books to read (2026 ver.)

One Italian Summer A Novel

Rebecca Serle • 2022

Pedagogy of the Oppressed 30th Anniversary Edition

Paulo Freire • 2000

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan • 2017

Why Nations Fail The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Daron Acemoglu • 2013

East of Eden

John Steinbeck • 2003

A Certain Hunger

Chelsea G. Summers • 2021

Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell)

Dante Alighieri • 2009

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak • 2007

1984

George Orwell • 2013

75th ANNIVERSARY EDITION “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s dystopian classic remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.

Conclave A novel

Robert Harris • 2024