Recs if you like Under the Volcano...

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

For when you need to wallow in melancholy and misery: a collection of pessimistic, cynical, downbeat, depressing, doom and gloom fiction for my disillusioned friends.

More to come!

Got the holiday blues? Check out my list Christmas with the Cranks!

This list will contain books that made me go, "Wait what?" I am still not sure if I completely get them but I i think I semi-liked some of them 🤣 (p.s. I am adding recs by other users so some i havent read yet)

Time Magazine’s All-Time Best 100 English Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 as published in 2005.

Originating in the late 1800s and continuing until the end of World War II, works of the modernism movement feature new and innovative styles, a break from traditional writing, and attempts to recontextualize literature in response to both the devastation of the series of global conflicts between 1900-1950 and the emergence of new technology, ideas, and world order. Subgenres of modernism include absurdism, surrealism, dadaism, and stream of consciousness.

Time Magazine’s compilation of the 100 best novels published since 1923.

(101 because “The Berlin Stories” is an omnibus of “Mr Norris Changes Trains” and “Goodbye To Berlin.”)

stories of excess, sensuality, pleasure, adventure, reactivity, and eros, as well as stories that reflect the feeling of a summer holiday or the lethargy and fatigue of late summer

Books where substance abuse or addiction play a part in the story. Not always the main characters, but does have some kind of impact on the plot. Including memoirs but I haven’t read many so I’d love suggestions of both non-fiction and fiction.

Books that were featured on an episode of Backlisted.

books to finish in the early hours of the morning, begun the night before - books twisted in form and function, to disarticulate and piece back together in your head. To read in threes, to read in straight lines, to take one page when required