Romantic Animism Reading List Part I

I’ve had so much fun with Confessions of a Romantic Animist. As someone who was writing about illness for the past three years while getting increasingly sicker, I’ve found it remarkably liberating/nourishing to write mostly about love. If attention is a type of prayer (Simone Weil) then I’m putting my attention on romance. The main essays of this series will all be free, while the reading list and personal memoir pieces will be for paid subscribers. Upcoming essays will feature Eros and Aphrodite, Paris and Helen, Love Potions, Romeo and Juliet, writing the character of Yeshua in The Madonna Secret, and the Song of Songs. If you missed the first four parts of the series you can find them here and below is part 1 of my recommended reading list for a romantic animist:

Enemies to Earth Lovers: Ecological Romance & Redemption Arcs

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Jun 9

My favorite moment in a romance novel is when a protagonist grudgingly admits that their enemy or loathed rival is good-looking. Variations include mentioning that he/she smells like pine, leather, cedar, smoke…insert some other sensual aroma. In a romantic novel this admittance is a Checkov’s gun, bound to go off by the end of the narrative. By go off,…

Lichenized Lovers: Symbiosis In Together and Tristan & Isolde

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Jun 13

After falling into a cave and getting covered in a weird gooey substance, a young couple find themselves physically fusing together until in the final scene they completely merge, creating an androgynous holobiont. So goes the plot of Together, a 2025 body horror film that A.V. Club’s Brianna Zigler declared, “the greatest romance of the year, even if i…

Romantic Animist Recommended Reading Part 1

Part 1

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Matter and Desire and Enlivenment by Andreas Weber

Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich