Just started reading the second installment of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, and I’m looking forward to April 30, 6pm, when Soman Chainini will be at the Harvard Coop to talk about his book. He will be in conversation with Gregory Maguire, and I will introduce and “moderate” the conversation.
I love the playlist for the first volume, which reminds me how much fun he is having with the trilogy.
The School for Good and Evil Reading Playlist by Soman Chainani
One of my goals in writing The School for Good and Evil was to give the book new energy from chapter to chapter, so you never feel like you’re in the same place twice. For each of the 30 chapters, I’d pick a book (sometimes a piece of music or an article) that I remembered loving as a child or adolescent and obsessively reread it until I put the chapter to bed. None of the books had explicit links to The School for Good and Evil — in fact, most of them aren’t even fantasy. But in the end, I realized I had a ‘playlist’ to my own imagination, at once light and dark, good and evil.
Compiled between April 2011 through March 2012
1. The Princess & The Witch
Mary Poppins, P.L Travers.
2. The Art of Kidnapping
Peter Pan, JM Barrie
Music Video: “Oh, Father” (Madonna, Like a Prayer)
3. The Great Mistake
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
4. The Three Witches of Room 66
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
The Steampunk Bible, Jeff Vandermeer
5. Boys Ruin Everything
Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice
6. Definitely Evil
The Witches, Roald Dahl
7. Grand High Witch Ultimate
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
8. Wish Fish
9. 100% Evil
The Magician King, Lev Grossman
10. Bad Group
The Hobbit, JR Tolkien
11. The School Master’s Riddle
The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
12. Dead Ends
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
TV: Downton Abbey, Season 1
13. Doom Room
14. The Crypt Keeper’s Solution
Room with a View, EM Forster
15. Choose Your Coffin
16. Cupid Goes Rogue
Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, John Berendt
17. The Empress’ New Clothes
18. The Roach and the Fox
Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis
Auntie Mame Around the World, Patrick Dennis
Madonna Style, Carol Clerk
Music Video: “Express Yourself,” Madonna
“Viva Donatella,” Lauren Collins. New Yorker. 9.24.07
19. I Have a Prince
Lord of the Flies, Wiliam Golding
20. Secrets and Lies
21. Trial by Tale
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
22. Nemesis Dreams
The Secret History, Donna Tart
Music Video: “Bedtime Story,” Madonna (Bedtime Stories)
23. Magic in the Mirror
The Line of Beauty, Allan Hollingshurst
24. Hope in the Toilet
25. Symptoms
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
TV: Downton Abbey, Season 2
26. The Circus of Talents
27. Promises Unkept
Blindness, Jose Saramago
Music Video: “Frozen,” Madonna (Ray of Light)
28. The Witch of Woods Beyond
The Crucible, Arthur Miller
Music Video: “What It Feels Like For a Girl,” Madonna (Music)
29. Beautiful Evil
30. Never After
The Alienist, Caleb Carr
Music Video: “Falling Free,” Madonna (MDNA)