I have always loved reading. But as the need to stay afloat and self-sufficient became more pressing, I slowly lost the habit.
Now that we’ve become friends through Shebs Reacts, there is a wonderful opportunity to return to books together.
Below is our curated list of over 50 essential works, organized by era and movement, followed by the strategy we’ll use to navigate them.
You’re welcome to use this as your own reading roadmap. And if you’d like to go deeper, you can join us on Patreon for weekly book threads and discussion.
Phase I: Foundations of Storytelling
The roots of every story ever told. These are the epics that defined civilizations.
| Title | Author |
|---|---|
| The Epic of Gilgamesh | Anonymous |
| The Iliad & The Odyssey | Homer |
| The Ramayana | Valmiki |
| The Mahabharata | Vyasa |
| The Book of Job | Anonymous |
| The Divine Comedy | Dante Alighieri |
Phase II: The Birth of the Novel
When the “story” became the “novel.” These works shifted the focus to the individual.
| Title | Author |
|---|---|
| The Tale of Genji | Murasaki Shikibu |
| The Pillow Book | Sei Shōnagon |
| Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift |
| Tom Jones | Henry Fielding |
| Tristram Shandy | Laurence Sterne |
Phase III: The Nineteenth-Century Zenith
The era of the “Doorstopper.” Realism, Romanticism, and the birth of the psychological profile.
| Genre/Region | Essential Titles |
| The Gothic & Romantic | Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights |
| Social Realism | Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, Madame Bovary |
| The Russian Giants | War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment |
| The American Epic | Moby-Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
Phase IV: Modernism & The American Voice
The world breaks, and so does the narrative. We explore fragmentation, consciousness, and the social conscience.
| Category | Works |
|---|---|
| Modernist Icons | Ulysses, To the Lighthouse, The Sound and the Fury, In Search of Lost Time. |
| Existentialism & Absurdity | The Trial, The Stranger. |
| The American Conscience | The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Invisible Man. |
Phase V: Dystopia, Myth & Global Renaissance
Post-war warnings and the expansion of the canon to every corner of the globe.
| Category | Works |
|---|---|
| Political Warnings | 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale |
| Speculative Masterworks | The Lord of the Rings, The Left Hand of Darkness |
| Global Voices | Things Fall Apart, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Midnight’s Children, The Cairo Trilogy, Beloved, The God of Small Things, Blindness, Disgrace, Persepolis |
Phase VI: Foundational Nonfiction
The ideas that reshaped how we see nature, gender, and our own history.
- Silent Spring, The Second Sex, Orientalism, A Brief History of Time, Sapiens, The Selfish Gene.
How Our Club Works (The Logistics)
Because this is an ambitious list, we don’t just read and hope for the best. We use a structured system to ensure everyone crosses the finish line.
- The Patreon Hub (Weekly Discussions): The heart of the club is our Patreon community. We will have weekly Check-ins: Every Monday, a new thread goes live for our current milestone (e.g., “Chapters 1-10”).
- The Monthly Zoom (Deep Dives): On the last Saturday of every month, during our Monthly Meeting of the Minds, we’ll meet on Zoom. This will be our opportunity to talk about the book and really investigate the work together. We’ll discuss themes, gripes, and how the book connects to the music and art of its time.
- The “No-Guilt” DNF Policy: Ambitious reading shouldn’t feel like a punishment. If you can’t finish a book, don’t drop out. Come to the threads and tell us why it didn’t click. A critical perspective is often more interesting than a glowing review.
Ready to Start?
We are kicking off with The Epic of Gilgamesh, and our goal for this week is to read 50% of the text (up to chapter 4), so that we’ll be done by the end of the second week of March.
We will be reading this version of the text, translated by N.K. Sandars. This version is famous for turning the fragments into a seamless, beautiful prose narrative. It’s the version most often assigned in high school and college courses.
- Where to read: It is available for free through the Internet Archive.
- Why choose this: It reads like a modern novel rather than a technical translation, making it the best choice for a first-time reader.
Click here to join the Patreon and get access to the reading schedule, the Zoom link, and our first discussion thread.
More books:
| Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies | Jared Diamond |
| Rubaiyat | Omar Khayyam |
| The Third Chimpanzee | Jared Diamond |
| Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil | Hannah Arendt |
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