Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?

Book(?): And I’m not sure it qualifies but a collection of Rimbaud’s poems and lyrical prose is a sure winner as well. I have difficult time wrapping my mind around the fact that he was so young.

Two short b-sides: - The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway - The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

This book is filthy, funny, misanthropic, insightful, and ridiculous in all the right ways.

> I was complaining of a small fit of the colic, upon which my conductor led me into a room where a great physician resided, who was famous for curing that disease, by contrary operations from the same instrument. He had a large pair of bellows, with a long slender muzzle of ivory: this he conveyed eight inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder. But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows were full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient; then withdrew the instrument to replenish it, clapping his thumb strongly against the orifice of then fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the adventitious wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it, (like water put into a pump), and the patient recovered. I saw him try both experiments upon a dog, but could not discern any effect from the former. After the latter the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companion. The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavouring to recover him, by the same operation.

Yes, this is a passage about trying to inflate a dog with a bellows. This is why this book is in the Western canon.

The Beetle: A Mystery by Richard Marsh (1897)

This novel is bizarre...to the max! (I'm bringing it back.)

This shit came out in the same year as Dracula (1897) and outsold it. That tells you that this is a boss novel that you should read immediately.

The plot is that a shapeshifting beetle person with mesmeric powers is trying to revenge themselves on a member of Parliament. After reading the first section of this book, in which a tramp is mesmerized, given spooky powers, and sent to steal some letters, you'll want to start shouting THE BEETLE! just like the characters in the novel. Keep an eye out for Sydney Atherton, a scientist who uses the mysterious fluid known as Electricity to fight our antagonist, and who randomly kills a cat with sarin gas to make a point in a conversation.

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Not as good as The Beetle, obviously, but holds up shockingly well. In this rollicking novel, Victorian organizational technology (gramophones, stenography, typewriters) triumphs over the undead. But read The Beetle first, it's way better.

Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778)

This is another awesomely messed-up book that's a great beach read in 2019. People are constantly getting kicked out of carriages and rolling down hills, falling down stairs, etc. It's like Jane Austen but with violence. Incidentally, Frances Burney was Austen's fav writer. There's an old person race in this novel, so enjoy that.