Classical Books That Blew My Mind This Month (And Possibly Ruined Me Emotionally)

 This January, I accidentally fell into a literary rabbit hole made entirely of longing, guilt, obsession, existential dread, and men who desperately needed therapy but instead wrote masterpieces. I didn’t plan to read this many emotionally devastating classics—it just sort of happened, the way breakdowns happen. Quietly at first. Then all at once.

There’s something about classical books that feels illegal when you read them at the wrong moment in your life. They don’t comfort you. They don’t reassure you. They look directly at your inner chaos and say, “Yes. That.” And suddenly you’re not just reading—you’re being psychoanalyzed by people who have been dead for over a century.

Here are the books that absolutely blew my mind this month. Not because they were easy or comforting, but because they were honest in a way that feels dangerous.

Letters to Milena by Kafka

Reading Letters to Milena feels like standing too close to a live wire. There’s an intensity here that borders on inappropriate, like you’re witnessing emotions that were never meant to be preserved, let alone published. Kafka doesn’t write to Milena so much as he writes through her—using her as a mirror for his fears, his devotion, and his crippling sense of inadequacy.

What struck me immediately is how little of this feels romantic in the soft, cinematic sense. This is love as obsession, love as self-erasure, love as constant self-interrogation. Kafka loves Milena, yes—but he also fears her, idealizes her, and places her on a pedestal so high that it almost guarantees failure. He doesn’t want to be abandoned, yet he writes as if abandonment is inevitable.

There’s something painfully modern about the way Kafka spirals. He overexplains his feelings. He anticipates rejection before it happens. He apologizes for wanting closeness while simultaneously craving it with desperate urgency. At times, it feels less like correspondence and more like an anxious monologue sent into the void, hoping someone will stay on the other end.

What makes Letters to Milena so unsettling is how self-aware Kafka is—and how little that self-awareness helps him. He knows he’s afraid. He knows he’s fragile. He knows he’s placing impossible expectations on love. And yet he continues. Because knowing your patterns doesn’t automatically free you from them. Sometimes it just gives you better vocabulary for your pain.

By the end, I didn’t feel inspired. I felt exposed. This book doesn’t ask you to admire Kafka—it asks you to recognize the parts of yourself that love like this. Intensely. Fearfully. Apologetically. And that recognition is uncomfortable in the most honest way.

Letters to Felice by Kafka

If Letters to Milena is Kafka emotionally undressed, Letters to Felice is Kafka emotionally stuck in a revolving door. This is the correspondence of a man who wants intimacy but is deeply suspicious of it, who craves connection but associates it with loss of self, freedom, and sanity. Reading it feels like watching someone negotiate with their own fear in real time—and losing.

Kafka writes to Felice obsessively, yet resists the actual implications of commitment. Marriage, domestic life, stability—these are not neutral concepts for him. They feel like threats. Like cages. Like the end of his ability to exist as a writer, as a solitary thinker, as himself. And so every letter becomes both an approach and a retreat.

What’s fascinating—and frustrating—is how Kafka intellectualizes everything. He analyzes his hesitation to death. He dissects his own paralysis with stunning clarity. But clarity does not translate into action. Instead, it becomes another loop. Another delay. Another reason to wait until he feels “ready,” which he never does.

This book feels like a masterclass in self-sabotage wrapped in eloquent prose. Kafka doesn’t lie to Felice—he overwhelms her with truth. Too much truth. The kind that drowns intimacy instead of deepening it. At times, it feels like he’s warning her away while simultaneously begging her not to leave.

Reading this in your twenties (or honestly, ever) hits uncomfortably close to home. How many times have we convinced ourselves that timing is wrong, that we’re not ready, that we need to become someone else first? Letters to Felice is a reminder that fear can masquerade as logic—and that overthinking can be just as destructive as avoidance.

The Metamorphosis by Kafka

The Metamorphosis wastes no time. Gregor Samsa wakes up as an insect, and the story moves on like this is merely inconvenient, not horrifying. And that’s exactly the point. Kafka doesn’t ask you to question the transformation—he asks you to watch how everyone responds to it.

What makes this story devastating is not Gregor’s condition, but how quickly his humanity becomes negotiable. Once he can no longer work, provide, or fulfill his role, his worth erodes. His family doesn’t ask how he feels. They ask how long this will last. How much space it will take. How disruptive his existence has become.

This book reads like a metaphor for burnout, illness, depression—any state that renders you “unproductive.” Gregor doesn’t change internally. He still loves his family. He still feels shame, responsibility, longing. But none of that matters once he stops functioning the way he’s expected to.

What haunted me most was how normalized the abandonment feels. There’s no dramatic betrayal. No villain. Just slow neglect. Quiet resentment. The gradual acceptance that someone has become a burden. Kafka doesn’t exaggerate cruelty—he shows how ordinary it can be.

By the end, The Metamorphosis left me with an uncomfortable question: how much of our worth is tied to usefulness? And what happens to us when we can no longer perform? It’s a short book, but it leaves a long shadow—and once you see it, you can’t unsee how often society treats people like Gregor, just without the metaphor.

Kafka doesn’t offer hope in the traditional sense. He doesn’t believe in neat resolutions or emotional closure. What he offers instead is recognition. The unsettling kind. The kind that whispers, “You’re not alone in this fear, even if that doesn’t fix it.”

Reading his works back-to-back feels like sitting with someone who understands your anxiety but refuses to sugarcoat it. Someone who doesn’t tell you it gets better—only that it gets named. And sometimes, naming the thing is the first step toward surviving it.

Anaïs Nin writes like a woman who has already decided that interiority matters more than approval. Her work is lush, indulgent, and unapologetically inward. She doesn’t explain herself. She doesn’t defend her contradictions. She inhabits them. And in doing so, she gives you permission to stop flattening yourself for the comfort of others.

Where Kafka fears intimacy because it threatens his identity, Nin fears nothing more than a life unlived. Her work pulses with desire—not just sexual desire, but emotional, intellectual, existential hunger. She wants everything, and she refuses to be shamed for it.

And that refusal is radical.

A Spy in the House of Love

This book feels like being invited into a beautifully decorated emotional labyrinth where every room contains a different version of the same woman. Sabina is a spy not because she seeks information, but because she seeks herself—through lovers, through lies, through constant reinvention. She watches her own life from a distance, participating but never fully belonging.

What makes this novel quietly devastating is how glamorous the emptiness looks at first. Sabina is desired. Admired. Wanted. She moves through relationships with ease and curiosity. And yet—she remains untouched. Intimacy is something she studies, not something she surrenders to. Love is an experience she observes rather than inhabits.

Nin captures the particular loneliness of being emotionally evasive while appearing emotionally abundant. Sabina is not cold—she’s fragmented. She wants connection but fears the stillness required to sustain it. Every relationship becomes a performance, every lover a temporary mirror reflecting only parts of herself.

There’s something deeply relatable here, especially if you’ve ever used romance, creativity, or chaos as a way to avoid sitting with yourself. Sabina isn’t dishonest because she’s cruel—she’s dishonest because she doesn’t yet know which version of herself is real. Or worse, she knows, and she’s afraid to commit to just one.

By the end, the novel doesn’t punish Sabina, but it doesn’t romanticize her either. Nin understands that freedom without grounding can become another form of captivity. And that realization lands softly—but it lands.

The Veiled Woman

The Veiled Woman is quieter, more introspective, and arguably more dangerous. This book isn’t about dramatic affairs or emotional escapades—it’s about the internal schism between who a woman is and who she’s allowed to be. Nin explores repression not as an external force, but as something a woman learns to enforce upon herself.

The veil in this story isn’t just societal—it’s psychological. It’s the careful editing of desire. The strategic silencing of instinct. The learned performance of acceptability. Nin writes about a woman who has internalized restraint so deeply that even her longings feel borrowed, secondhand, filtered.

What makes this book unsettling is how familiar the self-erasure feels. The protagonist doesn’t lack passion—she lacks permission. And Nin makes it painfully clear that waiting for permission is a losing game. Desire delayed doesn’t disappear; it mutates. It becomes resentment, sadness, disconnection from self.

This book reads like a warning whispered instead of shouted. A reminder that living behind a veil may protect you from judgment—but it also distances you from your own truth. Nin doesn’t condemn modesty or restraint; she condemns unconscious restraint. The kind that costs you your inner life.

By the end, The Veiled Woman doesn’t demand rebellion—it demands awareness. It asks you to notice where you’ve gone quiet. Where you’ve minimized yourself. Where you’ve confused safety with fulfillment. And once you notice, you can’t unknow it.

If Kafka teaches you how fear shapes the self, Anaïs Nin teaches you how desire does. Together, they form a brutal, beautiful conversation about what it means to be human: torn between longing and restraint, intimacy and autonomy, safety and depth.

Nin doesn’t offer morality. She offers honesty. And that honesty is intoxicating—especially if you’ve spent years pretending your inner life isn’t as rich, chaotic, or demanding as it actually is.

Reading her doesn’t make you calmer.
It makes you braver.

And honestly? Sometimes that’s more dangerous.

Reading these books back-to-back felt less like a reading month and more like an emotional intervention I did not consent to. Kafka cracked open my fear, Anaïs Nin illuminated my hunger, and somewhere between letters never meant to be sent and women learning how to want without apology, I realized how much of my inner life I’ve been managing instead of living. What stayed with me most wasn’t the brilliance (though there was plenty), but the recognition. The feeling of being seen in my contradictions. Of realizing that confusion, longing, fear, and emotional excess aren’t personal failures—they’re part of the human condition. Especially in your twenties. Especially when you’re trying to become yourself without a map.

If any of these books cracked something open in you, sit with it. Then tell me—which one ruined you the most? I want to know.