The Man Who Planted Trees
1953 · 72 pages
In a dead Provencal valley a shepherd pushes acorns into the ground, one at a time. Thirty years and two wars later the forest holds ten thousand people who never learn his name.
★ 5.2
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Nine Cloud Dream
1687 · 288 pages
Korea's supreme classical novel banishes a young monk, undone by eight fairies on a bridge, into a life of examinations, armies and love, granted in full so it can be seen through.
★ 6.4
The Book of the City of Ladies
1405 · 283 pages
Christine de Pizan, the first woman in Europe to live by her pen, answers centuries of learned misogyny by building an allegorical city whose every stone is the life of a woman.
★ 6.5
The Foundation Pit
1930 · 224 pages
Workers dig a foundation for the building that will house the whole proletariat, and the pit keeps widening. Platonov's Russian buckles under its own slogans, and the Soviets suppressed the book until 1987.
★ 6.6
East of Eden
1952 · 602 pages
Two generations of a Salinas Valley family repeat Cain and Abel, and Steinbeck stakes everything on one Hebrew word: timshel, thou mayest, which leaves a man free to choose against his blood.
★ 6.7
Children of the Alley
1959 · 448 pages
One Cairo alley holds human history entire. Its founder withdraws into a great house, and each generation raises a redeemer, Adam then Moses then Jesus then Muhammad, defeated by the same protection racket.
★ 6.9
Billy Budd, Sailor
1924 · 385 pages
Struck dumb by a false charge of mutiny, a beautiful young sailor answers with his fist and kills his accuser. Melville leaves his captain to choose between the law and the plain truth.
★ 7.0
Life is a Dream
1635 · 96 pages
Spanish Golden Age drama peaks here. King Basilio locks his newborn son in a tower to outrun a prophecy, then has him drugged, brought to court, and told it was a dream.
★ 7.0
Inferno
1321 · 296 pages
Lost in a dark wood, Dante follows the Roman poet Virgil down through nine circles, past lovers, popes, and traitors frozen in ice. Every punishment is built to answer its sin.
★ 7.3
Le Morte d'Arthur
1485 · 576 pages
Arthur pulls the sword from the stone and the finest knights come to his table, until his wife's love for Lancelot brings it down. Every Camelot since comes from Malory.
★ 7.4
Pilgrim's Progress
1678 · 400 pages
Christian sets out with a burden on his back toward the Celestial City, through the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair. For two centuries only the Bible was read more widely in English.
★ 7.4
Lord of the Flies
1954 · 192 pages
English schoolboys are marooned on an island without adults, hold a vote, and are soon hunting each other. Golding tells it so plainly that you believe every step of the descent.
★ 7.8
Paradise Lost
1667 · 591 pages
Satan rebels in heaven, loses, and comes for the first two people. Milton meant to justify God and produced a devil so magnificent he nearly walks off with the greatest poem in English.
★ 9.5
The Divine Comedy
1321 · 798 pages
No poem has reached higher. Dante goes down through hell, up the mountain of purgatory, and into the light of God, settling scores with real Florentines and arriving where Beatrice waits.
★ 9.8