do you, by chance, have a reccomended reading list? you have the absolute best references in your works!!
Oh, lord. Ummmm…. I mean, I have a book rec tag but most the shit my brain throws up as references is because of the combination of a lonely childhood spent hiding in the pages of books, the fact my mother used the Bangor Public Library as free babysitting for years, a less free babysitter who was a retired librarian who hoarded SFF paperbacks, and an English degree.
You could just start working your way through the western canon I guess, but that seems pretty grim. My hatred for The Scarlet Letter is strong enough if anyone were ever foolish enough to let me teach high school English again, I think the whole class might be “We shall now explore why this is considered so canonical you are forced to read it.” (Short Answer: super obvious symbolism and unlikely to antagonize parents with dirty words or unpleasant topics like sex that isn’t punished by lifelong misery, racism, or drugs) Also, damn did I hate Catcher in the Rye, even as an adolescent who should have loved Holden Caulfield. And, to my shame, I’ve never read a Faulker novel.
Hypertexts has a great poetry collection. (I know it’s labeled as erotic but it’s not explicit except in metaphor and dated renaissance slang)
Sorry this is so disjointed.