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ringleader's avatar

Cool picks! A lot I hadn’t heard of. I’d also recommend for anyone interested in the South The Leopard’s Spots by Thomas Dixon, the book Birth of a Nation was an adaption of. “Historians” today will say it’s sensationalized but Dixon lived Reconstruction and its certainly no more sensationalized than say Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Of course, Gone With the Wind is obligatory. It’s easily a top contender for the Great American Novel. And it is very “feminist coded.” People naysay it as overrated but they are simply mistaken.

A final pick is Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky. Though I do love reading I also have trouble finishing books, so both crime and punishment and demons have bookmarks at about a 100pgs in. Criminal, I confess. BUT Underground is breezily short and quite schizoid so right up my alley. One of the major scenes is seared into my brain, and reflect on it often. Until I write a long form piece on it, I will only add that it is a very prescient look into the psyche of a sensitive young(ish) man reckoning with bureaucracy and the schizophrenic undercurrents of Russian civil society and nihilism in the decades building up to the revolution.

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Nathan Bloom's avatar

Gore Vidal is a fantastic writer for those who sympathize with his described contrarian ‘gentleman bitch’ style. One of my favorites.

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