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.

Killings

1984 · 320 pages

One killing per chapter, in towns no reporter usually visits, including a Kentucky landowner who shot a documentary filmmaker for trespassing. Trillin cares how these Americans lived, not how they died.

★ 4.7

The Organization Man

1956 · 429 pages

Whyte went into corporations and the new suburb of Park Forest and found Americans trading the old ethic of individual striving for belonging. The organization wanted the whole man, and got him.

★ 5.8

Lolita

1955 · 317 pages

Humbert Humbert explains how he became stepfather to a twelve-year-old girl and drove her across America. Nabokov gives the monster the most beautiful prose in English and dares you to enjoy it.

★ 9.1