Recs if you like The Man Without Qualities...

Based on the list/book published in 2006, general editor Peter Boxall.

Name-calling and insults you might hear on the playground and beyond...

Anything can be an insult if you believe it! My kid brother used to get in trouble for calling us "you...you BEAN" with all the spite his little preschool self could manage 🥹

A list published by The Guardian on 5/16/2026, as voted on by authors, critics, and academics worldwide.

The Guardian Top 100 Best Novels

Fixations and obsessions

Originating in the late 1800s and continuing until the end of World War II, works of the modernism movement feature new and innovative styles, a break from traditional writing, and attempts to recontextualize literature in response to both the devastation of the series of global conflicts between 1900-1950 and the emergence of new technology, ideas, and world order. Subgenres of modernism include absurdism, surrealism, dadaism, and stream of consciousness.

Enjoy my newest lit series, ‘Reading the World’, in an attempt to diversify your own reading and broaden horizons, I have included a mix of genres. Sensitive topics often lie ahead as history, social and political issues are usually the centre of this writing. Enjoy!

This website ranks global literature using "best of lists" from over 700 sources. I compiled this list with the nonfiction % set to 50%.

In May 2026 the Guardian published a list of the 100 greatest novels published in English of all time. The list was created based on votes from authors, critics, and academics.

Due to an error, the list originally included The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley instead of The Stranger by Albert Camus. Both are included here, as an unofficial 101 best novels

Incomplete list of texts largely originally written in the German language considered foundational works of the 20th century, mostly by authors or expats from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and their antecedents. Partially personalized, naturally. Modernist/postmodernist; stylistically varied; weighed down by history, memory, and institutions; sometimes ironic, comic, or melancholic, or all three at once; atmospheric, psychological and/or philosophical. Pre/post-catastrophic humanism.