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
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.
Catch-22
1961 · 524 pages
Trying to get grounded for insanity, a bombardier learns that asking to be grounded proves he is sane. Heller runs that loop through a whole war until the deaths stop being funny.
★ 8.7
Slaughterhouse Five
1969 · 215 pages
Billy Pilgrim comes unstuck in time, between a Dresden meat locker during the firebombing and a zoo on another planet. Vonnegut was in that cellar, and writes "So it goes" after every death.
★ 8.4
The Ambassadors
1903 · 518 pages
Sent to Paris to pry a young American away from a Frenchwoman, a middle-aged emissary looks around and tells a young painter to live all he can. James called it his best novel.
★ 7.1
Wise Blood
1952 · 236 pages
Back from the war, Hazel Motes preaches the Church Without Christ from the hood of a rat-colored car, insisting there was no Fall and nothing needing redemption. O'Connor makes blasphemy sound like faith.
★ 6.5
Sixty Stories
1981 · 451 pages
A balloon settles over forty-five blocks of Manhattan and New Yorkers read meanings into it. Barthelme's deadpan collages taught two generations of American writers that a story need not make ordinary sense.
★ 5.5
A Good Man in Africa
1981 · 342 pages
Morgan Leafy, a British diplomat in a fictional West African state, must bribe an incorruptible Scottish doctor, conceal a venereal infection, and remove the maid lightning killed before the Duchess arrives.
★ 4.7