has anyone read these? iv'e been penning alot of rhymes lately and my roomate hooked me up with these books, she said there dark etc right up my alley, just wondering your thoughts

I've read Dante's Inferno. Very good read.

I've read heart of darkness, it's a great book. Apocalypse Now is based off of it.

The dissection of books ruins every book they offer you. It's no surprise to me that I've read much more outside of the school system, than I ever did when I was attending.

both books are pretty intense if you can sit through them.  And yes they are both "Dark" Inferno deals with 9 layers of hell and Heart of Darkness is about imperialism in Africa and a persistent darkness.

one of my favorite excerpts from any book is (Sorry its so long dont have to read) from Heart of Darknes:

"Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up -- he had judged. "The horror!" He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth -- the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best -- a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things -- even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry -- much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable deaths, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence throw to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal."



you should also check out "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibrahn - i dont know how they'll work lyrically but you can get a good bit from T.S. Elliott's "The Wasteland"/"The Hollow Men"http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html as well