Memed, My Hawk
1955 · 392 pages
Five villages belong to Abdi Agha. The boy Memed runs, is dragged back, kills, and takes to the mountains, where Kemal turns a peasant's revolt into an epic of Turkey's Çukurova plain.
★ 6.2
The Books canon
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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.
Independent People
1934 · 482 pages
Eighteen years of hired labor buy Bjartur a stretch of Icelandic moorland, and he defends his independence against weather, debt, and his own family. Laxness makes stubbornness heroic and ruinous at once.
★ 7.0
Letters from a Stoic
60 · 254 pages
Nero's tutor sets down how to die, how to hold wealth lightly, and how to stop waiting for life to begin. Philosophy arrives as advice from someone who likes you.
★ 7.0
The Handbook (The Encheiridion)
125 · 40 pages
Stoicism cut down to a pocket manual: sort everything into what is up to you and what is not, stop wanting the second kind, and meet what comes without complaint.
★ 7.2
Discourses
108 · 400 pages
Born a slave, Epictetus taught that nothing is yours except what you make of what happens. These are his classroom talks, and he is losing patience with you.
★ 7.5
Meditations
180 · 256 pages
On campaign at the Danube, Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, wrote notes reminding himself to expect rude people and to die well. He is talking himself into it, and you can hear that.
★ 7.5