Recs if you like Oroonoko...

Based on the list/book published in 2006, general editor Peter Boxall.

puts beret on a jaunty angle ‘why yes i went to Oxbridge and go skiing on my holibobs with papa, why do you ask?’ takes a hit of tobacco flavoured vape, puts asterisk in margin of the obscure classic i’m ‘reading’

the list for people who want to look ‘well read’ and need some books to name drop - look no further if you have read them, more power to you, but this is explicitly about the people who claim to have read them but can’t read instructions on pasta

consider this a shopping list 🖤

The Entire Collection of Penguin's Little Black Classics

NOTE: the ones with non matching covers just won't switch to the LBC edition no matter what I do

classic literature featuring authors and stories of africa, asia, and the middle east, mostly narrative fiction and memoirs instead of poetry/spiritual

All the books in the little black classic collection from Penguin.

All the books I've been asked to read for my English BA, but not necessarily the books I read while doing it (also i did a New Zealand literature paper so a couple of these will be a bit obscure)

Slowly curated list that features texts by authors mentioned in Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own'.

They are pretty, they are tiny, they are collectable, but have you read them all?

added as i read the book

Jeremy O’Harris for Vanity Fair April 1st 2026: “If you’re like me and the world has been overwhelming you with emails and countless deadlines, getting arrested in Japan for accidentally having MDMA in your toiletry bag, resulting in a 23-day confinement, will be your chance to turn off the world if you so choose. In the quiet of my cell, I read 23 books and turned in an outline for a movie at a major studio, all while realizing how loud my normal life had become. Here is a list of the books I read, in the order that I read them…”

Books and scholars referenced in Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

All the books that were listed on my female writers mug