Arguablyacademic - Romanticizing The Mundane

Sophie’s Exhaustive Dark Academia List

For a while now, since my dark academia rec list was such an unexpected success, I’ve wanted to create a list of all the dark academia books I’m personally aware of, regardless of whether I have already read them, as sort of a resource for the community. I have now done just that!

The titles in bold are the ones I have read. The ones I would especially recommend (which, okay, yeah, are almost all of the ones I’ve read) are in bold and italics. Note that this doesn’t mean I loved absolutely everything about the recommended book, just that I think it was good or worth reading overall. 

If anybody is aware of a dark academia read that didn’t make the list, please leave a comment and I’ll update the list! Thank you! And thank you to everyone who has already recommended titles to me, helping me compile this list! :)

Also, just to be clear: My personal definition of dark academia would be a story that is set at a school or university or focuses heavily on academia otherwise (maybe the characters are in a secret book or debate club, discuss academic topics, something like that) and in which something bad or dark happens. This could be a crime (violent or non-violent), an accidental death, something supernatural going on… Note: Some of the books on the list (meaning of those I haven’t read) might only fit a looser definition of dark academia, e.g. maybe they have a dark subject matter and include some intellectual elements, even if the setting isn’t actually an academic institution. 

And now, without further ado, enjoy!! As I said, I hope this will be a good resource for the dark academia community! And I want to update this list regularly so that it’s as exhaustive as possible! :)

A Beautiful Doom (Laura Pohl)

Academy Gothic (James Tate Hill)

Ace of Spades (Faridah Abike-Ayimide)

A Fatal Inversion (Barbara Vine)

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Holly Black)

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Libba Bray)

A Lesson in Vengeance (Victoria Lee)

An Education in Ruin (Alexis Bass)

A Question of Holmes (Brittany Cavallaro)

A Separate Peace (John Knowles)

As Good As Dead (Holly Black)

A Student of History (Nina Revoyr)

A Study in Charlotte (Brittany Cavallaro)

All Summer in a Day (Ray Bradbury)

As I Descended (Robin Talley)

Bad Habits (Amy Gentry)

Black Chalk (Christopher J. Yates)

Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

Bunny (Mona Awad)

Cat Among the Pigeons (Agatha Christie)

Catherine House (Elisabeth Thomas)

Different Class (Joanne Harris)

Dismantled (Jennifer McMahon)

D.O.G.S. (M. A. Bennett)

For Your Own Good (Samantha Downing)

F.O.X.E.S. (M. A. Bennett)

Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers)

Gentleman and Players (Joanna Harris)

Girlhood (Cat Clarke)

Give Me Your Hand (Megan Abbott)

Good Girl, Bad Blood (Holly Black)

Good Girls Lie (J. T. Ellison)

Hex (Rebecca Dinerstein Knight)

House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)

How We Fall Apart (Katie Zhao)

If We Were Villains (M. L. Rio)

In My Dreams I Hold A Knife (Ashley Winstead)

Kill All Your Darlings (David Bell)

Killing November (Adriana Mather)

Miss Pym Disposes (Josephine Tey)

Murder Scholastic (Janet Caird)

Ninth House (Leigh Bardugo)

Party Girls Die in Pearls (Plum Sykes)

Peace Breaks Out (John Knowles)

People Like Us (Dana Mele)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (Joan Lindsay)

Private (Kate Brian)

Shadow of the Lions (Christopher Swann)

Sleepwalking (Meg Wolitzer)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)

S.T.A.G.S. (M.A. Bennett)

Summer Sons (Lee Mandelo)

The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler)

The Bellweather Revival (Benjamin Wood)

The Book and the Brotherhood (Iris Murdoch)

The Case for Jamie (Brittany Cavallaro)

The Club (Takis Würger)

The Deceivers (Kristen Simmons)

The Devil Makes Three (Tori Bovalino)

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (E. Lockhart)

The End of Mr. Y (Scarlett Thomas)

The Furies (Katie Lowe)

The Furies (Natalie Haynes)

The Girls Are All So Nice Here (Laurie Elizabeth Flynn)

The Hand on the Wall (Maureen Johnson)

The Ivies (Alexa Donne)

The Lake of Dead Languages (Carol Goodman)

The Last of August (Brittany Cavallaro)

The Lessons (Naomi Alderman)

The Likeness (Tana French)

The Lying Game (Ruth Ware)

The Maidens (Alex Michaelides)

The Mary Shelley Club (Goldy Moldavsky)

The Night Climbers (Ivo Stourton)

The Orchard (David Hopen)

The Secret History (Donna Tartt)

The Secret Place (Tana French)

The Shadow Year (Hannah Richell)

The Swallows (Lisa Lutz)

The Truants (Kate Weinberg)

The Vanishing Stairs (Maureen Johnson)

The Wave (Morton Rhue)

The Wishing Game (Patrick Redmond)

The Wyndham Case (Imogen Quy)

The Year of the Gadfly (Jennifer Miller)

These Violent Delights (Micah Nemerever)

They Never Learn (Layne Fargo)

They Wish They Were Us (Jessica Goodman)

T.I.G.E.R.S. (M. A. Bennett)

Truly Devious (Maureen Johnson)

Trust Exercise (Susan Choi)

White Ivy (Susie Yang)

Without Anette (Jane B. Mason)

x

the phone call to chris but dumb

friendly reminder that you are safe if you choose not to reblog posts threatening ‘x’ bad thing will happen if you don't. i know that it can be anxiety inducing, especially to those struggling with intrusive thoughts. i promise you that you are safe love. if u needed a sign to believe that you and you're loved ones are safe, here u go. ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ > this bear is protecting you rn ♡

The dead poets society when you ask “is water wet?”

Neil: Fully believes water is not wet, has no evidence, has a brutal (but friendly) argument with Charlie about it. It gets ugly. They start pulling out the yo mama jokes.

Todd: Stands there really confused, like a deer in headlights, immediate panic no thoughts head empty

Charlie: Fully believes water is wet, has no evidence, ends up losing the argument because Keating agrees with Neil.

Knox: “…water…*is* the wet…?”

Meeks: “Well the definition of wetness is when water adheres to the surface of a material, so you could make the argument that water is wet because it is a bunch of water molecules that touch other water molecules, but that would also mean that a singular water molecule is dry, because it doesn’t have any other water molecules on it to make it wet.”

Pitts: *cries*

Cameron: *tries to agree with Charlie but gets told to shut the fuck up*

Keating: Laughs a little bit because what kind of silly question is that, but he thinks about it for a second and decides that no, water cannot be wet in the same way that dirt cannot be dirty, or dust cannot be dusty- things can be dusty if they have dust on them, but you wouldn’t take a handful of dust and say “wow this dust is super dusty.”

Web weaving about the untold story in you !

Can’t stop thinking about Cameron and Charlie actually being friends. Like they were roommates, do you know how much potential that has??? So, because I am on a tangent I would like to share a few thoughts:

- Charlie seems like he would be the kind of person to throw pens at Cameron when he wants his attention. So the floor is always littered in pens much to the annoyance of both of them because Cameron won’t pick them up.

-Cameron found out that Charlie could play the saxophone when Charlie would play a single, very loud note when he was too deep into studying and didn’t notice the pens bouncing off his shoulder. 

-They wear roughly the same size of shoes and when in a hurry they’ve been known to accidentally take the others and then complain about it for the rest of the day.

-The rest of the poets are tired™ of their bickering only because they know that it means nothing to either of them 

-I think I may have read this headcanon elsewhere, but them starting a podcast. 

-Their energies would balance it out so nicely, maybe do it on obscure parts of history

-Charlie would bring in snacks and brush the crumbs off his bed, into his hand, and then put them directly onto Camerons pillow. (Cameron would just take off the pillow case because he is sensible like that)

-I want Camerons parents to love Charlie, maybe they’ve met him at the first day of school assembly thing. 

-Better yet Charlie didn’t want to go home for the holidays and instead of admitting it was bothering him to the rest of the poets (and Charlie and mr.perry sounds like a nightmare for neil) Cameron just casually says that he could stay at his house for the break.

-Which creates the power duo that is camerons mom and Charlie. 

-If it was modern day they’d snapchat each other daily 

-Charlie is in the family groupchat 

I got ahead of myself, but anyway. I just love them together as friends and think it is unexplored potential.

more adam parrish heartbreak bc i'm (still) rereading tdt and he's breaking my heart!!!

•"besides adam was good at hiding things"

•"but adam was thinking about the suppressed truth: the two of them were on perpendicular paths, not parallel ones, and eventually, they'd have to go different ways. by college, probably. if not college, then after. a tension was building in him, like the one that sometimes haunted him late at night, where he wanted to save gansey or *be* gansey"

•"he *was* adam parrish, army of one. gansey raised by these adoring courtiers, would never be able to understand that"

•"i won't take your pity"

•"i am unknowable"

•"adam has killed himself for aglinoby, he said suddenly and for what? education?"

•"the bruises he'd come to school with. who has he ever had to love him? ever?"

•"how terrible it would be, blue thought, her mind on adam again, to not have a mother who loved you?"

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”