The following is a set of curated reading lists that each follow a distinct thread. These lists transcends time, literary style, or topic with the goal of identifying books that speak nicely to each other and ultimately offer the reader a broad understanding of a specific theme. Lists should be read in order and will be periodically updated.


Great Narrative

Books that do an exceptional job of capturing human existence and its associated follies at a granular level. Readers of this list will walk away with a greater understanding and empathy for everything that occurs within the six inches of the human skull.

  1. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, 1856 ↓
  2. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, 1877 ↓
  3. Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust, 1913 ↓
  4. My Struggle Book 1, Karl Knausgaard, 2009 ↓
  5. My Struggle Book 2, Karl Knausgaard, 2009 ↓
  6. The Years, Annie Ernaux, 2008 ↓
  7. My Struggle Book 3, Karl Knausgaard, 2009 ↓
  8. A Man’s Place, Annie Ernaux, 1983 ↓
  9. A Woman’s Place, Annie Ernaux, 1987 ↓
  10. My Struggle Book 4, Karl Knausgaard, 2009 ↓
  11. My Struggle Book 5, Karl Knausgaard, 2010 ↓
  12. A Frozen Woman, Annie Ernaux, 1981 ↓
  13. My Struggle Book 6, Karl Knausgaard, 2011


Philosophy and Metaphysics: From Beginning to Endgame

A list of works necessary to traverse many of the principal findings of philosophy and metaphysics. Begins with a post-Platonic primer on Western philosophy before building up to Wittgenstein, after which nothing else need be said.

  1. On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887 ↓
  2. Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard, 1843 ↓
  3. The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille, 1949 ↓
  4. The Inoperative Community, Jean-Luc Nancy, 1986 ↓
  5. Being and Time, Martin Heidegger, 1927 ↓
  6. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921


On Human Nature

A set of works that illuminate the complexity of humanity and the nature of good and evil. Readers of this list will learn things about the world, not necessarily nice things.

  1. Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1674 ↓
  2. On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887 ↓
  3. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866 ↓
  4. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1899 ↓
  5. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1869 ↓
  6. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880


Misanthropic

A list of novels tracing the maladies of our age throughout history: decadence, alienation, nihilism, malaise. Readers of this list will walk away with a greater understanding of the dark side of modernity and how we arrived here.

  1. Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin, 1837 ↓
  2. A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov, 1840 ↓
  3. Against Nature, Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884 ↓
  4. Submission, Michel Houellebecq, 2015 ↓
  5. Pan, Knut Hamsun, 1894 ↓
  6. The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq, 1998 ↓
  7. Platform, Michel Houellebecq, 2001 ↓
  8. The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942 ↓
  9. The Map and the Territory, Michel Houellebecq, 2010


The Epics

A set of works that transcend the description of story, book, or novel to achieve the status of an epic. Readers of this list will walk away understanding that within the totality of society, individuals exist within the superposition of insignificance and absolute importance.

  1. The Iliad, Homer, 750BC ↓
  2. The Odyssey, Homer, 700BC ↓
  3. The Aeneid, Virgil, 29BC ↓
  4. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1867


Pure Beauty

Expressions of pure beauty, nothing less.

  1. Hyperion, Friedrich Holderlin, 1797 ↓
  2. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, 1929


The American West

Novels that capture the search for the illusive ideals and tenets of the American West.

  1. East of Eden, John Steinbeck, 1952 ↓
  2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957 ↓
  3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 1962 ↓
  4. Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis, 1985 ↓
  5. Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac, 1958