Great Classic Books Under 200 Pages

Great classic Books under 200 pages

1. The turn of the screw by Henry James (108 pages)

One of the must read gothic horror tales: The story begins when a governess arrives at an English country estate to look two young children, Miles and Flora. At first, everything appears normal then one night a ghost appears before the governess.

2. Letters to a young poet by Rilke (80 pages)

A must read for everyone who loves poetry and writing: In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke, replied to the novice in this series of letters

3. The Aleph and other stories by Borges (200 pages)

A great collectio of magical storys full of phlosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises: "The Aleph is a point in space that contains all other points. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously, without distortion, overlapping, or confusion."

4. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (180 pages)

Hunger has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of psychology-driven literature. Set in late 19th-century Kristiania, the novel recounts the adventures of a starving young man whose sense of reality is slowly fading away.

5. The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann (40 pages)

A classic short story for every gothic horror lover. Read it and be prepared to get your mind blown.

6. Chess Story by Stefan Zweig (120 pages)

Driven to mental anguish as the result of total isolation by the Nazis, Dr B, a securities expert hiding valuable assets of the nobility from the new regime, maintains his sanity only through the theft of a book of past masters' chess games which he plays endlessly, voraciously learning each one until they overwhelm his imagination to such an extent that he becomes consumed by chess. Chess Story is Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942.

7. Bartleby, the scrivener by Herman Melville (70 pages)

Another great short story that will really make you think about capitalism and a man's free will: Set in the mid-19th century on New York City's Wall Street, it is, perhaps, Herman Melville's most prescient story: what if a young man caught up in the rat race of commerce and overworking finally just said, "I would prefer not to"?

8. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (160 pages)

This haunting and controversial novel is Baldwin's most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses: After proposing to a young woman, he falls into an affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

9. The Stranger by Albert Camus (123 pages)

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

10. We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson (160 pages)

Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone. 'Her greatest book ... ... the deeper we sink, the deeper we want to go' - Donna Tartt

Booklist for all the Dark Academics:

[Dark Academia book recs of all the different kinds I could think of. It's a long journey. Buckle up.]

The Classic Dark Academic :

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Anything by the Brontë sisters

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (this book birthed Dark Academia)

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Bram Stokers Dracula

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

Maurice by EM Forster

Madam Bovary by Gustav Flaubert

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A Good Man is Hard to Find

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Macbeth by Shakespeare

Othello by Shakespeare

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The Poetry-lover Academic:

Poetry of Baudelaire

Odes of Keats (ALL OF THEM ARE A MUST READ)

Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (especially The Raven)

Shelley's Alastor, Prometheus Unbound, Masque of Anarchy

Kubla Khan by Coleridge

T.S Elliott's Wasteland

all Emily Dickinson poetry but especially 'I felt a funeral in my brain', 'Because I could not stop for death' (read them a thousand times already)

Pablo Neruda's Nothing but Death

Langston Hughes

Tennyson's Lotos eater (underrated gem)

Sylvia Plath poems but special mentions to Lady Lazarus and the Bell jar

Paradise Lost by Milton (if you want to include something about the Devil in your list)

Poems by Sappho

The Contemporary Dark Academic:

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (the origin of Dark Academia)

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Ace of Spades by Amanda Foody (could recommend it a hundred times)

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

If We Were Villains by ML Rio

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Girls are all so nice here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

The Likeness by Tana French

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

One of us is lying by Karen Mcmanus

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Plot by Jean Hanff

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Conversion by Katherine Howe

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Quaint and Curious Volume

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Lying Games by Ruth Ware

Black Chalk by Christopher J Yates

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt

The Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Bad Habits by Charleigh Rose

Good Girls Lie by JT Ellison

Queer Dark Academic:

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (yes, yes, yes it's the gay shit)

Notes on a Scandal (What was she thinking?) by Zoë Heller

Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (lesbian vampire, hell yeah!)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Maurice by EM Forster

Christabel by Coleridge

Poems by Sappho

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Ace of Spades by Amanda Foody

The Dark Romantic Academic:

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Likeness by Tana French

The Temple House by Rachel Donohue

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Mythological Dark Academic:

(pardon me for my cluelessness)

I have not really read much about mythology but if Norse mythology is the area of your interest, Neil Gaiman is the God of it. (aka not only Good Omens and American Gods, but also the book 'Norse Mythology')

The Furies by Fernanda Eberstadt

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

[Remember: Some of these books have dark academia as their major aspect but most of them have dark academia as their minor aspect, and many of them have been put into the list because I got a dark academia kind of vibe from them. This list is entirely created out of my own reading researches, friendly recommendations, and book recs from reddit, pinterest and the internet in general. If I have gone wrong somewhere or if you want me to add something new, feel free to drop an ask.]

Most underrated movies of the last decade

1. Filth (2013)

One of the greatest movies of the last decade, maybe McAvoy's best performance ever: A tragic, funny, absolutely unapologetic movie about the downfall of a scottish police officer.

2. Swiss Army Man (2016)

I promise that you have never seen a movie like this before. It is absolutely strange, macabre and loaded with dark humor: a man stranded on a deserted island tries to keep his sanity by talking to a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe).

3. Rush (2013)

Rush is a 2013 biographical sports film centred on rivalry between two Formula One drivers, the British James Hunt and the Austrian Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula 1 motor-racing season. One of the best Sport Dramas out there.

4. Mother! (2017)

I know some people dislike this movie but I think it is one of Aronosfky's masterpieces. A political, philosphical and brutal allegory of the destruction of our planet brilliantly acted by Jennifer Lawrence.

5. The Flowers of War (2011)

Watching this movie was one of the most eye-opening experiences for me: An American (Christian Bale) tries to protect a group of Chinese students and prostitutes from Japanese soldiers in 1937 Nanjing.

6. Sheperds and Butchers (2016)

A different kind of "true crime story": A lawyer takes on the murder case of a prison guard traumatized by the executions he took part in.

7. Slow West (2015)

The cinematography in this is beautiful: A bounty hunter keeps his true motive a secret from the naive Scottish teenager he's offered to serve as bodyguard and guide while the youth searches for his beloved in 1800s Colorado.

8. Enemy (2013)

This movie will mess with your head: A college Professor (Jake Gyllenhaal) discovers a man who looks and talks exactly like him. A strange tale of what is true and what is fictional begins to unravel.

9. La grande bellezza (2013)

This arthouse movie is for the ones who look for deep conversations, philosopical questions and the horrors and beauties of everyday life. A slow paced and hugely moving tale about modern italy.

10. The Lighthouse (2019)

Everything about this movie is top notch: the acting, the story, the visuals. A modern masterpiece that has the chance of becoming a classic: Two lighthouse keepers are stranded on an island as they slowly dive into insanity.

R F Kuang asking the right questions here 💆🏾‍♀️ here's some good recs from the replies that I added to my own tbr:

The buried giant, kazuo ishiguro (subversive arthurian tale with dreamlike prose. everyone's memory is in flux so details shift and waver. intergenerational trauma and historiography but has a melancholical and anchored character story).

Lancelot (the arthurian tales series), giles kristian

The mabinogian tetralogy, evangeline walton (retelling of welsh mythology. weird, eerie, beautiful and just gorgeously written)

The traitor son cycle, miles cameron

The dragon and the unicorn, aa attanasio (very weird arthurian prose. merlin is an astral shark demon made of electricity. creepy, dark, and dramatic).

Sistersong, lucy holland

Book of the new sun, gene wolfe (like walking through a black Magic the Gathering Card, or if Pere La Chaise stretched endlessly, in every direction, throught time).

The dragon waiting, john m. ford

The wolf and the woodsman, ava reid

City of saints and madmen (ambergris series), jeff vandermeer (like slowly unearthing a strange and unfathomable artifact that you gradually piece together into an incomplete picture).

Silver in the wood (the greenhollow duology), emily tesh (chaotic, lush and haunting and canonically promises the m/m energy that feels promised but not guaranteed by the green knight trailer)

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Underrated Period Romances

1. A Royal Affair (2012)

A young queen falls in love with her physician, and they start a revolution that changes their nation forever.

2. Portrait of a Lady on fire (2019)

In 1770 the young daughter of a French countess develops a mutual attraction to the female artist commissioned to paint her wedding portrait.

3. Brooklyn (2015)

Young Irish immigrant Eilis Lace navigates her way through 1950s Brooklyn. Lured by the promise of America, Eilis departs Ireland and the comfort of her mother's home for the shores of New York City. The initial shackles of homesickness quickly diminish as a fresh romance sweeps Eilis into the intoxicating charm of love. But soon, her past disrupts her new vivacity, and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within.

4. Birdsong (2012)

As an English soldier fights in the horrific trenches of northern France, he is haunted by the memories of his forbidden love affair with a French woman.

5. Carol (2015)

Therese Belivet spots the beautiful, elegant Carol perusing the doll displays in a 1950s Manhattan department store. The two women develop a fast bond that becomes a love with complicated consequences.

6. The new World (2005)

Arriving with a British expedition in Virginia in 1607, Capt. John Smith is captured by Native Americans. His life is spared thanks to Pocahontas, daughter of the tribe's chief. Smith and Pocahontas fall in love, to the mutual dismay of the Native Americans and the British.

7. The world to come (2020)

In this powerful 19th century romance set in the American Northeast, Abigail, a farmer's wife, and her new neighbor Tallie find themselves irrevocably drawn to each other. A grieving Abigail tends to her withdrawn husband Dyer as free-spirit Tallie bristles at the jealous control of her husband Finney , when together their intimacy begins to fill a void in each other's lives they never knew existed.

8. Miss Austen Regrets (2007)

This is a lovely Film starring the young Tom Hiddleston: Novelist Jane Austen (Olivia Williams) nears her 40th birthday, unmarried and reflecting on her past suitors

9. Belle (2013)

The illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a British admiral plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.