Recs if you like The Vegetarian...
Weird Girl Fiction
An emergent subgrene by and about strange women on themes of female rage, sisterhood, hunger, attraction, beauty, motherhood, violence, and much more.
would you still love me if i was a plant?
books about people transforming into, or being reincarnated as, plants 🌱 (or trying their best to)
suggestions welcome!
apart / a part
literary (or literary-leaning) fiction focused specifically on isolation, disconnection, loneliness — and what they teach us about life and humanity.
ft. recs from the community!
Books that feel like an A24 film
Books that are atmospheric, emotionally unsettling, beautifully written, a little weird, and linger long after you finish them.
The Curio Cabinet: The Symbolic, Strange & Surreal
Not all collections hold things you can touch. This one holds worlds that breathe, selves that dissolve, and realities that refuse to hold their shape. These are the fictions that live on the edge of what language can contain - and sometimes just beyond. Admission is free, through entry requires a signed waiver: the curator cannot be held responsible for any transformations that occur upon your exit. We welcome specimen recommendations!
hungry women
these books use (literal) hunger as a political tool to speak to women’s oppression, repression and desire, whether through overt cannibal metaphor, speculative dispatches, or more subtle nuances of appetite in literary fiction. these women are hungry for something more, whether they’re allowed to act on it or not.
recommendations welcome!
Fun Size Horror Reads
Horror novellas under 200 pgs. Bite size scary reads for spooky season. These span the horror spectrum from psychological horror to gory, body horror to gothic ghosties and more. Let me know what else I should add!
assigned by frankie
almost every single book mentioned* on 🔗 Frankie's Shelf youtube channel because their taste is wild and i love it.
updated as frankie posts. *mentioned as in the book is the focus of the video, listed in the description, or offhandedly said.
I love it when women
...are unhinged, lonely, tortured, kooky, crazy, unmoored, yearning, plotting, stalking, monologuing, self-pitying, lost, etc.
🔪🩸👩❤️💋👩baddies on quests🐇🥰🧚♀️
Following women on journeys to do weird and maybe violent things.
weird girl lit
supporting women's rights and very very wrongs
Horror in < 200 pages
Horror books with a page count of 200 pages or less.
Before we started defining novellas by word count, they were defined as being any book less than 200 pages. Source: my Analysis of Short Stories & Literature professor in community college. I loved that class. But he loved James Joyce. So, ymmv, I guess.
High Femme Fiction
pink, sophisticated & sometimes fatale <3 (added some essential nonfic & poetry!)
The System Is The Monster
Fiction has always been where truth hides. Across horror, thriller, literary fiction, fantasy & mystery every book on this list has something to say about power, who holds it, who destroys it, and how it reproduces itself.
Profit > People
Fictional stories. Real consequences. Profit > People is dedicated to books with capitalist critique, focusing on the lives - and bodies - sacrificed at the altar of industry and interest. Always taking recommendations!
sad girl litfic starter pack
the warm, fragmented interiors of women navigating emotional turmoil, relational dysfunction, identity crises, and existential malaise. intense, immersive, atmospheric, and deeply felt. stories of mundanity and despair, but also of a different beauty, some subtler strength. let's wallow freely and without shame.
note: open to recs, but those focused on interiority rather than romance (e.g. not Normal People)
Books like an espresso shot
Short, quick reads that still pack a punch and wake you from your numb slumber
Feral and Hysterical: Works by Women
List of recommendations included in Sadie Hartmann's Feral and Hysterical: Mother Horror’s Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women.
Pairs with 50 States, 50 Books by Women list.
"She's Going Through Something"
Horror books written by women where a female MC is "going through something" and it's (mostly) society's fault. Others might think she's going crazy, or seeing things that aren't really there... But is she, really?
These books explore the real horrors women have to face in society through the storytelling conventions of the horror genre.
Translated Korean Literature
