Alright here it is. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with this since I have barely read anything since middle school (maybe a book or two a year). My contributions will primarily be manga. If I need to add a genre or period let me know. This series will eventually be canonized into the sidebar as a definitive recommendation list of all things C/Lit.
Future threads:
Periods: Pre-1800, 1800s, 1900-50, 1951-99, 2000-20, 2021
Genres: Children's, Comedy, Coming of age, Folklore, Historical, LGBT, BIPOC Related, Philosophy, Pop Culture, Religious, Thriller, Western, Young Adult, Action, Adventure, Survival, Crime, Mystery, Fantasy, Romance, Horror, Graphic Novel, Biography, Travel, Historical, Propaganda, Philosophy, Political Theory, Poetry, Plays, Manga, Speculative Fiction, Sports, and Miscellaneous
I have never seen a book- or any piece of media- continually top itself to the degree the third book did. Every time you're like "oh, I see what's going on, now I know what the rest of the book will be", it turns out that that either what you were expecting or an event to subvert those expectations will happen in the next 10 pages, and the scope of the book will increase to the degree that what you previously expected just suddenly seems to not matter at all