Finished most of The Gay Science, should I read Zarathustra and Birth of Tragedy next?
I've been interested in Nietzsche for a few years now, mostly through reading about his ideas, watching lectures/videos, and discussing his philosophy, but I only recently started actually reading his books properly.
I started with The Gay Science and I'm now close to finishing it. I've really enjoyed it, especially the aphoristic style. Some of my favourite sections so far have been The Teachers of Unselfishness, Work and Tedium, The Greatest Weight, Outside the Lecture Hall, What Does It Mean to Live?, The Evil Hour, We Must Learn to Love, and several of the passages dealing with self-overcoming, morality, suffering, and the free spirit.
What interests me most about Nietzsche isn't really the stereotypical "be strong and dominate everyone" interpretation. I'm much more interested in amor fati, self-overcoming, becoming who you are, affirming life despite suffering, the Dionysian, embracing the body and mortality, creativity, and transforming suffering into something life-affirming.
I've spent a lot of time reading pessimistic/existentialist writers and thinking about suffering, meaninglessness, mortality, etc., so Nietzsche's approach feels very different to me. I don't see him as simply denying darkness or suffering. What attracts me is the idea of going through it and somehow coming out the other side with an affirmation of life, rather than escaping from it.
Because of that, I've recently bought Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Birth of Tragedy. Zarathustra has always been one of the Nietzsche books that fascinated me most because of the whole prophetic/poetic style, the Übermensch, self-overcoming, eternal recurrence, the imagery of mountains, solitude, dancing, the earth, etc. And The Birth of Tragedy interests me particularly because of the Apollonian/Dionysian distinction and Nietzsche's treatment of Greek tragedy, art, music, suffering and life-affirmation.
My question is: should I just read these two next, in that order, or would you recommend reading another Nietzsche book before them?
I know the usual advice is sometimes to read Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, Twilight of the Idols, etc. first, and I'm definitely interested in those eventually. But right now I'm genuinely most drawn toward Zarathustra and Birth of Tragedy, rather than forcing myself through a recommended reading order.
Since I've already read most of The Gay Science, would going directly into Zarathustra be reasonable? And would it make sense to read Birth of Tragedy afterwards, or should I put something like Genealogy or Beyond Good and Evil between them?
Basically, I'm not trying to read Nietzsche chronologically or academically. I want to follow the parts of Nietzsche that resonate most with me first, then eventually go back and read the rest.
Would love to hear how people who have actually read most of his works would approach this.