Hi Readers!
I’ve missed blogging! I know I keep coming and going but I honestly just can’t quite let you go. I am still on BookTube and Instagram, and right now I’m filming a whole reading vlog for the release of Taylor’s The Tortured Poets Department.
It’s taking a while for me to process this album, just because there’s quite a bit more to process than any of us were expecting. A double album?!?! Who could have guessed?!?!? (okay, a few of us hoped. I never imagined we would be right though!)
There are so many lyrics, so many feelings, so many thoughts. The last 72 hours I have been a mess. This album is everything and nothing like I thought it would be.
This is her most vulnerable album. She holds nothing back, and lets us in to her wildest moments. I think this is the bravest she has ever been when it comes to what she is sharing with us.
I love this album for so many reasons, not least because it’s one for the readers. The ones whose aesthetic is bookshelves filled with books, dark academia walls, and annotated classics. We are literally living our best era.
Because it feels like such a literary album, I wanted to share some book recommendations inspired by the album. I’ve split this into three sections. The first being books that fit the themes and vibes of the album. The second section is books that match lyrics from the album, and the third and final section is all of the literary references Taylor makes (that I can find).
Vibes and Themes
Poets and Poetry
I’ve got to talk about some poetry. It’s literally in the title! I know this might sound ridiculous because this is what music is, but this album especially, the songs feel like poems that have had music added to them. Just reading the lyrics on their own, they honestly read like poems.
These are some poetry collections I think have the same style and themes as this album.
Emily Dickinson
There is no denying there’s a connection between Emily and Taylor. I think it was found out recently they’re in some way related, and the way that Taylor has written her last few albums really emulates the way Emily wrote her poetry.
I also think Taylor very losely references Emily in I Hate It Here. In the song there is a line about mistaken nostalgia and how she would want to go back to the 1830’s which is, coincidentally, when Emily was born.
Why – did they shut Me out of Heaven?
Did I sing – too loud?
But – I can say a little “Minor”
Timid as a Bird
Wouldn’t the Angels try me –
Just – once – more –
Just – see – if I troubled them –
But don’t – shut the door!
Oh. If I – were the Gentleman
In the “White Robe” –
And they – were the little Hand – that knocked
Could – I – forbid?
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Firstly, I think Plath would have loved this album.
But also, I need you to watch this video to fully understand why this poetry collection fits so perfectly with this album.
A small section of Lady Lazarus that reminds me of this album:
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? –
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty
And like the cat I have nine times to die
This is Number Three
What a trash
To annihilate each decade
What a milllion filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Bronte Sisters Collection of Poetry
I wanted to recommend this collection because it’s one of my personal favourites. This collection of poems was published in 1846 and is a collection of poetry by all three authors. My favourite in the collection is Frances by Charlotte Bronte.
This section of Frances in particular reminds me of something Taylor would write:
The tear which, welling from the heart,
Burns where it drops corrosive falls,
And makes each nerve, in torture, start
At feelings it too well recalls:
Dark Academia
We’ve all, at some point, called this album The Dead Poets Department, or The Tortured Poets Society, or one or the other, right? Well, the worlds of The Dead Poets Society and The Tortured Poets Department have officially collided in the Fortnight music video. So clearly, the connection was intentional!
Here are some of my favourite dark academia:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Babel by R.F. Kaung
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Doomed Love Stories
Women who fall in love with their own tortured wild boys.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston LaRoux
All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Lyrics
New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
“Fuck it if I can’t have him.”
~ Down Bad
Because when her boy leaves her, she literally just gives up on… life.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
“You caged me and then you call me crazy”
~ loml
This line, to me, relates to a lot of women in literature and history. These are the first two books that come to mind. The Yellow Wallpaper follows a woman who is locked inside a room by her husband, and we see her gradually descend into madness.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel companion novel the Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and follows a certain character who is also locked in a room and deemed mad by her husband…
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
“My boy breaks all his favourite toys”
~ My Boy Breaks All His Favourite Toys
I think we all know what character I’m referring to in this book…
Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas
“Who’s afraid of little old me? Well you should be.”
“If you wanted me dead
You should’ve just said
Nothing makes me feel more alive.”
“I am what I am cause you trained me.”
~ Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?
I can’t help but relate this song to the Throne of Glass series and also other fantasy novels where women enact revenge on the men that hurt them. The girls who were trained to be obedient but instead used what they were taught to win their own freedom.
Daisy Jones and the Six
“I can do it with a broken heart.”
“Lights, camera, bitch smile. Even when you want to die.”
~ I Can Do It With A Broken Heart
Firstly, this song hurts. So why do I want to dance around my room whenever that beat starts?
Any, this song is so Daisy Jones.
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
“He saw forever so he smashed it up.”
~ My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys
Ghosts is a book about ghosting. It is about the millenial dating scene and men who have commitment issues, which is everything that The Tortured Poets Department is all about.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
“I thought I was better safe than starry eyed.”
~ loml
For me, this reads as someone reluctantly falling in love. Who lets their walls down and risks being hurt, to be loved.
This reminds me of a few female characters, but definitely January from Beach Read, who has just come out of a relationship and lost her father. She is hurting and not looking for love when she becomes reacquainted with a college flame.
Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey
“A tattooed golden retriever.”
~ The Tortured Poets Department
Fox is the kind of guy people assume is a bad boy on the surface, but he’s actually thoughtful and generous and a total golden retriever with tattoos. Tessa Bailey really knows how to write a love interest.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata
“The greatest in the league
Where’s the trophy?
He just comes running over to me.”
~ The Alchemy
I haven’t actually read this book, although it is on my tbr. I just had to recommend a football romance because I think we’re all craving that after listening to this song.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
“and I’m pissed off your let me give you all of that youth for free.”
~ So Long, London
In this book one of the main characters marries very young, and the man she marries is a lot older than her. This isn’t forced upon her, she chooses this because her mindset is she wants to be educated by this mature, intelligent man. Now, admittedly, I haven’t finished reading this yet, so I can’t say for sure she regrets this, but I imagine she will.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
“I wish that I could unrecall how we almost had it all.”
~ loml
I just finished reading this book and it is the perfect book to go alongside TTPD because it follows two people just after they have broke up. For the most part it actually follows the man in the relationship, Andy, who is very much still in love with his ex. It follows him trying to heal and understand why it happened.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
“All your life, did you know?
You’d be picked like a rose?”
“I’m not trying to exaggerate
But I think I might die if I made it, die if I made it
No one in my small town thought I’d meet these suits in LA“
~ Clara Bow
Firstly, I love this song. It’s kind of Taylor acknowledging her own legacy and I love that for her.
This song is about rising to fame and making a name for yourself, so I immediately thought of Evelyn Hugo.
Literary References
Just Kids by Patti Smith
“You’re not Dylan Thomas. I’m not Patti Smith.
This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel
We’re modern idiots.”
You know what, I always thought this would be the type of book Taylor would read. I was right!
I guess this means I finally need to get to it…
This memoir revolves the goings on at the Chelsea Hotel in the 1970’s and 80’s.
In this lyric, Dylan Thomas is also mentioned. Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet who was born in 1914 and died in 1953. He was very popular embraced the reputation of being a roistering, drunken and doomed poet.
He spent his final days in New York, staying in the Chelsea Hotel, when he died from severe pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma, exacerbated by the New York smog he was breathing in.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett
“I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind,
People need a key to get to, the only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child.”
~ I Hate It Here
I can’t tell you how excited I am that this book got a shoutout by Taylor on this song. I have such a deep connection with this book. I have read it countless of times since I was a child, I used to watch the movie with my Nan. Yeah, this book and I go way back.
I also love that it’s this song in particular as it is all about escaping reality, and we all know that books provide the best refuge from real life.
Peter Pan by J.M Barrie
“You said you were gonna grow up
Then you were gonna come find me.“
~ Peter
Peter Pan is of course famous for being the boy who wouldn’t grow up, and now he is largely used in metaphors in songs by women fed up of immature men who won’t commit.
This isn’t the first Peter Pan reference she’s made. She also mentioned him in Cardigan “tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy.”
Beauty and the Beast
“Beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours
Demanding more”
~ Clara Bow
This is kind of a lose reference to just the title.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
“Who’s afraid of little old me?”
~ Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me
Again, kind of just a lose reference. I think this title is incredibly famous. I’ve never read or seen this play though, so perhaps there is a deeper meaning I’m just unaware of. I know if follows a husband and wife, but that’s about as much as I know.
Florida by Lauren Groff
Whilst this may not have been Taylor’s inspiration for the song, Florence Welch, when asked to feature on the song, apparently related it to one of her favourite short story collections:
As an extra, she also makes references to Ancient Greece and Greek mythology. In Cassandra she talks about prophets, and in So High School she has the incredible lyric: “You know ball, I know Aristotle.”
Thanks For Reading,
Jess X
Comfort Reads & Writes 
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