As we begin to descend into bleak postmodernity...

...cast your eyes upon a world-shatteringly adorable hamster.

Beloved may look like a short book, but, please, if this is your first time through read it with great care. Although this is a tactic I will not otherwise recommend, it might behoove you to skim through the SparkNotes for Beloved before reading the book itself, so that you can familiarize yourself with the plot before you begin to grapple with the text itself.

Beloved is the most important book of the second half of the 20th century, and it will be read in classrooms long after academics have forgotten T. S. Eliot and Marilyn Hacker; it is one of those books your children will ask you about in twenty or thirty years. Read it well.