Literature

This category is for the writing where language itself is the point — poetry, essays, drama, literary memoir, criticism, letters and journals. Their shared trait is a refusal to settle for the first way of saying something. The same scene becomes, in another writer's hands, an entirely different scene.

What lives here:

• Poetry: From Whitman, Dickinson, and Hopkins through Auden and Bishop, to Mary Oliver, Wisława Szymborska, Ocean Vuong, and Rupi Kaur. We treat poetry as the fastest-paying form of literature — a single good poem takes thirty seconds and rearranges your week.
• Essays: Montaigne is the patron saint, but the modern wing is the strongest: Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, John Jeremiah Sullivan. We treat the essay as the form where thinking and feeling stop competing.
• Drama: Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Tony Kushner. We argue (carefully) that you should read drama aloud at least once, in the bathroom with the door closed.
• Literary memoir and journals: Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Patti Smith's Just Kids, Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, the Woolf diaries, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
• Literary criticism: Italo Calvino's Why Read the Classics?, Harold Bloom (used carefully), James Wood's How Fiction Works, Susan Sontag's collected essays.

Where to start: Poetry has the best return on investment for new readers. Pick up Mary Oliver's Devotions or any Szymborska collection and read three poems aloud. If something clicks, you've found your entry point; if nothing clicks, try essays — Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem is the canonical first encounter.

What we don't include: forced-uplift "inspirational" essays, slim listicle books, "100 great books" reading lists masquerading as books.

Subcategories: Poetry · Essays · Drama · Literary Memoir · Literary Criticism · Short Stories

Browse: 10 Essential Modern Poets · 5 Essay Collections Worth Rereading