folklore
taylor swift's folklore album as books recommendations
It’s August, which means there will be signs of salt air and rust on your door. In honor of my favorite, (possibly only) no-skip Taylor album, here is an extended version of folklore songs as books.
Folklore is such a literary triumph so I always think of certain books for certain lyrics. Since I think of the album as a late summer album, I thought it would be fun to kick off my August posts with this.
I’ve added 2-3 more books per song for paid subscribers! Each book has a synopsis and a part of the song / few lines of the lyrics that I relate the most them. I prioritized adding a lot of lesser known, underrated books (all of these books are classics or literary fiction). Let me know if any books remind you of one of the tracks!
the 1 • Persuasion by Jane Austen
cardigan • Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
the last great american dynasty • The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
exile • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
my tears ricochet • In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
mirrorball • The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar
seven • Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
august • Luster by Raven Leilani
this is me trying • Normal People by Sally Rooney
illicit affairs • The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
invisible string • Journey into the Past by Stefan Zweig
mad woman • Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
epiphany • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
betty • Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
peace • Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Nolan
hoax • Wuthering Heights by Emily Brönte
the lakes • Bluets by Maggie Nelson
full list:
THE 1
Persuasion by Jane Austen
“i persist and resist the temptation to ask you
if one thing had been different
would everything be different today?”
At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
“but we were something, don't you think so?
roaring 20s, tossing pennies in the pool
and if my wishes came true
it would've been you.”
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means—and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.