Ten Dark Academia Reads to Match Your New Year’s Resolutions

Brooding. Learning. Historic spaces. Dark academia is deeply attractive to me, and many others – and I’m sure its many devotees will, like me, have made a few New Year’s resolutions and need a reminder of why we pursue self-improvement and introversion. Here’s my reading list of ten dark academia books that will remind you to get into the library and get on with your goals.

Shirley – Charlotte Brontë

Shirley is about a woman who loves to learn. It has queer undertones, it has a working-class revolution, it has a tacked-on happy ending. If you are seeking agency in your relationships or control over your finances, Shirley is for you; if you are searching for a dramatic classic written by a woman, Shirley will sort you out there, too.

A Discovery of Witches – Deborah Harkness

This is my current read, so no spoilers, thank you. It begins with a sexy vampire complimenting the protagonist’s scholarship and takes the high-octane glamour on a ride over Oxford as a battle with witches, vampires, and demons gets underway. It gives its reader fashion and antiques and wine knowledge, yoga with demons, and a bad-idea-good-idea romance – the perfect read if you are determined to enjoy your year and grasp all opportunities.

Waterloo – Victor Hugo

This is a short pamphlet taken from Les Mis. Read Les Mis if you have the time (it’s glorious), but this is my suggestion for the busy academe: revel in majestic history, lengthy description, and glorious classics… but also let Thénardier at the end remind you to seize the day and get shit done.

The Monsters We Deserve – Marcus Sedgwick

If your resolution is to change the way you think, then this is for you. What is real? How do you perceive? What about those things that live at the back of your mind and quietly influence you? Set against the formidable backdrop of an isolated cottage in the French alps, blurring the lines between fiction and memoir, and, crucially, explicitly re-writing a Romantic-era classic, The Monsters We Deserve should be on the reading list of any Shelley fan.

The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak

You’ve read The Book Thief. Surely you’ve read The Book Thief. Perhaps you dismissed the hype for years before reading it and finding out that, yes, it truly is as profound as people say – but you must have read The Book Thief. If the past couple of years have been hitting you hard and you need a reminder of hope in the bleakest of times and your own power in the face of a cruel and faceless machine, turn to The Book Thief, and to Death, to pull you out of a slump.

Paradise Rot – Jenny Hval

For the magical realism lover who still wants a school setting and a complex, perhaps ill-advised, romance. This is a book for beginnings, for endings, for people who have big life events or decisions upcoming – or for people whose resolution is to improve your living space.

Bunny – Mona Awad

If you felt that The Secret History contained insufficient murder and collusion, then this is what you need. Upper-crust New England and its Stepford Wives women, close-knit college friends and heightened emotions collide to make an atmospheric thriller. If you want to learn to exist outside of your comfort zone in 2022, then this is for you.

Gentlemen & Players – Joanne Harris

The old adage ‘grant me the power to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference’ can be applied perfectly to this book. If you would like to inhabit a dusty classics department as murder is afoot, but also to live in the real world and consider the ramifications of financial decisions and declining health, then this is your read.

Quicksand – Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen writes about shifting identities and how we fit into social roles. If your goal is self-knowledge, then Larsen can be your guide – and Quicksand is about the struggle Larsen herself felt embodying two identities, but also about a teacher trying to embody stability and self-confidence.

The Moth Diaries – Rachel Klein

The Moth Diaries is the ultimate book of dark academia angst and compulsion. It’s a whip-quick read with surprising depth and self-awareness, and contains its own reading list as its protagonist studies the gothic and the texts begin to inform her thinking. If you want to study more, read more, and become obsessed with your passions, this is the book that will inspire and enable you – just don’t watch the film.

Honourable Mention

The End of Mr Y – Scarlett Thomas

This is a book about a book. It’s about an academic losing themselves in a book, about a lost manuscript, about a strange compulsion, and about two professors falling in love. Unfortunately, it’s funny, and so it doesn’t belong on this list. It did, however, help to inspire it, and so it sits here – and leads the charge on ‘light academia books to distract you from your ceaseless work’ (forthcoming conference season).

Picnic At Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay

This book is kind of nuts. Did you watch the 2018 series? Sharp costumes, brilliant performances, and an endless expanse of the Australian bush to gaze at, the book has the historical setting, queer undertones, and intense mystery to grip the reader, but it won’t inspire you to do anything except stare into space.

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Not enough of this is set in the school for me to really consider it dark academia, but all the most affecting bits are. Best read when you have this song in your head, and somebody in mind to forget.

Only Ever Yours – Louise O’Neill

More clones, which isn’t really my thing, but this one comes as clones of supermodels with dialogues on femininity in the modern world and some exploration of queer-coding and racial tropes. This explores how we learn our biases and how we compete for what we want at the behest of the school system… but its futuristic setting and clinical outlook means that it lacks some of what we love about the dark academia aesthetic.

New Year Poem – Philip Larkin

It’s not truly long enough to be considered a ‘read’, but it is perhaps the most easily-accessible of all of these. I read this poem every New Year’s day, and it reminds me what I love and what I want.

On This Topic:

• Learn about how to display your dark academia passion.
• Oh so you want to steal my style? Here’s a moodboard.
• Classism in classics? Where do those dark undertones come from..?

To-Do:

• Write a chapter. Find out when I’m meeting with JW and ND.
• Travel back to London.
• Buy a new ereading solution.

Today’s Culture:

• Dark academia pioneers Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.
• Christmas / New Year leftovers. I will not be roasting any meat for a while after this.
• Buying all these books from Blackwell’s, Foyle’s, Waterstone’s or an independent retailer. If you take my recommendations to Bezo’s Monopoly Emporium I will be heartbroken.