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"For a 7-year-old who won't sit still"
Pippi Långstrump, Astrid Lindgren
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak
SHELF 01 / LITERARY FICTION

Books that argue back

Novels that take a position. Not polemics — fiction with the courage to mean something, where the form and the argument are inseparable.

62 titles in this section Browse all →
Staff pick The Dispossessed

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974

Two worlds, two systems, one physicist who sees both clearly. Le Guin doesn’t resolve the tension between them — she lives in it. The most honest political novel written as science fiction.

Translated Remainder

Tom McCarthy

A novel about authenticity and obsession. Quietly disturbing in ways that accumulate slowly.

Classic The Tartar Steppe

Dino Buzzati, 1940

A soldier waits his whole life for a war that may never arrive.

Housekeeping

Marilynne Robinson

Stoner

John Williams, 1965

SHELF 02 / GENRE FICTION

Science fiction you haven’t read

Not the canonical list. The books that fell through the cracks, or never made it to English-language bestseller lists in the first place.

44 titles in this section Browse all →
Translated Roadside Picnic

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

An alien visit happened. Nobody knows what for. We’re left with the debris.

Overlooked The Female Man

Joanna Russ, 1975

Four versions of one woman across four timelines. Angry, precise, and funnier than it has any right to be.

Weird Solaris

Stanisław Lem, 1961

Contact with an alien intelligence that might be reflecting us back at ourselves.

Recent Piranesi

Susanna Clarke, 2020

A house with infinite halls and tidal statues. Who lives there?

SHELF 03 / HUMANITIES

Dead people worth arguing with

Theory, philosophy, history of ideas. Books that changed how people thought — and might change how you do.

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Essential Manufacturing Consent

Chomsky & Herman, 1988

The propaganda model. How mass media structures public opinion without needing to lie. Uncomfortable the first time. Unavoidable after.

1967 The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord

Still unrefuted.

Philosophy of science The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn

Polemics Discipline & Punish

Michel Foucault

Children's books
SHELF 04 / CHILDREN'S

For small people with big questions

Books that respect children's intelligence. No easy answers, no lessons underlined. Just good stories that stay with you.

174 titles in this section Browse all →
Picture book 3–6
Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendak, 1963

Anger, imagination, and coming home. Nobody has improved on this.

Middle grade 8–12
Pippi Långstrump

Astrid Lindgren, 1945

Illustr. Ingrid Vang Nyman

A child who answers to no one and is stronger than any adult. Still radical.

Picture book 4–7
The Tiger Who Came to Tea

Judith Kerr, 1968

A stranger eats everything in the house. The family is fine with it. Children love the chaos. Adults read it differently.

Non-fiction 7–10
Factfulness

Hans Rosling — Young Reader's Edition

The world is better than you think and here is the data. A good antidote to doom.

Young adult 12+
The Giver

Lois Lowry, 1993

Utopia as dystopia. Still the best introduction to political philosophy for a 12-year-old.

Picture book 3–6
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle, 1969

A perfect object. The holes in the pages still delight every time.

From the shelf

"We wrote notes on every book. We couldn't stop."

Read staff notes →
NOTE 001
On why we don't sell self-help
The difference between books that change you and books that tell you they will.
NOTE 002
Why this translation matters
We carry Pevear/Volokhonsky Dostoevsky for a reason. The Garnett version is fine. This one is the argument.
NOTE 003
Picture books that don't talk down
A short list of children's books that treat their readers as people.
NOTE 004
The problem with bestseller lists
Mostly a selection effect. Here's what you actually want to read this year.