I like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (or Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, in its og name). Basically a very short book narrated by your crazy uncle telling tall tales while tripping. Full of lies and absurd surreal humor like how he rode a cannonball against the turks, climbed to the moon and hunted like a million things. It's such a fun read, specially how insane it gets at times for the 18th century.
Another "sadder" one I like is Anatomy of Melancholy (or in its og name, and forgive me but I love how silly these oldie titles are, The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up)
I never waste a chance to rant about this book.
I've never finished it. Because it's introduction is 200 pages alone, and it's itself a parody of introductions. It's final edition is almost 2.000 pages. It was written and rewritten by one guy, Robert Burton, in the course of 17 years as a way to treat his own depression.
It's far from a medical text, it's the closest thing to a blog but from the 17th century, If it was written by an oxford scholar that never left his library and so turned to philosophy, astrology, geography and basically every subject and book on earth to try to find meaning in it for his depression. The book goes everywhere, its a constant ramble but so eloquent and filled with humor, it is very funny. Like he just tells you an anecdote about how sad he was one time and then goes "anyways... so on demons"... and you can expect he will go on about demons for the next 50 pages.
It's not an easy read, it's a self admitted confused mess, but he just said "fuck it" and made it progressively more confusing with each edition. Sometimes it reads nihilistic others hopeful, depending on how he was feeling that day.
But it's one of the few books from that era that transcend all the arcaic language and lets you see "oh, this was just a guy, an actual shut in messy person trying their best to write himself out of his depression" and he tried hard. He gives hundreds of remedies for it but also concludes that probably none work. Which is sad but... yeah I feel u buddy :(
so yeah, I like how real this book feels. He said he only wrote about melancholy to distract his own melancholy, and maybe bring such comfort to others, and I think he did good on that front.
Rant over.
