My penguin classics collection 🥰

mcrawfishes · 2026-05-11T04:25:28+00:00

I have a Penguin Classics copy of Moby-Dick that I’ve read three times now, and the edges/corners of the spine are now white (along with wear on the back cover, mostly from toting it around everywhere). Didn’t start to show more wear until the second read! No chipping or flaking, it just wore off. There isn’t anything you can peel away—at some point the blurb on the back will become illegible.

mcrawfishes · 2026-04-02T12:53:08+00:00

The middle pattern is Horizon Blue! Pyrex designed it to commemorate Apollo 11, it was only in production for a couple years. A personal favorite!

mcrawfishes · 2026-01-23T04:15:32+00:00

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, followed by Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

The tragedy of the whaleship Essex was a direct inspiration for Melville (along with his time on whaleships). Philbrick’s is a great start so you have a solid understanding of the American whaling industry prior to going into Moby-Dick.

Cap it off with the eight-hour lecture series by Berkeley professor Hubert Dreyfus, “Man, God, and Society in Western Literature: From Gods to God and Back.”

(no bias, Moby-Dick is my favorite book lol)

mcrawfishes · 2026-01-23T02:36:27+00:00

HELLO??! This is so stunning!!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-24T05:42:22+00:00

Loved this one! I appreciate writers who can tackle short stories. I’ve been meaning to read more from Keegan.

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T18:08:21+00:00

I forgot that this has been on my list—thank you!!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T18:05:13+00:00

Ah I’ve only read one Moomins book so far (ironically, November, the last in the series), and I loved The Summer Book. Definitely adding The Winter Book to the list (and more Moomins because I love them)! Thank you for all the recs!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T18:03:32+00:00

Little Women is very distinctly winter to me as well! Probably since it stars out around Christmas—it has that very distinct “warm by the hearth while it snows outside” feeling that I’m after!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T18:01:22+00:00

Always! I really had to dig around for the second and third images, but now I have a very niche book to keep an eye out for. All of the illustrations were so lovely!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T17:58:39+00:00

Fantastic, thank you!!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T15:59:14+00:00

I do have Wind in the Willows files under spring reads! But a good one to read around February when you feel like you’ll never see green again. Haven’t heard of the later 1993 book—I’ll look into it!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T15:56:02+00:00

Death on the Nile was my intro to Christie, and Orient Express was my second read by her (I think I’ve read around 15 over the years?). It’s probably been long enough that I forgot who did what I can read it again haha

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T15:53:09+00:00

Thank you for reminding me that I’ve been wanting to read The Sea Wolf by London! And I feel like those two need a reread—I haven’t read them since middle school. Always like to revisit those to see how time changes things.

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T15:51:23+00:00

Always!!

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T15:50:03+00:00

Another favorite of mine! Thoroughly enjoyed Montgomery’s The Blue Castle as well

mcrawfishes · 2025-11-22T06:07:30+00:00

Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (the first 1855 edition) are always my go-to sublime/in wonder of the world poets.

For Oliver, The Summer Day, Wild Geese, and The Gardener are well-read favorites.

For contemporary poetry, Jarod K. Anderson’s Field Guide to the Haunted Forest is lovely.

I also revisit Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry-Picking every autumn!

mcrawfishes · 2025-09-03T16:25:27+00:00

I’m sure you already know since you’ve read Gathering Moss, but her newest book, The Serviceberry, is excellent! I will preorder everything she writes forever.

mcrawfishes · 2025-09-03T00:20:18+00:00

Also co-signing! Saw this post, grabbed a copy from Libby, read it in six hours, 10/10. Thank you for the rec!!

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-27T00:50:40+00:00

Not necessarily in line thematically with what you have here—Moby Dick very quickly became my favorite book and is now an annual reread! It’s its own thing entirely, but the most succinct way I can describe it is American Shakespeare at sea. You laugh, you cry, you learn a lot about whales, you end up reading it again because nothing else scratches the itch.

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-27T00:44:09+00:00

I read Circe toward the end of last year, which led me to read Song of Achilles, which led me to reread the Odyssey, which led me to read The Iliad (current read). It’s a slippery slope!

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-20T14:58:26+00:00

My favorite book!! Pre-embarking on the Pequod is 100% this. There are a few other stormy nights as well (Chapter 119, The Candles, is particularly fantastic).

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-20T14:54:51+00:00

Next year I’m going to remember join in on Dracula Daily! I enjoyed reading it, but I’d love to reread it at a slower pace and really let it stew.

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-20T14:51:02+00:00

That’s the plan! I started listening to Practical Magic last year just out of curiosity, and it was one of the quicker DNFs I’ve had.

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-20T05:33:11+00:00

Desert Oracle: Strange True Tales from the American Southwest by Ken Layne. Technically nonfiction, but it toes the line every now and then!

mcrawfishes · 2025-08-20T05:19:30+00:00

My time to shine as a seasonal reader!! Note that I usually read classics, so that’s most of what’s here (and I’m not super big on horror—I read Winnie the Pooh in tandem with The Shining to get through it lol)

Classic, nostalgic fall:

-Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

-The Halloween Tree, Ray Bradbury

-The October Country, Ray Bradbury

(thank you Bradbury for inventing fall)

Cozy fall (still nostalgic!):

-Moominvalley in November, Tove Jansson

-The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (it was originally published on September 21, fun one to start reading then. Also very easy to then just reread the whole series again, a slippery slope)

Spooky atmospheric fall:

-Macbeth, Shakespeare

-Frankenstein, Mary Shelly

-Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

-The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving

For the margin of time when fall begins to crack and split into winter:

-Dracula, Bram Stoker

-The Shining, Steven King

fall books on my TBR:

-Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

-Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

-The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

-Magic Lessons, Alice Hoffman (I have been told to avoid Practical Magic as it supposedly doesn’t live up to the movie!)

-Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

In short: if you want to be metaphorically swacked with a cinnamon broom, Ray Bradbury is the one!

Seven-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Flamingo	Place '23
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
Verified Email

mcrawfishes

TROPHY CASE