70 Reading Lists for the New Year
Finding your 'Personal Curriculum' for 2026
I’m really into this idea of the ‘Personal Curriculum’. I covered it a couple of months ago.
‘Personal Curricula’ are, essentially, self-imposed reading lists. The whole goal is to read more, read intentionally, and to replace doom scrolling with something purposeful.
For the New Year, my gift to you is this massive list of pre-formed Personal Curricula. 70 of them to be exact. I wanted to do 100, but Substack said the email was too long!
Broadly, we have seven themes:
Fantasy, myth, and folklore
Spirituality
Horror
Art
Psychology
Music
Sex and the body
If you can’t find something here which interests you, well… drop your thoughts in the comments…
Who knows? You might introduce someone to their next special interest.
I. FANTASY, MYTH, & FOLKLORE
1. Fairy Folk
Primary
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595)
Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648)
George MacDonald, Phantastes (1858)
Secondary
Simon Young (ed.), The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and Other Social Supernatural Beings (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2018)
Non-reading
The Fairy Faith (2000), dir. John Walker
*
2. The Origins of Fantasy
Primary
Beowulf (c. 700–750 CE)
William Morris, The Earthly Paradise (1868–70)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954–55)
Secondary
Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Non-reading
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–03), dir. Peter Jackson
*
3. The Epic
Primary
The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100–1200 BCE)
Homer, The Odyssey (c.725–675 BCE)
Virgil, The Aeneid (composed 29–19 BCE)
Secondary
Catherine Bates (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Epic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Non-reading
Star Wars original trilogy (1977–83), dir. George Lucas
*
4. Creation Stories
Primary
Hesiod, Theogony (c. 700 BCE)
Genesis (6th-5th century BCE)
Norse cosmogony from the Poetic Edda (composed 9th–13th centuries CE)
Secondary
Anthony F. Aveni, Creation Stories: Landscapes and the Human Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021)
Non-reading
BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: Jessica Frazier on Creation Myths
*
5. Witchcraft
Primary
Heinrich Kramer, The Malleus Maleficarum (1487)
William Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1606)
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Fairy Tales (1812–57)
Secondary
Katherine Howe (ed.), The Penguin Book of Witches (London: Penguin, 2014)
Non-reading
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), dir. Joel Coen
*
6. The Green Man
Primary
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th century)
Ellen Datlow et al. (eds), The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (2004)
Secondary
Gary R. Varner, The Mythic Forest, the Green Man and the Spirit of Nature (New York: Algora Publishing, 2007)
Richard Hayman, The Green Man (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2010)
Non-reading
The Green Knight (2021), dir. David Lowery
*
7. Fortune-telling
Primary
Prosper Mérimée, Carmen (1845)
Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831)
Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973)
Secondary
Deborah Epstein Nord, Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807–1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)
Non-reading
Notre-Dame de Paris (1956), dir. Jean Delannoy
*
8. Japanese Yōkai
Primary
Toriyama Sekien, Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (The Illustrated Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) (1776–1784)
Yanagita Kunio, The Legends of Tōno (1910)
Noriko T. Reider, Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2016)
Secondary
Kazuhiko Komatsu, An Introduction to Yōkai Culture: Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History (2017)
Non-reading
Spirited Away (2001), dir. Hayao Miyazaki
*
9. Demonology
Primary
King James VI & I, Daemonologie (1597)
Aleister Crowley, The Goetia (1904)
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (written 1928–40; published 1967)
Secondary
Scott G. Bruce (ed.), The Penguin Book of Demons (London: Penguin, 2025)
Non-reading
Rosemary’s Baby (1968), dir. Roman Polanski
*
10. Norse Mythology
Primary
The Poetic Edda (compiled c. 1270 CE, but written much earlier) — I recommend Carolyne Larrington’s translation
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (c. 1220 CE)
Völsunga Saga (13th century CE)
Secondary
Andy Orchard (ed.), The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore (London: Penguin, 2011)
Non-reading
Videogame: God of War: Ragnarök (2022), Santa Monica Studio
II. SPIRITUALITY
11. The Fall
Primary
Genesis 2–3 (6th–5th century BCE)
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667)
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens (1990)
Secondary
Louis Schwartz (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Non-reading
BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: John Milton
*
12. Journeys through Hell
Primary
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X (8 CE)
Dante Alighieri, Inferno (c. 1308–21)
R. F. Kuang, Katabasis (2025)
Secondary
Bart D. Ehrman, Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition (New York: Yale University Press, 2022)
Non-reading
Apocalypse Now (1979), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
*
13. Medieval Mystics
Primary
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393–1416)
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (1440)
Secondary
Bernard McGinn (ed.), The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006)
Janina Ramirez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It (WH Allen: London, 2022)
Non-reading
Podcast: Tudors, Dynasties & Beyond: Medieval Women – Mystics and Nuns
*
14. After the Apocalypse
Primary
The Book of Revelation (c. 95 CE)
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1826)
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
Secondary
James Berger (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Non-reading
The Last of Us (HBO, 2023–)
*
15. The Death of God
Primary
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882) and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Secondary
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)
Non-reading
Silence (2016), dir. Martin Scorsese
*
16. Hubris
Pride in the face of the Gods
Primary
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE)
Ovid, ‘Icarus’ in Metamorphoses (8 CE)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Secondary
Video essay: Then & Now, ‘Hubris, Nemesis and Greek Mythology’
Non-reading
Frankenstein (2025), dir. Guillermo del Toro
*
17. The Seven Deadly Sins
Lust, anger, pride, greed, gluttony, sloth, envy
Primary
William Langland, Piers Plowman (c. 1360s–1380s)
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400)
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992)
Secondary
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices (2020)
Non-reading
Se7en (1995), dir. David Fincher
*
18. Faustian Bargains
Moral fables where someone trades their soul for forbidden knowledge or power
Primary
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (1808/1832)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (1947)
Secondary
Simon (ed.), The Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain (2024)
Non-reading
Recording of Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus at the Globe Theatre in London
*
19. Biblically-Accurate Angels
Primary
The Book of Ezekiel (6th century BCE);
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy (late 5th–early 6th century CE)
Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias (1141–1151)
Secondary
Margaret Barker, An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels (London: Octopus Books, 2004)
Non-reading
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), dir. Hideaki Anno (guys, I’m dead serious with this one!)
*
20. William Blake
Primary
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789; 1794)
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
William Blake, Jerusalem (1804–1820)
Secondary
Morris Eaves (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to William Blake (2003)
Non-reading
William Blake’s Sacred Art (2025)
III. HORROR
21. Vampires
Primary
John Polidori, The Vampyre (1819)
Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla (1872)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
Secondary
J. Gordon Melton, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994)
Non-reading
Nosferatu (1922), dir. F. W. Murnau
*
22. Ghosts
Primary
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1601)
M. R. James, ghost stories (c. 1904–1925)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Secondary
Roger Clarke, A Natural History of Ghosts (2013)
Non-reading
The Woman in Black (2012), dir. James Watkins
*
23. Gothic Women Writers
Primary
Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya (1806)
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (1979)
Secondary
Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik (eds), Women and the Gothic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017)
Non-reading
Jennifer’s Body (2009), dir. Karyn Kusama
*
24. The Allure of the Ruin
Primary
Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’ (1818)
William Wordsworth, ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839)
Secondary
Brian Dillon, Ruin Lust (London: Penguin, 2014)
Non-reading
Crimson Peak (2015), dir. Guillermo del Toro
*
25. Werewolves
Primary
Petronius, The Satyricon (1st century CE)
Marie de France, ‘Bisclavret’ (late 12th century)
Clemence Housman, ‘The Were-Wolf’ (1896)
Secondary
Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (1865)
Non-reading
The Wolf Man (1941), dir. George Waggner
*
26. Monsterf***ing
Primary
Giambattista Basile, Lo cunto de li cunti (Pentamerone, 1634–36)
Madame de Beaumont, La Belle et la Bête (1740 / 1756)
Angela Carter, ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ (1979)
Secondary
Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (1996)
Sue Chaplin, ‘“Daddy, I’m Falling for a Monster”: Women, Sex, and Sacrifice in Contemporary Paranormal Romance’, Gothic Studies 21.1 (2019): 10–27
Non-reading
The Shape of Water (2017), dir. Guillermo del Toro
*
27. Unreliable Narrators
Primary
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ (1843)
Vladamir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
Secondary
David Punter, chapter on ‘The Ambivalence of Memory’, The Literature of Terror, vol. 2 (1996)
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet and Linda Briggs, chapter on ‘Unreliable Narrators and “Unnatural Sensations”: Irony and Conscience in Edgar Allan Poe’, in The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic, 2nd ed (2016)
Non-reading
Gone Girl (2014), dir. David Fincher
*
28. Gothic ‘Orientalism’
When Western fears and desires are projected onto a fantasised idea of Eastern cultures
Primary
Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813)
William Beckford, Vathek (1786)
Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)
Secondary
‘Oriental Gothic: Imperial-Commercial Nightmares from the Eighteenth Century to the Romantic Period’, in The Cambridge History of the Gothic (2020)
James Watt, ‘Elite and Popular Orientalisms’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts (2022)
Non-reading
The Mummy (1999), dir. Stephen Sommers
*
29. Nunsploitation
Sensationalist narratives set in monasteries or convents that eroticise religious repression
Primary
Abbé du Prat, Vénus dans le cloître (1683)
Denis Diderot, La Religieuse (written 1760; published 1796)
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
Secondary
Douglas E. Cowan, The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination (2022).
Non-reading
The Devils (1971), dir. Ken Russell
*
30. The Femme Fatale
Primary
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)
Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1891)
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
Secondary
Julie Grossman, The Femme Fatale (2020)
Non-reading
Double Indemnity (1944), dir. Billy Wilder
IV. THE WORLD OF ART
31. Separating Art from the Artist
Primary
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’ (1891)
Secondary
Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (2023)
Hannah Arendt, ‘Responsibility and Judgment’ (written in 1964; published 2003)
Non-reading
BBC Radio 4, The Why Factor: Separating the Art from the Artist
Should We Separate Art from the Artist?, Crash Course Art History #5
*
32. How to Look at Pictures
Primary
T. J. Clark, The Sight of Death (2006)
Secondary
Shari Tishman, Slow Looking (2017)
‘The Art of Slow Looking’, JSTOR Daily (2024)
Non-reading
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (BBC, 1972)
*
33. Feminist Art History
Primary
Linda Nochlin, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
Secondary
Katy Hessel, The Story of Art Without Men (2022);
Professor Jill Burke, How to Be a Renaissance Woman (2024).
Non-reading
Video Essay: Behind the Masterpiece, ‘The Female Gaze: How Women Artists Change What We See’
*
34. Global Art History
Primary
James Elkins, Is Art History Global? (2007)
James Fox, The World According to Colour (2021)
Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives (2001)
Secondary
Edward S. Cooke Jr., Global Objects: Toward a Connected Art History (2022)
Non-reading
Youtube Series: Travis Lee Clark’s, Non-Western Art History
*
35. The Art Market
Primary
Michael Findlay, The Value of Art (2012)
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975)
T. J. Clark, Those Passions: On Art and Politics (2025)
Secondary
Philip Hook, Rogues’ Gallery: A History of Art and Its Dealers (2018)
Non-reading
The Price of Everything (2018), dir. Nathaniel Kahn
*
36. The Italian Renaissance
Primary
Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists (1550/1568)
Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting (1435-36)
Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (1558-66)
Secondary
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (1972)
Non-reading
BBC TV show, Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty
*
37. Impressionism
Primary
Eva Figes, Light (1983)
Robin Olivier, I’ve Always Loved You (2004)
Sebastian Smee, Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism (2014)
Secondary
Sue Roe, The Private Lives of the Impressionists (2006)
Non-reading
BBC TV series: The Impressionists (2006)
*
38. The Netherlandish Baroque
Primary
Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999);
Benjamin Moser, The Upside-Down World: Encounters with the Dutch Masters (2021);
Laura Cumming, Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death (2013).
Secondary
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987)
Non-reading
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), dir. Peter Webber
*
39. Architectural History
Primary
Vitruvius, De architectura (1st century BCE)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1851–53)
Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci (1980)
Secondary
The Oxford Companion to Architecture (Oxford University Press: 2009)
Non-reading
Youtube Series: History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939
*
40. Black Modernism
Primary
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Alain Locke (ed.), The New Negro (1925)
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
Secondary
Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies (1994)
bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)
Non-reading
Black Is… Black Ain’t (1994), dir. Marlon Riggs
V. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SELF
41. Coming-of-Age
Primary
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006)
Secondary
Graham S. (ed.), A History of the Bildungsroman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Non-reading
David Copperfield (2019), dir. Armando Iannucci
*
42. Psychoanalysis
Primary
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation (1912)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Secondary
Shoshana Felman, ‘Turning the Screw of Interpretation’ (1977)
Non-reading
Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), dir. John Huston.
*
43. The Doppelgänger
Primary
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double (1846)
Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)
Secondary
Naomi Klein, Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023)
Non-reading
Saltburn (2023), dir. Emerald Fennell
*
44. Stoicism
Primary
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic (c. 62–65 CE)
Epictetus, Enchiridion (c. 100 CE)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (c. 170–180 CE)
Secondary
John Sellars, Lessons in Stoicism (2020)
Non-reading
BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: Stoicism
*
45. Meditation
Primary
The Dhammapada (c. 3rd century BCE)
The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (c. 1st century BCE–1st century CE)
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)
Secondary
Donald Lopez, ed. Buddhist Scriptures (Penguin Classics, 2004)
Non-reading
BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: The Buddha
And… try a guided mindfulness meditation!
*
46. Epicureanism & Hedonism
Primary
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus (c. 300 BCE)
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (c. 50 BCE)
J.-K. Huysmans, À rebours (Against Nature, 1884)
Secondary
Michel Onfray, A Hedonist Manifesto: The Power to Exist (2005)
Non-reading
The Great Beauty (2013), dir. Paolo Sorrentino
*
47. Obsession
Primary
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea (1978)
Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985)
Secondary
Daniel Wegner, White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression, Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control (1989)
Non-reading
Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
*
48. Melancholia
Primary
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1601)
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
John Keats, ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1819)
Secondary
Sigmund Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917)
Non-reading
Hamlet (2009), dir. Gregory Doran
*
49. Psychopathy
Primary
Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square (1941)
Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991)
Secondary
Hervey M. Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity (rev. ed., 1982)
Non-reading
Peeping Tom (1960), dir. Michael Powell
*
50. The 5 Stages of Grief
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
Primary
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1961)
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969)
Secondary
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (1978)
Non-reading
Manchester by the Sea (2016), dir. Kenneth Lonergan
VI. THE WORLD OF MUSIC
51. Synaesthesia
When the senses get confused — so, smelling sounds, hearing colours, and so on
Primary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’ (written 1797; published 1816)
Virginia Woolf, The Waves (1931)
Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. (1964)
Secondary
Jamie Ward, The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses (2008)
Non-reading
Fantasia (1940), Disney
*
52. The Æolian Harp
A mythological harp, played by the wind, which was used by the Romantic poets as a metaphor for creation
Primary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘The Eolian Harp’ (written 1795; published 1796)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821)
E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘Beethoven’s Instrumental Music’ (1810)
Secondary
M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (1953)
Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (1999)
Non-reading
Video documentation of an Aeolian harp played by the wind
*
53. The Sound of Silence
Primary
The Cloud of Unknowing (late 14th century)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953)
Secondary
Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart (eds), Silence and Absence in Literature and Music (2016)
Non-reading
John Cage, 4′33″ (1952)
*
54. The Cult of the Conductor
Primary
Hector Berlioz, Memoirs (written 1848–65; published 1870)
Richard Wagner, On Conducting (1869)
Secondary
Theodor W. Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962)
Non-reading
Tár (2022), dir. Todd Field
Maestro (2023), dir. Bradley Cooper
*
55. Musical Theatre
Primary Literature
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595)
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Non-reading (Musicals)
West Side Story (1961), dir. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins
Les Misérables (2012), dir. Tom Hooper
Wicked (2024), dir. Jon M. Chu
*
56. J. S. Bach
Primary
Johann Nikolaus Forkel, On Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work (1802)
C. P. E. Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments (1753–62)
Martin Luther, The Small Catechism (1529)
Secondary
Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000)
John Eliot Gardiner, Music in the Castle of Heaven (2013)
Non-reading
St Matthew Passion (1727/1736)
The Goldberg Variations (1741)
*
57. The Beatles
Secondary
Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’ (1941)
Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (2nd rev. ed., 2008)
Primary & Non-reading
The Beatles, Rubber Soul (1965)
The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Yellow Submarine (1968), dir. George Dunning.
*
58. Punk
Primary
Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989)
Richard Hell, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (2013)
Secondary
Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming (1991)
Non-reading
Sid and Nancy (1986), dir. Alex Cox
*
59. The Sublime
Primary
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Alexander Gerard, An Essay on Taste (1759)
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790)
Secondary
Philip Shaw, The Sublime (2006)
Non-reading
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D minor (1824)
*
60. The Passage of Time
Primary
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924)
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (1913–27)
Vikram Seth, An Equal Music (1999)
Secondary
Jeremy Eichler, Time’s Echo: Music, Memory, and the Second World War (2024)
Non-reading
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), dir. Agnès Varda
VII. SEX AND THE BODY
61. Libertines
Primary
Pietro Aretino, Sonnets of Lust (c. 1525)
Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, The Sofa: A Moral Tale (1742)
John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure: Fanny Hill (1748–49)
Secondary
Kathleen Lubey, Excitable Imaginations: Eroticism and Reading in Britain, 1660–1760 (2012)
Non-reading
The Libertine (2004), dir. Laurence Dunmore
*
62. The Tattooed Body
Primary
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846)
Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man (1951)
Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, ‘The Tattooer’ (1910)
Secondary
Matt Lodder, Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art (2024)
Non-reading
Tattoo Uprising (2019), dir. Alan Govenar
*
63. Second-Wave Feminism
Primary
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981)
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1979–84)
Secondary
bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981)
Non-reading
BBC archival programmes and interviews on second-wave feminism (1970s–1980s)
*
64. ‘Camp’
Primary
Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on “Camp”’ (1964)
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Jean Genet, The Maids (1947)
Secondary
Fabio Cleto et al. (eds), Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject (2022)
Non-reading
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), dir. Jim Sharman
Pink Flamingos (1972), dir. John Waters
*
65. New Queer Cinema
Primary
Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet (1981)
Derek Jarman, Modern Nature (1989)
B. Ruby Rich, ‘New Queer Cinema’ (1992)
Secondary
Ronald Gregg and Amy Villarejo (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema (2021)
Non-reading
Un chant d’amour (1950), dir. Jean Genet
Paris Is Burning (1990), dir. Jennie Livingston
Poison (1991), dir. Todd Haynes
*
66. The Decadents
Primary
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (1857)
Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1891)
Aubrey Beardsley, Illustrations for Salomé (1894)
Secondary
Jean Pierrot, The Decadent Imagination, 1880–1900 (1981)
Non-reading
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), dir. Albert Lewin
Salomé (2013), dir. Al Pacino
*
67. BDSM
Primary
Marquis de Sade, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1791)
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs (1870)
Pauline Réage, Story of O (1954)
Secondary
Brandy L. Simula, Robin Bauer, and Liam Wignall (eds.), The Power of BDSM: Play, Communities, and Consent in the 21st Century (2023)
Non-reading
Secretary (2002), dir. Steven Shainberg
Pillion (2025), dir. Harry Lighton
*
68. The Abject Body
Primary
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980)
Georges Bataille, Erotism (1957)
J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)
Secondary
Konstanze Kutzbach and Monika Mueller (eds.), The Abject of Desire: The Aestheticization of the Unaesthetic in Contemporary Literature and Culture (2007)
Non-reading
Under the Skin (2013), dir. Jonathan Glazer
Francis Bacon, Death of George Dyer (1971)
*
69. Sapphic Poetry
Primary
Sappho, Fragments (c. 630–570 BCE)
Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me (Une femme m’apparut, 1904)
Hilda Doolittle, Collected Poems (esp. Sea Garden, 1916)
Audre Lorde, The Erotic Poems (1978)
Secondary
James J. Wilhelm (ed.), Gay and Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology from Sappho to Michelangelo (1995).
Non-reading
Sappho: Love and Life on Lesbos (2015), BBC documentary
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), dir. Céline Sciamma
*
70. The Four Kinds of Love
Storge (family), Philia (friendship), Eros (sex), and Agape (self-sacrifice)
Primary
Plato, Symposium (c. 385–370 BCE)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Books VIII–IX: Friendship) (c. 350 BCE)
The New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13 (c. 50–60 CE)
Secondary
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960)
Non-reading
Ingmar Bergman, Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Well, I hope that gives you some food for thought, this year. Happy reading.
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