The Curator: comfort me with witchcraft
gentle earthy dark-but-sweet love stories as comfort food. Books from Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen.
Whenever I need comfort, I read or watch something witchy.
Maybe that’s weird, but I’m assuming you also have some weird comfort thing up your sleeve for those desperate moments when your nervous system doesn’t behave and you need sedating. So judge ye not.
Feeling down? Witchcraft. Feeling hungover [past me]? Witchcraft. Feeling lonely sad anxious stuck or maybe it’s simply raining outside and I have tea? Witchy-craft.
But like why witches in particular?
Maybe it’s because at 13 I was fully convinced my letter to Hogwarts was on its way. Or when that didn’t turn up, that my Teen Witch palm reader pencil floating The Craft style mind control was just around the corner on my sweet sixteen. Or again when that birthday came and went with no powers, maybe I just needed to read more Tarot cards or spend more time in graveyards on Halloween to really tap into the universal spirit power that was my birthright.
As you probably guessed, nothing of the sort ever occurred. I am simply a regular old gal with regular old brain powers.
Regardless, throughout my 36 years on this planet, I repeatedly turn to stories of outcast women who find themselves and community through magic. In an age where our rights are being challenged from every direction, these are the stories of female empowerment, friendships, and true love that save me from the brink of despair. Men-type people have their superheroes1, well I’ve got my mind powers too, just with a lot less blowing stuff up and a lot more blow me that kiss. The books this week tap into all these gloopy feelings, so get your galoshes on cuz I’m taking you straight to Weep Town.
What about you? Can you share your weird comfort foods with the class? We’d love to hear.
FURTHER READING 💻 →
Why ‘witch lit’ is having a moment.
Beyond the Bookends has a newly updated list of the best witchy books
BOOK REVIEWS 📚→
The Practical Magic Series by Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman writes like a gentle lady dove, gracefully flying her feathered words above your head, letting them softly cover you until you can't breathe anymore for the happiness and maybe some slight suffocation but it’s ok just sit up every once in a while and take a drink and a cookie break cuz The Practical Magic series is a goddamn institution and it’s DELIGHTFUL.
The four books follow the Owens family from the Salem Witch trials in 1600 to the present. In each generation, the object of an Owens woman’s love is doomed to an untimely death. From ancestor Maria to Jet, Franny, and Vincent, Sally, Gillian, Kylie, and Antonia, we experience love and loss but all in the most serene, tranquil tone, even in the face of mortal danger—who needs Xanax when you’ve got magic!
For a few hours, you can completely forget about the patriarchal pseudo-Christian forced birthers attempting to rip women's rights away; you can forget about the hundreds of thousands dead from COVID, gun violence, protesting, climate change, etc. all over the world; you can even forget about whatever shit you have going on in your little pin drop of the map.
For just a few hours, you can soak into this special world where women have power, where even when things get complicated, you can always count on love, your family, intuition, nature, to tell you what to do.
That even when someone dies, they don't really.
That boozy cake can fix anything.
That there are rules and then there are rules that should be broken and knowing the difference is what sets you apart.
These stories are gentle, sometimes simple, but always a welcome respite from the horrors of current affairs.
If you’d like some complimentary sedatives to free you from your worries, read in the order they were written (pictured, left to right up top). Even if you’ve watched the movie. Or even if you haven’t. Trust me.
Moodometer: For when you need midnight margaritas with your coven in the kitchen.
Rating: I give these books an Always Throw Spilt Salt 5 Stars.
♥♥♥♥
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
A friend recommended this book to me, and if you’ve been here for at least three weeks, you know that means it took me ages to get to it. But I believe all books find you at the right time, and this one certainly did.
Garden Spells is predictable. It’s a simply written love story, a sister story, and eerily similar to Practical Magic. It will never win any awards. The cover is truly horrendous. By every count, I should not be recommending this book to you.
But oh my, was it so sweet, just what my soul needed after multiple rounds of murdery mayhem and drama. I read this while enjoying a summer cold, and it felt like being wrapped in a warm, wet blanket—in a good way.
Just listen: “The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.”
Do you not feel calmer already???
If you’ve already seen Practical Magic and want something same same but different, try Garden Spells and report back.
Moodometer: For when you need the easy love of sisters, a tree that tells your future, and a gorgeous man who will never give up on you.
Rating: I give this a Spell on Me 4 Stars
READING 📖→
My official spooky season TBR is 15 books long which is laughably ambitious but also exciting because it’s always spooky season in my heart and that just means more to read! Started with Mister Magic as promised, and while it’s not winning prizes, it’s got me turning pages. If you want to see the full list before the next newsletter, check it on IG @thebookcreep.
BUYING 💰→
Two Subtacks and a Bookstagram recently persuaded me to blindly purchase A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus, and Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Like BLIND guide me to the books plz. NOW, Anne at
puts Alice Winn’s In Memoriam in a pot with these PLUS Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and suddenly I don’t know if I’m human or a ChatGPT knockoff since clearly I’m so heavily influenced by the internet as to have lost all original thought. Will be adding to TBR immediately.Unnecessary impractical Halloween coffee mugs from Hide & EEK! at Target, specifically the ghostie and cat. The shapes make it impossible to drink out of without spilling all over yourself but I’m not taking suggestions.
WATCHING 📽️→
The Hunger Games four-part movie binge party we had over the holiday weekend. My fiance is fresh to the series, so he (understandably) had a lot of questions. There is so much to pack in that even basic establishing shots are full of plot. The quality holds up though, A++ from us.
NEW BOOKS 📚→
Holly by Stephen King - the fact that this is SK’s 66th novel is mind-scrambling. While all new SK books seem to get attention, this one has extra hype due to private detective Holly’s appearance in several other titles, including Mr. Mercedes and The Outsiders. “Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King's most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.”
Evil Eye by Etaf Rum - Past BOTM and Read With Jenna author whose second novel has gotten a lot of zizz. While I trust neither of those institutions, the blurb is intriguing: “a striking exploration of the expectations of Palestinian-American women, the meaning of a fulfilling life, and the ways our unresolved pasts affect our presents.”
The Fraud by Zadie Smith - Zadie Smith is a genius and I will read anything she writes, including this “kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story--and who gets to be believed.”
Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li - As a Wednesday child myself, (born on a Wednesday full of woe under a waning crescent moon), this “new collection--about loss, alienation, aging, and the strangeness of contemporary life” sounds like it was written for me.
BOOK NEWS 📰→
The New Yorker “Best Books We Read This Week” includes an… interesting review of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake. Like, an I would almost argue the complete opposite of everything written interesting.
All families are horrific in their own ways - Horror’s worst families discussed by Rachel Harrison, author of Black Sheep.
The Final Girl in movies doesn’t have to be white.
RESTACK OF THE WEEK ♻️→
If you, like me, are an elder millennial with little hope of home buying in your city, Zillow Gone Wild is here to remind you that even psychopaths can afford homes and you can’t.
“Stay till the end to see the final boss”.
LET’S CHAT☺
This week: Leave a comment with your most trustworthy comfort read, watch, or listen. Other than witchy stuff, I love Gilmore Girls. As I get older, I just get more Lorelai and less Rory. Eventually, I plan to be an Emily but without the stick up my butt. And probs less money.
Or per ush, let me know what you’ve been reading in the comments. I’m always game for a good rec (or warning, grievances, etc. ). If you tell me your favorite TV show or movie lately, I’ll give you a book recommendation.
In Case You Missed It 🖤
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See you around the bookshelf!
Natalie
Men-ish or men-adjacent people, this is an extreme generalization of stereotypical gender roles. Take it or leave it - I love superheroes too but they just don’t serve the same fantasy purposes for me.
I will die on the hill that my comfort read is Persuasion and my comfort film is Ever After. I love witches so much I feel like I'm going to explode, absolutely loved this! The best witchy thing I've read in recent memory was The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow, loved it! I tried also watching A Discovery of Witches but found it too YA for my taste (sad).
Loved this: “suddenly I don’t know if I’m human or a ChatGPT knockoff since clearly I’m so heavily influenced by the internet as to have lost all original thought.”
Hmm, I know the feeling, Miss Natalie 🤔😆 (I just ordered my husband to buy me Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter!).
I’m not so into witches, but I’d say my comfort reads are anything by John Irving or Tracy Chevalier. I know I will get lost in anything they write.