 Welcome to the Dark Academia vlog project. I often say that I like Dark Academia, that I love Dark Academia, but the reality is I love The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Every time I read Dark Academia, I'm disappointed and I've been chasing that high, trying to fill that void ever since reading The Secret History. So the goal of this vlog is to find something, to find something to fill that void, to scratch that itch, to sate that hunger. And these are the candidates that I have assembled. Lane Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth, Bunny by Maura Awad, These Violent Delights by Micah Never Ever, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessil, Catherine House by Elizabeth Thomas, The Divines by Ellie Eaton, and Ghost of Harvard by Francesca Saratella. Hopefully one of these will work, but we'll find out together. Book 1 is done. I just finished Bunny by Mona Awad and I don't really know what I just read, which when I checked Goodreads just now, I saw a lot of reviews that were like, what did I just read or what? Or I'm too confused or I'm too dumb for this book. Okay, so like I that made me feel better because like I replayed the ending. I listened to an audio book and I replayed the ending like four times. So I was like, did I zone out? What just happened? So I replayed it and I was like, did I zone out again? What just happened? Am I missing something? I'm not zoning out and what am I missing something? And after like four or five times I was like, okay, it's it's not me. Like the ending is quite ambiguous, I guess that would be the word. I don't really know what I expected. I guess I expected it to be a little weird from the little bit that I knew about it going in. It says a wicked satire, hilarious hallucinogenic freakery. Those are the kind of like blurbed reviews on this. So you know, I didn't I expected it to be strange, but it's yeah. I mean, I think it's meant to be open to interpretation or at least I certainly hope it's meant to be open to interpretation because it is very vague to me. Like I can I can see arguments for various interpretations of what just happened. And oh, I shouldn't say just what happened throughout the book and then the way the ending kind of like would, you know, how you would basically how you would interpret the ending based on what version of events you think this is or whatever, you know what I mean? But yeah, it's I want to say it's hard to talk about without spoilers. But also, I feel like it'd be hard to talk about with spoilers. Because it's just it's a real trip. I it kept me I don't know if entertained is the right word kept me engaged. And I did keep thinking that I was like, oh, okay, it's pointing towards this is going to be what we find out is happening or this is going to be the reveal or this is where we're going with this. And then it did things to like confirm that but not completely. It's still so like basically what I'm saying is that my interpretation, where I thought this was conclusively going, I think is a interpretation of what was going on. But it is not the only interpretation of what is going on. And I love books that do that. Generally speaking, I'm not saying I love this book. I don't dislike this book. This is not my favorite version of that. But like one of the many reasons that ocean at the end of the lane and my Neil game is one of my favorite books of all time in my favorite game and my favorite adult game of book anyway, is that it's a bit like that where some crazy things happen and it does leave it open to interpretation not as wildly open to interpretation as this is where like you you have it relies on you to come up with some kind of way to interpret this. Whereas like ocean at the end of the lane is kind of like one of two options. And there's this straightforward option where you can take it a face value but you can interpret it to be something else as well. Here there is no straightforward option. You it demands of you that you have found some kind of like method to the madness some kind of meaning to this chaos. Otherwise I feel like all the reviews that are like what that was BS like that didn't make any sense. Like I get it why that would be your review if you're not willing to put forth a theory and be like like meeting it halfway with your own interpretation. Yeah. I feel like it's a book that if I reread it I would get a little more out of it so I might reread it because I liked it. I didn't dislike it. I didn't love it. So like I'm not you know I don't rate books for my secret project as I go then I go back and add them because it's a secret. But right now if I had to rate it I think it would be four stars because I didn't love it so it's not five stars but I do think it's very clever and witty and it got me thinking clearly and I will have me thinking for a little while. So I think that's that's at least a four right. As to it being dark academia yeah I mean it is dark academia I suppose. Although weirdly the academia part of it is um not too prevalent like it is the setting that is academic and the reason our characters are thrown together is academia that is what like unites them. I mean the the characters in this book they attend a university for a graduate degree and that is how they all know each other and that is like where they are meeting now you know that is that's the setting and the reason for all this to be happening. But like I don't know I feel like in in The Secret History which is what all these books are in my mind being compared to for good or for ill. The Secret History um I really felt a little bit more like they were students and they all the like shenanigans they got up to they did still also you know do homework and stress about assignments and when they attended class it felt like as as a little eccentric and out there as it is it feels like they are attending class and it's not as out there as this is. I mean I think there's a pretty good reason depending on your interpretation of what's going on here for why it's so out there and for whether or not it really is that out there in terms of what's supposed to actually be happening. It's up to you I guess whether to take it as it is as wild as it seems or it's not. But yeah this this seemed more interested in I don't know just kind of like a just kind of a mind trip chaotic psychedelic horror. I don't really know what else to say so I liked it and it is it is I think it does belong in dark academia but it's not really what I think of like the the experience of reading this book isn't really what I think of as the experience of reading dark academia so much because it doesn't seem to be academia that is the point of obsession for the people. The darkness is tangential to that in a way. Unlike the vast majority of books that are dark academia that are not the secret history which which I dislike this is a book that I would consider dark academia and I like it so that's yay but it's also like it's like dark academia by a technicality I don't know if that makes any sense it's like if you were to read like a legal thriller where it's like a courtroom drama but in the universe of that book the litigators are elves but you like it doesn't really matter you know to the story you'd be like well I guess this is a fantasy book but like it is technically fantasy because they are elves but this is a courtroom thriller you know what I mean it's like they are students and this is an academic setting Kaz now is not the time for this you know in that way that I'm like the thing that this book is about and uh the dark of this book like dark academia is this book is kind of like split the dark and the academia because it is dark and it technically has academia but for me dark academia should like the the academia should derive or the the darkness should derive from the academia or the darkness should be intrinsically linked with the academia here academia and darkness are just kind of like happening simultaneously what they're not the result of each other so yeah I don't know if that makes any sense so like I liked it I don't know if it's yeah I guess it's dark academia but like not really but it is good so I'm glad I read it but I don't know I don't I don't I know I said that this is technically dark academia and I still say that it technically is but I'm like not really you know it is dark and it has academia but it's not really dark academia if that makes sense anyway yeah I will have to like marinate a little bit on this before I uh I'm right now I mean I think it is a four stars and I might reread it but yeah a success I would say in terms of spending time writing a book so that's funny I have a double update for you finish these violent delights um more than if I think like two weeks ago at this point definitely at least a week ago because I'm not marking these on Goodreads while I do this vlog project I can't check I definitely yeah probably two weeks geez okay I've been meaning to film a clip and then I just haven't and then I just finished like a minute ago playing Bad Heroines so I'm gonna do both now for you feel very similarly about both even though they are quite different books but well you know first things first in order of in reading order these violent delights it's um a lot more than plain bad heroines since apparently I'm gonna I'm gonna compare and contrast them a lot more so than plain bad heroines these violent delights seems to be uh more attempting to emulate specifically the secret history type of project if that makes sense um however it fails so spoilers both both I hated both of these books honestly like yeah like one star yeah no I was like maybe two stars but why no I hated it so this one I feel less visceral hatred for right this second because it's longer ago that I finished it I feel more like more recent anger for playing about heroines but so this one they're they're both actually queer um books I feel like that's a big you know a lot of dark academia does that which like the fact of that is great I just wish the books were good so this does follow a toxic relationship between two young men who are in love with each other and the I talk about this more usually about when it comes to like grim dark books but um basically uh to have a toxic relationship depicted in a book or toxic behavior or evil behavior or anything like that there's a difference between depicting it and condoning it there's a difference between depicting it and romanticizing it and I feel like a huge reason why a lot of dark academia is so bad is that it all of it makes the mistake of wanting to romanticize what dana tart was not making fun of but criticizing and this is the same problem you see with weathering heights when books are inspired by weathering heights inevitably they are inspired by weathering heights because the person finds weathering heights to be romantic and so then when they do their version of that they are romanticizing something really deeply toxic and awful so a lot of dark academia is romanticizing dark academia and dana tart's secret history which is what set this all off and that's the huge irony of this um her book is a condemnation of that and weathering heights is a great book and the secret history is a great book um but they're not great books because you should find what they depict romantic I've had this conversation with my mom I was just like I don't know why you could like weathering heights they're so awful um you know like wow who wants that kind of romance and I'm like but that's the thing like you're not supposed to want it you're not supposed to like it you're not supposed to think that that is romantic if you do now we have a problem so the secret history is brilliant and I I get why the dark academia aesthetic is appealing I mean how I'm filming this entire blog project however I find I mean the dark academia and and the secret history specifically I feel about it the way that I feel about first law and it's it's kind of one of those things like there's a lot of like uh I'm not even talking about this book I will talk about this book more specifically but like this is the the problem with both of these books like there's you know um tag questions and things like that that are like you know name your favorite fictional fantasy world that you wish you could escape into or if you could go to your favorite fantasy world blah blah blah blah and like nine times out of ten I'm like my favorite fantasy worlds to read about are most of the time fantasy world that I would never want to visit because that's um because they're awful because they're grimdark because they're filled with tragedy and death and and it's horrible I like reading about it though so I love reading about the world's first law I love reading a sire wise and fire um I love reading the the broken earth by nk jemisin um these these are not worlds that I would want to visit they sound pretty dark and terrible I don't think that that's ideal I don't I don't read it because I think wow if if only um and that's the thing like I feel the same way about the secret history about Donna Tartt it is brilliant and it and what makes it so brilliant is the depravity and darkness and the acknowledgement of those things in the way that the when people talk about how the the secret history is pretentious they're not wrong it is pretentious but the pretension is a feature and not a bug the pretension is there at least in my opinion and feel free to disagree but the reason it works in the secret history in a way it doesn't work in all these others these other copycats these emulators is because the pretension is part of the condemnation like the the pretentiousness of the writing is part of the criticism of the pretension of these characters um she's writing about pretentious people pretentiously and and calling attention to their pretension um like intentionally so when people read that and think um oh how ideal I guess even though it's a murder you know it with the the dark academia aesthetic you know and everything like I I do personally lean towards the aesthetic that has come that has sprung up around dark academia and that part romanticizing I guess the aesthetic that's sort of builds up around it I don't see a huge problem with it um there there are problematic aspects about dark academia as concerns privilege as concerns the the sort of like very white centric um but a lot of people have like broken those barriers anyway and dark academia has you know become something that that anyone who has the desire can emulate the aesthetic of and like if dark academia if the way you are emulating dark academia or wishing to emulate dark academia is to wear sweaters and read books and light candles like yeah I mean that's that describes my life I like it I like wood paneling like I think Oxford is a beautiful place so when people you know use like Cambridge and Oxford and and other old educational institutions as part of the aesthetic like those are beautiful places like um and my personal taste in in architecture and in interior spaces I lean in towards dark wood and books and stuff like that so like yeah it's it's a nice aesthetic but um but the books that are emulating dark academia the the books that are trying to be like the secret history are romanticizing it even when they have uh they write you know dark stories they write about murders they write about bad people doing bad things but it seems to me that it's pretty clear that the authors they found something appealing in the characters in the secret history they found something appealing about the idea of these characters and they can't get away from that and so when they are writing it themselves they like their characters they like the idea of this and that creeps into the writing and then they like the idea of being pretentious about it and they like they like all of those things about it so the dark academia so so the secret history is a savage condemnation of all of that and that's what makes it so good because it's a true understanding of the darkness of it and it it doesn't hold back because it doesn't love those characters it doesn't love what they are doing in fact it it hates what they're doing it hates what they represent so these books so like so these violent delights it has cats do i get the break so these violent delights has two male characters who are in love are in academia and who do a crime you know what's not to like except yeah and here again i haven't made this point yet dark in in the secret history but on a tart she also walks the walk like her characters are pretentious and they are in uh you know uh in academia and the stuff they talk about and the stuff they say and the stuff they're reading and the discussion do i get sprayed the discussions they're having the debates they're having the ideas they are grappling with however much she is criticizing them and their obsession and however much she is condemning everything that they're doing and saying and feeling and being in the book they are actually engaging in pretty high-level debates pretty interesting questions and they're being pretentious as fuck about it but it's also it's genuinely pretty pretty academic stuff and the way she's written it is actually quite intellectual it's it's condemning it but it also is kind of intellectual and this like so many others there's like you know the obligatory references to chess because that makes you academic there's like one or two actual instances of like some high-minded intellectual question or debate or something like that any classroom setting or classroom adjacent setting so that we can have the example of these characters being intellectual but most of the book it spends its time talking about how intellectual they are talking about how intelligent they are talking about what geniuses they are talking about how much they feel the other one is so intelligent and intellectual and genius and not actually showing them being those things and it's just to to constantly reinforce the window dressing of these are just such there's there's so genius but they're so dark and twisted they're so brilliant but they're they're so sadistic and they're so self-destructive and and they are not deep thinkers they are not that intellectual they aren't even that sadistic what they are what they get up to and the reasons for it are are not interesting they are not deep and dark and layered and complex and presenting the reader with a fascinating moral situation to have to grapple with they're it's really dumb and contrived to be quite honest like the the the author was like i need a reason for them to do a murder because this is dark academia so what if i just have them do a murder because like that's basically what happens in this book and is the flimsiest reason for a murder that i could possibly imagine and the main character the character who is telling this story who is your p o v character is insufferable like i i and i not in a fascinating way not i mean plenty of abercrombie characters in first law are insufferable plenty of characters in the secret history are insufferable but he is insufferable to read about he is not interesting he is very annoying the conclusions he's drawing about going on around him are are such wild departures from reality and again not in a way that is fascinating and not in a way that is like a surprise because it's an unreliable narrator and you didn't see it coming he's an unreliable narrator that you are watching be unreliable in the moment and being like what the fuck is your problem dude and for this and he is so annoying so deeply irritating and the person he's in love with isn't much better but by comparison he seems great um and the person who is the other guy that he's in love with who is i guess in love with him as well i'm just like there's nothing between them there's no chemistry between them not like a meeting of minds not a passionate physical connection just like fucking nothing the only thing that is between them is this weird toxic codependency that really seems to come out of nowhere and it's like again it's unpleasant to read about and not because like oh it's too dark for me like i like dark stuff um it's unpleasant to read about because these are just like really depressingly vapid people who believe that they are intellectuals and i'm like what's your fucking not like this is there is no depth to this and it just goes on and on and on moping about itself and doing a murder and then moping about the murder and it just there's it has nothing to say nothing at all not about the characters not anything about anything bigger and more intellectual not anything about morals not about they're hardly in academia at all so for to be a dark academia you know i would like them to be in academia but there's not a lot of that going on you'd actually have to have them doing academic things and you'd have to know academic things for them for to be able to write that which is the time why i'm guessing that's not happening that it was just there was just nothing nothing to this except the authors you can just feel the author thought that this was so deep and so dark and so brilliant and it really fucking wasn't it just wasn't there's nothing to this i know it's really long which i think is a great segue to plain bad heroines which also is very in love with itself is also i i don't want to use the word pretentious although i don't know i mean that probably is the right word it's it is so smug smug is a better word um this book is even longer and even more meaningless and even more obnoxious and even more smug than the other one so i think i do hate this more but i really really hated the other one as well don't get me wrong this book um has more characters no don't eat that one of the two of them are actresses and they're all they're going to the same place again because that's where they're shooting so in theory these timelines you know kind of parallel each other because we have females engaging in female female romances with each other in the same location where kind of eerie things happen to them which are reminiscent of the eerie things that happened to the girls in the 1900s when this was a girl's school which like that that sounds good like that sounds like a book that i would love but there was nothing to these characters and there was nothing to the experiences and i kept hoping desperately that this plotting nonsense that goes on and on and on both timelines on and on and on and then you know we get these weird moments you know there's like wasps are a big part of it death by wasp um and other like weird tragic grim dark violent ways of dying um in the past timeline and then there's like sort of like weird things that happen to the present day timeline where they they aren't dying but they're experiencing weirdness which like maybe this was like a cw show you know you'd find it a bit creepy and it'd be you know a fun time to watch it on a friday night like nothing much to it i don't expect much because it's a cw show but it's like at that level like like nancy drew on the cw like that level of kind of like weird ookey spooky creepy something like i think we're being haunted i kept i kept hoping because we keep getting these like um passages from this book that the girls were obsessed with in the past timeline we keep getting told more information about the past timeline and you keep having mysterious events happen in the present timeline and i'm like at some point something here is going to make sense there will be some kind of a meaning behind all of this time we've spent on this some kind of a connection some kind of something to like make this mean something and there isn't there fucking isn't and i can like a book where the end of it is kind of like the point is that there is no point where if i feel like that's what the author was trying to do is like you know you expected a point to this well the more fool you like isn't like that you know if i felt like that was what he was driving at um i could i could like that but no the book really felt like it was it was doing something deep and it did have some kind of a message or a meaning but it didn't it didn't tell me where um but the thing that the review said that i was like yes they were like i was hoping for something like picnic at the hanging rock for the past timeline and i was like yes that's what i was hoping for and i was like a book that's basically like two timelines so it would be like picnic at hanging rock meets you know i don't know truly devious or meets the Mary Shelley club or meets whatever so you have these two timelines and i was hoping slash expecting the past timeline to be like picnic at the hanging rock and i was like yes that but it's nothing like that unfortunately so this book was just even longer even smugger even more a waste of time like for it to be your academia again you need some academia and for the past timeline where we see the girls like i mean the present timeline they're not into school at all what are you doing you know past timeline you know if they had been shown to be being in school doing school-ish things and academic type things but but no like they are in a school that's like the place they're in but there's nothing really academic about what's going on what they're doing what they're saying what they're contemplating there's there aren't any brilliant academic connections made by the author of the book um even if the characters themselves aren't really engaging in academia this book is just and and the the the narrative voice the authorial voice i already said it was smug and it is smug but it's also like really in your face um with this like smark snarky over the top so like zingy dialogue uh i'm not just dialogue excuse me it's not even the dialogue that zing the dialogue is bad though no it's like the the narrator of the book is like talking at you like to you in a way that feels like conversational in a very snarky kind of way um where we say things in like needlessly quirky ways um which just like are are deeply and irritating to me because it wasn't funny or clever and then all of the references i i personally don't like it when books make too much of making modern day references and not just references to like um intellectual properties or things like that i also mean just references to um modes of communication social media things like that to fashionable slang and jargon because it dates a book unnecessarily although this book is crap it wouldn't stand the test of time anyway but a book is less likely to stand the test of time if it's riddled with things that make you feel very that are making it make you very conscious of when this was written because that's kind of stuff changes so rapidly so like if this was a great book which it's not but let's say it was and we have this present timeline um it should be written away where like if like within reason like obviously some things like the technology shifts so dramatically that like no matter what you have written people are like well nowadays we teleport and they weren't doing that you know like um so it will no matter what you do a book will date itself after some time but as much as possible if you make it modern without being too specific about specific social media platforms specific slang associated with those platforms things like that then make somebody be able to pinpoint like you know the year maybe even the month in which this is taking place then instead of this book being feeling like anyone's present day that they're like oh this is just the present day where there are these people going about their lives no it feels like instead it's like this is the present day of the year in which this was written it it it makes it more specifically that time and that tanks me out of the story because i'm thinking about that then and it takes me out of the my ability to believe that this is just the present day this is a present day for a past time and it just it makes it feel less like this is about just people just modern people it feels like i don't know yeah it's just very jarring to me i don't like it ever i really don't so like many books do this and better books than this do that and i will always dislike that so the fact that this book was already such garbage and then it was doing that as well i was like of course you did that of course you did that so yeah i i was really holding out hope like as i looked started at like a three because i really was irritated by the like authorial voice of the narrator but i was like all right but like if you do something interesting though like i'll forgive you for being so quirky and snarky and in my face um and then the narrative was like going nowhere and it's still going nowhere and still going nowhere and i was like i was like this is looking like a two the more ever good i was like definitely more of a two and i was like if at the end after after all this nothing can save this book from feeling too long and meandering like i will always have stopped that even if there's a good payoff but if there's a good payoff if at the end there's this comes together and there's a connection or a revelation or a reason for me having been dragged through this narrative that makes me go ah i see now what you were doing then i would be happy to like bump it back up to a three or something um i it would never really be higher than that because i just found it too irritating for it to ever earn more than that from me but if at the end there had been a point to this misery i'd have been like all right i'll give you a three because you ended up having a reason for all of this but there wasn't definitely a one because nothing about this was good nothing um so yeah uh both of these are big fat nos from me bunny i liked much better than either of these i didn't even love bunny but bunny definitely had much more of a project in mind and had it just showed more savvy and and more actual intention behind what it was doing and what it was doing was actually genuinely more out there um instead of these books where they're like oh isn't this dark and isn't this subversive but you're like no if fucking isn't like it really isn't this really could be on the cw so i think bunny um because it it made the bold choice and did some things that were just like very strange but leaned into that stangeness and i sort of again had a point to it more so than these two have for sure so so far bunny is the winner bunny has no air to the secret history which is the point of this project but but bunny so far is the best but i have several more to go so what i have left hey don't eat that rubber band it's not oh my god you bit it so yeah i still have ghost of harvard or in harvard harvard yard i don't go spend harvard or in the title um catherine house um the divines that's it hopefully i think um yeah uh big big no to the valentines and plain men heroines absolutely not special topics in calamity physics uh that was my favorite of the bunch so far i really like this i don't think i can give it five stars it's like four four point five i really really liked this it's just that the ending it didn't like fully come together for me in a way where i was like perfect ending wrapped this up in a way that it's not perfection the ending i was like okay you know what i mean maybe you don't if you maybe be really alone i mean but i was a really surprised to see when i check this on goodreads um that it generally speaking has a pretty low aggregate rating and there's like a lot of really negative reviews and my inclination to be like all y'all are wrong when i dislike a book i'm right even if it's popular but if you guys you don't you don't understand this book's actually great well what's kind of weird for me reading some of those reviews i just kind of like skimmed some of the more negative ones and they sounded kind of the way that i sound when i talk about other dark academia and they're like oh she just thinks she's so clever and she thinks this is so smart and she's no donna tart and i'm like yeah i mean i say that all the time about books but but not this one i don't think this book is on par with donna tart i would give it five stars if i did but i don't think it was trying to be and that's like half the battle you know what i mean like the other books i feel like i said before like they're trying to emulate donna tart but they've also misunderstood with what donna tart was doing you know it's like emulating weathering heights but not appreciating what weathering heights was attempting to do so this book i think the other is very very clever don't don't do that kids it's very very clever and the this book i could appreciate that the writing style is very much your mileage may very very much like uh an i'm not even an acquired taste but a particular taste it's a pretty strong flavor it's a flavor that very much works for me she's it's like like i often come up with books that try too hard constantly to be snarky and be in your face and be stylistic and like be just hey don't uh-uh be so clever all the time but this really really worked for me because i feel like it's one of those like i that usually irritates me because i'm like you're not even very funny you're not even very clever stop it um here i'm gonna be like my personal sense with this am i feeling about it which obviously there's no way to prove this this is just obviously a matter of taste um but the way that i feel about what i'm reading is this author is just bursting with so much wit constantly that it's just like spilling out of her and that she can barely contain it all and that every sentence is like that where it's just like crammed in there because it's just like overflowing from her and that she can't help herself and it's just like everywhere all the time all the time all the time um because that's just how she thinks that's how she talks like it doesn't feel try hard if that makes sense it feels like if anything she's like trying to hold back and like can't possibly because there's just this this uh excess of wit and that's a pleasant experience to feel like the author you're reading has an excess of wit i also feel like it was kind of refreshing that for a dark academia book which i will say this like some of the others like i don't know that i could really call a dark academia because academia is not it's more the focus of this than some of the others more so and you actually have like a group of students with a teacher and like that's kind of what's going on so it's got more of that going on than some of the others but what's interesting or maybe not interesting but the thing that's unexpected i guess especially for dark academia is that uh more than half like majority of the references made were to old film rather than to books there's also lots of literary references don't get me wrong there are lots of that too but i so i personally have seen a lot of old movies um i watched a ton growing up and i still watch quite a few i don't just don't watch a lot of movies nowadays in general but i have seen a lot of old movies a lot of my favorite movies are old movies so the way that this references old movies sometimes it's apparent that that's what it's doing like somebody who hasn't seen old movies would know that it's referencing an old movie because it comes out and says like in that movie blah blah blah it'll sometimes say it but there are so many times when it just like it says it in a sentence just casually expecting you to know and if you don't know you might be confused or you might this may be why people think it's overwritten then again i also get irritated with too many references and books but here it just feels so natural to the character and to the writing it doesn't feel like it was like inserted to be witty again it just feels like it's just exploding like i i talk in film references quite a bit myself and i know what it's like to just like your mind just goes there and you like can't stop it so that's what it feels like reading this to the author was just like exploding with wit and references so like a ton of a ton old old like silver screen references that work for me because i know what she's talking about like a few there i was like oh i've never seen that movie but i do know that that is a movie that i meant to see but a ton of references where i was like i know exactly what you're talking about i know exactly what you're talking about i know exactly what you're talking about and so i enjoyed them it's not often that i read a book especially a modern book that references old film because i feel like i people my age don't watch old movies um like it's not as much as i have uh the the chapter titles are uh named after uh classics and literature uh are some of them might be film i think they're all literature pretty sure they're all literature they're all like the names of old books so for example we have a 100 years of solitude we have one full over the cuckoo's nest part of darkness deliverance taming of the shrew etc etc so like it's it's filled with references literary and all literary and this just really works for me and i felt like the characterization was really good um and it was quirky in a way that felt authentic rather than like look how quirky i'm being like i bought it um more than i do in a lot of others and then in particular like the main character it's it's a lot to do with the main character and her father and her relationship with her father and to be clear upfront the man who's the father character is very very different from my father but my father is kind of a strange person or a unique individual and so i i super duper identified with all the times when the main character would be like well a normal dad would blah blah blah but my dad naturally being my dad did x now my my father would do z not x but the point is neither her father nor my father would do the normal thing that the other dads would do so i super identified all the times the main character was like it is the unique experience of being my father's child like uh would also kind of um what this reminded me of um not not the whole plot and not all of it and not even the characters that much but because again it's a lot to do with this girl and her father and their relationship um and the way that they keep traveling from place to place uh which is a lot of you know her backstory before she kind of settles down in this this one school with these with this group of people these group of students and this teacher but before that they've been traveling around her and her dad and it kind of reminded me of Casper the Friendly Ghost how Kat and her father have been traveling around and around and around until they finally settle in this new england town in this house which is the house that Casper the Friendly Ghost is um and her dad is like not an intellectual the way that the dad is in this book but it's still kind of like a quirky father with a daughter that's like just knows how to deal with that so like i love Casper the Friendly Ghosts one of my favorite halloween movies so it reminded me of that it kind of reminded me of me and my dad like not not entirely and in very very different ways but this kind of feeling of like knowing what it's like to have a dad who like doesn't say the normal dad things doesn't do the normal dad things and then the humor of the author the references the author makes they're just very much like my taste things that i get things that i have seen things that i do think are funny so this like the author the authorial voice is quite strong and clearly not everyone's cup of tea but i really enjoyed this i have now ordered a hardcover copy of this and um i think i i don't think i ordered i think i put it on my wishlist um night film by this author which i had heard of before and i didn't really have any interest in reading it before not like revulsion or i wasn't like anti-reading it but i was not really interested in thinking about like it just didn't i don't know it didn't super appeal to me but having read this book and knowing it's by the same author i'm much much more intrigued by night film so maybe i'll read that this spooky season but this totally works for me so far by far my favorite of the bunch and it's not yeah when there were people in reviews saying oh she's trying to be donna tart i don't think she is trying to be donna tart this is very different in tone and style to the secret history this is like quirky and funny and open-ended and i mean it's darkly funny to be clear um the mystery really really works there is like a mystery component to this which is again quite different from the secret history the secret history isn't so much a mystery because you kind of know up front what happened it's more just the seeing the how and the why here there is a genuine mystery component um and uh i forget where i saw it might have been an article somewhere um but the author's saying how she wrote this in three drafts because um it was that part of it the mystery and they're like you already know the answer to the mystery as the author so like having to make sure that every character in every scene is functioning in a way that makes sense for the mystery that you already know like you already know what all their motivations are but the reader doesn't so making sure that what they do in those scenes always actually makes sense for what you know is actually going on but also like does give hints without giving away to the reader what is going on and i think she does it really really well i think the mystery is handled really really well so yeah i really like this so far this is this is the one to be the ghosts of harvard hi that sounds really warm i guess it is i would probably give this four stars um it was probably one of the most academic i.e. actually taking place in school of all of these although that being said she's not really interacting all that much with well that's not true there's quite a bit of her in class and her interacting with professors and her dealing with academia itself that being but but i guess where the reason why i was like there isn't much i mean because there is but that's more like you know how like if you if you watch like a show like vampire diaries like they're they're in school but like that's not the focus of the show you know like and once in a while this episode you know we're like it's finals and like it's a stressor for that episode but like generally speaking it's about romances and vampires so for a book about dark academia the academia is still taking kind of a backseat the way it would in something like vampire diaries and what we're focusing on is to my surprise although in defense of the book it's literally in the title so that's on me but um there's actually ghosts i assumed that we were being like metaphorical or symbolic or something i did not realize that there would actually be ghosts in ghosts of horror which again that's on me it's literally in the title so um that's what the book is more about is about the ghosts and about i mean if there is somewhat of the like symbolic ghostliness i think you know the ghost of our past the ghost of our memories the ghost of you know things that haunt us like in a less literal sense it's both there's things that haunt her in a non-literal sense and there's literally ghosts haunting her and there is a sort of pseudoscience explanation for why that's going on but it's definitely pseudoscience so and then like where there are so mysterious things going on and um it's just like with to do with how her brother died so there's a mystery at the heart of it that was a pretty good mystery um like i kind of pegged certain things about it but from early on i was like i i bet i don't know exactly how it's this but i bet it's something like this and i was pretty correct um but it's still decent decently well done the mystery and um my my estimation of this book rose a lot when i learned two things one this is a debut and for a debut it is very impressive um and two how much research went into the ghost one of the ghosts like the name you should recognize i don't want to say what it is because that'll spoil it because it's kind of a surprise who the who that ghost is um so again i don't want to say but it's a person that you should know um then the other ghosts um are either actual people as well or people that are based on they're sort of like an amalgam of real people who were in similar situations so the amount of research that i learned that the author had done into um the individuals that she was basing these ghosts on to make sure that like what she's pitching as like their ghostly forms what they'd be saying and thinking about what they claimed to have experienced that that would check out so i didn't realize um that it was not really off the cuff that like she like did a lot to research and also the history of harvard itself the history of yeah so like there was a lot of research someone into this for a book that's like my ghosts at harvard um there's nothing more research into that than into the pseudoscience explanation for why there's ghosts um which you know fair enough i'd rather you just didn't explain it honestly uh and didn't try to explain it just let it be ghosts but it's fine that's just a personal preference so overall i think it's pretty engrossing and pretty atmospheric and and the family drama that's it's more of a familial drama to be honest like usually when i think of dark academia i think of the source of stress the source of tension the source of like narrative drama comes from the school comes from the people at the school comes from fellow students comes from teachers comes that it's academia and here academia is sort of the backdrop for a lot of this but more it's a story about a family that's grieving about the death of for her the brother and for her parents their son and how they're all coping or very much not coping with it and so a lot kind of spirals from that and then you know spills into academia and and so academia becomes part of it but it is like incidental to it in in some sense or more so than being the focal point so i guess i'm disappointed about that but that's more just because i'm looking for dark academia like this book wasn't saying that it focused on that you know what i mean so like going into it know that it does have a supernatural elements to it and that it is more about a family drama that happens to play itself out at harvard than it is about harvard although there are scenes of like classes and students and assignments and debates and and reading of uh debating texts in classes and having asshole professors and things like that like that there's there's quite a bit of that going on but yeah it's not academia itself is like not i don't know what the word is that i'm looking for because like it's around a lot and and there's certainly stuff going on to do with it but i guess like the driving thrust of the narrative the driving emotional tension of the narrative is not that much to do with academia academia is just like happens to be a very present reality for the main character so you just have some stress about that i don't know if i'm making any sense i think it's pretty good i think it's pretty good um it's definitely in in so far as the this project this video is to find something that gives me the secret history without like being a copyface with the copyface secret history i will also be angry that's something that like gives me what that gave me this is not really about that it's not really trying to give me that so like what it was doing it did pretty well and i think it's pretty good book and i'm not i'm not mad i read it but in terms of finding something that i can be like if you read the secret history and you loved it then you should read this i don't think i could say that at all about this like you might very well like this book and i might recommend it but it's not like a read-a-like for the secret history i don't think um so the failure for what the purpose of this video is but overall i think it's a pretty good book it gets a pretty good book especially again it's a debut so dang and all the research it retroactively boosts my enjoyment knowing that like she wasn't just pulling this out of her ass especially there's one part in particular and again i don't want to say it's like a specific thing cited by one of the ghosts as having occurred is i guess i'll say it to me as big as possible and i was like i mean even when it happened or when when i when i read that part of the book i was like dang like that's pretty impactful but i just kind of assumed that the author had made it up and i learned that she hadn't made that up but that was true option made up the fact that a ghost is talking about it but like the thing that the ghost was talking about that really happened and i was like dang like so yeah i think it's pretty well cobbled together is what i'm saying but it is no secret history and it's not really trying well yes baby cuny what did you think of it kathrin kath did you like the book did you have a good time kathrin house finished this last night and i liked it i think it's very strange i definitely googled it immediately after finishing it because i was it was one of those like looking for the those youtube videos that are like ending explained like i would like the ending explained to me although i get that i also it's not meant to be explained it's not that i didn't get it you know it's it's meant to be hang on let me try to light on because you can't see my face oh yeah that's better it's now i just look like i'm at a seance okay is that better sitting on the floor in my bedroom so yeah kathrin house um i think it's it's weird but i think it's it's pretty good and weirdly if any of these books are a successor to donna tart um i think it's this one which you've been like going into this book with the amount of like mixed to negative reactions that i saw to it i feel like this is one of those books that like i feel like most people that i know that picked it up didn't like it um either felt about it or outright hated it the i think the only person i know um that liked it was bethanie but that didn't give me much hope because when i saw what she comped it to she comped it to stuff that i don't like like uh the starless sea layer and work instead i was like oh god i hated that book so i went with this being like okay this is going to be another rant review and no i liked this i didn't love it like bethanie i think gave it five stars not giving it five stars definitely not um so like in that sense it's not a successor to donna tart but the thing that the secret history does so well or i should say the thing because it does many things well but one of the things that it does well is really um allow you to experience this sense of totally merchant obsession which is what these students feel i feel like that's why it also inspired so much like copycatting and an entire aesthetic and people like trying to live like this because reading the secret history is quite an immersive experience and like you kind of feel with them this like sucking into this world where like the rest of the world's rules don't apply we're in our own little universe our own standards and rules apply and that's what kathryn house does not only in terms of that is the situation of the book because it very much is is that complete isolation from the rest of the world but that is also the feeling that it gives the reader that we are isolated from the rest of the world it is just kathryn house and it's with this kind of with this sort of religious zeal and religious devotion and passion and that's again what secret the secret history does is where this devotion to the greek classics until living your life in a way that resembles them and um enacts them and like throwing real life bacchanalian shindigs you know like like truly living your academia rather than just reading about it so like this also it's not great classics but this also does that thing of like you really feel like the students there in a particular of our main character who's your pv character this sense of like other worldliness maybe not other or or separate worldliness i don't know with it you are in a world unto itself and the rest of the world does not matter the rest of the world is not part of this and and that when you get a bit of that anytime you go to or you experience or you read about people who are like in boarding schools and in summer camps and things where like you become this insular in a cult i mean in essence i guess that is what i'm trying to describe as a cult and that's kind of what the secret history does is like academia as a cult and so maybe that's it that's what i'm looking for i'm looking for a book that gives me academia as a cult and this is also why it is fucking sick that people i don't mean cool i don't mean like sick man i mean like it's messed up that people want to basically like emulate the secret history and not because they're like wow donna you wrote a great book i would also like to write a great book but because they romanticize what she did and what she did was write about a cult no stop trying to be an occult so gathering house is a school as a cult academia has a cult which is like that's what we've been looking for here i didn't know that's what we were looking for but that's what we were looking for so i uh i have already started the divine so like i said i finished this last night it was way too late for me to like film a clip and then this morning i've just been like writing errands and stuff and listening to the audio book for the divines and i can already tell you that the divines it barely belongs on this list like yes there's a school there's very very much a school involved in the story but it is not about school not even a little bit so yeah definitely not i can basically i can say like that's the last one left on the list so the next clip will be with that and then we'll be done and i can confidently say the divines won't be it so if there is a winner in terms of this project in terms of not being the best book that i read for this project but being the one that the most delivers what the secret history delivers it's gathering house and for people that hate it i mean there's a lot of people that hate the secret history too but for people that hate it you're wrong um it is the very strange book and it is very like fever dream like and nothing really feels concrete and this is very intentional you're you don't have to like that but it is very intentional because the the main character herself feels that kind of disorientation and it's not at all confident that she knows what isn't is not real so i think that quite honestly it's brilliant if not it's one thing to write about a character that can't tell what's real and what's not real you can write about a character like that fine but you write about a character in a way where you the reader feel similarly where you are also on that journey with that character where you feel equally disoriented i think that takes a lot more talent and that is what she has done and if you don't like that feeling if you don't want your book to be doing that then don't recather in house but she's very intentionally like disorienting you so that your disorientation matches the disorientation of the main character which i think is great i did not expect there to be a sci-fi element to this i don't i don't think anyone warned me about that so at first i was just surprised like i was like what what is this doing here and then once i was like okay i guess this is something we're doing here i enjoyed it and then one of the other kind of talk about where she got the idea for it i was like okay okay yeah i got i got you i got you that makes sense or it doesn't make any sense but like it makes sense why she wrote it that way or why she chose to do that so yeah like i yeah i liked it i think four stars because it's not a five stars like i don't think it's perfect and yeah like i didn't like finish it and go wow i love that but i did finish it going hmm hmm and the the abrupt open-endedness of the ending um like i don't think it would be a better book if it gave you something more conclusive but just my emotional experience of reaching the end and just being like excuse me is that it you just can't just end it like that what what what um which a lot of great movies have that have open endings you feel that way about them you can't you're like what but it wouldn't be better if there was a clear answer it's just you wanting an answer makes you feel unsatisfied um so yeah i like this just yeah if you're if you've heard negative things about it and you haven't wanted to pick it up i would say you know i think it's very very good but if you don't want to read a book that's super disorienting and that is oh he's kind of wibbly wobbly like that very intentionally i would say i don't think it's like the author not knowing what she's doing i think she very much knows what she's doing you don't have to like what she's doing so if that sounds awful to you then don't read it but also it is nothing like the starless sea because this is good starless sea sucked so um yeah like i guess i would say the difference to me is that while the starless sea and the night circus which are very very beloved and i do not like either one they feel like vibes for the sake of vibes with really nothing further beyond supporting that um is my assessment of what's going on there here there is vibes but there is a very clear reason for the vibes like there is there's method to the vibes it's not just so i have a much much much much more respect for catherine house and i would reread catherine house and like try to piece together what what what happened um so yeah i liked it and i would recommend it but with like all those asterisks like i can't just like i don't want to read this i can't say that about secret history either but like i expected not to like it because i heard mostly negative things and having read it i get why it's polarizing but if you just out of hand dismissed it because you heard negative things i would invite you to reconsider and go into it knowing what it is and like if what i described does sound appealing to you then you know then going in expectations are half the battle if you're expecting it to be disorienting and then it is like that's different from expecting a clear cut narrative about a boarding school and then it being kind of this like this disorienting vibesy book um but if you know that going in and if that appeals to you um and if my recommendation means anything then give it a go and last i have the divines by ellie ethan this book it's not dark academia which is i guess like when i was talking about catherine house is what i've learned um is at least what i mean by dark academia the darkness shouldn't come from the school setting the darkness should come from the academia academia is not just the school building you know what i mean see i mean in this book we have a school setting which is such two timelines and the present day timeline the adult lady who has recently gotten married is is reflecting on her days when she was at this elite girls boarding school for high school um and already not that you can't have dark academia that takes place in high school you can um but i tend to think a bit more when it comes to to university to secondary education but like that would not be a deal break for me like i still felt like was good at dark academia and it was taking place in high school i'd be like aren't this an intense high school but like when i talk about darkness coming from academia usually that comes from this kind of like obsessive relationship with the material that you're studying and in high school you don't really have that much say over what you're studying you're studying the general curriculum that every high school student has to study in order to graduate whereas in university is when you start to specialize you start to choose like your passion and you're studying that so like again not to say you can't have dark academia in high school you can but i feel like it's a bigger hurdle this book i mean it might be because i listen i listen to this on audiobook and the narrator that was reading it is a narrator that i've heard narrate um quite a few thrillers that are just thrillers and that's really what this book i feel like the pacing of it and the way it's framed and the way that it this the plot unfolds is a lot more reminiscent to me of those other like thrillers that that narrator has read before not dark academia and like the way that it you know withholds information from the reader and the way that you know like you're building up to the revelation of how this is connected or which part of it like you're misled about or like what is the dark thing that happened and it just it's not to do with academia it's not it's to do with like toxic female friendships and bullying and and that kind of thing which i don't think you can't write a book about those things but that's not dark academia but more more over my bigger problem with this book i mean for this video so like it's disqualified from like consideration for is this you know is this gonna scratch the secret history itch like no it won't but whether or not i thought it was a good book or whether i liked the book or not i don't think i really did because i don't think the author really knew what she was trying to do with this other than to show a bunch of toxic people being toxic and that can be interesting but toxic for toxic's sake if that makes sense isn't great in my opinion so like the female friendships in it from from the elite high school are awful and the main character is still like harboring a bunch of issues from those days where there's like other stuff about the relationships and about her present day and about stuff that she's remembered having happened or stuff that she mentions it doesn't go anywhere and it feels like a not necessarily a plot hole but it feels like it's just like left hanging and other stuff is really never explained and it's it doesn't feel like i mean not everything has to be explained in a book in fact if some things are unexplained that can make it feel more realistic because in life not everything is explained but in the book like this where it's like this very thrillery like i've thrown out i think that's mysterious like you're planting it we're expecting a payoff when you plant a bunch of stuff you don't pay it off and the book itself doesn't really have a payoff of its own apart you know aside from whether those specific things are paid off like the book it just kind of like at the end of it i was like what was the point of that what was the point of that because it wasn't a very interesting mystery especially when you do like when it it's not like a big surprising reveal the ending i mean it did leave me with more questions and answers but not in a good way not in like a wow now i have so many questions what was really going on it's more just like a uh did you mean this to be kind of like like what what were we doing with that like where am i meant to take that as like like what what is this what are you trying to say what are you trying to do are you trying to do something did you just forget that you planted that stuff before did you forget what this character thought and said like like what is what's going on with this and it was just really unpleasant to read about because the main character again reading about an unlikeable main character can be fascinating i mean first law is being entirely composed of unlikeable characters and it's my favorite series of all time and the secret history is certainly a bunch of unlikeable characters this main character is not only unlikeable but two things are wrong with this one she's not interesting so don't care and two she's written in a way where it feels like the author wants us to sympathize with her in just some degree like not necessarily condone all her behavior or think she's a great great person but i feel like the way it's written the author is expecting some buy-in for you to like feel for her and feel with her and she's awful and boring and i hate her and she just gets worse and worse and like what she has suffered does not really justify or explain her own awfulness and i just hate her not in a like so fascinating so like reading about kyle havin in the liveship trader series by robin hum is so well written it's so frustrating to read from kyle's perspective because he's he's the worst but he's really well written and when you're reading it you're like oh she's like nailed it because there's people like this like you did such a great job with this but like i know i'm meant to think he's awful here i feel like i'm meant to again not condone everything that she does but that i'm meant to kind of go with her on this and kind of root for her and i don't root for her she's the worst so yeah i didn't think i don't i just don't think the author knew what she was even trying to do and then if she didn't know what she was trying to do well i don't think she did what she was trying to do because it's not really clear what she was trying to do yeah i wouldn't i mean i didn't hate this as much as i hated these violent delights or playing bad heroines but this is just like very forgettable and not very well executed but not as like aggravatingly in my face about its own pretension like those other two but the other two i was like fuck you this i'm just like nah so like this is like a two stars two and a half stars because like it's pretty short it's pretty page turning because you know you're like what's the mystery like it's not that great a mystery i'm not that curious about it but it keeps you going like i wonder if we're gonna find out now um but yeah i really i didn't really the other characters and it aren't very well fleshed out either it's just really you and the main character the one other character that is somewhat fleshed out is treated pretty horribly by the narrative in a way that like again i expect darkness and bad behavior to look like this but this is one of those where i like um i don't know that that was necessary or called for or did anything for the story like why is this here you just wanted to be awful and you thought you had license to be awful because you were writing a dark book about people being toxic like that's not how that works sometimes have a reason for including stuff yeah just like not a free for all to write awful things so yeah i don't recommend this not just as this is not dark academia because it's not i also just don't think it's a very good book so um i think to end on such a want one but um i did enjoy um let's see catherine house i really enjoyed um and then my favorite just reading i think that the winner of like this is actually dark academia this is good dark academia is catherine house um but my favorite book that i read for this project was special topics and calamity physics um my hardcover of it arrived i did also order another edition of it that has not arrived yet and bunny bunny was like pretty good um since i started there i didn't really like know where to place it in the rankings yet and and now like having read some really bad book really good books bunny is like it's like is unique and i respect its uniqueness um but these violent delights and plain about heroines and divines terrible in particular those first dude the divines is just like but these violent delights plain about heroines well let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings about these books if you've read them your thoughts and feelings about these books if you haven't read them if you want to read them if you're you never want to read them if you plan to read some of them or all of them or none of them whatever let me know i guess we guess on saturdays other random time full of nothing saturdays i like to subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you