Out of Africa
1937 · 399 pages
"I had a farm in Africa," Dinesen begins. Seventeen years below the Ngong Hills end in ruined coffee and a forced sale, and she tells it in prose that never asks for sympathy.
★ 6.5
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.
As You Like It
1600 · 320 pages
Banished from court, Rosalind hides in the Forest of Arden in men's clothes and coaches the man she loves in how to court her. She talks rings around everyone in Shakespeare.
★ 7.2
My Antonia
1918 · 166 pages
Jim Burden arrives orphaned in Nebraska and finds Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl whose family is barely surviving the winter. Cather writes the prairie so well the book reads like your own childhood.
★ 7.2
The Collected Poems
1963 · 296 pages
Frost's New England of stone walls and deep snow arrives in plain talk held to strict meter, with something much colder underneath. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening offers no comfort.
★ 8.6