Liberincantrix - Life Enthusiast

beginners guide to classics:

novels —

the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde (the classic that started it all for me - oscar wilde is KING)

dracula - bram stoker

rebecca - daphne du maurier

a christmas carol - charles dickens

frankenstein - mary shelley

their eyes were watching god - zora neale hurston

the haunting of hill house - shirley jackson

lolita - vladimir nabakov (my current read)

jane eyre - charlotte bronte

plays & short story collections —

the importance of being earnest - oscar wilde

the crucible - arthur miller

the bloody chamber and other short stories - angela carter (adore this)

edgar allen poe's short stories

poetry —

goblin market - christina rossetti

sappho

Saving

Dark Academia Books I Have Read & Recommend

08/03/20

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

A coming of age story centring on Holden Caulfield, a boy who is struggling to come to grips with growing up and the challenges that accompany it. He leaves his school Pency Prep to wander New York for a few days. A classic story of teenage angst and rebellion.

I had to read this in secondary school but I quickly became attached to it. So many people hate this book and I can't understand why. I understand it can be slow at parts but I related so much to Holden and his struggles. His dry wit reflected my feelings at the time I read it and made me feel seen. This is legitimately one of my favourite books.

9/10

•S.T.A.G.S., M.A. Bennett

Greer MacDonald struggles to settle into sixth form at the prestigious St. Aidan the Great boarding school. Just as she is about to give up on making friends she is invited by Henry de Warlencourt to spend the October midterm break with the most popular students of the school at Henry's country manor: Longcross Hall. Things quickly unfold to be darker and more twisted than Greer could ever have thought.

This was a surprising one. This book was gifted to me and I was incredibly sceptical at first. The premise seemed unoriginal and boring, centering on a 'quirky' girl. But I was so wrong. Swallowing my pride I read the book and quickly became obsessed, my pride returning. This book was so interesting and thrilling. I was tense the whole time reading it. Reading it late at night proved to be a challenge because it spooked me so, despite not being supernatural or mythical. I loved this book and I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel: D.O.G.S.

8/10

•Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, murders Hamlet's father, Old King Hamlet, in pursuit of the throne. After Claudius becomes King of Denmark, Old King Hamlet appears as a ghost to Hamlet and orders him to avenge his death and free him from purgatory. Hamlet hatches a plan with his closest friend Horatio to expose Claudius' crime.

This play convinced me to like Shakespeare. Beforehand I had only read The Merchant of Venice when I was fifteen, and I didn't think much of it. But a few years later I studied Hamlet in school and oh boy, what a story. It's bloody brilliant and has persuaded me to want to read more of Shakespeare's plays.

9/10

Dark Academia Books I Want to Read

•The Secret History, Donna Tartt

•In the Shadow of Heroes, Nicholas Bowling

•The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

•D.O.G.S., M.A. Bennett

•Die Mühle, Elizabeth Herrmann

•The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

•Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

•Dracula, Bram Stoker

•Macbeth, William Shakespeare

•Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

Recommended more books to me!

The Chronicles of Narnia Headers

⛅. fav or reblog if you save!

fan art and pictures by robin print.

Could willingly waste my time in it.

- Reporting;

- Data visualization;

- BI!

The business man smartly presses the BISEXUAL button in order to increase PROFIT

some things i wish i knew as a baby practitioner:

it’s perfectly okay to change your mind. sometimes the ritual doesn’t line up with how you feel anymore. sometimes you feel pulled in a new direction. it’s all normal.

there’s intense and powerful magic in research. in learning. that doesn’t always mean hours in the library, but it does often mean logging off and learning about your native environment.

let your grimoire be messy. let it contradict itself. add things that are interesting but don’t really have a place yet. it’s your book, and you can always keep going in another one once this book is full.

you will learn upsetting things about parts of your practice. this is mostly for white- and otherwise privileged- witches; it’s important to recognize that the modern witchcraft, occult, and new age movements have a long history of stealing from closed cultures, from marginalized practitioners, and creating synthetic histories to explain modern inventions. if a fellow practitioner presents information like this to you about one of your practices, i implore you to take it to heart. learning more about the origins of your ritual and altering them, removing them, and providing reparations where appropriate are important, vital parts of connecting with your practice.

you may work with deities, you may not. same with spirit, the fae, ancestors, and all other aspects of craft. other people may work with forces you aren’t familiar with or that you struggle to believe in, that’s normal. do more research, talk with other practitioners, accept “no” and “i don’t have the energy to educate you” for what they are: boundaries. trying to subvert them will only hurt you both.

discourse isn’t worth your time. it just isn’t.

not every practitioner is a witch, not every witch is a practitioner. the labels we use to describe our work are historically charged, as magic so often is. what feels good to you may hurt another person, and vice versa.

magic is often closer to jazz than to a well-rehearsed symphony. plan accordingly. learn to improv in each key. learn the core elements of your practice and build from there.

consent. consent. consent. all magic that may touch another being requires it, not just love or romantic magic. healing? get consent first. divination? consent. make sure your subject knows what they’re consenting to. check in often. (think of it like a tea party. you invite them, and they come or they don’t. you offer them tea, they may want it or not. if they aren’t able to respond when you ask, you don’t pour them tea. if they hurt you or something you love, you might throw tea in their face.)

self-care is more than baths and deep breathing. it can be therapy, medication, boundary-setting, any number of really hard things. you deserve that care, though. other people do, too.

For those who read both

he's art.

Well, keep switching your alibi or stutterin’ when you reply You can’t even look me in the eye, oh, I can tell, I know you’re lying