#187. "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak

The general consensus around Russia is that it's a cold and desolate place. While there's a rich culture, there's often a need to focus on the weather, of which can be an unforgiving landscape that swallows those unprepared whole. For Boris Pasternak, it's also a place to find hope. In "Doctor Zhivago," he explores the life of a doctor who is surrounded by misery during the time of war. He deals with the revolutionaries who wish to present a new and more idealistic world. They quote the literary giants of the past, looking for direction on the way forward. Even if the titular Zhivago cannot lead, he's doing more than enough to keep the cause alive. The question eventually comes whether he could find something for himself to live for. That's what leads to one of the most bittersweet romances of the 20th century, portraying a world of hope and sacrifice, while also acknowledging that not everything is fair. This is a story that will make hearts flutter, but also make them sink. It's a profound journey unlike any other in the literary world. 

#186. "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion

Like the characters at the center of Joan Didion's sparse novel "Play It As It Lays," this story is a narrative gamble. With everyone's lives spiraling out of control, this is a study of characters who are never understood lower than a surface level. Whereas most would get lost in the winding trail of interiority, Didion's fascination is more about the immediate response, relying on paragraphs that are at times so zippy that they tempt the reader to miss hidden details. This is a world where shocking detail happens in mundane prose, and introspection doesn't always reveal itself beyond the immediate action being performed. What it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in a go-for-broke immediacy that makes for an entertaining read. It may result in the reader asking what just transpired, but hopefully the interpretation of the prior pages will be enough to make this playful exercise worth the gambit. 

#185. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

Among the echelon of fantasy that feels like an all-too-real portrait of the modern age is Aldous Huxley's satirical ride "Brave New World." Unlike the more piercing nature of "1984," Huxley is more fixated on a comic read of a culture that has been designed for nonstop pleasure. Everything becomes so accessible that the very concept of sex seems absurd, where even the birthing process has lost its sentimentality in favor of nonstop excess. Even in the quest for a titular brave new world, the people in charge of that journey don't have the wherewithal to make it better. Is everyone doomed to be distracted by debauchery as worse behavior becomes accepted, or will something change for the better? In short, the answer is like all satires and exists somewhere amid the humor.

#184. "A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace

Throughout the 1990s, few authors sought to redesign the literary language quite like David Foster Wallace. Along with his maximalist magnum opus, he was a regular culture critic known for his detailed essays that pushed far beyond the page and into the footnotes. Nowhere is this clearer than in his essay collection "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which finds him interweaving the hot topics of the day along with personal perspectives that turn academia into an accessible and sometimes emotion-driven art form. One doesn't need to be a fan of tennis, state fairs, or David Lynch to appreciate what Wallace has created. It's such a succinct look at what drove the writer that it becomes one of the essential portraits of a period in American history that was both full of ambition and farce. In some ways, these essays surpass his fiction, introducing a new way to think of the world, even if there's things about it that he doesn't care for.