A belated July Newsletter

Books, Gothic Houses & Other Things I've Been Collecting

I thought I had scheduled this to publish 6 weeks ago - apprarently not! Regardless I wanted to share. July seems so long ago as I update this. I’m glad I wrote this all down at the time! July was a month of collecting things.  Not necessarily things in the traditional sense, but little bits and pieces that caught my attention: a sentence from a book, a strange symbol carved into an old building, a new idea I couldn’t stop thinking about, a film, a place, a record.

I've been doing a lot more of writing things down lately, which probably explains the slightly obsessive journal related portion of this newsletter.

So, here's a little collection of July.

📓 A new journal (and several new obsessions)

One of my favourite things this month has been getting my pocket Paper Republic Grand Voyager. This is one trend I am more than happy to be “influenced” by 😂

I've been trying to create a more portable version of my journalling life - something small enough to actually carry around with me rather than a beautiful notebook that inevitably stays at home because it's too heavy or too precious. This new pocket journal is becoming a sort of little travelling cabinet of curiosities.

I've got a field notebook for nature observations, somewhere for book notes, a sketchbook, and a section devoted to folk beliefs, signs and symbols. There's also plenty of room for bits of paper and ephemera.

I've just loved having somewhere to record the little things I notice when I'm out and about. I'm increasingly interested in the history of ordinary objects, buildings, marks and traditions - the things that people have left behind without necessarily intending to leave a record at all.

Which brings me nicely to...

🕯️ Witch marks, haunted houses & Gothic women

I've been leaning quite heavily into the Gothic lately - but hey what’s new there!!

I went to a brilliant talk in Haworth with Dr Emma Liggins about nineteenth-century women authors and the haunted house, which felt like it had been designed specifically to appeal to all of my interests at once.

I've always loved the idea of the haunted house as more than simply a spooky setting. There's something extremely compelling about what happens when women are placed inside these spaces in Gothic literature - houses become oppressive, mysterious, protective, imprisoning, or even extensions of the women who inhabit them.

I've also been thinking a lot about the stories we tell about women, particularly the ways that folklore, mythology and Gothic fiction give us strange, sideways ways of exploring women's experiences.

At the start of July I also went to the Women of Camelot talk as part of Bradford Literature Festival, which sent me down another little rabbit hole of women, mythology and the stories that have been retold about them over and over again. I spent some time doing a spread in my commonplace journal about the talk and it inspired me to experiment and have fun with art journalling.

I also have to mention a real highlight of the month - Little Moreton Hall. One of my special interests are witch marks and this place was full of them! I've now decided that I absolutely need to start cataloguing the ones I find when I'm visiting historic houses.

This is how a commonplace book becomes dangerous: you start by writing down a few interesting things and suddenly you're researching apotropaic marks and seventeenth-century folk beliefs at eleven o'clock at night. I'm not complaining 😏

📚 What I've been reading

July was a fairly eclectic reading month. I must do an up to date reading post pronto to bring you up to speed as I’ve since read some brilliant books.

For book club I read The Correspondent, which unfortunately didn't quite win me over. I wanted to love it more than I did, but sometimes a book just doesn't land in the way you hoped it would.

I had much better luck with The Odyssey. I read Emily Wilson’s translation and despite all of the online chatter around it - I very much enjoyed it.  I read it before going to see the film at the cinema, and I really enjoyed the experience of finally spending some time with a story that has been sitting in the cultural background for so long. The film was... fine. I didn't dislike it, but I definitely preferred the book.

Which is actually a nice segue into one of my intentions for the rest of the year: I want to go to the cinema more. I love going to the cinema, and there's something about making an occasion of watching a movie. I'm going to try to make it a more regular part of my life.

The biggest reading love of the month, though, was We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

I loved this book. LIKE LOVED IT.  It's exactly the sort of strange, unsettling, slightly claustrophobic story that I find irresistible, and Merricat is such a fascinating character. Shirley Jackson is rapidly becoming one of those authors where I want to read everything she's written.

I've also continued listening to Emma on audio, which is taking approximately seventeen years. I know. I know. I should probably be enjoying it more. I do like Austen, and I can appreciate what I'm reading, but I'm beginning to suspect that I prefer the 2020 film adaptation. Sorry Jane babes.

And now I've started East of Eden as part of Steinbeck Summer with the rest of the reading girlies online. I'm 100 pages in and so far - so good!

🌀 The labyrinth has been living rent-free in my head

One of the things I've been thinking about most this month isn't actually a book or a film, but an idea.

I came across a video essay called Why Women Love Movies About the Maze/Labyrinth, and I genuinely haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

The idea is that perhaps the labyrinth functions as a particularly feminine kind of story space - where the traditional masculine hero's journey is a straight path out into the world, the labyrinth is circular, disorientating and inward. The woman enters it without necessarily knowing exactly what she's looking for, encounters strange creatures or guides, gets lost, and eventually has to find her own way out. Let’s not forgot the OG girl in the labyrinth - Ariadne, the Minotaur and the thread.

The more I think about it the more stories I start seeing through this lens. Girls entering strange worlds. Women wandering through houses, forests and mazes. Animal guides. Locked rooms. Secret passages. The feeling of being lost and having to navigate your way back to yourself.

Naturally, this has sent me down another rabbit hole of books and films I now want to explore. I suspect this is going to become one of those ideas that follows me around for a while in the same way as I’ve been obsessed with the cross overs between fairy tales and the gothic.

🏛️ Places I've been

July has given me plenty of opportunities to get out and wander.

We visited Little Moreton Hall, which was every bit as crooked, strange and beautiful as I'd hoped. I’ll share a separate post about our visit soon.

I also spent some time at Rodley Nature Reserve,  This place is a hidden gem and a firm favourite of mine.

We also visited Fountains Abbey, which is one of those places I could probably return to repeatedly and still find something new to look at. We hadn’t been for a while and it was just gorgeous.

🎬 At the cinema & on the sofa

As I mentioned, I went to see The Odyssey at the cinema this month.

I'm still undecided about the film itself, but I enjoyed the whole experience enough that I've decided I want to make cinema trips a more regular thing. There are so many films I'd rather see on a big screen than eventually get around to watching at home six months later.

At home, I've also finally started watching Gossip Girl. Yes. For the first time. I somehow made it this far through life without watching it, and I'm now enjoying the experience of finally discovering all the things everyone else apparently knew about twenty years ago. There is something wonderfully silly about following a month of nineteenth-century Gothic women writers and Homeric epic with Gossip Girl. Look, we all contain multitudes ok!

🎶 What I've been listening to

This month I've been playing The Pink Panther soundtrack on vinyl, which feels like exactly the sort of jazzy, old-fashioned soundtrack I want accompanying my evenings. There's something about putting a record on rather than simply pressing play on a playlist that makes listening feel intentional and like an activity in itself.

I think that is really the theme of July - making little rituals out of things. Reading a physical book. Going to the cinema. Writing down something strange I've noticed. Putting a record on. Wandering around an old building with no particular agenda. Just being present.

🌿 Looking back at July

Looking back, July has been a bit of a mix of books, old buildings, walks, talks, films and lots of little things I've found myself getting interested in.

I've really enjoyed having my new journal to keep all of this in one place too. I'm still figuring out exactly what I want it to be, but at the moment it's a mixture of nature notes, book notes, things I've spotted when I've been out, bits of folklore and random thoughts that I don't want to lose.

I think that's probably what I've enjoyed most about it - I can just write something down because I find it interesting, without having to decide whether it's important enough or what I'm eventually going to do with it.

Which is quite a nice way to spend a month really - reading things, going places, finding something interesting and then writing it down.