By now you know that my tastes in media lean towards the dark and weird, so you'll understand why I'm excited to share this list from The Strategist: it's all about CULTS. Check it out:

The Best Books on Cults, for These Cult-Obsessed Times

I figure today's a good day to share it, since it's the official start of summer and now's the time to build your summer reading list if you haven't already. Join me in choosing a book or podcast that scares away everyone else at the beach! (JK, I live in New York City, where the beaches are too hard to get to and/or too gross. I'll be reading/listening on the subway.)

There's a lot on this list I've never heard of, and some books that even sound a little too dark for me (yikes, Not Without My Sister), but I have read/listened to these:

Manson: The Life and Times of Charles - I like how in-depth this gets, and how Jeff Guinn considers the perfectly-timed cultural storm that helped make Manson seem acceptable to so many people.

The Girls - Even though it's fiction, it borrows heavily from facts about the Manson family and drops you right into the mind of a neglected and impressionable teenager. Bonus: short chapters for easy subway reading.

Heaven's Gate - Excellent podcast that dissects the Heaven's Gate followers as real people who believed they found salvation instead of just crazy people with matching Nikes.

Have you read/watched/listened to anything else from that list that you recommend I read? Tell me all about it!

Happy summer, fellow weirdos!