It’s no secret to the people in my life that I like classic novels. I’ve been reading classics since I was 10, and in grad school I focused on literature from before 1600. I still read classics in my spare time! All of that is to say that I’ve read a lot of classics, so I feel somewhat able to give a recommendation of the classic novels worth reading. 

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What is a classic? Before I share the classics I think you should read, we need to talk about what is a classic. According to a 2011 article in The Guardian, “It can’t just be that it’s old. A classic must have something else, something that has either caused it to endure or has, in the case of modern classics, inspired the faith that it will do so” (x). So it 1) should be old and enduring or 2) should inspire the belief that it will be enduring when it’s old. 

Additionally, I’m only including books I’ve read. This is because I can only decide if a book is worth reading if, you know, I’ve read it. So if you have a book in mind that you think should be on this list and it isn’t, I probably just haven’t read it.

That being said, let’s talk about classics!

Want modern versions? Be sure to check out my post 19 Retellings of Classic Fiction You Need To Read, 

All Quiet on the Western Front – “When twenty-year-old Paul Bäumer and his classmates enlist in the German army during World War I, they are full of youthful [enthusiasm]. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught to believe in shatters under the first brutal bombardment in the trenches. Through the ensuing years of horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another.” (x).

Why is this worth reading? This is such a beautiful and haunting critique of war and illustration of how war affects everyday citizens. World War I irrevocably changed whatever direction the twentieth century may have gone in, and it negatively affected so many. 

2021 Recent Reads: October-December

Anna Karenina – “Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and thereby exposes herself to the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel’s seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness” (x).

Why is this worth reading? It’s a beautiful novel about Russia before the revolution, but also of course about star-crossed lovers. Plus, it’s way shorter than War and Peace, so if you’re interested in trying out Russian literature, you might as well start out with what is considered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever created.

2021 Recent Reads: July-September

Brave New World – “Aldous Huxley’s profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls … [It] has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites” (x).

Why is this worth reading? With how prevalent technology is in our lives, especially considering how much of it can be used to spy on us, it’s important to read a version of the dystopian future where technology is everything. It also shows (on an extreme level) how we can be indoctrinated by our society without realizing it. I massively prefer Brave New World to 1984, which isn’t in this post.

2021 Recent Reads: January-March

Doctor Faustus – “In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus a distinguished scholar turns away from learning and embraces necromancy to satisfy his yearning for knowledge, power and influence. Faustus trades his soul to Lucifer for the secrets of the universe, only to find that satisfaction remains beyond his grasp. His quest for fame and thirst for knowledge eventually results in his damnation. One of the most spectacular and popular plays of the Elizabethan stage, Faustus’ fantastical mix of high-minded theology and low-brow slapstick has allured generations of readers and playgoers in the ensuing centuries. Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus has been regularly rewritten, adapted, performed, and parodied across the ages, speaking to its tenacious grip upon the public imagination” (x).

Why is this worth reading? Okay, I’m cheating: this is a play. But it’s one of my all-time favorites. I’ve read it so many times, and I definitely prefer Marlowe’s version of this story to others. (I have a soft spot for Marlowe in general.) Also, this is the source of the famous quote “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?” about Helen of Troy. It’s just … so good.

2020 Recent Reads: October-December

Frankenstein – “Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear” (x).

Why is this worth reading? One of the original science fiction novels, Frankenstein is moving, frightening, beautiful, and horrifying. I absolutely love it. I loved getting to teach it during my student teaching because I got to dive super deep. 

2020 Recent Reads: July-September

The Great Gatsby – “Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, The Great Gatsby depicts the tragic story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy young woman who is his former lover. His doomed love story for the ultimately unattainable Daisy is considered the Great American Novel of the 20th century” (x).

Why is this worth reading? While we tend to associate The Great Gatsby with high school reading assignments, there’s a reason it’s assigned in high school: it’s good. It encapsulates the Roaring 20s and how our idea of America is different from the reality, especially how the American Dream is unattainable. 

2020 Recent Reads: April-June

The Handmaid’s Tale –  “In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive” (x). 

Why is this worth reading? Asides from being well-written, there are plenty of situations that have been compared to this book in recent years, so it’s helpful to read the original text in order to understand what is and isn’t a correct use of the comparison. But now, with abortion bans and laws prohibiting Texas parents from providing life-saving transition care for their trans children, we are closer than ever to living in a dystopian reality. Read this and recognize how big country-wide changes start small and get more and more blatant before the world as we know it is gone.

2020 Recent Reads: January-March

Little Women – “Little Women is one of the best-loved children’s stories of all time, based on the author’s own youthful experiences. It describes the family of the four March sisters living in a small New England community. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Laurence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever” (x).

Why is this worth reading? Ugh it’s just good. Every time I read it I feel so emotional at the end. It’s just wonderful. 

2019 Recent Reads: October-December

The Odyssey – “Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home” (x).

Why is this worth reading? Again, cheating, but this is another one that I just love so I had to include it. I’ve read The Odyssey so many times (the first time being when I was 10), and I’ve taught it. It arguably launched my love of classics. There’s a reason it’s taught regularly thousands of years after it was created, and that reason is it’s entertaining and understandable once you get used to the writing style.

2019 Recent Reads: July-September

The Picture of Dorian Gray – “The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only full-length novel, is the enduringly eerie story of a naïve and irresistible young man lured by decadent Lord Henry Wotton into a life of depravity. Though Dorian is steeped in sin, his face remains perfect, unlined as years pass—while only his portrait, locked away, reveals the blackness of his soul. This timeless tale of Gothic horror and fable, reveling in the unabashed hedonism and cynical wit of its characters, epitomizes Wilde’s literary revolt against the proprieties of the Victorian era” (x).

Why is this worth reading? It’s smart and gripping. In fact, I recently read this and it’s so good! It was different and better than I expected it to be. Definitely also darker than I expected! 

2019 Recent Reads: April-June

Pride and Prejudice (5/5) – “When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life” (x).

Why is this worth reading? I mean, it’s Pride and Prejudice. Need I say more?

2019 Recent Reads: January-March

Sense and Sensibility – “For Elinor Dashwood, sensible and sensitive, and her romantic, impetuous younger sister Marianne, the prospect of marrying the men they love appears remote. In a world ruled by money and self-interest, the Dashwood sisters have neither fortune nor connections. Concerned for others and for social proprieties, Elinor is ill-equipped to compete with self-centered fortune-hunters like Lucy Steele, while Marianne’s unswerving belief in the truth of her own feelings makes her more dangerously susceptible to the designs of unscrupulous men. Through her heroines’ parallel experiences of love, loss, and hope, Jane Austen offers a powerful analysis of the ways in which women’s lives were shaped by the claustrophobic society in which they had to survive” (x).

Why is this worth reading? If you like Pride and Prejudice, you definitely need to read Sense and Sensibility. Like all of Jane Austen’s work, it’s well-written and entertaining and also a fierce social criticism. 

2018 Recent Reads: October-December

Their Eyes Were Watching God – “One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature” (x). 

Why is this worth reading? For one, it’s beautiful. For another, if you’re going to read The Great Gatsby, you should also be reading Their Eyes Were Watching God. They both feature gender roles, race, and depictions of America in the first part of the twentieth century, but they show very different parts of America. 

2018 Recent Reads: July-September

Things Fall Apart – “Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order” (x). 

Why is this worth reading? This is entertaining, but it’s also important to read African stories and stories about Africa (especially colonization) written by Africans. Read Things Fall Apart instead of reading Heart of Darkness. 

2018 Recent Reads: April-June

Vanity Fair – “Thackeray’s upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled ‘A Novel without a Hero’, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world” (x). 

Why is this worth reading? This is a satire that looks at so many aspects of Regency life. You both root for everyone and root for everyone to fail. I will say that the movie with Reese Witherspoon feels like it’s based on a completely different version of this book. Maybe it’s because Reese Witherspoon seems too nice/plays too many nice characters to be seen as Becky Sharp, maybe it’s the writing overall, maybe it’s both. Regardless, I much prefer the ‘98 miniseries to the movie, and if you’ve watched the movie starring Reese Witherspoon and read the book expecting it to be like that movie, you will be disappointed.

2018 Recent Reads: January-March

The Woman in White – “Published in 1859, we are immediately intrigued by the narrative – a young and genial tutor of arts, Walter Hartright, encounters a woman dressed head to toe in white who is lost in the streets of London. After reporting her to the authorities Walter is informed that the lady was an escapee from a mental asylum. However, when Walter takes a new position in teaching art he encounters a girl named Laura, whose looks are stunningly similar to those of the woman in white. As the pair fall for one another, the sense of mystery deepens – is there more to their meeting than first meets the eye? Lauded for its innovative and compelling plot and use of multiple characters in narration, The Woman in White is one of the earliest examples of detective fiction. Throughout his quest for the truth, Walter hires a number of private detectives and eventually mimics their methodology, with Collins’ legal know-how lending realism to the plot line. Wilkie Collins was strongly motivated to author her novel by the unequal situation men and women found themselves: at the time, the law overtly deferred to men in matters of inheritance and estate” (x).

Why is this worth reading? This is considered one of the original mystery novels. There’s an evil husband who has control over his wife’s money because of terrible laws for women in the 19th century and there’s a mystery about a death and someone getting locked in an asylum (the 19th century was not a great place for women) and terrible motives and more. If you like mysteries, you’ll like this.

2017 Recent Reads: October-December

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – “The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy Gale in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home in Kansas by a cyclone. The book is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The Library of Congress has declared it ‘America’s greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale.’” (x).

Why is this worth reading? I got it for Christmas one year as a kid and I finished it in one day. It’s so much bigger and more nuanced than the Judy Garland classic movie. I think that many people of all ages will enjoy it, but I especially recommend that people with kids in the 9-14 age range give it to their kids or read it with them. 

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