classic books <3
my reading list + what i’ve read (ticks means I’ve read it, and my rating is under it :)
Items in this hypelist
American Literature
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 2002
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe · 2018
The Mystery of Marie Roget
Edgar Allan Poe · 2018
Neuromancer
William Gibson · 2000
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin · 2016
If Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin · 2006
From one of the most important writers of the twentieth century comes a stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—"a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless" (The New York Times Book Review).<br/><br/>"One of the best books Baldwin has ever written—perhaps the best of all." —The Philadelphia Inquirer<br/><br/>Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions—affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin · 2012
In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With documentaries like I Am Not Your Negro bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction. Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in “The Harlem Ghetto” to a sobering “Journey to Atlanta.” Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of white progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright’s work is pointed and unabashed. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for white readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise. Notes is the book that established Baldwin’s voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin’s own search for identity as an artist, as a black man, and as an American.
Go Tell It on the Mountain (Vintage International)
James Baldwin · 2013
Another Country
James Baldwin · 1992
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe · 2012
Misery
Stephen King · 2017
Carrie
Stephen King · 2011
<b>#1<i> NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOOD <b> • </b>Stephen King's legendary debut, the bestselling smash hit that put him on the map as one of America's favorite writers <b>• In a world where bullies rule, one girl holds a secret power. Unpopular and tormented, Carrie White's life takes a terrifying turn when her hidden abilities become a weapon of horror.<br><br><b>"Stephen King’s first novel changed the trajectory of horror fiction forever. Fifty years later, authors say it’s still challenging and guiding the genre." —<i>Esquire </i></b> </b></b><br> <br> <b>“A master storyteller.” —<i>The Los Angeles Times • </i>“Guaranteed to chill you.” —<i>The New York Times • </i>"Gory and horrifying. . . . You can't put it down." —<i>Chicago Tribune</i></b><br> <br> Unpopular at school and subjected to her mother's religious fanaticism at home, Carrie White does not have it easy. But while she may be picked on by her classmates, she has a gift she's kept secret since she was a little girl: she can move things with her mind. Doors lock. Candles fall. Her ability has been both a power and a problem. And when she finds herself the recipient of a sudden act of kindness, Carrie feels like she's finally been given a chance to be normal. She hopes that the nightmare of her classmates' vicious taunts is over . . . but an unexpected and cruel prank turns her gift into a weapon of horror so destructive that the town may never recover.
The Shining
Stephen King · 2008
The Institute
Stephen King · 2021
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury · 1999
The Yellow Wall-Paper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 2024
God Emperor of Dune
Frank Herbert · 2020
<b>Book Four in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time<br><br></b>Millennia have passed on Arrakis, and the once-desert planet is green with life. Leto Atreides, the son of the world’s savior, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, is still alive but far from human. To preserve humanity’s future, he sacrificed his own by merging with a sandworm, granting him near immortality as God Emperor of Dune for the past thirty-five hundred years.<br><br>Leto’s rule is not a benevolent one. His transformation has made not only his appearance but his morality inhuman. A rebellion, led by Siona, a member of the Atreides family, has risen to oppose the despot’s rule. But Siona is unaware that Leto’s vision of a Golden Path for humanity requires her to fulfill a destiny she never wanted—or could possibly conceive....
Children of Dune
Frank Herbert · 2020
Dune Messiah
Frank Herbert · 2020
Dune
Frank Herbert · 1999
The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury · 2012
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1968
The Handmaid''s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 2011
The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides · 2011
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis · 2014
Ariel
Sylvia Plath · 2010
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 2005
<p><i>The Bell Jar</i> chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made <i>The Bell Jar</i> a haunting American classic.</p> <p>This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 2004
The Godfather
Mario Puzo · 2005
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1926
Chapterhouse: Dune
Frank Herbert · 2020
<b>Frank Herbert's Final Novel in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time</b><br><br>The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. The remnants of the Old Empire have been consumed by the violent matriarchal cult known as the Honored Matres. Only one faction remains a viable threat to their total conquest—the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune’s power.<br><br>Under the leadership of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Bene Gesserit have colonized a green world on the planet Chapterhouse and are turning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile. And once they’ve mastered breeding sandworms, the Sisterhood will control the production of the greatest commodity in the known galaxy—the spice melange. But their true weapon remains a man who has lived countless lifetimes—a man who served under the God Emperor Paul Muad’Dib....
Heretics of Dune
Frank Herbert · 2020
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1999
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 2003
Brazilian Literature
Near to the Wild Heart (Penguin Modern Classics)
Clarice Lispector · 2022
Água viva
Clarice Lispector · 2025
British Literature
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll · 2016
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Douglas Adams · 2020
<b>'Sheer delight' - <i>The Times</i></b> <p><b>This 42nd Anniversary Edition includes exclusive bonus material from the Douglas Adams archives, and a new introduction.</b><br> <br> <b>*****<br> <br> <i>So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish</i> is the fourth installment in Douglas Adams' bestselling cult classic, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 'trilogy'.</b><br> <br> There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It's not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he's the only human who's been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams.<br> <br> Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately, she's forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God's Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it.<br> <br> And, in a dramatic break with tradition, actually find it . . .<br> <br> <b>Follow Arthur Dent's galactic (mis)adventures in the last of the 'trilogy of five', <i>Mostly Harmless</i>.<br> <br> *****<br> <br> Praise for Douglas Adams:<br> <br> 'A pleasure to read' - <i>New York Times</i><br> <br> 'Magical . . . read this book' - <i>Sunday Express</i><br> <br> 'One of the world's sanest, smartest, kindest, funniest voices' - <i>Independent on Sunday</i></b></p>
Life, the Universe and Everything
Douglas Adams · 1997
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Douglas Adams · 1995
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams · 2005
And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie · 2011
"If you’re one of the few who haven’t experienced the genius of Agatha Christie, this novel is a stellar starting point." — DAVID BALDACCI, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author<br/>An exclusive authorized edition of the most famous and beloved stories from the Queen of Mystery.<br/>Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to an isolated mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die…<br/>Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?<br/>"Agatha Christie is the gateway drug to crime fiction both for readers and for writers. . . . Just one book is never enough." — VAL MCDERMID, Internationally Bestselling Author
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë · 1848
The ABC Murders
Agatha Christie · 2003
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 2011
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 2012
<p>A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. <br> <br> First published in 1954, <i>Lord of the Flies</i> is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on <i>Lord of the Flies</i> by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages original and independent thinking while guiding the student through the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.</p>
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 2021
"Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel", often published as "1984", is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated. The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 2009
The Shape of Things to Come
H. G. Wells · 2016
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier · 1970
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1884
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis · 2018
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll · 1920
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 2013
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde · 1908
Colombian Literature
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · 2022
<p>Now a Netflix series adaptation starring Claudio Cataño, Jerónimo Barón, and Marco González</p><p>One of the twentieth century’s enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.</p><p>The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.</p><p>Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility, the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth—these universal themes dominate the novel. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an account of the history of the human race.</p>
French Literature
The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage International)
Albert Camus · 2018
The Fall
Albert Camus · 2019
Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality. Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger-- now one of the most widely read novels of this century-- in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Albert Camus · 2023
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas · 1998
German Literature
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 2019
Letter to the Father
Franz Kafka · 2015
The Trial (Legend Classics)
Franz Kafka · 2021
Greek Literature
The Odyssey
Homer · 2014
<b>From Stephen Mitchell, the renowned translator whose <i>Iliad </i>was named one of <i>The New Yorker</i>’s Favorite Books of 2011, comes a vivid new translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>, complete with textual notes and an illuminating introductory essay.</b><br><br>The hardcover publication of the<i> Odyssey </i>received glowing reviews: <i>The New York Times</i> praised “Mitchell’s fresh, elegant diction and the care he lavishes on meter, [which] brought me closer to the transfigurative experience Keats describes on reading Chapman’s Homer”; <i>Booklist</i>,<i> </i>in a starred review, said that “Mitchell retells the first, still greatest adventure story in Western literature with clarity, sweep, and force”; and John Banville, author of <i>The Sea</i>,<i> </i>called this translation “a masterpiece.”<br> <br>The<i> Odyssey</i> is the original hero’s journey, an epic voyage into the unknown, and has inspired other creative work for millennia. With its consummately modern hero, full of guile and wit, always prepared to reinvent himself in order to realize his heart’s desire—to return to his home and family after ten years of war—the <i>Odyssey</i> now speaks to us again across 2,600 years.<br> <br>In words of great poetic power, this translation brings Odysseus and his adventures to life as never before. Stephen Mitchell’s language keeps the diction close to spoken English, yet its rhythms recreate the oceanic surge of the ancient Greek. Full of imagination and light, beauty and humor, this <i>Odyssey</i> carries you along in a fast stream of action and imagery. Just as Mitchell “re-energised the <i>Iliad</i> for a new generation” (<i>The Sunday Telegraph</i>), his <i>Odyssey</i> is the noblest, clearest, and most captivating rendition of one of the defining masterpieces of Western literature.
The Iliad
Homer · 2007
In 2002, the University of Michigan Press published Rodney Merrill's translation of Homer's Odyssey, an interpretation of the classic that was unique in employing the meter of Homer's original. Praising Merrill's translation of the Odyssey, Gregory Nagy of Harvard wrote, Merrill's fine ear for the sound of ancient Greek makes the experience of reading his Homer the nearest thing in English to actually hearing Homer. The translator's English renders most faithfully the poet's ancient Greek--not only the words and meaning but even the voice. Merrill has now produced an edition of Homer's Iliad, following the same approach. This form of rendering is particularly relevant to the Iliad, producing a strong musical setting that many elements of the narrative require to come truly to life. Most notable are the many battle scenes, to which the strong meter gives an impetus embodying and making credible the war-lust in the deeds of the combatants. --University of Michigan Press.
Russian Literature
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov · 2016
The Meek One
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 2015
White Nights
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 1923
Dostoyevsky was epileptic. 'White nights' is the term that he used to describe the experience - part ecstatic, part torture - of his epileptic fits.-- N.Ward "Twelve of the Fifty-One Shocks of Antonin Artaud, New Theatre Quarterly, 1999, vol. 15, p. 127
We
Yevgeny Zamyatin · 2023
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 2008
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 2016
Love... it means too much to me, far more than you can understand.At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developingromance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance. One of the greatest novels ever written,Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving. Rosamund Bartlett's translation conveys Tolstoy'sprecision of meaning and emotional accuracy in an English version that is highly readable and stylistically faithful. Like her acclaimed biography of Tolstoy, it is vivid, nuanced, and compelling.
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1989
<b>The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.<br><br>“The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”<i>—<b>The New Yorker</b></i><br></b><br><b>One of <i>The Atlantic</i>’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years</b><br><br>Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. <i>Lolita </i>is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. <br><br>Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
Demons
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 2008
Pyotr and Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the Tsar, destroy society and seize power for themselves. Together they train terrorists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals – even if the mission means suicide. But when it seems the group is about to be discovered, will their recruits be willing to kill one of their own circle in order to cover their tracks? Partly based on the real-life case of a student murdered by his fellow revolutionaries, Dostoyevsky’s sprawling novel is a powerful and prophetic, yet lively and often comic depiction of nineteenth-century Russia, and a savage indictment of the madness and self-destruction of those who use violence to serve their beliefs
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 1998
The Idiot (1868), written under the appalling personal circumstances Dostoevsky endured while travelling in Europe, not only reveals the author's acute artistic sense and penetrating psychological insight, but also affords his most powerful indictment of a Russia struggling to emulate contemporary Europe while sinking under the weight of Western materialism. It is the portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society in which a "positively good man" clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his moral idealism. Meticulously faithful to the original, this new translation includes explanatory notes and a critical introduction by W.J. Leatherbarrow.
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 2008
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 2015
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2017
<p>A celebrated new translation of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece reveals the “social problems facing our own society” (Nation).</p> <p>Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and on our modern world. Declared a PBS “Great American Read,” Michael Katz’s sparkling new translation gives new life to the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student who sees himself as extraordinary and therefore free to commit crimes—even murder—in a work that best embodies the existential dilemmas of man’s instinctual will to power. Embracing the complex linguistic blend inherent in modern literary Russian, Katz “revives the intensity Dostoevsky’s first readers experienced, and proves that Crime and Punishment still has the power to surprise and enthrall us” (Susan Reynolds).</p> <p>With its searing and unique portrayal of the labyrinthine universe of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, this “rare Dostoevsky translation” (William Mills Todd III, Harvard) will captivate lovers of world literature for years to come.</p>
