#...book recs?

[wetcatspellcaster]

i love the way your fic breaks my heart - do you have any book recs or other fic recs that inspired you or have the same kind of angst? it hurt so good 😫

Hi anon! This was a really nice message to receive... I have no idea if I emulate the writers I admire or not, but I certainly figure there are some books that have informed me in my past and it was fun thinking of them to answer this question!

For fic, please just check my bookmarks on AO3! I actually write a little different to what I read (I also don't tend to read much for the pairings I write for, combination of 'feeding myself' and fighting off the potential for imposter syndrome/accidental plagiarism) but the fics I've bookmarked are all ones that I objectively loved and also reveal all of my fictional obsessions... knowing myself, the angstiest ones there will be Spike/Buffy :')))))

As for books! These are some basic bitch recs but I'm a basic bitch so-

Holly Black has a big influence on the kind of heroines I write, and her books are usually a little angsty although they have happy endings... most people have heard of The Cruel Prince which is one of my favourites, but Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a standalone vampire novel and is pretty good for angst that hurts in the right way tbh, that heroine is really Going Through It

Sarah Rees Brennan (good fic author and good author) taught me everything I know in The Demon's Lexicon, which is just a really funny, trashy YA novel except that the plot twist is tragic af and I saw it coming from chapter one and it still hurt so good! In Other Lands is not angsty AT ALL but great if you like slow burn romance.

I write Darklina for a reason :') Leigh Bardugo got good at the right amount of angst with Six of Crows and I KNOW that's a basic bitch rec but KAZ/INEJ ARE THE 'ANGST THAT HURTS SO GOOD' BLUEPRINT!!!!

I remember Marie Lu's The Young Elites trilogy making me cry for hours in the good way and I'm now worried that was formative.

This is not a romance book and doesn't have romance in, but The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly is an amazing novel about grief and processing loss through and using fairytales and I'm reading the sequel now and honestly? God-tier writing.

The Wicked and the Divine is a comic book series but it's sexy af and definitely gets that balance of 'sacrifice' vs. 'selfishness' that it seems I've become lowkey obsessed with.

I also just recently read an amazing fantasy duology by AK Larkwood (The Unspoken Name and The Serpent Gates) and I'm adding it here bc these were the first books that I'd read in a long time that were genuinely... aspirational - I wanted to learn from them and try to write more like that author. They had just the right balance of angst and levity... also there is a peak Astarion coded character in them tbh so people should read them for the hot fucked-up elf boy.

[animentality]

kicking a hornets nest.

[positivewlwvibes]

and if yes pls respond/put in the tags with what you’re reading and whether or not you like it i need new books for the new year <3

[sapphicides]

in honor of black history month 2025, i’ve put together a list of books written by black sapphic authors for you to read in the month of february

non-fiction essays/memoirs:

all about love: new visions by bell hooks

black lesbian in white america by anita cornwell

sister outsider: essays and speeches by audre lorde

mouths of rain: an anthology of black lesbian thought by briona simone jones

blues legacies and black feminism by angela davis

does your mama know?: an anthology of black lesbian coming out stories by lisa c. moore

fiction:

the color purple by alice walker

loving her by ann allen shockley

the gilda stories by jewelle gomez

in another place, not here by dionne brand

pomegranate by helen elaine lee

the summer we got free by mia mckenzie

these letters end in tears by musih tedji xaviere

dead in long beach, california by venita blackburn

young adult:

escaping mr. rochester by l.l. mckinney

this ravenous fate by hayley dennings

faebound by saraa el-arifa

so let them burn by kamilah cole

where sleeping girls lie by faridah àbíké-íyímídé

adult:

honey girl by morgan rogers

the deep by rivers solomon

sweet vengeance by viano oniomoh

come back (love concealed) by terri ronald

house of hunger by alexis henderson

short stories:

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo

the secret lives of church ladies by deesha philyaw

additional info:

-> “why wasn’t this book listed?” probably because it wasn’t black sapphic-centric, the author isn’t a black sapphic themself, or i just simply haven’t heard of it! so feel free to add on if it meets those two criteria

many of these books require trigger warnings, especially some of the older ones that are more likely to feature racial struggles of the time. please do your due diligence and search for tws if you want to read them!

please feel free to add onto this list in the rbs or comments! happy black history month

[peachdoxie]

I looooove the shit that's like

"You have the power to possess me and take over my body but you don't because you respect me"

because it can lead to

"I'll let you possess me and take over my body when necessary because I trust you"

[orcboxer]

those first couple weeks after escaping a time loop have gotta be disorienting as all fuck. all those little cues that used to tell you what's about to happen are now triggers that cause you to brace for something that isn't coming. you have to relearn the permanence of death -- hell, you have reacquaint yourself with the entire concept of finality altogether. everything keeps changing but it never changes back and you keep having to remind yourself that this is normal. "it won't reset anymore," you echo to yourself, over and over and over, like a broken record, like you're still trapped in a loop, like someone who escaped the time loop but was doomed to bring it into the future with them

[artisimpossible]

People on here are always like "fuck capitalism, why can't things be weird anymore" and then write up a whole dissertation about how the biggest IPs need to change to be weirder.

Like, you are so close. You are so close to getting the point. "Big" IPs *can only exist because they are normal*. They will *never* be weird. They will *never* do what you want. Go find some smaller IPs. Bring back discovery. Bring back never having heard of a book before you buy it. Bring back watching obscure anime online that none of your friends know about. Bring back trying new things, even if they're bad or cheaply made. That is how you get *weird*.

[himboskywalker]

I picked up a copy of "The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire" by Dr. Chris Kempshall and was delightfully surprised. Kempshall is a World War I historian and a respected one at that, known for his modern media analyses and research on how contemporary art reflects and discusses war. This is precisely my shit, as most of you know, and after seeing who it was written by I did a little excited jig and thought, oh god I cannot wait for this analyses of Star Wars through the scope of the rise of fascism and the World Wars.

So imagine my delight when I start reading the historian's introduction only to realize this acclaimed academic has written a Galactic Empire history book from the perspective and lens from a historian within the Star Wars universe. It truly has been such a delight and for anyone in the historical field it's phenomenal to see the recreation of historical methodology and historiography from the in universe perspective of a fictional world. 10/10

[littlestpersimmon]

Everybody read Bongchon Bride right now. I am no longer asking

[atthecenterofeverything]

if you're looking for further antipsych readings, i heavily recommend bruce cohen's psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness.

it would be one of the published academic books on the topic of psychiatry i would have the least amount of caveats for - together with anne harrington's mind fixers: psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness.

if you are already convinced that psychiatry, together with other sciences, evolved alongside capitalist development to serve bourgeois interests, ensure social control and legitimize the hegemonic world order - and that no amount of intradisciplinary reform can change this, short of total abolition - then you will likely not be learning much from this book. it does however lay the arguments very clearly, together with concise, clearly explained marxist theory about labor. it then goes on to tie psychiatry with other hegemonic structures - the family, most notably.

interestingly enough, it manages to completely avoid two of the most common pitfalls of this kind of text: it never places the issue with the use of drugs themselves, but with forced medication and lack of available information - and it never blames capitalism itself for the coercive and punishing character of psychiatry, inventing a precapitalistic mythical past where crazy people were fine.

a solid recommendation if you are trying to give an introduction to antipsychiatry concepts to someone!

[metamorphesque]

Aurora (Arshaluys) Mardiganyan was just 14 when the sky collapsed on her head. In 1915, as the Armenian Genocide began, her village was torn apart by turkish soldiers. She watched as her father, her brothers and all the men in her family were dragged away and murdered. The women and children, including Aurora, were spared only to be marched into the desert—a death sentence of a different kind.

The march was relentless. Day after day, Aurora trudged through the searing heat, surrounded by the dying and the dead. There was no food, no water—just the constant, gnawing hunger, thirst and sexual mutilation. Those who fell behind were shot or left to die under the unrelenting sun. Aurora witnessed countless mothers cradling their dying children, their bodies wasting away before her eyes. The air was thick with the stench of death, and the ground was littered with the bodies of her people, unburied, forgotten.

According to her story, the turkish soldiers decided to nail the 17 girls of her village in the group to crosses—in a grotesque parody of their Christian faith, but they miscounted and only constructed 16 crosses; Aurora was the lucky one who was not crucified.

She endured much, being sold into a harem as a teen, for 85 cents. She was beaten, assaulted and dehumanized in ways no child should ever endure. Aurora’s spirit was broken over and over again, yet somehow, she survived.

When she finally escaped, Aurora found her way to the United States, carrying the weight of what she had witnessed. She was alone, orphaned by genocide, but she was determined to tell the world what had happened. Her story, Ravished Armenia, recounted the horrors in graphic detail—images too painful for most to even imagine. But for Aurora, they were not just stories; they were the memories that haunted her every day.

She agreed to relive her trauma once more, acting in the film Auction of Souls, where she portrayed her own suffering and the atrocities she had witnessed. But even then, Aurora was exploited. The people behind the film saw her pain as a commodity, and she was never properly compensated. She gave everything—her story, her dignity, her voice—but received little in return.

In the early 1930s, both the book and the film faded from the public’s attention. The sudden and complete silencing of the film had two explanations: the growing U.S.-turkey alliances, and an agreement between Hollywood and Germany. Aurora had written about being raped by a roving gang of german soldiers in turkey before being sold into a harem

The film that was supposed to tell her story was lost, leaving behind only fragments, just like the memory of the millions of Armenians who were massacred.

Here you can find Aurora Mardiganyan's book, "RAVISHED ARMENIA".

[pitviperofdoom]

Hiya Tumblr,

Broken up about JK Rowling's descent into loud, financially-backed bigotry and the resulting souring of a beloved book series from your childhood? Looking to fill the void of stories about wizard school?

Read The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik.

Featuring a magic system with consistent and coherent rules, a diverse cast, and a world that is both dark and incredibly colorful. The school is a shifting eldritch location suspended in the infinite void, invested with monsters that hunt the students through its halls. There are no teachers or professors or adults in sight; the students fend for themselves in sink-or-swim desperation, self-teaching with materials the school provides, building their skills and forming alliances to survive the neverending gauntlet. The protagonist is a budding dark sorceress who chooses On Purpose to be good, equal parts Wednesday Addams and Granny Weatherwax.

I haven't read the third book yet, but I'm incredibly excited to.

Read these books. Forget Hogwarts, the Scholomance is where it's at.

[lets-throw-bacchanal]

My 2 fav book genres are: what the fuck richard and what the fuck andrew

[hoarder-of-dragons]

All characters from any media are asexual unless they say outright, "I'm sexually attracted to this/all gender(s)".

[noahhawthorneauthor]

Sometimes they fancy a shag, sometimes they don't, sometimes they never do or only for special moments or people. REGARDLESS THEY MATTER AND DESERVE TO TAKE UP SPACE.

Yesterday was International Asexuality Day, but ace books are good to read all year round. Asexual means a person doesn't feel sexual feelings or attraction to others, but this is a spectrum and can vary widely from person to person. Note that attraction does not equal romance, and asexual is not the same as aromantic. Some people are sex repulsed, some are not. Some people are sex positive, some are not.

Demisexuality falls under the asexual umbrella, and means a person doesn't feel attraction until developing a strong connection with a person. Two of my books, Phantom and Rook, and Matsdotter and Adrastus, have demisexual mains.

There are many different shades of Ace, and many different types of stories just waiting for you to read.