One of the pre-reqs of being a boho is literature. Even for those bohos whose primary art is not writing, reading is a M-U-S-T.
The lovely Laren Stover of Bohemian Manifesto includes a section of books that all bohos must read. Because of this crappy economy and the crappy libraries in my area, I can't find/buy a great deal of these books so I turned to the ever lovely Gutenberg! No, not the guy who made the printing press and the Bible. I fell in love with the site Gutenberg because it has a ton of hard to find classics for free. *squee*
Sooo, to save you all the trouble, I found some of Stover's boho must reads & a few of my own.
Scenes de la Boheme - Henry Murger This isn't an optional read!!
The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce (If you haven't read it already, I recommend An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge. Soooo haunting!)
The Communist Manifest - Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (Everyone should read this; not just bohos.)
Therese Raquin - Emile Zola (Stover recommends Nana as well but Gutenberg didn't have an English translation.)
Les Fleurs du Mal - Charles Baudelaire (Even if you can't read it in French, do so anyways. The beauty of the poems in their original language cannot be found in the translations.)
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I recommend Hernani as well.)
Anything by Poe.
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Anything by Byron.
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Candide - Voltaire
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Cousin Betty - Honore Balzac
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Wasteland - T.S. Eliot
What is lamentably missing from this list is the works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Rimbaud. Gutenberg currently does not have any of their works.
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