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.

The Count of Monte Cristo

1844 · 1276 pages

Edmond Dantes, a sailor about to marry, is denounced by rivals and buried in an island prison for fourteen years. He returns rich and unrecognizable, and revenge fiction still runs on his design.

★ 7.0

Bacchae

405 BC · 432 pages

Dionysus returns to Thebes disguised as a stranger, and the young king who denies him ends up on the mountain in women's clothes. Reason that refuses the god is torn apart by it.

★ 7.4

Medea

431 BC · 208 pages

Medea gave up her country and killed for Jason, and now he is marrying a princess. Euripides lets her argue her case so completely that her revenge arrives with the force of logic.

★ 7.5

The Oresteia

458 BC · 335 pages

Agamemnon comes home from Troy to a wife who has spent ten years planning her welcome, and the killing runs down the generations until Athena stops it by seating the first jury.

★ 8.6