Amy H. Sturgis's Blog, page 15
October 22, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 22
Dark Academia novel: Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison (2019)
Quote:
“So seriously, you never walk the arboretum path alone. Even if it’s not haunted, it’s creepy and not safe. It’s outside the walls.” This last is said with such earnestness I simply nod.
“Outside the walls equals not safe alone. Got it.”
ALT
October 21, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 21
Dark Academia novel: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson (2012)
Quote:
Keep calm and carry on. Also, stay in and hide because the Ripper is coming.
ALT
October 20, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 20
Dark Academia novel: The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew (2022)
Quote:
She’d heard of Godbole. Everyone had. It was a highly prestigious yet controversial program, a magnet for those who dabbled in the occult.
… And so, on a bluebird day in September, she packed up her things and she went. To conquer the world, and maybe some others. To prove that she could.
She took a breath and she took a step.
And the shadows followed.
ALT
October 19, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 19
Dark Academia novel: The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett (2020)
From the cover:
secrets and lies, then somebody dies
Quote:
The end of my life starts here.
A rainy, sodden autumn has turned the river below into a roaring monster. Rocks jut out like jagged teeth, jet black against frothy white. My blood sings as the weathered wood sags behind me—someone has followed me onto the tiny bridge over Anna’s Run….
Legends say Anna’s Run takes one unlucky sacrifice every year. The wind wraps around my neck like a cord.
ALT
October 18, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 18
Dark Academia novel: River of Ashes by Alexandrea Weis and Lucas Astor (2022)
Quote:
He waited for the animal to charge. Instead, it turned and raced into the brush.
Smug with his victory, he turned back toward The Abbey. At the iron gate, he raised his head to the night sky. The stars weren’t twinkling, and there was no moon. Perfect.
He cut across the field of high grass. Not far from the cells, the lone howl of a dog stopped him in his tracks. Silence. Seconds ticked by, but the only sounds were the chirp of the crickets and the occasional croak of frogs.
When the dogs appear, death is near.
He chuckled. Maybe the dogs knew what he had planned.
ALT
October 17, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 17
Dark Academia novel: The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (2022)
Quote:
It was open on the very last page I’d looked at: ‘How the Ritual Was Performed’.
I wondered which of my fellow philosophy students had stumbled upon it. And why did they leave in such a hurry that they left the volume lying around like a piece of old junk?
The page was exactly as I last saw it, with one tiny, significant exception: the droplet of blood in the bottom right corner. A small smudge, as though someone had pricked their finger on a spindle and then tried to turn the page.
The sight made me smile. Someone had tried to perform the ritual. I knew it in my bones. There was someone at Carvell as intrigued by the occult as I was. For some reason, this knowledge bolstered me.
In a moment, the decision was made. I was going to attempt the ritual too.
ALT
October 16, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 16
Dark Academia novel: Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones (2023)
Quote:
Everyone from Oreville knows the story of Clarissa. Her living ghost haunts the long rain-dark winters alongside the looming specters of Washington’s grim army of infamous serial killers and litany of missing girls…. Clarissa Campbell, who vanished so completely that no one has found a trace of her – not the full investigative force of the Oreville police department, not legions of armchair sleuths and online obsessives, not television news crews or magazine reporters or Clarissa’s friends and family.
ALT
October 15, 2023
Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 15
_____
Dark Academia novel: The It Girl by Ruth Ware (2020)
Quote:
Afterwards, it was the door she would remember. It was open, she kept saying to the police. I should have known something was wrong.
She could have retraced every step of the walk back from the Hall: the gravel crunching beneath her feet of the path across Old Quad, under the Cherwell Arch, then the illegal shortcut through the darkness of the Fellows’ Garden, her feet light on the dew-soaked forbidden lawn. Oxford didn’t need KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs; that lawn had been the preserve of dons and fellows for more than two hundred years without needing to remind undergraduates of the fact….
Then up staircase VII, four flights of worn stone steps, right up to the top, where she and April slept, on the left-hand side of the landing, opposite Dr. Myers’s rooms.
Dr. Myers’s door was closed, as it always was. But the other door, her door, was open. That was the last thing she remembered. She should have known something was wrong.
But she suspected nothing at all.
ALT
October 14, 2023
I hope to see you in SPACE!
I’ve taught at Signum University for years, but in addition to offering my classes, I’m now also joining Signum’s SPACE Program (Signum Adult Portals for Adult Continuing Education).
I have modules up for candidacy now that I am very excited about! Each will be one month long, with two one-hour meetings per week (one an interactive lecture by me and one a group discussion facilitated by me). All meetings are online. Everyone’s invited!
Here’s the schedule:
January 2024: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
February 2024: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (the first work officially authorized by Shirley Jackson’s estate to respond to The Haunting of Hill House)
March 2024: The Last Man by Mary Shelley (a science fiction classic and the most relevant novel one can read while living in “unprecedented times”)
Everyone is invited! For more information, please check out this link: Amy H. Sturgis, Upcoming SPACE Modules
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Halloween 2023: Dark Academia 2023, Day 14
Dark Academia novel: Don’t Breathe a Word by Jordyn Taylor (2021)
Quote:
“Yesterday” starts to play again from the beginning, but it’s a hell of a lot eerier as it becomes the backdrop to the story I typed on the next slide: “In 1962, Hardwick sent a small group of students underground to test a nuclear fallout shelter. Six went down, but only five survived…”
ALT
