Okay, maybe it’s rainy outside today. But, truth is that Spring is officially here. We’ve passed the equinox, the clocks have shifted, evenings aren’t dark anymore, and soon the sun will come back, brighter and stronger each day. Most people love this new season. If you’re still here, reading this, there’s a little part of you that can’t handle all the sunshine, flowers, and chirping birds. Too much happiness can feel… like a lot. This is for those moments. The list below has something in common, and as you scroll, you’ll notice it. By the end, you’ll probably be grateful we put it together.
Valisia’s picks
La Morte Amoureuse by Théophile Gautier
A masterpiece. Truly. Gothic writing at its finest. Religion, nightmares, femme fatales, vampires, the quiet suggestion that love might be stronger than death… it has everything, and somehow never feels excessive. Just perfectly lush.
Told in the first person, it follows a young priest, Romuald, who falls -quite disastrously-in love with the enigmatic Clarimonde. From that moment on, reality becomes… flexible. By day, he is a devoted man of God. By night, in his dreams, he belongs entirely to her. What Gautier does so well is capture that feverish state between desire and guilt. The pull between devotion and obsession. Clarimonde is not just a woman, she’s a vision, a temptation, a beautiful threat. Both beauty and the beast, naturally.
It’s eerie, sensual, decadent - and I mean that as a compliment. Every sentence feels lush, almost intoxicated with its own emotion. I loved every word. And yes, I fell for them both. No regrets.
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
Yes. You saw this coming. There is always going to be an Agatha Christie moment with me. Even more so when Egypt is involved - I have a weakness.
Everything begins as it should: a luxurious cruise along the Nile, all sun, silk, and quiet displays of wealth. And at the center of it, Linnet Ridgeway- young, beautiful, impeccably dressed, and just slightly too accustomed to having everything. Which is precisely why she ends up dead. Shot, mid-honeymoon, on a boat full of people who absolutely have opinions about her life choices. Including, notably, the husband she recently acquired from her best friend. A detail that does not go unnoticed.
And who happens to be on board? Of course, Hercule Poirot, who is supposedly on holiday. (Poirot on holiday is always suspicious. Someone is definitely going to die.) What follows is pure Christie: misdirection, red herrings, shifting alliances, and that delicious sense that everyone is hiding something. Possibly several things. It’s one of those stories where the scenery is gorgeous, the manners are impeccable, and everyone has a motive. A classic. And one of Poirot’s most satisfying cases.
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The first thing I ever read by Gogol was “Viy”. Obviously. A haunted church, a witch, theological panic -I was right at home. So when I moved on to “Dead Souls”, it felt almost suspiciously… terrestrial. No demons, no levitation, no cursed beauty staring into your soul. And yet, somehow, I loved it just as much.
At the center of it all is Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a man with the energy of someone who definitely has a plan and absolutely should not be trusted. He arrives in a small provincial town and starts buying “dead souls”, which, unfortunately, are not poetic metaphors but actual deceased serfs still listed in census records. What follows is a parade of bizarre landowners, each more embarrassing than the last. Gogol observes them with this quiet, almost elegant cruelty. Never loud, never forced, just painfully precise.
So, this is not horror. Not technically. But it is grotesque in its own way, which is probably why it works. Everyone is ridiculous, slightly decayed, faintly tragic, and very, very funny - whether they mean to be or not.
Stella’s picks
Difficult Death by René Crevel
"All aboard Ratapoilopolis!"
I have a love affair with everything that falls under the “Surrealism” umbrella. I like it even more if it made André Breton mad. In this case it was Surrealism’s sacred ideals versus Communism and Homosexuality.
The novel revolves around the struggles of Pierre Dumont, a young man torn between two figures who embody opposing paths. The first, Diane, is a warm, self-effacing art student who loves Pierre in a way that appears platonic, but carries an undercurrent of desire she wouldn’t resist. Pierre, however, ultimately feels no attraction toward her. The second is Arthur Bruggle, an ambitious yet campy American composer and drifter, with whom Pierre is deeply infatuated. Bruggle, in turn, treats him with indifference, disdain, and at times, cruelty.
Difficult Death is often considered semi-autobiographical in its exploration of emotional anguish, sexuality, and inner turmoil. René Crevel delves into the complex psychological landscape of his protagonist, reflecting his own life, marked by illness, conflicted identity, and his eventual suicide in 1935.
A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir
Contrary to the book’s title, this is A Very Difficult Read. You can be sure that when something is titled Happiness, Bonheur, Freedom, or Love, you’re in for some of your most heartbreaking hours -if it’s a film- or days, even months, if it’s a book.
Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece made me feel the same way I did when watching Michael Haneke’s Amour: devastated and deeply moved, but also left with a renewed respect for people and for life.
The book is a final, day-by-day account of her mother’s death. De Beauvoir’s relationship with her mother, famously documented in her early memoirs, shaped by opposing attitudes toward social expectations, rebellion on one side, conformity on the other. While she rebelled against social expectations, her mother embraced them. She captures the complexity of the mother–daughter bond, a tension between intimacy and distance, resentment and deep admiration. But through this deeply difficult subject, she also reflects on the way women were treated by arrogant doctors, as well as on the socioeconomic realities of France, seen through the acts of kindness of the underpaid and overworked nurses.
My Last Breath by Luis Buñuel
I love cinema, and I love Luis Buñuel—he is one of my favourite directors—so reading his autobiography felt like the natural next step (it’s also the only autobiography I’ve ever read). After reading My Last Breath, he ascended to the pedestal I had been building, brick by brick, with every one of his films.
The book explores many aspects of his life: his friendships with Charlie Chaplin, André Breton, Paul Éluard, and Salvador Dalí; anecdotes from their shared lives; and behind-the-scenes moments from his films. He lived in Spain, Paris, the United States, and Mexico. He is brutally honest—offering his candid opinions on Japanese culture, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the Marquis de Sade—while also sharing his preferred recipe for a dry martini. The kind of James Bond I would want.
My favourite anecdote of his is a prank he wanted to pull: as a renowned atheist, on his deathbed he would call all his friends and a priest, confess his sins, receive absolution, and then die, just to leave them all wondering.
Alexandra’s picks
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
This novella is a short, sharp confrontation with the one thing most people spend their lives avoiding: the reality of their own death. Tolstoy follows a successful, outwardly respectable judge who has done everything “right,” only to realize (too late) that none of it actually meant anything when faced with his final days.
What makes the book hit is how it dismantles the idea that more success, more comfort, or more recognition will ever be enough; it exposes that hunger as a kind of lifelong distraction. As Ivan’s world shrinks, has nothing to do with status or achievement, but a painful clarity about how he lived and what he ignored. It’s not an easy read (quite the opposite!), but it’s one of those rare works that forces you to reconsider what a “good life” actually is before you run out of time to answer it.
Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille
"Erotism is the affirmation of life, even in death" - Georges Bataille.
A read that deliberately pushes into territory most people would rather avoid. Bataille moves between philosophy, anthropology, and literature to argue that eroticism isn’t just about sex, but about transgression, taboo, and our strange pull toward death itself. He looks at everything from religion and sacrifice to cruelty and desire, suggesting that what we’re really chasing isn’t pleasure in a simple sense, but a kind of loss of boundaries, a moment where the self dissolves.
What’s most interesting is that he doesn’t celebrate total freedom. In fact, he insists that without limits and prohibitions, eroticism loses its intensity altogether. It’s dense, unsettling, and at times extreme. It can reshape how you think about desire; less as something clean or rational, and more as something tangled up with fear, the sacred, and the edge of life itself.
The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras
This is a haunting, minimalist exploration of emptiness and the human inability to love. In her lyrical, spare style, Marguerite Duras tells the story of a man who hires a woman to teach him to feel, to resurrect him from the social death of isolation and emotional numbness he’s already living. The story moves with intensity, confronting the reader with the idea that death is not only physical but a state of the soul, a life stripped of connection and feeling. In just a few pages, Duras captures the strange tension between longing and impossibility, showing that love is as fragile, elusive, and essential as life itself.
Happy reading!