims here but just couldn’t do it.

Until I remembered Crimson Peak (2015).

I have only seen twenty minutes of it. I am absolutely determined to finish it. I loved every single second of the movie right up until someone’s face breaks a sink. (And yes, I am exceptionally bad with horror movies because of violence.) I started wondering which stories influenced the script. del Toro generally does a beautiful job weaving stories, pulling directly from a wide variety of genres and media. What if he listed them somewhere? Wouldn’t it be lovely to see the inspiration for myself? Maybe I could read each over the summer and then finish with a watch party — just in time to ring in the spooky season. Knowing del Toro, many of the recommendations would even be the perfect literary friends for deep investigation here with all of you.

And that, dear Reader, is how #GothLitSummer2025 was born.

The Books

del Toro catalogs nine titles — seven novels, one short story, and a folio of engravings — that directly influenced the making of the film. Nine further novels are cited in conversation with the main seven.

I will reserve Guillermo del Toro’s remarks on each of the main books until I review them later this summer. For now, the list with a brief description:

Brontë, C. (1847). Jane Eyre.

A resilient orphan confronts frightening secrets, haunted mansions, and a tormented love that tests the boundaries of desire and morality.

Brontë, E. (1847). Wuthering Heights.

A tempestuous saga of doomed love and vengeful obsession, where the wild moors echo with the haunting passions of Catherine and Heathcliff, whose souls refuse to rest — even in death.

Dickens, C. (1861). Great Expectations.

A young orphan’s rise through shadowy twists of fate haunted by mysterious benefactors, decaying mansions, and the lingering specter of guilt and unfulfilled desire.

James, H. (1898). The Turn of the Screw.

A governess, isolated in a decaying country estate, descends into paranoia as she confronts — or perhaps imagines — malevolent spirits preying upon two unnervingly silent children.

Lewis, M. G. (1796). The Monk.

A pious abbot succumbs to forbidden desires, spectral horrors, and diabolic forces within the labyrinthine shadows of monastic Madrid.

Piranesi, G. B. (1745-1750). Carceri d’invenzione.

Colossal architecture, endless stairways, and arcane machinery evoke a sublime and terrifying dreamscape of confinement, isolation, and the uncanny.

Poe, E. A. (1839). The Fall of the House of Usher.

An ancestral mansion crumbles in unison with the minds and bodies of the tortured Usher twins. Are they consumed by madness or the supernatural?

Radcliffe, A. (1794). The Mysteries at Udolpho.

The virtuous Emily St. Aubert plunges into a world of crumbling castles, spectral terrors, and cruel villains, where reason and imagination wage war amid the eerie shadows of the Italian wilderness.

These can be read in any order at any time during the summer. And if you read faster than I do, you can enjoy the other nine books that are mentioned in del Toro’s recommendations.

The Schedule

My local public library starts Summer Reading on 21 June and ends on 23 August. While that is typically plenty of time, I am taking two independent study courses this semester, which will bring a truckload of reading with them.

To give myself a fair chance at the seven required books, I’ll be starting on 10 May. (What better way to celebrate a half-birthday than new books?) I expect to end on 31 August, too — just in time for the new academic year.

Reader, I wonder: What are your plans for summer reading this year?

Let’s enjoy a summer of books together!