Dante for Halloween

So I finished up Curt Ander’s one-volume history of the Civil War. Not going to review it. It was good, good enough for a solid B from the Hopper. Felt like it was skipping over things. Or, the visual I had reading it: I was only seeing the peaks of a mountain range whose lower scarps and valleys were obscured by low-lying clouds.

Now – it’s Halloween-time, and every Halloween-time I like to read something spooky, scary, and/or chilling (yes, each of those adjectives means different things to me … perhaps a follow-up post to, uh, follow). I posted some choices a few days ago, but none really felt like this year’s IT.

Last night I picked up Colin Wilson’s Spider World off the book shelf. Bought it way back in January, never cracked it. Surely a world where mankind struggles for very survival against SUV-sized death spiders – out of any Halloween book ever possibly written – this was the thing to read this week.

However …

And it’s a big however …

I read the first 15 pages and was revolted by two scenes of disgusting violence, both of which implied children present and acted upon.

Not my cup of tea, not now. Things have changed for me since I became a father, and the death of children is not something I want to read about.

It goes back on the shelf for another year or two.

I have been itching to read something religious and spiritual lately. Why not combine that with Halloween? I enjoyed the gothic-ness of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Immediately Dante’s Inferno came to mind. Although I posted about it tongue-in-cheek last week, why not? I did read half the work a dozen years ago, but this version I had – a small paperback with user-friendly notes and summaries for each Canto – has been crying out for me to read ever since I bought it two-and-a-half years ago.

So I plan to journey with Dante and Virgil into the spiraling pit of Hell over the next week or ten days.

It’ll be a lot less traumatic than freaking out the next time I see a daddy long-legs. Plus it might get me back in the Confessional.