{"id":19322,"date":"2025-12-18T20:02:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/12\/18\/11-essential-books-overlooked-by-the-literary-canon\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T20:02:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T20:02:19","slug":"11-essential-books-overlooked-by-the-literary-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/12\/18\/11-essential-books-overlooked-by-the-literary-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"11 Essential Books Overlooked by the Literary Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Over the past century, there have been countless attempts to assemble a definitive list of essential literature. In recent decades, however, the very idea of a literary canon has become a source of sustained debate, shaped by its historical tendency to be racist, sexist and otherwise exclusionary. A glance at many of these roundups still reveals a striking sameness: overwhelmingly white and male.<\/p>\n<p>That is not to suggest that Joyce, Homer and Dostoyevsky are not foundational reads for literary devotees. Rather, a truly committed reader would do well to recognize that many extraordinary books exist as overlooked peers to the greatest works humanity has produced. With that in mind, what follows is a selection of classics, old and new, that deserve a place in any honest literary canon.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script>\n\t!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n\t{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n\t\tn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n\t\tif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n\t\tn.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n\t\tt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n\t\ts.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n\t\t'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n\tfbq('init', '618909876214345');\n\tfbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past century, there have been countless attempts to assemble a definitive list of essential literature. In recent decades, however, the very idea of a literary canon has become a source of sustained debate, shaped by its historical tendency to be racist, sexist and otherwise exclusionary. A glance at many of these roundups still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-usa-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19324,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19322\/revisions\/19324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}