about 15 minutes
The Long Weekend
- The whole story, part by part
- Every important character
- Themes with the evidence
- Lessons, and how critics read it
- A timeline
For readers stuck in the rat race
The great books, in the time you actually have.
War and Peace takes about forty hours. You have a lunch break. Pick a classic and get the story, the people, the themes, the lessons and what to take away from it, at whatever depth fits your day.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Call me Ishmael.Melville, Moby-Dick
Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.Tolstoy, War and Peace
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills…Kipling, The Jungle Book
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.Austen, Pride and Prejudice
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains.Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah…Kipling, Kim
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The library
Choose a classic
16 works so far, oldest first. Swipe through them, or travel through time below.
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Meditations
c. AD 180
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius · c. AD 180
The most powerful man on earth, fighting a plague and a war on the Danube, wrote himself notes at night on how to stay calm, fair and unafraid—and they work just as well on a Monday morning.
4 h to readhere: 19 · 5 · 1 min
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Don Quixote
1605
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes · 1605
A man of nearly fifty reads himself out of his ordinary life and rides off to be a hero—and four centuries later he is still the funniest, saddest picture of what happens when you refuse to let the world shrink your dreams.
32 h to readhere: 21 · 5 · 1 min
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Frankenstein
1818
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley · 1818
A brilliant student builds a living man, runs away the moment it opens its eyes, and spends the rest of his life learning that walking away from what you’ve made is the most dangerous experiment of all.
5 h to readhere: 19 · 4 · 1 min
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Moby-Dick
1851
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851
A one-legged captain bends a whole ship to his hunt for the white whale that maimed him, and the drifter who signed on for a paycheque lives to tell you what happens when one man’s grudge becomes everyone’s fate.
16 h to readhere: 21 · 4 · 1 min
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Walden
1854
Walden
Henry David Thoreau · 1854
A young man with a Harvard degree and no career built a cabin for $28.12½, kept every receipt, and asked the question that ambushes every commuter sooner or later: how much of my life am I trading for all this?
8 h to readhere: 21 · 4 · 1 min
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Great Expectations
1861
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · 1861
A blacksmith’s boy is handed a fortune by a secret benefactor and turns into a polished young snob in London — until the night the money’s real source climbs his stairs in a storm, and everything he thought he was falls apart.
12 h to readhere: 20 · 4 · 1 min
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Crime and Punishment
1866
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
A broke, brilliant student decides that a great man has the right to kill, murders an old pawnbroker with an axe to prove it, and then spends two feverish weeks discovering that the real punishment starts the moment the crime is done.
16 h to readhere: 20 · 4 · 1 min
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War and Peace
1869
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
Four aristocratic families live through Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and along the way Tolstoy answers the question your busy life keeps dodging: what actually makes a life worth living?
40 h to readhere: 18 · 4 · 1 min
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Middlemarch
1871
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871
A young woman who wants to change the world marries the wrong man, a brilliant young doctor marries the wrong woman, and a whole English town watches, gossips and gets tangled up in both—the wisest novel ever written about how ordinary life bends big hopes, and what good survives the bending.
23 h to readhere: 19 · 5 · 1 min
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Anna Karenina
1878
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1878
A brilliant married woman falls for a dashing officer while, on a country estate, an awkward farmer tries to work out how to live, and between them Tolstoy shows you exactly what love, honesty and a good life cost.
28 h to readhere: 20 · 4 · 1 min
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The Brothers Karamazov
1880
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1880
A drunken, lecherous old father is murdered, all three of his sons had reasons to want him dead, and the wrong one goes on trial: inside this gripping whodunit, Dostoevsky stages the greatest argument ever written about God, suffering, and whether each of us is responsible for everyone else.
26 h to readhere: 23 · 4 · 1 min
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Thus Spake Zarathustra
1883
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883
A hermit comes down from his mountain to announce that God is dead and that we must become more than we are—then spends four strange, funny, furious books finding out whether he can bear his own message.
7 h to readhere: 21 · 5 · 1 min
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The Man Who Would Be King
1888
The Man Who Would Be King
Rudyard Kipling · 1888
Two broke, brazen ex-soldiers sign a contract to make themselves kings of a country nobody has mapped—and for one dizzy season, they actually pull it off.
1 h to readhere: 13 · 4 · 1 min
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The Jungle Book
1894
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling · 1894
Forget the cartoon: Kipling’s jungle is stricter, stranger and sadder, the story of a boy raised by wolves who earns his place by the rules, loses two homes in one season, and cries for the first time in his life.
4 h to readhere: 21 · 5 · 1 min
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Heart of Darkness
1899
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899
In under 40,000 words, a sailor’s steamboat trip up the Congo to fetch a brilliant, ruined ivory agent becomes the most argued-over short book in English—about empire, evil, and who gets to tell the story.
3 h to readhere: 18 · 4 · 1 min
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Kim
1901
Kim
Rudyard Kipling · 1901
A street kid who belongs everywhere and nowhere walks India’s greatest road beside a holy man hunting for salvation, while a British spy ring hunts for him — and he has to work out which journey is really his.
7 h to readhere: 16 · 4 · 1 min
No book fits all of that yet. Try another mood or word.
See them all
- Meditations c. AD 180
- Don Quixote 1605
- Frankenstein 1818
- Moby-Dick 1851
- Walden 1854
- Great Expectations 1861
- Crime and Punishment 1866
- War and Peace 1869
- Middlemarch 1871
- Anna Karenina 1878
- The Brothers Karamazov 1880
- Thus Spake Zarathustra 1883
- The Man Who Would Be King 1888
- The Jungle Book 1894
- Heart of Darkness 1899
- Kim 1901
On the way to the shelf
- Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen1813
- Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë1847
- Les MisérablesVictor Hugo1862
- The Count of Monte CristoAlexandre Dumas1844
- Beyond Good and EvilFriedrich Nietzsche1886
- DraculaBram Stoker1897
Three ways in
One book, three depths. Cycle through them any time.
Every work has the same five parts at every level (the story, the people, the themes, the lessons and the takeaways), just simpler and shorter each time. Start deep and step down, or grab the essence and come back for more on Sunday.
about 5 minutes
The Lunch Break
- The story in a few parts
- The main people
- The big themes
- Three lessons
- Two readings each way
about 1 minute
The Elevator Ride
- The story in one breath
- Who matters
- The themes in a word
- One lesson
- One takeaway each way