Life can be (a) dream

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Timeline of my reading

My absolute strongest recommendations have a star in front of them. You probably can see that there are a lot of stars. This is because I drop books like crazy. If I don't like it, I just won't read it. So, even if a book doesn't have a star, it's probably still good just because I finished it. I also didn't want to drown you out in stars.

April 2023 - Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
A friend loaned me a copy of this book after a break-up. I am a very neurotic person, so I found a lot of benefit in it. It was the first clear explanation I read of how much power I let my emotions have over me, and how much I am crippling myself.

July 2023 - Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney
A friend recommended this book after he found benefit from it. I also learned lots from it. I have a longer write up of my thoughts here.

June 2024 - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This is the first book I read while trying to get back into reading fiction. It was recommended by the same friend as above while I was recovering from my near suicide attempt. Honestly, I was still in such a bad fog that I barely remembered or processed most of the book. I also just wasn't that good at reading yet. Anyway, what I remember is good, and I want to re-read it again when I don't have such a big backlog of books to read. It got me back into the habit of reading, and helped me cure my horribly broken attention span.

September 2024 - Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Man with an intellectual disability receives a surgery that raises him far above the average IQ. There are complications (which caused a lot of tears). I had read the short story years before, and kept putting off reading the full story. When I finally read it, I was very sad that I had put it off for so long. But, really, it's really good! I was still trying to form a reading habit at this point, and it helped a lot.

October 2024 - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Recommended by another friend. I binged this the day before an exam and proceeded to almost fail it.

January 2025 - The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
I found this on the bookshelf of a coworker, and borrowed it from him. I had read this years prior (from the same author), which almost entirely set my views on mental illness and education so strongly that I still hold almost all of those beliefs. But, honestly, I found the book a little underwhelming! It seemed sort of repetitive. I think part of the problem is also that I had heard of many of the cases mentioned in the book (or of very similar ones), so it felt as if it was a summary more than anything. I think that this book is still useful for people who want an in-depth introduction into the topic of why the younger generation sometimes comes off a little weak.

January 2025 - The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I read this too early into starting to read again, just like Anna Karenina. I have to reread this eventually.

February 2025 - Confession by Leo Tolstoy
My favorite book ever. It documents Tolstoy's transition to faith and his overall attitude towards the topic during his lifespan. I have a longer write up of my thoughts here.

February 2025 - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
This book is very misunderstood. I have seen libraries write descriptions about the eroticism of this novel and even tag it as a love story. Please know that this is not true, and the book is explicitly written with an unreliable narrator that tries to trick you and justify his actions frequently. It is very good.

March 2025 - The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
I saw almost every adult I know in this play. It describes the misery of people who hate their lives and don't do anything to change it. My mood was down for a week after reading it. Anyway, I still highly recommend it.

July 2025 - The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
This finally let me see my whole suicidal period as resolved. Everything else I had to say or express was in this book, and after I read it, I was done moping about it. I wrote And the cat screamed, and I moved on.

July 2025 - Animal Farm by George Orwell
I have read this goddamn book three times. I read it for the first time in fifth grade while dying of boredom, and I had no clue that it had historical context or anything to it. I read it again in eighth grade for our history class, and was sad to see that the pigs were metaphors. I read it again for a book club, and I enjoyed it, but I really just need to not read this or talk about this book ever again.

August 2025 - No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Honestly not that good. I read this for the same book club as above, and I didn't take much of anything from it. It seemed to fill the reader with misery for no benefit.

September 2025 - The Trial by Franz Kafka
Read this for the book club. I feel like I may have missed something. It was alright. Maybe I am so surrounded by useless bureaucracy that I just find the topic boring instead of interesting now.

October 2025 - Sakhalin Island by Anton Chekhov
Why read Chekhov's plays when you can read about the insanity of Sakhalin Island instead? Very powerful. I learned about the overall mindset of a criminal too.

October 2025 - The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I read this almost exclusively so I could read The Magic Mirror by Plath. It's a good book. His other works are better, but considering how high Dostoevsky sets the bar, this is still good.

October 2025 - The Magic Mirror by Sylvia Plath
This is probably the most rare thing I've read! Until I publicly posted the PDF onto my site, there was no way for the average person to read this outside of paying 500 dollars for a copy (of which there are only 500 in the first place). The Magic Mirror is a thesis by Sylvia Plath analyzing the use of double characters by Dostoevsky, and how his usage of the double character evolved throughout his career. The thesis mostly focuses on The Double and The Brothers Karamazov. In it, Plath called The Double an embryo, where his technique is then fully refined in Brothers. This made me very emotional. Plath was already so skilled so young, and The Bell Jar could have been its own embryo had she not killed herself so young.

October 2025 - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I read this right as I first started wondering about the whole hedonism problem. I felt very isolated at the time. When I tried to speak against hedonism to my friends, I felt as if the responses I got back were lifted from this book verbatin. I felt less lonely after this. Still very dazed and unsure of how to handle it, mind you, but I had more strength afterwards. And I cried in public while reading it...

November 2025 - Confession by Leo Tolstoy
Again, again! Reread it so I could make a proper write up on it.

December 2025 - Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
My favorite from Dostoevsky. I had a lot of fun finding historical context for the book and attaching it to modern events.

January 2026 - Foundation by Isaac Asimov
It was alright. I tried this because my dad really enjoyed this book series when he was younger, but I got sad every time it jumped several years into the future and abandoned its old cast of characters. I wasn't able to move onto any of the other books in the series.

January 2026 - Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
About damn time! I was a fool to read the most popular book of his so late! My second favorite from Dostoevsky.

February 2026 - Demian by Hermann Hesse
Recommended via email from someone who saw my site. I am so glad, because I am not sure I would have even heard of this book for another several years if it wasn't for this. It is one of my absolute favorite books exactly because I read it during a time period where I was trying to find how to exist without a mentor, which this book is very focused on.

March 2026 - The Castle by Franz Kafka
Recommended by a friend after he heard that I didn't get much out of The Trial. I feel bad, though, because I didn't get much out of this one either.

March 2026 - The Stranger by Albert Camus
Read this just to see if I liked Camus' stuff. I am not sure. I got a similar feeling reading this as I did reading The Trial. I struggled to really make sense of why the main character was like that. I still want to try more of his stuff, since he's very highly spoken of.

March 2026 - Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Really good. Like really good. It follows Siddhartha, a Buddhist that realizes that he can never reach enlightenment by following others. Demian had more impact, but that was only because Demian is more relevant to my life right now. I think I will re-read Siddhartha when I am a bit more developed and take even more from it. I took this whole book as a challenge, honestly. Look at the problems Siddhartha has, look at what he considers difficult, and look at your life, and... ;w; I want to be as strong as him.

April 2026 - Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Well, I liked Siddhartha a ton, so of course I had to read this too! This solidified Hesse as my favorite author. It tackles the question of suicide and personality in such a good way! Personality is multi-faceted, and is a bunch of little people shoved inside your head that all take turns existing.

May 2026 - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
I read this for the first time in high school, but recently reread it for the book club. I had a wildly different read, and was way way more scared than I was before. This is made worse by the fact that Huxley initially said he thought it would maybe take ~600 years for society to hit this point, and later revised this to say it was possible in as little as ~100 after seeing the course of society.

May 2026 - Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
My day was ruined after finishing this. I've not read much American literature, and now I see I should really read more. "You said about them rabbits..."

June 2026 - Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
This book is about how algorithms control modern society. I wasn't a huge fan of how this was written, but the information is very good. I do wish she went a bit more technical on her explanations, but I realize that due to how secretive these algorithms are, she simply doesn't always have the information to share. I took several notes of systems to check on after reading this, and was extremely nervous by the fact that this was written in 2016. It's probably gotten much worse since then!

June 2026 - Narcissus & Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Clearly I am obsessed with Hesse. It was very fun to watch Hesse's mindset progress between Steppenwolf and this book. He didn't worry as much about the rot of society this time! Now he's worried about the differences between the artist and the thinker!