Nevanna's Forest of Stories

These are five of the books or series that were foundational to my mind control obsession.

1. The Witch Herself (1978) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

The subject line of this post is from a song that recurs throughout Naylor’s “Witch” books.

I discussed this series last year, during Spooky Season, but I chose to single out this particular book (the third out of six) because it’s the one in which protagonist Lynn’s best friend, Mouse, declares her intention to be a hypnotist. After minimal study, she can put people in trances, control their actions, and access repressed memories. She also communicates with Lynn’s internal shadow self; it’s suggested that everybody has one, and that some witches - as well as an amateur hypnotist, apparently - can control these aspects of their victims by learning their secret names. (That part was, for better or for worse, also tremendously fascinating to me as a young reader.)

Mouse’s hypnotism is not part of the latter three books, in a series that is generally very smart about continuity and callbacks. The possible Watsonian reason is that she’s understandably frightened of her own power, but to the best of my recollection, it’s never even mentioned again.

2. The Ghastly Glasses (1985) by Beatrice Gormley

A psychic researcher posing as an optometrist gives young Andrea a pair of glasses that allows her to change people’s personalities when she looks through them.

This book is the sequel to Mail-Order Wings, which I haven’t read, but works pretty well as a stand-alone. It has a solid “be careful what you wish for” message and a very funny ending that would probably please cat lovers. I remember stealing one of its plot threads (minus the glasses) for my own long-ago attempt at a Psychic Kid story, about which I can unfortunately remember very little now.

3. Animorphs (1996-2001) by K.A. Applegate

Most of my peers probably at least know the hook for this series (written by spouses Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, along with a team of ghostwriters): five kids are given the power to transform into animals in order to fight an invasion by parasitic mind-controlling aliens. Although I never actually finished reading all the books, they were overwhelmingly formative for me while I was following them, and the horror of Yeerk infestation – both from the inside, when it happens to the team leader at one point, and from the outside – was a huge part of the reason why.

4. Extreme Zone (1997-1998) by M.C. Sumner

When her father’s secret scientific research leads to his disappearance from the military base where they live, Harley teams up with Noah, a classmate suffering from nightmares of what might be an alien abduction, to investigate.

There are satisfying amounts of mind control in this series, but it also contains: conspiracies, astral projection, interdimensional travel, clairvoyant visions, cults, shapeshifting, genetic engineering and other forms of Weird Science, and lots of questions that – even though the story seems to come to some sort of conclusion in its eight-book run – are never really resolved. Given the time frame of its publication, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly inspired by The X-Files. And unlike Animorphs, which is a generation-defining phenomenon, I have never met another person who’s read Extreme Zone. It doesn’t fall into the category of “do I remember reading this or did I hallucinate it?” that happens sometimes with childhood favorites – you can find and buy copies online, and I held onto my own collection – but some elements of the story, which are both surreal and specific, as well as its relative obscurity and the fact that I was only ever able to find most of the books exclusively at one independent bookstore in upstate New York, make me feel like a lot of adults probably do when processing those half-formed memories of nostalgic media.

5. Daughters of the Moon (2000-2007) by Lynne Ewing

Four (later, five) teenage girls use their supernatural powers to fight a demon and its human (and not-quite-human) thralls.

As a teenager, I already recognized that these books were kind of awkwardly written, not to mention morally uneven when it came to excusable applications of mind control (it was okay when the good guys did it!), and I didn’t care. As I wrote on Tumblr some years ago, the series scratched my itch for sensual descriptions of psychic contact as well as an enemies-to-lovers romance with a tormented immortal bad boy. Even then, I knew what I liked.

I’ve been thinking about fictional depictions of Grim Futures lately, for absolutely no reason at all, why do you ask? Here are five pieces of dystopian fiction that made an impression on me when I was younger (long before The Hunger Games or the subsequent “YA dystopia boom”).

( How post-apocalyptic! )

Have you read any of these books? Did any fictional visions of a Grim Future make an impression on you when you were younger?

flo_nelja asked about my top five nonfiction books. I admit that I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction, and most of my recent favorites in the latter category are either a) analyses of literature or pop culture, or b) memoirs by survivors of cults or cult-like environments. Here are some examples from the past few years.

1. Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss (2018)

I’m grateful for a text that recognizes mass-market series as having equal cultural importance to Newbery Medal winners, while also acknowledging some of the long-standing biases inherent to writing and publishing for young people. The book is beautifully laid out and packaged, too.

2. Slonim Woods 9 by Daniel Barban Levin (2021)

Levin’s recollection of how a friend’s father manipulated his reality, and that of several other college students, is bizarre and horrifying, but allows the reader to understand how a charismatic authority figure can build a cult that is just as dangerous as a group with the scope and resources of a Peoples Temple or a Scientology. (I can’t remember whether or not I first heard this story from one of the bloggers who covered Andy Blake’s activities, but there are some similarities between the two.)

3. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Impostor Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson (2022)

To jump from true accounts to accounts of the questionably true…

Go Ask Alice, first published in 1971 and marketed as the writing of a real teenager who lost her life to drugs, was the first in a long line of sensationalist “diaries” of at-risk youth. By 2022, it was no secret that Beatrice Sparks, who supposedly discovered and edited these diaries, actually fabricated them all, either partially or entirely. Emerson’s book, which examines the culture that allowed titles like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal to gain popularity and influence, combines several of my interests: hoaxes, moral panics, and trends in young adult literature. It’s a remarkably engaging read, if an occasionally upsetting one. (Although most of the events in Jay's Journal were very likely Sparks' own creation, the central figure actually is based on a real teenager who took his own life, and while I think that Emerson's descriptions of that tragedy and its aftermath are tasteful, they are also intimate and emotionally harrowing.)

4. Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson (2023)

Multilevel marketing schemes fascinate me for a lot of the same reasons that cults do. Paulson’s reflection on her ascendancy through the ranks of Rejuvinat (the name that she invented for the real MLM company that employed her) exposes the predatory nature of an industry whose promises of success, self-fulfilment, and belonging seem too good to be true because they actually are.

5. Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me by Aisha Harris (2023)

“Ebony and Ivory” (which unpacks the “Black Friend” archetype in media) and “This Is The IP That Never Ends” (which is about Hollywood’s obsession with sequels, remakes, and reboots) are my favorite essays in this collection, but all of them are funny and insightful.

Honorable Mention: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (2000)

I haven’t revisited this writing guide in years, and I don’t know if I’d recommend it now, but it meant a lot to me as a teenage writer who couldn’t get enough of King’s fiction. I liked seeing one of my favorite authors (at the time) break down his process, and the line “What writing is… telepathy, of course” tickled me so much that I used it as a summer camp yearbook quote.

I recently read Spells To Forget Us, a YA contemporary fantasy about a young witch and her non-magical girlfriend who have to deal with the consequences of a memory-erasure spell gone wrong. If you like time-loop stories or the neighborhood resets in The Good Place, you might like this book. I did not love it as much as I wanted to, but that’s primarily because it didn’t give me the story that I hoped for when I picked it up, not because there’s necessarily anything wrong with the story itself. I truly hope that this title finds its audience, even if – for reasons including but not limited to my age – I am not it.

( Spoilers and creative self-reflection )

I expanded on the ways that my teenage obsession with Stephen King (which I shared with a close friend) informed a lot of the fanfic that I was writing at the time.

I've already written about vampire books that I loved, so here is my list of formative books about witches.

1. The House With a Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs (1973)

Orphaned Lewis and his eccentric magician uncle discover that their house is linked to a horrifying scheme from beyond the grave, and team up with their neighbor – a powerful but kind witch who loves purple and bakes delicious chocolate-chip cookies – to thwart a magical plan to destroy the world.

I first read this book in third grade, and I still recommend it to young readers to this day. The atmosphere, the dialogue, and the suspense all work together perfectly, and I love that a bookish, awkward, overweight misfit gets to be the hero without losing any of the traits that make him who he is. (The two sequels, in which Lewis’s friend Rose Rita plays a more prominent role, are also wonderful.)

2. Wise Child by Monica Furlong (1987)

With both of her parents absent and with no other family to care for her, Wise Child is adopted by Juniper, whom their medieval Scottish village regards as a healer, wise-woman, and possibly even a witch. (Later, we find out that Juniper uses the word “doran” to describe herself and those like her.) Both of their lives change for the better until Wise Child’s birth mother starts using her own magic to intimidate them, and the superstitious villagers blame Juniper for a local illness, forcing both her and Wise Child to flee their home.

As I told a friend recently, “This is the book for those of us who mixed up potions in our backyards.” It absolutely is that, but it’s also a powerful coming-of-age story about the dangers of mob mentality and the value of choosing one’s own family, with a conception of magic that is somehow both mysterious and matter-of-fact at the same time.

3. The Witch’s Eye by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1990)

Lynn is trying to make sense of the events that led to her mysterious neighbor’s death in a house fire, but when she finds Mrs. Tuggle’s glass eye in the ruins of the house next door, she suspects that the old woman still holds some kind of influence over her family.

Although this is the fourth installment of a six-book series, I actually read it first (I read a lot of series out of order when I was younger). I’m hesitant now to recommend any of the books without qualifications, since it takes the “eccentric old lady is definitely using sinister magic” stereotype, which has historically caused real harm to real people, and plays it completely straight. Still, Lynn’s physical and psychological transformations, as she tries and fails to get rid of the eye, are very unsettling, and I can’t entirely dismiss a book whose climax scared me so much that I asked one of my own friends to hide the book for me so that it didn’t have to stay in my house.

4. The Sweep series by Cate Tiernan (2001-2003)

An alluring new classmate introduces Morgan and her friends to Wicca, leading Morgan to discover secrets about her own past and hidden powers.

I’ve developed mixed feelings about this series, too, because of its narrative emphasis on Chosen Ones and Special Magical Bloodlines, but devoured the books when I was in high school, even though they portrayed a spirituality in which I didn’t participate. I reread a couple of them around the time that I had the idea for this post, and appreciated that even after Morgan finds out that she’s descended from one of those Special Magical Bloodlines, she doesn’t consider her adoptive parents and sister to be any less her family. I was also happy to see positive queer supporting characters – both witches and not – in a series published in the early 2000s.

I would love to read, or perhaps write, an analysis of how Sweep fits into the supernatural teen soap opera subgenre. (It was published while Buffy and Charmed were still on the air, but predates Twilight, though it does contain some of the tropes that made that series and its imitators famous.)

5. The Tiffany Aching Series by Terry Pratchett (2003-2015)

In the region of Discworld known as the Chalk, Tiffany encounters fairies, elemental spirits, the ferocious but loyal Wee Free Men, and other friendly and not-so-friendly magical creatures, in her quest to become a witch.

True confession: I’ve tried a few other Discworld novels, partially or from beginning to end, and I didn’t love them (though, based on everything that I’ve heard, I understand why people do!). I don’t know what it says about me that this middle grade/YA series, which I discovered as an adult, works for me while the adult-marketed titles don’t. I do know that there’s still a lot to love about the Tiffany books in particular: their humor, originality, excellent character development, and insights into the fantasy genre and human nature. Although the setting and tone are very different from Wise Child, Pratchett’s exploration of a witch’s responsibilities reminded me a lot of the purpose that Juniper and Wise Child tried to serve in their own village. And, of course, the Wee Free Men are delightful in every one of their appearances. Crivens!

Have you read any of these books? What are some of your favorite witchy tales?

I shared a piece of fanart that I created for Charles de Lint's Newford series, and some reflections on why his books were and are special to me.

Since a new academic year approaches (at least in the United States), I’m focusing this week on my favorite campus novels that we could, if we want, consider “dark academia.”

1. Victoria by Barbara Brooks Wallace (1972): Eccentric and prickly Victoria, her timid sidekick Dilys, and their two roommates form an occult-leaning secret society to ward off “evil forces” at their boarding school, guided by the instructions in the Black Book that Victoria carries everywhere.

I first picked up this book (which, to the best of my knowledge, is out of print now) from my older sister’s bookshelf when I was around the same age as the characters, and – based on the back-cover blurb and Dilys’s impressionable narration – wasn’t sure at first whether or not anything supernatural was actually happening. I think that this sort of genre ambiguity can be either a feature or a bug, but the complex, sometimes hostile, sometimes loyal relationships among the tween girls are what really make the story memorable, and speaking as a former Weird Little Girl who formed secret and vaguely occult-leaning alliances with friends and classmates, that aspect of the still book resonates with me.

2. Down A Dark Hall by Lois Duncan (1974): Fourteen-year-old Kit senses at a first glance that the Blackwood School is an “evil” place, and it’s certainly odd that only three other students are enrolled. Still, she and her new friend Sandy, along with the rigorously logical Ruth and the beautiful and dreamy Lynda, soon settle into their new routine, until strange incidents of sleepwalking and the emergence of inexplicable new artistic talents convince Kit that something is very wrong at Blackwood after all.

I could write so many words about Lois Duncan, one of the queens of young adult suspense, whose books I read and reread countless times in junior high and high school. I think Down A Dark Hall is definitely the strongest in terms of atmosphere; it blends one of her pet subjects – psychically gifted young people – with the Gothic trope of the forbidding, isolated house with a sordid history; and it evokes the psychological uneasiness and eventual terror that can arise when teenagers are at the mercy of adults who want to use them. (I wasn’t particularly impressed with the 2018 movie adaptation, which doesn’t spend nearly enough time with the students to make the audience care about them; it would probably have worked better as a miniseries.)

3. Tam Lin by Pamela Dean (1991): This is a retelling of the Scottish ballad of the same name, set at a Midwestern liberal arts college where the cultlike Classics department rides through the night on horseback, ghosts fling books out of dormitory windows, and our heroine must navigate classes, friendship, and romance amidst the scheming of otherworldly beings. This book doesn’t ultimately leave much doubt as to whether the supernatural elements are present, but they don’t become overt until close to the end. Meanwhile, readers spend most of their time exploring the beautifully described campus and intellectually rewarding classes with Janet and her brilliant, loyal (if sometimes bewildering) friends. In its depiction of the college experience, Dean’s novel is unquestionably aspirational, but as someone who first read it when I was looking forward to my college years, and have reread it several times since looking back, I’ve never found that aspect of it to be twee or grating. Also, as in the original ballad, the girl rescues the boy, and their slow-burn romance has some nicely swoony moments, but I appreciate the portrayal of the friend group, their interpersonal struggles, and their shared love of books, even more.

4. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992): One of the foundational texts of dark academia is, in fact, another book about cultlike Classics scholars, though this one is very different in its intent and tone than Tam Lin. “Pretentious students murder a classmate and most of them get away with it” is not a spoiler (it’s revealed in the first few pages), and only partially conveys the experience of reading the book (which posts like this one also try to capture), but I certainly wouldn’t blame any reader for being unwilling or unable to buy into that premise. I bought into it to a degree that I can partially blame on circumstance, since I attended the college that was the basis for The Secret History’s setting, and read it on winter break while trying to decide whether I wanted to return. That said, I still find the story to be extremely re-readable even though I would probably not want to hang out with any of the characters at any point in my life.

5. All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters (2023): When Tara is unexpectedly invited to her college's exclusive academic society, she finds new friends and support for her dream of becoming a writer, but soon discovers what she was really signing up for when she took an oath to be a “vessel for genius.”

The only recently published entry on this list – which makes it the only one to be published after the Internet codified “dark academia” as an Aesthetic and a Brand – shares some noticeable thematic elements with the Duncan and Tartt novels mentioned above, and directly references the latter at least once or twice. If you prefer a more diverse cast and the emergence of a found family in your tales of ghosts, ominous scribblings in notebooks, and secret societies with their arcane rituals and sketchy academic mentors, then Waters’ book is a good choice.

In alphabetical order, here are my top five independent bookstores in the Boston area.

1. All She Wrote Books (Somerville)

2. Brattle Book Shop (Boston)

3. Brookline Booksmith (Brookline)

4. Harvard Book Store (Cambridge)*

5. Porter Square Books (Cambridge)

*Love the store; don't love the ownership so much. Click here to find out more about the workers' union and what they're fighting for!

Since I support This Week in Fandom History on Patreon, I have access to their behind-the-scenes episodes, which are less focused on a particular topic than the ones in the main show, and often consist of the hosts nerding out about whatever strikes their fancy. (I usually dislike extensive tangents in other podcasts, but I'm okay with unfocused rambling if I know it's what I signed up for.) Sometimes they talk about books that were popular during their formative years, which were also my formative years. And if I had a nickel for every time Emily and V mentioned an installment of a YA pulp series that I needed to seek out immediately because it featured some form of mind control, despite never having read the series as a Youth, I would have two nickels. Which is not a lot of money but it's weird awesome that it happened twice.

The first one is Murder in Paradise, a Sweet Valley High Super Thriller, in which the Wakefield twins, their mom, and their best friends take a vacation at a spa, whose owner has a sinister agenda that involves plastic surgery and (most relevant to my interests) hypnotism. I was able to find a copy on the Internet Archive.

The second one is The Nancy Drew Files #80, Power of Suggestion, in which (I am led to understand) a supporting character gets involved in college psychology experiments that essentially turn him into a brainwashed sleeper agent. This one is proving a little bit harder to track down; it seems like my options at this point are Interlibrary Loan, ThriftBooks, or a used bookstore quest (the last of which can be extremely enjoyable in its own right).

But, when I was talking about this with Elle, I said something about mind control melodrama in The Baby-Sitters Club (which I did read when I was younger), and we somehow generated a fanfiction premise in which Claudia's sister, Janine, who canonically takes college courses despite being eternally in high school, becomes a brainwashed sleeper agent through some campus research project. We decided that her trigger was a math equation, and didn't speculate much further than that, but I am very tempted to write this fic now. (Since the original podcast conversation kept referencing the Winter Soldier, I keep wanting to call this a "crossover," but it doesn't necessarily have to be one.)