Dark Academia Reading Challenge

Dark Academia Reading Challenge

Welcome to my very first reading challenge that I’ve tried putting together myself! The theme is Dark Academia, which is an aesthetic often associated with Northern European private schools. It includes antiques, books, glasses and tweed outfits. You’ll also find silk scarves, taxidermy animals, greek mythology and marble busts. It can be many things, but if you look it up on Pinterest, you might get an idea of what it entails.

I’ve wanted to dive more into this Dark Academia feeling for a while, since I happen to be intrigued by the whole aesthetic. Also, it’s the perfect excuse for yet another reading challenge (that I probably will take years to finish, ssschh).

EDIT: Since I first made this challenge in 2020 a lot of new Dark Academia books have come into the world and I’ve decided to make an *EXTENDED DARK ACADEMIA READING CHALLENGE* – I’ll add whatever books I read that I think fits into the Dark Academia aesthetic and let it grow from there!

Making the list of books

It was fun trying to make up my own list for once and I might create more when I finally get around to finish some of the other reading challenges I’m working on. The list is a mix of books I’ve already read that I thought fit the list, as well as books found through Goodreads and Bookstagram conversations.

I hope you’ll find it fun and please tag me on social media (@madebypernille) if you choose to join the challenge, so I can follow your progress too! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #Darkacademyreads (Dark Academy Reads), so we can find each other 🙂

There are 30 books on the original list, and some of them might be outside your comfort zone, and that’s ok! You can always choose to switch one of them, for another favorite book of yours.

See the extended edition for further Dark Academia books to read.

Dark Academia Reading Challenge – list of books

  1. Sappho – collected poems by Sappho
  2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  3. Macbeth by W. Shakespeare
  4. Circe by Madeline Miller
  5. A Secret History by Donna Tartt
  6. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  7. Complete short stories by Edgar A. Poe
  8. Medea by Euripides
  9. A room of one’s own by Virginia Woolf
  10. The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  11. Electra by Sophocles
  12. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
  13. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar G. Wilde
  14. Dead Poets Society by N.H. Kleinbaum
  15. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
  16. The strange case of the alchemist’s daughter by Theodora Goss
  17. Le nécrophile by Gabrielle Wittkop
  18. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  19. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
  20. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte
  21. A lesson in vengeance by Victoria LEe
  22. Vita Nostra by Marina Daychenko et.al.
  23. This is how you lose the time war by Amal El-Mohtar
  24. Sherlock Holmes – The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur C. Doyle
  25. Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar by Thomas Cathcart
  26. Antigone by Sophocles
  27. The rhetoric and the poetic by Aristotle
  28. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
  29. Three guineas by Virginia Woolf
  30. The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlo

Extended Dark Academia Reading Challenge – list of books

31. If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
32. A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

 

Dark Academia Reading Challenge  Dark Academia Reading Challenge list of books part 2

I hope you’ll have fun with this challenge and I can’t wait to talk about all these books with you! Have you read any of them? Let me know in the comments below if you’re joining!

If you want to dive into more bookish lists, I’ve compiled all my reading challenges right here>>

Tell me what you think! :D