Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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What makes something a “classic”? How old does it have to be? How much a part of the canon? And which/whose canon are we talking about anyway? Here are ten books I’m calling classics, and that I’d like to read in 2024.
I’m a little late to this train, but so be it — there are still eleven months left in the year to get to these…

Books:
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)
Le Rouge et le Noir by Stendhal (1830)
I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki (1905)
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
Antigone by Jean Anouilh (1944)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (1952)
Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
The Promised Land by Grace Ogot (1966)
Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) by Mariama Bâ (1980)
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa (1982)

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