9. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day — a butler remembers the career he devoted himself to and the relationship he never quite allowed to happen. how much of one’s time can obedience burn through? and how much time will you have wasted until you realize?

1. bell hooks’ “Love as the Practice of Freedom” — an essay that insists love isn’t just a feeling but an ethic and practice, a conscious choice and set of actions.

4. James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” — an essay where family grief, Harlem, and American racism intersect into a sharp and uncomfortable clarity that’s impossible to ignore.

7. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights — a love story that refuses to end at death. haunting isn’t just a ghost at the window, but an obsession that reshapes generations, long after the lovers are gone.

8. Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love — medieval visions of christ in intimate, bodily detail seen while she lies deathly ill. ultimately “all shall be well.”