Book Recommendations: Slytherin

Hello, your Fairy God-Librarian here, and this post is geared for the Slytherin bibliophiles.

As you might already know, this post is the last in a series of four posts where I recommend books for each of the Hogwarts Houses. It also kind of mirrors my obsession with the four elements, which I discussed in my post about niche writing. I started with my own House (Hufflepuff), then followed it with my secondary (Ravenclaw), tertiary (Gryffindor), and am finishing today with the House I’d least like to join if Hogwarts were real: Slytherin. All the book recommendations come straight from my own library.

However, don’t let that fool you into thinking that I don’t value the Slytherins. The Queen herself would not have created such a House if she did not think that the qualities the Slytherins imbibe were important. It all depends on what you value most, how you choose to interact with the world as a human being, more than it is a reflection of your personality.

If you value being cunning (actually a useful skill sometimes), ambition (necessary if you lack the motivation to achieve anything in your life), and resourcefulness, then you might be a Rednec—a Slytherin (sorry, momentarily channeling Jeff Foxworthy).

Side note on resourcefulness. When I was a senior in college, getting my bachelor’s in education, my dad and I went to a Publix. He was trying to reach something high on a shelf, and there was no employer around to lend us a ladder. I got the sudden idea to use a cooking spoon hanging on a rack nearby to extend my reach and knock the box down. My dad beamed with pride. He leaned to a woman nearby and said, “My daughter’s a teacher. She’s very resourceful.”

I myself felt pride at hearing my father’s words. I had done a simple, crafty thing. I had used my surrounding’s resources to solve a problem. People think Slytherins are inherently bad people, but as we just read, one of the qualities to describe a Slytherin was used for a normal, decent deed. It’s only bad when you use such skills for bad reasons.

Slytherins enjoy a good book too, as books are some of the greatest resources ever in existence. So, for those cunning and ambitious Slytherins, this list of recommendations is for you.

1. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

   1) Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (Genre: Horror)

   Shutter Island opened my eyes to the dark recesses of the mentally insane patient. I can’t feel worse for someone than I can for those who are so impaired mentally that their families have to send them to psychiatric wards for the rest of their lives. They are basically kept alive only because it is a sin and against the law to murder. I also feel bad for those that choose such a career as psychiatric nurses/doctors. I couldn’t do it. However, this appeals to the Slytherin in us all because of its elaborate thrilling plot and its seriously deep, dark undertones. Light was a word I used to superabundance when describing the books recommended for Hufflepuffs. Get ready for its truth in opposite for the Slytherins.

   2) Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Genre: Grimdark, Young Adult Fantasy)

   No, I did not come up with the word Grimdark to describe the first book in the series by Ransom Riggs (real name apparently, super weird yet super cool). The first word I think of to describe this book and the series would not be dark, incidentally, but unique. Having just finished reading Riggs’ fourth book in the series, I can honestly say that I would love to read a novel co-authored by him and Brandon Sanderson, another epic fantasy writer. Both authors excel at designing unique premises to a story, i.e. types of powers that can occur naturally in a world. Riggs’ peculiars normally do not have the typical superpower one would invent for a fantasy series; his characters have powers such as: the ability to “eat” light, divining doors, can pull nightmares from a dreaming person’s head as if it were string, a half fish-half human family, a little girl who weigh as light as air and is always in a state of floating so she must wear lead shows all the time, a monster mouth on the back of a little girl’s head, and the ability to store and control bees within a little boy’s stomach to name a few. The monsters he created are also indescribable. Whenever I picture them, my Hufflepuff mind wants to gag. In a nutshell, the powers he creates are weird and the premise for the places he invents are dark, deep, and just…weird. But also unique, creative, detailed…interesting. Basically, his entire series, just like his characters, are, in my opinion, peculiar.

   3) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Genre: Classical Romance, Dark Thriller)

   I tried to include at least one book written by a woman and at least one classical book to each of the recommendations. This one fits both requirements. It also fits the requirement for complicated plots, dark undertones, and morally questionable yet complex characters that appeal to most Slytherins.

   The complexity and complete audacity of all of the main characters makes me want to bring them to the real world, smack them for being so stupid, and then put them back in their book so that I only have deal with them in my mind, whenever I choose to. But then again, personalities that ridiculous, self-serving, and passionate in the worst way do not appeal to me. I described the type of people I admire to an extent in the post about Hufflepuff readers. However, I do enjoy this book, as do I enjoy all of the books written by the rest of the Bronte sisters (I even own and enjoy biographies written about the Bronte family, despite them having basically bland lives). These women were beautiful writers. They were also defying the derogatorily designated prowess of women, so thought until recently. These three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, were some of the best literary geniuses of their times; as was Jane Austen, Anne Radcliffe, “George Eliot”, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley (Mary Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and a bookbinder, also the wife of scoundrel Percy Shelley, and not-really-friend of Lord Bryon, another scoundrel).

   The person of Emily Bronte was secretly intensely passionate. She must have had the ability to hide within herself the great capacity to feel the strong emotions that arose within her soul. Then, she poured all of that passion into the only book she’d write in her life. The characters and plot of Wuthering Heights are stressful, manipulative, deeply passionate, cunning, and ambitious to a fault.

   Classic Slytherin.

   4) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Genre: Young Adult Thriller)

   Let me start off this part by saying I thought that The Hunger Games series were extremely well-written and enticing. I read the first book and then bought the next two the day after. However, I eventually gave those books to a friend. Not because I didn’t enjoy them, I really did, but because the premise of the books makes me sick. I have barely seen the movies either. I just cannot stomach the thought of killing children!! or anyone!! for spectate!!, turning children into murderers, and the overall creativity and abandon of killing that Collins disperses throughout these series. I mean, the way she kills each of the characters, picks them off one by one, without warning, the clever way she designs each death throughout the entire series leaves me feeling sick. I just can’t stomach such conflict, darkness, morbidity, such death. I’ll tolerate and even write a paper on macabre stories such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or A Modern Prometheus or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but I have trouble with this series. Slytherins, take that as your recommendation.

   ¡Fin!

   So, there you have it! I hope you’ve enjoy perusing through some of the books in my library as much as I have. Rather you’re a fellow Harry Potter acolyte or not, it’s never wrong to take a friendly suggestion as to what book you should read next. I love recommendations! (As long as you can accurately explain why I should read the book so I can discern for myself, hence why I get so descriptive about each one.)

   Don’t forget to keep reading!

   Love,

   Lacie 🙂