coming of age reads
Items in this hypelist
Books
The Idiot: A Novel
Elif Batuman · 2018
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction<br/><br/>“Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ<br/><br/>“Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair<br/><br/>A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.<br/><br/>The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.<br/><br/>At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.<br/><br/>With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail.<br/><br/>Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
Michelle Zauner · 2021
Turtles All the Way Down
John Green · 2019
Finding Audrey
Sophie Kinsella · 2016
Holding Up the Universe
Jennifer Niven · 2018
<b><b>A <i>New York Times</i> Bestseller</b><br><br>From the author of the <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>All the Bright Places</i> comes a heart-wrenching story about what it means to see someone—and love someone—for who they truly are.<br></b><br>Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed “America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libby’s ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for EVERY POSSIBILITY LIFE HAS TO OFFER. <i>In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything. </i> <br><br>Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he’s got swagger, but he’s also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can’t recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He’s the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything in new and bad-ass ways, but he can’t understand what’s going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: <i>Be charming. Be hilarious. Don’t get too close to anyone. <br></i><br>Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game—which lands them in group counseling and community service—Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. . . . <i>Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.<br></i><br>Jennifer Niven delivers another poignant, exhilarating love story about finding that person who sees you for who you are—and seeing them right back.<br><br>"<b>Niven is adept at creating characters</b>. . . . [Libby's] courage and body-positivity make for <b>a joyful reading experience</b>."<i> --The New York Times</i><br><br>“<i>Holding Up the Universe</i> . . . taps into the universal need to be understood. To be wanted. And <b>that’s what makes it such a remarkable read.</b>” <i>—TeenVogue.com,</i> “Why New Book<i> Holding Up the Universe</i> Is the Next<i> The Fault in Our Stars”</i><br><br><b>"Want a love story that will give you all the feels? . . . You'll seriously melt!"</b> <i>—Seventeen Magazine</i>
The Museum of Heartbreak
Meg Leder · 2016
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell · 2013
"Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try"--
The Sun Is Also a Star
Nicola Yoon · 2019
The Outsiders
S. E. Hinton · 2006
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt · 2013
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith · 1998
The American classic about a young girl's coming of age at the turn of the century.<br/>"A profoundly moving novel, and an honest and true one. It cuts right to the heart of life...If you miss A Tree Grows in Brooklyn you will deny yourself a rich experience...It is a poignant and deeply understanding story of childhood and family relationships. The Nolans lived in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn from 1902 until 1919...Their daughter Francie and their son Neely knew more than their fair share of the privations and sufferings that are the lot of a great city's poor. Primarily this is Francie's book. She is a superb feat of characterization, an imaginative, alert, resourceful child. And Francie's growing up and beginnings of wisdom are the substance of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."<br/>--New York Times<br/>"One of the most dearly beloved and one of the finest books of our day."<br/>--Orville Prescott<br/>"One of the books of the century."<br/>--New York Public Library
Jane Eyre (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)
Charlotte Brontë · 2003
Charlotte Brontë characterized the eponymous heroine of her 1847 novel as being "as poor and plain as myself." Presenting a heroine with neither great beauty nor entrancing charm was an unprecendented maneuver, but Brontë's instincts proved correct, for readers of her era and ever after have taken Jane Eyre into their hearts. The author drew upon her own experience to depict Jane's struggles at Lowood, an oppressive boarding school, and her troubled career as a governess. Unlike Jane, Brontë had the advantage of a warm family circle that shared and encouraged her literary pursuits. She found immediate success with this saga of an orphan girl forced to make her way alone in the world, from Lowood School to Thornfield, the estate of the majestically moody Mr. Rochester, and beyond. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
