#dark academia book recommendations

[punki-miltonia]

Ten Word Book Reviews: The Maidens

All the possibility, none taken; inauthentic, vapid; left wanting more

[stardustscripted]

[thebellekeys]

The Ultimate Dark Academia Book Recommendation Guide Ever

The title of this post is clickbait. I, unfortunately, have not read every book ever. Not all of these books are particularly “dark” either. However, these are my recommendations for your dark academia fix. The quality of each of these books varies. I have limited this list to books that are directly linked to the world of academia and/or which have a vaguely academic setting.

Dark Academia staples:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum

Vita Nostra by Maryna Dyachenko

Dark academia litfic or contemporary:

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

White Ivy by Susie Yang

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Attribution by Linda Moore

Dark academia thrillers or horror:

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Dark academia fantasy/sci-fi:

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

Dark academia romance:

Gothikana by RuNyx

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

Dark academia YA or MG:

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Crave by Tracy Wolff

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Dark academia miscellaneous:

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip

[thereviewverdict]

it's me, my 17 personalities, 228 playlists and 479 unread books against the world

[booklovers-hub]

The sluttiest thing a hero can do is showing up at the villain's doorstep while they're hurt and saying, "I didn't know where else to go."

[ambxtxo]

donna tartt’s reading list

In an interview, Tartt lists her favorite authors and the names of a few works. I have listed the most popular works from each author and the specific ones she recommended as well.

Homer

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Greek Poets and Tragedians

Argonautica

Antigone

Prometheus Bound

The Oresteia

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

The Frogs

Dante

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Shakespeare

“I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic”

Macbeth

Hamlet

Dickens

“Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Nabokov

Pale Fire

Lolita

Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Yeats

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth

Ethan Frome

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

Helena

Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Orlando

Edward St. Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Underworld

W.G. Sebald

Austerlitz

The Rings of Saturn

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The White Album

Other Specific Books

Memoirs d’Outre-Tome by Chateaubriand

Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski

A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq

[lovesdaya]

@lovesdaya

[clickityquacks]

Alignment chart of dark academia books, emphasis on the academia. I have read them all and this is my take on it all.

Is the novel a dark academia because it takes place in a school and there are a lot of "dark" themes or is it a dark academia because the atmosphere is grim and the characters are pursuing knowledge.

Also book recommendations, I think people would like the books that fall in the same quadrant.

Books under the read more.

Top Left: My favourite corner where I just want the author to flex their niche knowledge.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

If We Were Villains - M. L. Rio

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies - Heather Fawcett

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

The Raven Boys - Maggie Steifvater

The Secret History - Donna Tarte

Babel - R. F. Kuang

Bottom right: The intersection between lots of deaths and some niche knowledge. This one is a bit more hand wavey so here are some explanations.

Blood Over Bright Haven - M. L. Wang: Often compared to Babel but has way less niche knowledge and more transactional deaths.

Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir: This one is a sequel but the convoluted plot lives in my head rent free and it’s Dark (Goth) Academia.

Bunny - Mona Awad: Lots of allusion to literature and mythology. Also lots of dark, bunnies and swans.

Bottom Left: Takes place in a school that people are trying to survive.

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Vicious - V. E. Schwab

Legendborn - Tracy Deonn

Ace of Spades - Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

Deadly Education - Naomi Naovik

Top Left: Happens in a school and pretty light on death but has “dark” themes.

The River King - Alice Hoffman

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder - Holly Jackson

The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis

A Study in Drowning - Ava Reid

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

You Feel It Just Below the Ribs - Janina Matthewson and Jeffrey Cranor

[learnelle]

🏺Greek Mythology Book List 🏹

Circe - by Madeline Miller (By far the most recommended!)

The Song of Achilles - by Madeline Miller

Persephone - by Madeline Miller

Helen of Troy - by Margaret George

Stone Blind - by Natalie Haynes

A Thousand Ships - by Natalie Haynes

Lies We Sing to the Sea - by Sarah Underwood

Pandora - by Susan Stokes

The Maidens - by Alex Michaelides

Psyche and Eros - by Luna Mcnamara

Here, the World Entire - by Anwen Kya Hayward

Ariadne & Elektra - by Jennifer Saint

Neon Gods - by Katee Robert

The Penelopiad - by Margaret Atwood

thank you for contributing to the original post! @delienn @mofustudies @booksnpictures @love-margaret @thr3eguess3s @circeisreading @rayosvioleta @friendlyflor @athenaandzeus @notmumtoday @winryrockbellwannabe @wine-darktea @ben-learns-smth

[poppletonink]

Best Quotes From 'If We Were Villains'

"You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough."

"You can't quantify humanity. You can't measure it - not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them."

"I don't know, it's like I look at you and the sonnets make sense. The good ones, anyway."

"Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?" The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can't help but suppress a smile. "I blame him for all of it."

'She says, “Were you in love with him?” “Yes,” I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. “Yes, I was.” It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.'

'I need language to live like food - lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.'

'Below was the motto: Per aspera ad astra. I'd heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns to the stars.'

"We cracked up. [...] But we didn't really shatter until we were all back together again."

'The clock on the mantel struck twelve, and we stirred, one by one, like seven statues coming to life.'

'Actors are by nature volatile - alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.'

[nejjcollectsbooks]

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

― Jeanette Winterson

[moonlight-s0nata]

| A thousand splendid suns, Khaled Hosseini

[ariasmontage]

something for the mind, something for the body

[thereviewverdict]

Despite all my saddened rage, I am still a girl in her room reading her silly little books, watching her silly little films, listening to her silly little playlists.

[literatureaesthetic]

to anyone wanting to read about palestine / israel, i highly recommend mornings in jenin by susan abulhawa. i wrote my dissertation on this book. it has so many layers, it's so complex, and it's a really good novel if you're looking to develop a better understanding of the history between palestine and israel

[thebellekeys]

Recommendations for media about translation, interpreting, and foreign languages

Movies and TV

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) The Interpreter (2005) The Last Stage (1948)

Books

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri The Interpreter by Suki Kim Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok Translation Nation by Héctor Tobar Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip Translation State by Ann Leckie

Other Important Topics and Subjects

La Malinche The Rosetta Stone The Tower of Babel The Adamic Language Esperanto Philology Goethean World Literature

Documentaries and History

The Interpreters: A Historical Perspective The Nuremberg Trials Biblical Translation St. Jerome - patron saint of translators Shu-ilishu's Seal (first depiction of an interpreter)