Categories
2025 – Spring

Would you read these?

Author: Lyo Elle Roy

There’s this old adage we all know and are tired of hearing that says “not to judge a book by its cover,” although it is rarely actually applied to books. However, in libraries and bookshops, who hasn’t decided on whether to purchase or not a story, based on the appeal of its title? And what would happen if some of the most well-known books had completely different names that aligned to modern tactics of marketing? We gave some of the most beloved English literature classics clickbait titles to experiment…


1. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Man finds unexpected secret against ageing; doctors hate him! Discover it for yourself.

2. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

When people assume you’re the monster but you’re not: “everybody calls me by my father’s name and I’m pissed.”

3. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Twin flames getting together ends in haunting nightmares: the risks of meeting your other half.

4. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Man locks up his wife in the attic for years, is surprised when left at the altar by new girlfriend.
or
The true story behind his “crazy ex” that he doesn’t want you to know.

5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

How NOT to propose to the love of your life, including mentioning the inferiority of her birth, and a recipe for the most EXCELLENT boiled potatoes you’ll ever see.

6. The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald

Man spends his whole life and fortune trying to get his ex back only to get dumped and die in a pool; don’t repeat his mistakes!

7. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Feeling tired? Doctor discovers new side-effects of fatigue: seeing people in your wallpaper.

8. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Russian high society ruined these people’s lives! Here’s how to find purpose in hay fields and faith instead.

9. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, Edgar Allan Poe

10 reasons why trying to bring someone back to life is a terrible idea, from a scientific p.o.v.

10. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

The origin of American men’s obsession with big fish is not at all what you would expect!

11. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

The simple trick to living life fully and becoming all the people you want to be.

12. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

Step-by-step tutorial on how to get rid of your homophobic boss.

13. She, Henry Rider Haggard

Is matriarchy too dangerous for society? A group of hetero-cis men discuss the issue.

14. Metamorphoses, Ovid

You could be drinking your ancestors’ blood by eating berries: discover how that happened.

15. Paradise Lost, John Milton

Changes in temperatures might not be humans’ fault; the mystic origins of seasons.

  • Cover of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde in the Oxford World’s Classics, 2008. Details from Self-Portrait, Maxwell Ashby Armfield, 1901. © Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library.
  • Cover of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for the Penguin Books Clothbound edition.
  • Cover of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, in the Classics collection of Wordsworth Editions.
  • Cover for the 2006 edition of Jane Eyre in the Penguin Classics editions. Detail from Only a lock of hair, 1858, by Sir John Everett Millais. © Manchester Art Gallery/Bridgeman Images
  • Cover of Pride and Prejudice in Cranford Edition, hardback. Illustration by Hugh Thomspon, adapted by Cristina Serrat.
  • Cover of The Great Gatsby, deluxe edition illustrated by Adam Simpson, 2025.
  • Cover of Anna Karenina, in the Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2017.
  • Cover for the New York edition of Moby Dick, published independently, 2001. © SecretGardenbooks.
  • Cover of Giovanni’s Room in the Penguin Modern Classics, 2007.
  • Cover of She in the Oxford University Press edition, 2008. Picture from the 1965 movie She, Hammer Film Productions Ltd.
  • Cover of Paradise Lost in the Arcturus Epic Classics, 2024. Illustration by Gustave Doré.
Categories
2024 – Winter

Phantom

Author: Chloé Leresche

[Content warning: blood and gore depictions, physical injuries, death/death of child]

She tries to cry out, but it is swallowed by the wet and harsh fabric. Her movements too, restrained by the drapes, drowning her in her panicked heat and cold sweat. She has to go find him. She must. He was right there, going into the woods. She fights, her frustrated and desperate groans increasing as she suffocates in the darkness that envelops her, crushes her. She must catch him before he goes. She must save him. He’s so small, the forest is going to eat him. 

The breath leaves her lungs as she meets the ground. For a moment, all is quiet, and only the heavy dark exists above her. There is nothing, and he is not here. Only then does she feel the cold lurking, sliding on her skin as would the embrace of a dead man, biting in her flesh under her sweat. Her son is not here. The gasping breath she takes feels like void filing her lungs, like toxic mist, making its painful way through her insides, to her rotten liver. 

The floor under her is hard, flat, steady. You are not outside. You are not with him. You are just lying there, a miserable, pitiful childless mother. Slowly, she raises her arm, and, as if it was waiting for her to calm down, the drape swipes gently to the ground. Now free, she puts her hand on her stomach. She does not wince under the cold contact of those lifeless fingers; she does not tremble as the cold kisses her all. She lies there for a while, staring at a cold dark that does not look back at her. 

Like a phantom, she gets up, and quietly, she leaves. 

She is awakened by the sun, this time. She sees it through her closed eyelids, feels it warming up hair. Then the sounds come to her, the birds’ distant but beautiful songs and the gentle touch of the leaves dancing in unison. She can smell the moss before even opening her eyes. There is a bit of morning dew on her dress and shoulders, small droplets. Some ants are walking down her bony arm, and there are other insects on her, tickling her, already claiming her body. 

A shadow passes by, behind some bushes, not far. It is quiet and light, innocent. It stops for an instant, and the small head of a young doe appears, framed by the vibrant green leaves. Its curious eyes judge her, body ready to jump and run away, but not too fearful, almost playful, even. For a moment, all is quiet, and only exist the fawn, herself, and the rays of light filtering through the tall trees above. Is this what the medieval poets envisioned, speaking of virgins and unicorns in clearings? The fawn spooks and runs. 

Like a phantom, she gets up, and quietly, she follows. She sees him from afar; frail silhouette standing before the cliff. The wind will catch him, it will grab his young limbs and throw him to his death. She calls him, yells, cries out, but the wind grabs her words, laughs at it and brushes it away. She runs, but the wind pushes back, not even bothered by her, not anything. He does not hear her, and she can only watch as the wind takes her son’s hand gently and whispers to him: “Fly.”. 

She opens her eyes in a gasp that is not quite hers. Completely still. For a moment, all is quiet, and only exists the blue of the sky above and the mocking laughter of the wind. 

She feels her crushed bones, her bleeding organs, her ribcage intertwined with her son’s, his bones puncturing her lungs. She found him, she’s happy. The wind got them, it’s happy. 

A phantom, she gets up, and quietly, she disappears.