Influential Books

My relationship with books began early & has never let up. In high school, I was drawn to works like Hamlet, Frankenstein, and the gothic tales of Poe. Later, studying in a Great Books program at university exposed me to the foundational texts of the Greeks, Romans, and the medieval world. That immersion in myth, tragedy, and metaphysical questions left a lasting mark.

What follows isn’t an exhaustive list, but a collection of titles that have influenced me at different points in my life. Some are literary, others historical. All of them, in one way or another, have helped form my rich interior life...

  • Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
  • Our Band Could Be Your Life, by Michael Azerrad
  • Ancient Mystery Cults, by Walter Burkert
  • The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns, by Mary Butts
  • A Dictionary of Symbols, by Juan Eduardo Cirlot
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
  • The Dictionary of Mythology, by JA Coleman
  • So This is Permanence: Joy Division Lyrics and Notebooks, by Ian Curtis
  • Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, by Owen Davies
  • Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies
  • No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai
  • Helen in Egypt, by Hilda Doolittle
  • Dance of Death, by Fritz Eichenberg
  • The Wasteland and other poems, by T.S. Eliot
  • Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck
  • The Egyptian Hermes, by Garth Fowden
  • The KLF, by John Higgs
  • The Iliad, Odyssey, and Hymns, by Homer
  • The Witch, by Ronald Hutton
  • The Way of Tarot, by Alejandro Jodorowsky
  • The Art of Pulp Horror: An Illustrated History, edited by Stephen Jones
  • Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees, by Ernst and Johanna Lehner
  • The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector
  • Beowulf, translated by R.M. Liuzza
  • Gothic: An Illustrated History, by Roger Luckhurst
  • Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, by J.F. Martel
  • Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
  • Confessions of a Mask, by Yukio Mishima
  • Meditations in an Emergency, by Frank O'Hara
  • The Symbolism of the Tarot, by P.D. Ouspensky
  • Metamorphoses, by Ovid
  • The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels
  • The Golden Dawn: The Original Accounts of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order, by Israel Regardie
  • Season in Hell & the Drunken Boat, by Arthur Rimbaud
  • Alchemy and Mysticism, by Alexander Roob
  • This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else, by Jon Savage (2019)
  • Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
  • Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
  • Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
  • Goth: A History, by Lol Tolhurst
  • The Aeneid, by Virgil
  • Isis in the Graeco-Roman World, by R.E. Witt
  • Orlando: A Biography, by Virginia Woolf

Last revised 2025-07-30

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