in libris, libertas

he/him, xviii. scorpio, infp, humanities student. aspiring english/history major.

[foolish-byron]

reading list

currently reading:

Dracula, by Bram Stoker

to be read:

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Süskind

Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

wishlist:

Diaries, 1910-1923, by Franz Kafka

The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black, by E. B. Hudspeth

S., by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst

Love and Space Dust, by David Jones

Giovanni's Room, by James Baldwin

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

1984, by George Orwell

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (re-read)

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

The Stranger, by Albert Camus

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

Beowulf, by Unknown

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster

Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy

To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Trial, by Franz Kafka

The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

read:

The Lord Of The Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien (★★★★★)

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (★★★★☆)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera (★★★★★)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (★★★★★)

They Both Die At The End, by Adam Silvera (★★★★☆)

Maurice, by E. M. Forster (★★★★★)

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (★★★★★)

Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston (★★★☆☆)

[lovedroppedlining]

my heart is an explosion of summer, smothered by the winter cage of my ribs

[foolish-byron]

have a beowulf meme i just made

[foolish-byron]

sometimes i notice someone's writing in the pages of a library book, or the receipt they used as a bookmark, or the way they folded the corners of some pages, or even the lines they highlighted and i end up falling a bit in love with a stranger

[ava-marie-reads-deactivated2025]

In the kindest way possible, absolutely not. If I saw someone write in a library book? I don’t care how interesting or nice your annotations are I’m gonna tell the librarian exactly what you did. I will tell on you.

These are like the only rules with library books other than return them on time; don’t fold the corners, don’t write in them and don’t highlight in them because they aren’t yours.

[foolish-byron]

okay, after reading this and another reply i have to agree about the "not writing on library books" rule, but to be honest i was talking more about used books in libraries. where i live, it's common for most of the books in public libraries to be donations rather than actual purchases, either from schools or citizens! it's something i really like, because a book can pass down hundreds of hands with its first owner's mark still all over it, as if to say "i was here, i read this, i loved this. and now i'm giving my most private thoughts to you"

[foolish-byron]

how much do i have to pay to just have someone read poetry to me with their head laid on my chest and my hands playing with their hair

[foolish-byron]

the fact that you can understand so much about a person based on their hands... are they artists, do they play some instrument, are they hard-working or accident-prone? are they soft and careful with their touch, or rough but earnest? their entire life is plainly written on their palms and fingers for you to see

[foolish-byron]

i think my favourite thing is the moment right before a downpour. when the air feels static and electricity seems to run down your spine, when you can taste petrichor all around you, when the grass and earth ready to welcome the rain, when the sky grows grey and thunders begin to rumble in the distance

[foolish-byron]

maybe i don't always say i love you, but i still keep the cinema ticket from that one date as a bookmark. i pick with the tip of my finger your fallen eyelash and ask you to make a wish. i remember your coffee order word by word. i've learnt your favourite recipe by heart so i could make you something you love. i read you out loud passages of books that remind me of you. in art galleries, i find details of your face in every painting. i send you funny words in greek or latin, and i hardly have to pretend to hear your laugh even through text. i see something and i immediately think that you'd enjoy it. i revel in the reminder that i Know you, and i love you.

[foolish-byron]

sometimes i notice someone's writing in the pages of a library book, or the receipt they used as a bookmark, or the way they folded the corners of some pages, or even the lines they highlighted and i end up falling a bit in love with a stranger

[foolish-byron]

imagine learning an obscure language with your friend so you can communicate without being understood by anyone else... goals

[foolish-byron]

i'm talking latin, greek or even sanskrit. learn sindarin and quenya, learn ladin, learn anything and wreak havoc

[foolish-byron]

imagine learning an obscure language with your friend so you can communicate without being understood by anyone else... goals

[foolish-byron]

i feel like i need to showcase every aspect of my personality so that i can always feel Known and be sure that it's exclusively on my terms but at the same time i never want people to truly see me, because that'd mean having to accept the ugliness within

[foolish-byron]

all i want is to start uni, wear tweed jackets and have a group of friends i can discuss classics with, sitting on the floor and chatting over a glass of wine, throwing in latin and greek words as we speak, exchanging annotated books and spending entire nights studying together

[foolish-byron]

home feels like the smell of apple and cinnamon tea, the tapping of rain on windows, the sound of pages slowly turning and pens scratching on paper, but also footsteps over dried leaves, the colour of sunlit marble, the taste of overly-sweet coffee and muffled sounds of traffic down the street-

[foolish-byron]

that feeling when you get so into a book that you lose yourself to the story for a while is borderline bacchanalian

[foolish-byron]

is there anything more intimate than reading your favourite book to someone as they fall asleep? like "here, take a piece of my soul. i hope it brings you the sweetest dreams"

[foolish-byron]

when i write, i want to show the ugly as well as the beautiful. the horrendous as well as the awe-inducing, the embarrassing as well as the endearing. i want to show the darkest side of humanity as well as the lightest, and i want to show them in the same breath, because yes we are horrendous, yes we are beautiful, yes we are cruel, yes we are heartbreakingly good