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.

Stoner

1965 · 278 pages

Sent to study agriculture, a Missouri farm boy falls for English literature instead and never leaves the university. Williams makes an unremarkable life, badly used by everyone in it, hold you completely.

★ 7.8

The Secret History

1992 · 557 pages

At a Vermont college a transfer student joins five classics majors and their charismatic tutor, then learns their rite to Dionysus left a farmer dead. Dark academia has been rewriting it since.

★ 6.4

Lucky Jim

1954 · 264 pages

Jim Dixon loathes lecturing in medieval history, his professor's madrigal weekends, and the colleague trapping him with fake suicide threats. His drunken Merrie England lecture is the great set piece of English comedy.

★ 6.3