The Iliad
750 BC★ 9.9
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.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
1603★ 9.9
The Odyssey
700 BC★ 9.9
War and Peace
1869★ 9.8
King Lear
1607★ 9.8
Don Quixote
1605★ 9.7
Ulysses
1922★ 9.7
In Search of Lost Time (set of 6)
1922★ 9.7
The Brothers Karamazov
1880★ 9.7
Anna Karenina
1877★ 9.6
Crime and Punishment
1866★ 9.6
Middlemarch
1872★ 9.6
Pride and Prejudice
1813★ 9.5
Madame Bovary
1857★ 9.4
Macbeth
1606★ 9.4
Essays
1580★ 9.3
To the Lighthouse
1927★ 9.2
Plays
1904★ 9.2
The Magic Mountain
1924★ 9.1
Othello
1603★ 9.0
Mrs. Dalloway
1925★ 9.0
Selected Stories
1904★ 8.9
The Gulag Archipelago
1973★ 8.9
The Canterbury Tales
1390★ 8.9
The Republic
380 BC★ 8.8
Eugene Onegin
1832★ 8.8
The Three Theban Plays
429 BC★ 8.8
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1776★ 8.8
Great Expectations
1861★ 8.8
Wuthering Heights
1847★ 8.8
Bleak House
1853★ 8.8
Les Miserables
1862★ 8.8
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
1916★ 8.7
The Master and Margarita
1967★ 8.7
Life and Fate
1980★ 8.7
Gravity's Rainbow
1973★ 8.7
The Diary of a Young Girl
1947★ 8.6
The Oresteia
458 BC★ 8.6
Notes from Underground
1864★ 8.6
The Red and the Black
1830★ 8.5
The Prince
1532★ 8.5
Brave New World
1932★ 8.5
Doctor Zhivago
1957★ 8.4
The Leopard
1958★ 8.4
Slaughterhouse Five
1969★ 8.4
The Tin Drum
1959★ 8.3
Night
1955★ 8.3
History of the Peloponnesian War
431 BC★ 8.2
Romeo and Juliet
1597★ 8.1
Portrait of a Lady
1881★ 8.1
Emma
1815★ 8.1
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
1891★ 8.1
Dead Souls
1842★ 8.1
The Idiot
1869★ 8.1
David Copperfield
1850★ 8.1
Buddenbrooks
1901★ 8.0
A Doll's House
1879★ 8.0
The Importance of Being Earnest
1895★ 8.0
All Quiet on the Western Front
1928★ 8.0
The Sun Also Rises
1926★ 8.0
A Farewell to Arms
1929★ 8.0
The Making of the English Working Class
1963★ 7.9
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1962★ 7.9
The Name of the Rose
1980★ 7.7
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1984★ 7.7
The Remains of the Day
1989★ 7.7
Austerlitz
2001★ 7.6
Postwar
2005★ 7.6
Gorgias
380 BC★ 7.6
The Annals
117★ 7.6
Medea
431 BC★ 7.5
Capital
1867★ 7.5
The Last Days of Socrates (includes Apology)
399 BC★ 7.5
The Odes of Horace
23 BC★ 7.5
The City of God
426★ 7.5
The Decameron
1353★ 7.5
Bacchae
405 BC★ 7.4
Beowulf
Author unknown
1000★ 7.4
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Author unknown
1375★ 7.4
Frankenstein
1818★ 7.4