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.

1984

1949 · 328 pages

Winston Smith rewrites old newspapers so history agrees with the Party, then risks a diary and a love affair. Orwell built the machinery so exactly that reading it feels like being watched.

★ 9.1

We

1924 · 225 pages

Numbered citizens live in glass apartments under a Table of Hours, and the engineer D-503 records his own unraveling. Banned in Russia until 1988, it gave Orwell his model for Nineteen Eighty-Four.

★ 6.6