Blood Meridian
1985 · 337 pages
Scalp hunters ride the Mexican border in 1849, among them a runaway Tennessee boy and the hairless giant Judge Holden. McCarthy writes the violence in Old Testament prose and never once looks away.
★ 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.
The Consolation of Philosophy
524 · 154 pages
Awaiting execution, Boethius is visited by a woman called Philosophy, who explains why fortune's wheel turns and how God's foreknowledge still leaves you free. Medieval Europe read nothing more closely.
★ 7.4
Philosophical Essays
1710 · 366 pages
Reality is made of monads, mind-like simple substances with no windows, whose perceptions God synchronized in advance. His conclusion that ours is the optimal world drew Voltaire's ridicule in Candide.
★ 6.3