This is so satisfying!!! When I read ‘if we were villains’ I got soooo mad and still cannot fathom how people can compare it to ‘the secret history’ and I’ve been stewing over why it enraged me so much. You finally put into words what I was feeling, thank you! The romanticising, the not-self aware pretentiousness and the lack of actual academic/intellectual content. (Copy pasting tons and tons of Shakespeare quotes doesn’t make it actually dark academia). Thank you!!
yeah, whenever I tell people that I love The Secret History and they respond with "you would love If We Were Villains" I'm like no, how dare you, they are NOT same 🥲
This is not me trying to convince you of liking the book but M. L. Rio has a MA in Shakespeare studies from King's College and Shakespeare's Globe so i don't think it's just copy and pasting the quotes and more a real love for it.
@@heatherlydia4728 yeah, I found that out too after reading and I think it my have worked in their detriment (when it comes to my reading enjoyment at least). I found the book was very unbalanced when it came to the actual usage of Shakespeare knowledge. On one hand the book assumed that their readers knew the play’s plot and characters intimately: or had to in order to understand how the actual characters mirrored the one’s in Shakespeare’s play. On the other hand it never once explained the plot of the play but still had actual pages over pages of actual Shakespeare quotes that seem unnecessary and excessive if you assume your readers know what you’re writing about. And for the book to be so drenched in Shakespeare it included very little analysis/discussion/intellectual questioning about the source material. So I really don’t doubt the author’s knowledge and love for Shakespeare. I stand by the point though that it wasn’t well used and didn’t make it automatically “academia”. (I blame the editors of the book more than the author themselves tbh.)
The entire time I am watching this I just want you to read Vita Nostra cause that’s my favorite dark academia in how it very much does not romanticize a lot of whats wrong with academia but is also a TRIP with a very “what did I just read?” Ending
Since you weren’t turned off by Bunny, maybe you’d also be interested in trying Mona Awad’s newest book _All’s Well_ , which I hear is a fever dream mash-up of All’s Well That Ends Well (ofc), Macbeth, and The Tempest? As a Shakespeare aficionado and all. Same trippy style, now with more Shakespeare references? Also, pure speculation on my part, but I’m guessing Awad may have been inspired by Atwood’s Hag-Seed, which you read for your Hogarth project. And yes, the Catherine House haters are Wrong. 😌😇 me, an intellectual: They don’t Understand.
yes, you like 'special topics', i am so happy! cause this was my absolute favorite book in my late teens/early twenties, i reread this so often... and at that time no one had ever heard of DA. i can only recommend to read 'night film' very whole-heartedly, especially in the upcoming spooky season, it has absolute fitting vibes for it. marisha pessl has never let me down yet (although granted, she just wrote two other books.) i absolutely agree that authors writing about academia should really know what they're talking about, so that the setting doesn't feel superficial. so i find it often helps when they are in academia themselves - like one of the best depiction of academic life imo is 'possession' by a.s. byatt. this shows how a literature PhD candidate (hope titel is correct, i'm not english) investigates the literary remains of her researched author in detail, and makes it as suspenseful as a thriller. it benefits from a.s. byatt being a literature professor herself a great deal. also in that vein falls 'the name of the rose' by umberto eco, where you can feel his intellectualism(?) in every sentence - although on the outside it's a mystery thriller set in medieval times. Non of these i would categorise as DA though. no 'academia as cult' in there ^^ anyway, thanks for almost always having the same taste as me. i feel like you're the only booktuber i can trust.
I totally get what you're saying about These Violent Delights and how the romanticization is very problematic, BUT. I moved it up on my TBR immediately after hearing your rant 😂
This is a long vlog but I enjoyed it very much. I hope you will do more of this kind of secret vlog projects. Sometimes you're talking quite fast and I don't always understand you (sorry but English isn't my native tongue) but what I do understand, I love listening to. I never read Secret History but it tempted me so many times when it was just released (yes , I'm that old, ha !). Maybe your vlog finally convinced me that it's time to read it !
I had the exact same reaction to Catherine House as you did. From all the mixed reviews, I thought it would be 'fine' at best, but I actually really enjoyed that one. Thanks for checking out all these others, glad I can now safely scratch some of these off my TBR, lol. Still quite interested in Bunny and Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Also, I would be veryyyy curious to hear your thoughts on Vita Nostra, because that's my personal favourite dark academia. And I also just finished Babel, which I adored as well. Loved this vlog project!!
I thought at first youre reading the secret history by Donna Tartt. Not sure if you know it but if you don't I highly recommend it. It's one of the best novels I know.
Have you read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco? Everything you love about Dark Academia reminds me of Name of the Rose. I need to read The Secret history :)
I’m so excited because I’ve been saving some of these dark academia reads because I always want to read them during the fall/autumn and Catherine House is on my TBR, and it sounds even better to me after watching this lol. May add the Marisha Pessl because I did like her Neverworld Wake. I just read They Never Learn by Layne Fargo and really liked it, and I’d say it falls into dark academia-I’d recommend it!
This was yet again a great vlog! I really enjoyed the topic of this one and the aesthetic vibe of the vlog was superb. I liked the Secret History so I will certainly check your favourites out. Have you read by any chance If we were vilains by M L Rio ? It's also supposed to be DA and gets recommended to me for if you like the SH. It looks interesting but I have no idea if it's good. Anyways I hope you will keep doing secret vlog projects because I really enjoy these video's !
I really want to check out Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I read Night Film a few years ago and it gave me a few sleepless nights. I don’t normally like books with a mixed media component, but I think she did a good job in Night Film. The Likeness by Tana French is the best Secret History-esque book I’ve read. I think since it was published in 2008, it exists outside of this trend of dark academia books we see now, so it doesn’t suffer from the shortcomings you described in a lot of these.
Ooh fantastic !! I think I'll add Ghost of Harvard and Special Topics to my list because they sound excellent. Keep meaning to read Nightfilm, I just keep saving it for October but then never reading it in October haha.
for me these violent delights failed on the technical level too. it should have been in first person and it should not have started with the murder cause then it would have been at least more tense. it was trying to be the secret history so bad and if it just tried to be itself I think it would have been much better
@@LienesLibrary it was inspired by a true story allegidely so that explains why their reason was so flimsy (the real murderers reason was that they wanted to do "the perfect crime") but yeah i totally agree with you. I also was really frustrated with it
Great video. As a Donna Tartt convert, I have tried to embark on this quest to find the next TSH or more accurately, to find an author who writes like Donna Tartt (3/3 for me), and been unsuccessful. Books I've tried: If We Were Villains by ML Rio: Too much actual Shakespeare in-text. Some plot loopholes. Resolution kind of anticlimactic and not really earned. The Likeness by Tana French: Well-written but felt too much like TSH 2.0 to me and the mystery resolution was kind of meh. Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessi: Will respectfully disagree with you on this one, I found the writing style to be too affected. Authors I've tried: Sally Rooney: No. Just...there's no similarity. Jennifer Egan: Very lacklustre for me. Zadie Smith: Trying too hard, the elegance is not there. Amor Towles: Quaint but also monotonous. Hanya Yanahigara: Strongest contender in terms of strong, beautiful writing. I've read only 2/3 of her books and the recent one didn't really come together for me. Kazuo Ishiguro: Only read 1 book (Never Let Me Go) which was very good but didn't evoke the wow that Tartt does so effortlessly with her writing. So yes, my favourite (living) literary fiction author publishes a book every 10ish years and there's really no one like her. Fun fact: My favourite (living) fantasy author also hasn't published in more than a decade and some say won't publish at all. Fair enough. But for readers calling the author a hack or a one-time wonder, show me an author in ANY genre who can make a plotless novella about a deep dive into the mind and life of a neurodivergent character seem so ethereal and beautiful, and I'll change my name to Auri. 😊 Anyway great vlog and the search for the next TSH continues.
I have read bunny, catherine house and these violent delights. I was enjoying these violent delights at first but it just fell apart for me, like there wasn't even a reason for them to murder that rando lol. I really enjoyed bunny and I thought catherine house was just okay, it didn't really come up with anything new. Special topics has been on my tbr for forever so i'll make sure to read it soon, night film is one of my favourite books. The only dark academia book I loved as much as secret history was if we were villains, but I know you've said you didn't like that one either.
I was curious to see what side of the fence you landed on for Catherine House. I haven't read it or A Secret history Yet, even though I own them (the usual reader problems). The Ghosts of Harvard sounds interesting and I had never heard of that one.
I think the reason why I haven’t liked the books tagged as dark academia is because the authors romanticise it. The authors love the dark academia vibe so they romanticise the toxic love and criminal activity like a murder and that doesn’t work for me. I want academia in the dark academia book not just a toxic love story/Friendship and some crime.
Babel is the only book that compares in my opinion. I'm halfway through and to me its better than The Secret History even (I've also searched by reading all these books too haha)
