Tomes of Toreador Talent
A 'Rebours by Joris Karl Huysmans --
Angels in America by Tony Kushner -- Love, guilt, hypocrisy, AIDS, and transcendence.
The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton -- Four spirited young women seeking their fortunes and love.
Carmilla by J. Sheridan LeFanu -- A beautiful, cruel vampire who seduces and feeds off of an innocent young girl.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty trilogy by A. N. Roquelaure (AKA Anne Rice) -- Fairy tale B&D!
Dracula by Bram Stoker -- The great Count was probably a Toreador. How else could he have seduced Lucy and Mina so easily?
Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite -- A grisly murder, a computer hacker on the run, sex, drugs, all the good stuff, artfully and eloquently described.
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser -- Royal and religious allegory, poetic and flowery.
Fanny Hill by John Cleland -- The first dirty book! Subtitled "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," so you know it's a Toreador classic.
The Hunger by Whitley Strieber -- Miriam creates childer out of love, even though they suffer and die for her.
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence -- A modern noblewoman renounces a stultifying life in favor of physical pleasure.
Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe -- Beautiful death is so frequently feminine...
Lost Souls? by Poppy Z. Brite -- Sensualist, hedonistic vampires killing and seducing with no care for their effect on those around them.
No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre -- Three people in hell. A cynical, bitter, philosophy lesson. Too artistically refined for any Brujah.
Orlando by Virginia Woolf -- Orlando pursues his/her own poetic muse throughout 400 years of English history. A transgender Toreador!
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce -- The pursuit of art by rebellion against social mores.
Possession by A. S. Byatt -- Two sets of lovers in different times and a mystery revolving around poetry. Also Angels & Insects and everything else by A. S. Byatt as she explores themes of art, sex, literature, love, and loss, all woven together with eloquent prose and meandering exposition.
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy -- Frustrated artist Eustacia can't find beauty or love on the desolate heath, so she kills herself.
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare -- Young mortal love, misunderstood and reviled in life, ending in tragic death.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia -- A lengthy analysis of the effects and reflections of gender, sexuality, and religion (among other things) on art and literature.
Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory by Mary Woronov -- Brilliantly written autobiography of a speed freak and hanger-on of Andy Warhol's scene.
The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet -- finding beauty in a world of filth and decadence and having the ability to survive in it.
The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice -- Obvious, I know. Louis is the classic Toreador, forever bemoaning the loss of his humanity. Lestat is a Poseur.
The Vampyre by John William Polidori -- Arguably the very first fictional vampire.
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster -- A tale of prim Victorians surrendering to Italian desire.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte -- Star-crossed lovers on the wild moors, and they're only united in death.
Anything by Anais Nin.
Miscellaneous Romantic, Pre-Raphaelite, and Symbolist poetry by the likes of Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, etc., etc.
The primer on being an aesthete and decadent (Oscar Wilde modelled Picture of Dorian Gray on it).
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