You "win" the Lottery! Aka ADVERTISING FAIL

[insanepurin]

There's a short story I read called "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, which I loved. Naturally, I got curious about what else she's written, ready to get my hands on more psychological creepy stuff. So I found "The Lottery", a collection of short stories she's written. Here's what the back of the book says:

"The Lottery," one of the most terrifying

Comments

[gairid]

I am a fan of Shirley Jackson's writing, but I can understand being less than interested in some of her short stories. They fascinate me for some reason, probably because I'm one of those people that is interested in the minutiae of the past, especially the more immediate past.

That said, if you like The Lottery I can't rec The Haunting of Hill House highly enough: it remains very high in the pantheon of works that I've read many times over since I first read it my dark, dimly recalled high school years. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is also good, yet somehow less memorable to me that Haunting. Both of them are good horror novels, both psychological and straight-on scary.

Jackson also has two books (Raising Demons and Life Among The Savages) that were originally written as a series of articles for a women's magazine (I don't recall which) in the early fifties. These collected stories make up two pretty decently threaded books--they're all about raising her family and they are hilariously, laugh out lout funny, though I suppose YMMV. In my case, the stories take place only a bit before my own childhood, so some of the situations, slang, and the like resonate pretty strongly with me.