Summer Reading: Learn with JSTOR & Weird Detectives

Here we are at the end of June, but there’s still plenty of time for summer reading! In this post, I’m sharing some lists of journal articles from JSTOR and inviting you to read some weird detective fiction with me.

Loggan, David, 1635-1700? Bodleian Library, Oxford: Two Panoramic Views of the Interior and a Key. Line Engraving by D. Loggan after Himself. n.d. 1 print : line engraving. Wellcome Collection. https://jstor.org/stable/community.24838911.

JSTOR Reading Lists

Did y’all know that JSTOR has educational resources? They do, and they’re cool. Here are some that I’ve bookmarked for myself:

• Surrealism at 100: A Reading List

• Speculative Fiction: A Reading List

• Natural History: A Reading List

• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe: Annotated

(JSTOR is also seeking contributions for new ones if you’re interested in proposing something.)

Weird Detective Fiction

This summer, I’m diving into stories of weird detectives and weird investigations—read along with me! There are two cheat selections on this list: I’ve already read Little Mysteries by Sara Gran and “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link.

• Robert Aickman – “Ringing the Changes” (collected in Dark Entries)

• Paul Auster – City of Glass

• Laird Barron – “Bulldozer” (collected in The Imago Sequence and Other Stories)

• Jorge Luis Borges – “The Garden of Forking Paths” (collected in Labyrinths)

• Leonora Carrington – “The Debutante” (collected in The Complete Stories)

• P. Djèlí Clark – The Haunting of Tram Car 015

• Julio Cortázar – “Blow‑Up” (collected in Blow-Up and Other Stories, but my library had an older edition, called End of the Game and Other Stories)

• Sara Gran – Little Mysteries (the stories are experimental, compelling, and worth reading even if you haven’t read the Claire DeWitt books yet)

• Jonathan Lethem – Gun, with Occasional Music

• Victor LaValle – The Ballad of Black Tom

• Kelly Link – “The Faery Handbag” (collected in Magic for Beginners)

• Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder

• Vladimir Nabokov – The Eye

• Jeff Noon – A Man of Shadows

• Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

• Alain Robbe‑Grillet – The Erasers

• Sofia Samatar – “A Brief History of Nonduality Studies” (collected in Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond)

• Leonardo Sciascia, Equal Danger

Let’s go read!