Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition Challenge 1

[flo_nelja]

A new challenge for February! ow pressure, one top 10 every week.
For the first week

Make a Top Ten list for your favourite standalone media and tell people exactly why you love it. This can be in any format - movies, one shot dramas, novels, short stories, plays, something else not mentioned here. Whatever you like!



1) Le Horla (The Horla) by Guy de Maupassant

One of my first horror stories, about a guy who gets slowly possessed by an unknown creature. It's lots of things I love in horror and love of things I love about mind control in the same story :D

2) L'enfant de la haute mer (Child of the High Seas) by Jules Supervielle

The story of a dream city in the middle of the sea and the very lonely child who lives here. It made me cry, and the reveal was very poetic to me.

3) La escritura del Dios (The Writing of the God) by Jorge Luis Borges.

A cosmic supernatural story that's not horror, or rather the only horrors are the historical ones. It was fascinating to me, and the Aztec background makes it even better.

4) Dynd-Kongens Datter (The Marsh King's Daughter) by Hans Christian Andersen

It's a very Christian fairy tale and I understand some people don't like it, but to me it was jsut part of the supernatural, with the creepy rapist swamp monster, the talking storks family and the incredible Viking girl with an evil personality at day. I was a bit in love with her I think.

5) Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé (How Wang-Fo Was Saved) by Marguerite Yourcenar

A kind of fairy tale too, about a painter who painted the world so beautifully that the Emperor could no longer care about reality. I love the writing so much, and this ending !

6) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Lots of supernatural stories of the time open the "or maybe the narrator is mad" option, but few of them can talk about mental illness well enough to make this option as interesting as the supernatural one. Also the feminist themes still hit. And of course theis haunted room is haunting.

7) Story of your life by Ted Chiang

Linguistic-fiction is not the part of science-fiction I usually think about, but it was so good. the family tragedy and the high science concepts mix perfectly to me.

8) Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

Another possession story! I loved the philosophical points, I believe in nothing of this, but they have a kind of poetry going, and the love triangle possession itself was very well done, and I might have been a bit in love, once more.

9) Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

It's about nerds talking about deep questions mixing science and philosophy which happens to be something I enjoy, so I was already sold before the ending killed me.

10) La ruelle ténébreuse (The Shadowy Street) by Jean Ray

A supernatural horror stories that's in two parts, each of them being a perfectly good horror story, but the way they complete each other about what happened is perfection. Also I love the language, and the weight of the normal, non-supernatural Belgium before all happens.



Absolutely none of these stories are realistic, they all have some kind of supernatural or sci-fi element, which wasn't part of the selection, it's just how my tastes work :D

Comments

[garonne]

I also count 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and 'Le Horla' among my favourite short stories of all time. Now I want to read the other eight!

[flo_nelja]

Yesssss they're not all horror though <3

[mythicmistress]

May I borrow this challenge? I'll give credit where credit is due, of course. Also, these short stories sound interesting for the most part.

[flo_nelja]

Yesss ti's a challenge for everyone ! I can't believe I didn't give the link : https://dreamersdare.dreamwidth.org/150623.html

[dreamersdare]

Intruding in this comment thread to say, as the orginator of (this version) of the challenge, yes, please do, I wholeheartedly endore you playing along in whatever way suits you. Have fun!

[queenslayerbee]

I've only read The Yellow Wallpaper and Story of Your Life, both of which I love (especially the first one). I'll be adding some of the others to my least, thank you for the recommendations!

[dreamersdare]

I don't think I've read anything on this list, but I looked at the first one and went "oooh, mind control?" and then went and looked it up and and went "OOOOH, INSPIRATION FOR LOVECRAFT??!" and now I am obviously going to need to read it. And then I spiralled from there and added many new things onto my to-read list.

Good list, liked it a lot, thank you for sharing it ♥