The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1831 · 483 pages
Medieval Paris rebuilt around the cathedral, where a deaf bell-ringer loves a dancer the archdeacon also wants. The novel made crumbling Notre-Dame a national cause and saved it from the wreckers.
★ 6.6
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 Heart is a Lonely Hunter
1940 · 368 pages
Four people in a Georgia mill town confide everything to John Singer, a deaf man who lip-reads them and answers little. McCullers fills the place with people who cannot reach each other.
★ 6.9
Light in August
1932 · 512 pages
Pregnant and walking from Alabama, Lena Grove looks for the man who left her. Nearby a man who cannot say whether he is black or white is running out of room.
★ 7.2
The Castle
1926 · 352 pages
K. arrives in a village claiming the castle above it hired him as land surveyor, and never reaches anyone who can confirm it. Waiting becomes the whole of his life there.
★ 8.4
Brave New World
1932 · 281 pages
Babies are decanted from bottles into castes, everyone takes a drug called soma, and nobody is unhappy. Huxley saw that a tyranny of pleasure would hold better than one of fear.
★ 8.5
Great Expectations
1861 · 469 pages
Pip, a blacksmith's boy, is handed a fortune by an unknown benefactor and turns snob. Miss Havisham waits in her rotted wedding dress, and Dickens makes the shame of low birth unbearable.
★ 8.8