#here i think i have cultivated a good array of brainrot possibilities with this list

[nedlittle]

top five Classic Literature Tomes to get the most fantastic array of brain rot

the use of the word 'tomes' assumes books over 400 pages, however most of the classics i've truly gone cuckoo bananas over are shorter, but i'll try for some meaty ones

sorry to be the most boring person alive but moby-dick good actually. i DID give it 2.75 when i read it and i did sort of hate the experience but jesus christ herman melville i am going to charge your ghost property tax in my brain!! genuinely a Rich Text. i would love to study it in a class. sometimes a story is a coffin that is also a lifeboat. sometimes fate is a noose tightening around your neck the closer you get to the end of a story you've already lived. sometimes you have to make a story epic to ensure that the people in it did not die in vain, even though they did, and you will too. sometimes a whale is a fish (?) and also a book (?) that is the entire argument for one of the cetology chapters. my favourite incorrect whale fact chapter is the one where ishmael lists approximately two dozen things that are a) white b) scary to prove that the titular whale is not an isolated case. the one about skull dimensions is also an all-timer. read a little context about melville at the time of writing, read his breathtakingly romantic letters to nathaniel hawthorn, then read moby-dick. I SURVIVE MYSELF! MY DEATH AND BURIAL WERE LOCKED UP INSIDE OF MY CHEST! i am actually planning to reread it, once war and peace (& emails) is sufficiently underway. other suggested reading: the whale: in search of giants of the sea by philip hoare; in the heart of the sea: the tragedy of the whaleship essex by nathaniel philbrick; the whale: a love story by mark beauregard

normally this is where i would rec the brothers karamazov because i am a one trick pony however more people should read the idiot. yes you can tell that dostoevsky planned the first section then flee by the seat of his pants for the rest, but it is a Blast. i have previously described it as the world's longest and most high-stakes game of "yes, and?" and i stand by that assessment. it's really just a blast up until the last couple chapters which are a foregone conclusion and you KNOW the end of the story is going, because you've been told how it ends, but you still want it to end differently! incredible mimetic desire on display! myshkin is ostensibly in the centre of two love triangles (nastasya ➡️ myshkin ⬅️ aglaya and myshkin ➡️ nastaya ⬅️ rogozhin) but the actual reality is like. nastaya is playing homoerotic 4d psychosexual mind chest with aglaya while myshkin watches, meanwhile nastaya and rogozhin uh. certainly have something Hinky going on but rogozhin and myshkin are probably the gayest relationship i've personally encountered in dostoevsky. i would need a chart to explain. if you've read any other fedya d there's some familiar territory that could get repetitive, and half the scenes are people in drawing rooms fighting over nothing. it fucks.

it's not long but notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin is a Thinker. autofiction within autofiction. transgressive both in style and substance. if you're a fan of the bell jar/cassandra at the wedding/special topics I'm calamity physics/media about pretentious literary girls with fucked up brains, then this is a book for you. captures the listlessness of being in your early twenties and seeing no future where you survive and the necessity of queer friendship and grassroots activism and there's a very real anthropomorphic crocodile who is also a metaphor for lesbianism and you WILL cry over the crocodile! fantasy is a cornerstone of hope! the crocodile is allowed to reach out and find a way to live when neither protagonist nor author can find a way.

also not long but there is so much delicious gender in my ántonia. ántonia and jim really ARE queering heterosexuality by being straight in the most gayass t4t way. another book that's enriched by learning about the author's bio and specifically her gender presentation (the intro to the barnes & noble edition makes a great point about how cather is allowed to vocalize her desire for women if her words are in the mouth of a young man--literally, there's a prologue written by an unnamed narrator who isn't not cather telling you 'this happened to my buddy jim'. layers upon layers of authorship. but also jim is a woman and ántonia (tony!) is a man and they take refuge in the assumption of outward-presenting heterosexuality to get real fucky with gender. does lose a little steam once jim goes to college but dear god could cather string a sentence together. every formal description of this book makes it sound unbelievably boring but do it for the gender and the beautiful descriptions of nebraska

plum bun: a novel without a moral by jessie redmon fauset is a good chaser if you've read passing. they were published the same year and tackle similar themes but with vastly different voices and outcomes; nella larsen is beloved and renowned today, but hardly anyone has heard of jessie redmon fauset (i hadn't until someone on here recommended plum bun to me!). personally i prefer plum bun to passing--though only by a slight margin and this is a case of the two cakes rule; they're both good! fauset's prose has such a rich texture that you can really sink into, and the way the early parts unfurl were very reminiscent of a tree grows in brooklyn. also both a Romance and a satire/interrogation of marriage plots if you're a romance rearer. we are WAAAAY overdue for a jessie redmon fauset revival! give my girl her due!