Episode 2: The Lottery Scares Us

Our second episode (click here to listen!) focused on the horrors of Shirley Jackson's classic short story "The Lottery", a world where your friends and neighbors will happily stone you to death (with real stones!) so long as they're not the ones on the receiving end of said stones. 

Jackson is known for creating a claustrophobic sense of dread within her stories, often focusing on women whose sense of identity disintegrates, sometimes right out there in the daylight, or in otherwise perfectly ordinary circumstances.

I'm a huge fan of Jackson, as, if you've been listening, you know by now, and part of the fun of being a Jackson fan is collecting the variety of editions of her work.  Here's a sampling of the different covers in Shirley Jackson's oeuvre:  

The Popular Library editions, which are among my favorites, because the covers are so expressive, or in the case of The Bird's Nest, just so damned weird.

One of my holy grails, the original cover art for The Haunting of Hill House, my favorite of Jackson's novels, and probably my favorite novel of all time.

Amazing cover art for the first paperback edition of Jackson's final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  I'd love a poster of this someday.

And finally, speaking of The Lottery, here is the beautiful edition I finally acquired last summer.