The original version of this newsletter was sent out on Tuesday, October 7.
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Hello, fellow bookworms!
As fall officially begins, so does the fall arts season, and UCSB Arts & Lectures is kicking things off with a bang! Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert will be coming to the Arlington Theatre on October 11 to discuss her 2025 memoir, All the Way to the River. I just finished reading it, and it’s a fascinating, horrifying, emotional roller-coaster ride of a book! Gilbert also brings us some additional insight in this interview with our own Leslie Dinaberg, including what compelled her to tell such a painful and personal story as well as her feelings now that the book is out in the world.
On October 14 at Campbell Hall, Alexis Okeowo brings her investigative skills and personal insight to discuss the changes her home state of Alabama has been through. Her book Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama digs deep into the stories of systemic inequality, racism, politics, and more, painting a vivid and complicated picture of her home state. And on October 16, Fareed Zakaria comes to the Arlington to speak about our rapidly changing world and how we can understand and best adapt to it.
Now I’ll hand things over to our incredible reporter Christina McDermott to bring us a roundup of 19th-century vampire tales, perfect for spooky season! Happy reading.
—Tessa, allbooked@independent.com
I see the creep of autumn into Santa Barbara’s sunny days most often at dawn and dusk. It happens when I awake to heavy cloud cover and fog thick enough to obscure the distant roadway. At night, I find myself surprised when darkness settles over the cityscape before dinnertime, and the red line of sunset looks cold and hard. At these moments, I find in myself a desire to curl up with a cup of tea, and some gothic fiction.
I take particular pleasure in old gothic literature. If you have some patience for older text, and like reading something steeped in atmosphere, unintentional camp and symbolic meaning, I recommend Carmilla and Dracula: the mom and dad of the modern vampire.
Carmilla (1872) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu:
When you live in a remote castle (excuse me — schloss) without anyone your own age to spend time with, maybe you, too, would be excited when a carriage accident on your father’s grounds produces a beautiful, mysterious companion. So J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s heroine Laura feels when Carmilla glides into her life.
But there’s something off about Carmilla, who is languid during the day, and who locks her door tight at night. Meanwhile, young peasant women in the surrounding area are succumbing to an unknown illness.
And then of course, there’s Carmilla’s attachment to Laura. It’s this relationship that makes Carmilla the canonical lesbian vampire. And how can she not be when she says “I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so” as she presses her face into Laura’s outstretched palm and calls her darling? It’s almost enough to make a girl forget she’s with a blood eating demon.
But not quite … At only about 100 pages, Carmilla is a quick read. You can find out how the tale unspools in just one sitting.
Dracula by Bram Stoker:
When Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, travels across Europe to meet Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, he goes with an earnest desire to do his job well. The count is interested in buying real estate in London. He’s also interested in Harker — namely keeping him trapped in his castle.
So begins a winding epistolary novel, complete with daring escapes, helpful nuns, doomed ship journeys, insane asylums, damsels and heroines, doctors, and one determined vampire. Dracula is an exciting read and the titular villain has panache — you root against him and respect his style. Meanwhile, Mina Harker, Jonathan’s wife, rises as the story’s true protagonist and partner to hero Van Helsing.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is Carmilla’s larger, more famous cousin. Some scholars argue Stoker found inspiration in Carmilla, and it’s fun to find the parallels in the two novels.
Books in Context:
Both works tease apart some of the same social anxieties of the time. Dracula isn’t as explicitly queer as Carmilla is, but his fierce desire to possess both Mina and Jonathan Harker, as well as little details in the book pointing to his ‘feminine’ appearance make it easy to imagine the count as operating outside the standards of heterosexuality and gender norms.
Both novels are also, according to scholars, able to be read with a political lens. For example (and this is only one example), you can think about both novels in the context of the prevailing Anglo-Irish anxieties of the time. Both Le Fanu and Stoker were Anglo-Irish, a protestant ruling class in Ireland. The Anglo-Irish operated within a system that repressed the island’s native Irish Celtic people. In the 19th century, questions of identity, power, and self-governance, as well as past uprisings, prompted some Anglo-Irish to harbor fears of an older Irish ruling class rising up ‘from the dead’ to usurp them. Not to mention the devastating famine, created in large part by English policy, that had occurred just a few decades before these novels were released caused such extensive starvation and death that malnourished people, who may have looked like ‘walking corpses,’ populated the country.
I find this kind of analysis fascinating. But I appreciate some of us just want a spooky story. That’s the best thing about gothic novels in my opinion — you can read them on any level you want. So as Halloween approaches this year, cuddle under a blanket on a dark night and crack open Carmilla or Dracula.
FROM OUR PAGES
We’ve had some great author visits and interviews recently, so don’t miss out. Here is some of our book-related coverage from the last two weeks! Read all this and more at Independent.com.
“A Mother’s Poem Becomes a Book About Displacement, Resilience” by Debra Herrick
“Mountain Drive Returns: Beloved Santa Barbara Classic Back in Print” by Alice Dehghanzadeh
“Eat, Pray, Love, and Let Loose” by Leslie Dinaberg
UPCOMING BOOK EVENTS
Below, you will find a few bookish events coming up in Santa Barbara. If you are hosting a bookish event in Santa Barbara, be sure to submit the event to our online events calendar.
Film Screening and Book Signing: Mountain Drive Memories
Thursday, October 9, 5:30-7:30 p.m. | Santa Barbara Historical Museum
S.B. High School 150th Anniversary Author Talk: Becky Shawver: Best Romance Scam Victim Ever
Thursday, October 9, 6 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books
Godmothers Gather: The Illuminated Book Club: How to Be Free
Friday, October 10, 4 p.m. | Godmothers
Godmothers Gather: Shaka Senghor: How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons
Friday, October 10, 6 p.m. | Godmothers
Book Launch: Body Memory by Meriwether Clarke
Saturday, October 11, 6 p.m. | Lewis & Clark
UCSB Arts & Lectures Author Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert: All The Way to the River
Saturday, October 11, 7:30 p.m. | Arlington Theatre
Storytime at Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Sunday, October 12, 11 a.m. | Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Bilingual Songs & Stories for Kids
Tuesday, October 14, 11 a.m. | Eastside Library
Godmothers Go: Jen Hatmaker: Awake
Tuesday, October 14, 3 and 6 p.m. | Rosewood Miramar and Godmothers
UCSB Arts & Lectures: An Evening with Alexis Okeowo: Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama
Tuesday, October 14, 7:30 p.m. | Campbell Hall
Book Signing: Frances Pettey Davis: Red Summer
Wednesday, October 15, 5:30 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books
Comic Chaos Club: The Old Willis Place
Wednesday, October 15, 4 p.m. | S.B. Central Library
Romance Book Club: Olivia Dade: ZomRomCom
Wednesday, October 15, 5:30 p.m. | S.B. Central Library
Godmothers Gather: Luisa Navarro: Mexico’s Day of the Dead
Thursday, October 16, 6 p.m. | Godmothers
Godmothers Gather: Pamela Love: The Infinite Door: A Tarot Deck and Guidebook
Friday, October 17, 6 p.m. | Godmothers
UCSB Arts & Lectures Roman Baratiak Endowed Lecture: Fareed Zakaria: What It Takes
Thursday, October 16, 7:30 p.m. | Arlington Theatre
Off Register: S.B. Art Book & Print Fair
Saturday, October 18, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. | Community Arts Workshop
Horror Book Club: Stephen Graham Jones: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Saturday, October 18, 1 p.m. | Goleta Community Center
Godmothers Grow: The Wise Effort Method with Diana Hill, PhD
Sunday, October 19, 11 a.m. | Godmothers
Poetry Club Kick-Off
Sunday, October 19, 2 p.m. | Goleta Community Center
Chaucer’s Books Storytime: Patrice Karst: The Invisible String Family Celebration: A Reimagining of The Invisible String
Sunday, October 19, 3 p.m. | Chaucer’s Books
S.B. SPOTLIGHT
We at the Independent get many books sent to us by area authors, sometimes too many! It’s practically impossible for us to read and review them all, but just because we are busy bees does not mean that they aren’t worth the attention. In an attempt to not completely drop the ball, we have compiled a list of books here that are either written by a Santa Barbara author, feature someone in our community, or have another tie to Santa Barbara. I urge you to look through this list. Perhaps you will find your new favorite read!
The following are the most recent titles that have been sent to us.
Peace, Love & Haight by Max Talley
Body Memory by Meriwether Clarke
Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most by Diana Hill, PhD
If you are a local author and would like us to feature your book in this section, please email allbooked@independent.com with the subject line “S.B. Spotlight.”
Book Reviews Courtesy of CALIFORNIA REVIEW OF BOOKS*
Thanks to the generous contributions of David Starkey, Brian Tanguay and their team of reviewers at California Review of Books, we are able to provide a steady stream of book reviews via our content partnership. Recent reviews at Independent.com include:
Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza; review by David Starkey
*At the present time, all of the Independent’s book reviews are provided in collaboration with California Review of Books (calirb.com).
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