#classic lit recs

[therealrichardpapen]

Can I have some classic lit recs…make me feel like Henry please <3

Oh, this would be my pleasure, my dear friend!

Caligula by Albert Camus (It's a play about Caligula)

Oresteia by Aeschylus

Cicero

Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare. Coriolanus speaks about men's hubris and how pridefullness brings your downfall, while Titus Andronicus, well, I'll let you discover it by yourself:))

Marcus Aurelius, amazing works regarding stoicism

Seneca, letters to Lucilius, another great stoic

Petrarca's letters to classical authors

Ovid, the roman writer exiled by Augustus to the Black Sea, at Tomis, part of the Kingdom of Thrace (now Constanța, Romania), where he kept writing.

Bacchae by Euripides

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (a nobel awarded historical fiction about the life in Nero's Rome, written by a Polish writer)

Sappho, but I suggest finding a good translation with footnotes as her works have been barely maintained, and some of her poems are literally one word long.

Beyond good and evil by Nietzsche

Crime and Punishment by Dostoievsky (I won't add more as I recently conducted a full ass campaign here on how and why this book is worth it)

E.M. Cioran, A short history of decay, The demiurge, The troubles with being born. He is a bit of a nihilist. Romanian philosopher that wrote mostly in French

Machiavelli, The prince. This should be a good introduction into Machiavellism

The sacred and profane by M. Eliade is also worth a try

I believe there's no point in mentioning the Iliad and the Odyssey since everybody knows them by now. Hope you'll have fun!

Updated ~ with memes

Upon finishing my first year of uni and starting the second, there are more titles that could be added to the list:

The symposium by Plato (the og talk about the Androgynous, love. Beloved Alcibiades)

The Frogs by Aristophanes (comedy mostly)

Daphnis and Chloe by Longus (amazing, full of symbols short novella on the bucolic world of ancient Greece)

Dante. If you genuinely want trauma and pain and to be lost in documents trying to understand Dante's times/politics of Florence, do try it. Its full of religious substrata due to the century Dante lived in. If you want a counter, ridiculing the medieval mindset of "god is everything", I recommend The Decameron since Boccaccio takes it all and creates funny, unhinged and decadent stories.

Voltaire's Candide or The Optimist is more of a philosophical work, Voltaire being clearly influenced by the illuminist current. (Not specifically something henry would read, but it would definitely make you feel closer to the TSH aesthetic)

Russian lit. Again, not Henry vibe exactly, but deep enough and very insane vibes. Crime and Punishment if you want yearning, self guilt and inner struggles.

Gogol's Overcoat and The Nose if you want some Russian surrealism.

[owlyjules]

Hi! Sorry if you've been asked this before (or just don't want to say, because that's cool too), but I was wondering if you had any book or author recommendations you could give? :> Your art is always accompanied by such lyrical captions, and I was wondering what inspired them. Thank you for your time and all the gorgeous art you share! <3

Thank you so much!!

I just love creating little stories with each picture when i paint them! (Btw big thanks to my wife for helping me spellchecking and beta reading those since english is not my first language!)

For recs, a lot of the inspiration from fairytale books I read as a kid and some more recent influences but its really a little bit everywhere so its hard to pinpoint!

But heres a few of my favourites for this october mood!

The last Unicorn

Anything by emily caroll!

Tove Jansson

T kingfisher

The angels game by Carlos Ruiz Záfon

Hope you find one you like!:D

[nejjcollectsbooks]

thrifted and annotated copy of 'to the lighthouse' by virginia woolf.

so lovely, buying a book at the second-hand store and finding someone's annotations between the pages.

[dysphoresque]

“You mean I have a home to go to, as long as I don't go there?”

— James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

[melloreine]

EVERY SINGLE WEBSITE JUST RECOMMENDS THE SAME CLASSICAL QUEER LITERATURE. ITS ALWAYS DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, SHERLOCK HOLMES, OR THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY AND SOMETIMES SONG OF ACHILLES. IVE ALREADY READ MOST OF THEN AND THE REST ARE ON MY TBR!!! IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE?? THERE HAS TO BE 😭 edit: I also know of Carmilla but that’s about it as far as sapphic ones.. please tell me sapphic ones guys :(

[mayahigh]

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

[midnights-wish]

''Let me fly with you.''

Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar' (1963).

[worlds-of-ink-and-paper]

oh, you can't read a book if it doesn't have a lil bit of ✨spice✨????

well I can't read a book if it doesn't have a lil bit of ✨homoerotic subtext amidst victorian fears of plague and the mysterious disappearance of a ship's crew✨

[elysiumaze]

The room where she had spent so many afternoons glittered in the crescendo of an orchestra, silently, avenging itself for her distraction.

Clarice Lispector in, Near to the Wild Heart.

[shiveringfrogspawn]

florence + the machine’s bird song and edgar allan poe’s the telltale heart are written about the same guy who is Just Not Having a Great Day

[rileys-battlecats]

Favorite epic song???

Love ur art btw <33

hi i know this probably means my favorite song that i consider to be epic sounding BUT ive been bingeing EPIC the musical for the past few weeks so my brain instantly went to “just a man”

[nejjcollectsbooks]

thrifted & annotated copy of 'frankenstein' by mary shelley

whoever had bought this copy ended up dog earing it like a third of the way through so this was all the annotating/underlining they did. such a treat to open up a thrifted book and see the thoughts and words of another reader. It's incredibly endearing and makes me look forward to reading the book purely so I can look through their notes and compare my opinions and thoughts on the passages against theirs.

[keepingupwiththekaramazovs]

Okay, so I finally finished scheduling out all of the chapters, and as of right now, this read-along is scheduled to finish up toward the end of July! There are only 96 chapters in The Brothers Karamazov (I say only—I guess what I mean is "only" in comparison to like, Les Misérables) but I've paced them out to try to give us adequate time to discuss each chapter, and so that hopefully everyone is able to keep up around their other obligations. You are, of course, welcome to read ahead, and we even have a channel for that in the Discord!

The (very short) preface dropped yesterday, but the read-along officially kicks off with Chapter 1 next Monday. You're still welcome to come join us! The discord is shaping up to be a great place to hangout.

[can-of-w0rmz]

What are the most haunting classic lit books you’ve ever read?

I’m feeling silly and looking for some good good fucked up old gothic horror. Bonus points for anything related to childhood trauma

[starrynightsxo]

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES BOOK REVIEW

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Intriguing plot line, with various themes that were very interesting. One over-arching theme was that of women and women in society in general and there are particular parts in the book where Eugenides outlines some of the very real issues for women in regards to expectations of femininity.

(KIND OF SPOILERISH?)

Also, the consistent sexualisation of the Lisbon girls (particularly Lux) by "the boys" as they are so called is to be noted as the means in which Eugenides explores this is fascinating. The sexualisation feels almost normal at times and the observance of the boys would be actually quite commendable if it wasn't more creepy than not.

I feel as well, at the end, by the time most of the Lisbon girls are dead, the neighbourhood is desensistised to their suicides and perhaps suicides in general at this point, and this really resonated with me in how society is at the moment and how this most definitely needs to change!

To conclude, would 100% recommend, however some part did feel a little dragged out for me in the middle so it wasn't a full 5 stars but still very good :) and remember guys these are just my opinions so please do not come at me for them 🩷

[midnights-wish]

''He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.''

Osamu Dazai, 'No Longer Human' (1948).