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Nathan Munda
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The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
James Mustich
It’s been considerably more than a half century since the first angst-ridden teenager cracked the spine of The Catcher in the Rye and felt he’d found a book—or more specifically, a character—that spoke for him. In the intervening years, millions of other self-anointed outsiders have felt the same wa...show more
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The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
As story and as media phenomenon, Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games is at the top of the pile of wildly popular dystopian teen fiction that has dominated twenty-first-century bestseller lists (in no small part by appealing to readers well beyond their teen years). In the nation of Panem, power and ...show more
The Lord of the Rings
J. R. R. Tolkien
Appearing in three separate volumes between July 1954 and October 1955, The Lord of the Rings constitutes a single linear narrative that was segmented for publishing convenience rather than by authorial intent. Tolkien’s hero, Frodo, is the adoptive heir of Bilbo Baggins, protagonist of The Hobbit. ...show more
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Heinlein's most famous and influential work, albeit not his most brilliantly speculative, is surely Stranger in a Strange Land, a book whose questioning of social mores and religious certitude have made it as congenial to some readers as it has been controversial to others. Astonishingly ente...show more
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
When it comes to page-turners, The Count of Monte Cristo is the great granddaddy of them all. Despite the novel’s gargantuan dimensions—it runs to more than twelve hundred pages in most editions—each of its chapters is like an exhibit in a compendium of narrative suspense; it’s hard to imagine any t...show more
Ringworld
Larry Niven
“Hard” science fiction—heavy on technical detail and informed with scientific precision—reached a pinnacle in the best work of Larry Niven, who, in his heyday, seemed to occupy a galaxy all his own. His headlong and engrossing novel Ringworld, which spawned several sequels, illustrates his most capt...show more
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Many thousands died when Allied planes firebombed Dresden, Germany, in February 1945. Kurt Vonnegut, an American soldier being held there as a prisoner of war, survived because he was confined to Schlachthof-fünf—slaughterhouse number five, an airtight, impregnable underground meat locker. When the ...show more
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
Yes, in The Day of the Triffids the human race does go blind and people die in immense numbers from sheer sensory incapacity—to say nothing of the genetically engineered predatory plants given star billing in the book’s title. Yet, the novel exudes a holiday air, a sense of liberation from artificia...show more
Dune
Frank Herbert
Inspired by a visit to the famed sand dunes of Oregon, Herbert delved into research on environmental science and related matters as he began to chart the long, complex backstory of his epic, which ultimately came to span some twenty-one thousand years of future history. Through canny and judicious t...show more
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
J. K. Rowling
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”
So, modestly, J. K. Rowling opens t...show more
11/22/63
Stephen King
Although its ramifications are intricate, the seed of 11/22/63 is quite simple: A man named Jake Epping, living in Maine in 2011, finds a portal into the past (to September 9, 1958, at 11:58 AM, to be exact) and decides to travel back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy...show more
The Hobbit
J. R. R. Tolkien
In the late 1920s, J. R. R. Tolkien, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, scribbled a sentence while correcting some student papers: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Those ten words are the seed from which grew a complex and elaborate mythology that would captivate the ima...show more
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is near the top of the list of most-beloved American novels. Set in Depression-era Alabama, it is the story of six-year-old Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout; her older brother, Jeremy, nicknamed Jem; and their father, Atticus Finch, a middle-aged lawyer who...show more
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, edited by Bernard DeVoto
In the first month of 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress requesting funds for an expedition to explore the Missouri River and seek the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, make contact with the land’s native peoples, and expand the potential of the fur trade and other co...show more
A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
The plot of A Game of Thrones revolves around a dynastic war among several families, but every step of the way the intricate story lines are personal and visceral. What’s most compelling is that the reader’s understanding of unfolding events is continually transformed by shifting narrative perspecti...show more
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
Some books become popular phenomena of such extraordinary dimensions that it becomes impossible not to pick them up; usually this is because something about them makes them impossible to put down, no matter how hard we try. The Da Vinci Code, which dominated the bestseller list between 2003 and 2006...show more
