anyway, friends, read the secret history, the picture of dorian gray, if we were villains for tragic gay romeo and juliet, meditations by marcus aurelius for good life advice, and babel by r.f kuang (otherwise known as the only book to ever make me cry.
the goldfinch is also amazing, but keep in mind any book written by donna tartt (secret history author) is always amazing. the starless sea by erin morgenstern is hit or miss, but I like it because the art style is similar to mine.
one thing all these books have in common is elegant poetic prose, good writing and (excluding the starless sea) they all have endings that will make you just stare at the ceiling after finishing them.
(crime and punishment and anything written by dostoyevsky — especially the brothers karamazov — is good, but maybe I just have a bias for existentialist authors because I myself am an existentialist. Try reading Camus and Nietzsche too, and no reccomendation is complete without Kafka.)
