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Tim Kreuz
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The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
James Mustich
A book of shimmering social surfaces and hauntingly evanescent private depths, The Great Gatsby imbues its fleet narrative with a formal elegance that has been readily apparent even to the generations of high school students to whom it has been assigned—generally long before they might understand th...show more
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Harriet the Spy
Louise Fitzhugh
Like an outsider Nancy Drew, Fitzhugh’s Harriet has won the esteem—“allegiance” is probably a better word—of countless young girls who’ve mimicked her notetaking (as well as her unwavering love for tomato sandwiches). She is, in a word, beloved, most likely because her stance apart—as writer, as spy...show more
Johnny Tremain
Esther Forbes
I read this one as an adult and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I can see reading this one again.
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
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe
Inspired by the real-life experience of Alexander Selkirk (1676–1721), a Scottish sailor who was marooned for more than four years on a South Pacific island, Robinson Crusoe gave enduring form to fundamental themes of the Western imagination. With his parrot and parasol, the castaway Crusoe is an e...show more
Voices from Chernobyl
Svetlana Alexievich
This book is an oral history of the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in 1986, and of the suffering, death, and contamination—biological, environmental, psychological, existential—left in its wake. It is constructed from the testimony of dozens of people whose lives were transformed by the disas...show more
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms was Hemingway’s second novel, appearing in 1929, three years after The Sun Also Rises. Mining autobiographical terrain, it draws upon the author’s experience as an ambulance driver during World War I. Although it authentically evokes the fraught tedium of military work and the dra...show more
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
This is my favorite Dickens novel. Great to see it on this list. So many great memorable characters. Super enjoyable.
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities may have the most famous opening of any novel ever written, the frequent application of its words outside the novel’s specific context giving it an edge over the nearest competition, Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice. Echoing the dichotomies invoked in its opening sentences,...show more
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Is life unfair? Is circumstance fate? Can we ever take the law into our own hands to change it? Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first major novel poses these questions in the tale of a man who enacts brutal crimes in order to break the strictures of his social destiny. For Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the han...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
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
You know the story of this quintessential holiday tale, but have you ever read it? So many times has the tale been told—in numerous stage and screen adaptations—that we are apt to take the power of its invention for granted. Yet no retelling comes close to capturing the humor and human sympathy, the...show more
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
Anne Frank’s intimate two-year record of her family’s hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic is one of the most famous, powerful, and beloved books of the twentieth century. Encapsulating the terror of the Holocaust in the domestic drama of the Franks’ anxious existence and the private yearning...show more
Bleak House
Charles Dickens
Although it lacks the affectionate warmth of David Copperfield and the narrative unity of Great Expectations, Bleak House is considered by many critics to be its author’s greatest achievement. Unlike those other two novels, which, of course, have their own ardent champions, Bleak House is not steepe...show more
Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White
Someone once called E. B. White the most companionable of writers, and the adjective fits him like a glove. His conversational genius set the enduring tone of The New Yorker in the magazine’s formative years, and his unassumingly authoritative personal essays gave the genre a genuine American accent...show more
Fer-de-Lance
Rex Stout
When I'm looking for a mystery to read, Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin is the first one I think of. Feeling inspired to read another one.
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
More nuanced and darker in mood than David Copperfield, Great Expectations is its author’s deepest working of the terrain of childhood and the fears and fates that spring from it. Anchored in a Kentish village, around which the years and events of the complicated plot will revolve, the book returns ...show more
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Great story. Harder to get through than expected. Parts I skimmed. But most I was drawn into. Satisfied when I finished.
The Secret of the Old Clock
Carolyn Keene
I read a lot of the Nancy Drew mysteries with my daughter. The actual author is Mildred Wirt and if you can find her Penny Parker mysteries, you will find Penny has a lot more spunk and personality than Nancy. While I enjoyed both, I definitely enjoyed those more.
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
The product of two decades of literary labor, Les Misérables was begun while the author enjoyed political favor in Paris and finished during Hugo’s nineteen-year political exile in the Channel Islands. At the core of its vast narrative is Jean Valjean, a peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bre...show more