Circe by Madeline Miller. An absolute masterpiece with so much more of a story than I expected when it was recommended to me as a "cosy book" (I certainly wasn't feeling cosy in the 'Circe is trying not to get raped again' arc). Great story, perfect tempo and phenomenal writing style with clear knowledge of all the intricacies of the myths

pseudointellectual

29 days ago

Song of Achilles and by extension that book are what spurred me to make this, so they are on my buying soon list

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I dunno if this counts but I recently read The Secret History and it's absolute dynamite

Is Susanna Clarke sort of book Tok? Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel and Piranesi were both pretty good

benge

1 month ago

looking at some Goodreads reviews on Piranesi made me want to claw my eyes out lol. Love it though. To me if I think of booktok it mainly evokes YA/NA romantasy

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Dostoevsky is fairly popular in certain niches, along with Kafka and Camus - but for books whose popularity originated from TikTok, they're far and few between. The only recommendation I've received which I hadn't heard of previously and which was replicated across the community was 'Notes of a Crocodile,' though I haven't read it personally.

literati

1 month ago

That's a TikTok book‽ It's great, and the writing is impeccable (though not the plot).

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melancholica

1 month ago

I mean, it's not a 'TikTok book' as in produced for TikTok or typical Y/A fluff, but anecdotally it's a fairly popular recommendation across those interested in classics who also like LGBT stuff.

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champagne

1 month ago

Notes of a Crocodile is pretty good. Agree with literati on the quality of Qiu Miaojin‘s writing.

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I don't use Tiktok but a girl who does recommended me "Her Body and Other Parties" to read. A collection of feminist horror stories, one apparently quite prevalent in the Booktok community, and one that's reasonably interesting. It was certainly more intelligently written than "Tender is the Flesh", another Booktok book the same girl recommended to me. But if you're going to be reading Booktok, why not go for simple trash-lit à la Colleen Hoover? It would be so much more fun.

pseudointellectual

1 month ago

I'm not necessarily looking specifically for booktok books. I was talking to a friend about Greek mythology shit and mentioned "Song of Achilles" which was like the first booktok book I ever heard of and figured it was trash as a result, although they said they enjoyed it well enough. Then figured I'd ask the general public here to see if my bias was inherently off or not.

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Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life 😊 Unironically pretty good though.