Faust, Part One
1808 · 176 pages
Having learned everything and felt nothing, a scholar bets the devil that no moment will ever satisfy him. Then Mephistopheles introduces him to a girl named Gretchen, and Goethe follows the damage down.
★ 9.2
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.
The Tempest
1611 · 259 pages
Prospero raises a storm to strand the men who stole his dukedom on an island where a spirit and a monster obey him. What he does with that power reads as Shakespeare's farewell.
★ 8.6
The Arabian Nights
Author unknown
1100 · 464 pages
Scheherazade marries a king who executes each new wife at dawn and stays alive by telling stories that break off before the end. Sinbad, Aladdin, and Ali Baba reached the world through her.
★ 7.5
The Golden Ass
170 · 267 pages
Meddling with magic, Lucius turns himself into a donkey and is beaten from owner to owner across Greece. The tale of Cupid and Psyche sits at the center, and the ending turns holy.
★ 7.3
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
1950 · 171 pages
Four children evacuated from wartime London find a wardrobe opening onto snow, a lamppost, and a land where a witch has made it always winter. Lewis buried the Christian story inside an adventure.
★ 6.9
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Author unknown
1550 BC · 698 pages
Egypt's instructions for the dead, copied onto papyrus and buried with the body. Your heart is weighed against the feather of truth, and one spell begs it not to testify against you.
★ 6.7
The House of the Spirits
1982 · 433 pages
Clara predicts the future and moves furniture without touching it, while three generations of her family reach from the era of the great estates to the 1973 coup that comes for them.
★ 5.7