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.

Mrs. Dalloway

1925 · 197 pages

Clarissa Dalloway buys the flowers herself and gives a party, one June day in London, while a veteran wrecked by the war comes apart nearby. Woolf moves between strangers' minds without warning.

★ 9.0

The Blind Owl

1937 · 108 pages

Persian fiction's darkest book: an opium-addicted painter of pen cases draws the same scene, an old man and a girl in black offering a lily, then finds it living behind his wall.

★ 5.3