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.

Layli and Majnun

1192 · 320 pages

Qays, an Arab poet, loves Layli so openly that his tribe calls him Majnun, the possessed, and her father marries her elsewhere. Poets from Anatolia to Mughal India rewrote Nezami's version for centuries.

★ 6.5

First Love

1860 · 298 pages

Turgenev said this was the only work of his that still gave him pleasure. Vladimir, sixteen, loves the princess next door, twenty-one, and her secret lover is nobody he can fight.

★ 5.6