Classics

I picked this up at a library sale with the intention of keeping it for my daughters’ library, but I started it one rare quiet day and finished it in a few hours. This story of Jess and Leslie's friendship and their magical forest kingdom is as wonderful—and heartbreaking—now as it was when I was 10.

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family live in a castle in the English countryside, but they are far from wealthy. This family of dreamers and creatives can hardly put food on the table. When two young Americans, Simon and Neil Cotton, arrive to take over the estate of their deceased landlord, they bring new hope to the family: of creative patronage, of potential marriage, and of (continued) free rent. Aspiring writer Cassandra details the adventures of the family in her journal as they move from abject poverty into high society. Full of charming observations and self-awareness, Cassandra teeters between childhood and adulthood and, through her her writing, she comes to realizations about herself, her family, and love. The family is by turns frustrating and amusing--I was confused by the inability of all of them (save Stephen, their ward) to find work in any capacity. That aside, Cassandra is a delightful companion through the story--on par with Anne Shirley--and the castle itself is pure fantasy for any romantic Anglophile.

The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.

Tuck Everlasting is one of my favorite books that I read in school. Ten-year-old Winnie Foster is enchanted when she meets the Tuck family, who are unlike anyone she's ever met. She soon discovers their secret: they cannot die. After drinking from a magic spring many years before, they found that they never aged. Now they move through life, trying to remain inconspicuous and find purpose in lives that never end, and Winnie must decide if she wants to follow the same path. This is a classic middle grade book that prompts discussions about family, choices, and mortality. It's one of the first books that come to mind when I think of excellent middle grade writing: artistic but straightforward, and above all, respectful of the reader's abilities to wrestle with difficult questions.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the much-loved classic about a young girl, Francie Nolan, growing up in poverty in turn-of-century Brooklyn. Francie is a bookish, resourceful child, caught between her dreamer of a father and her work-worn, practical mother. Francie is self-aware and a keen observer of people and the life around her, a heroine who manages to continue to seek beauty even as it seems determined to elude her. I finally read this in 2017 and it made my list of best books of the year.

Love this book? Read more books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Emma is truly a force, and while she may be snobbish, spoiled, and too idle for her own good, what makes her so compelling is that her focus isn't usually on herself. Emma wants nothing more than to set up those around her in what she sees as perfect matches--all the while ignoring potential relationships of her own. Her exploits may be a bit of a power play and for her own entertainment, yes, but at the same time she is well-meaning and at times charmingly oblivious to the mistakes she makes. I enjoyed Emma even more the Pride and Prejudice, and Austen is, as ever, sharply observant of the subtleties of human relationships.

Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it was first published, heralding Mary Gaitskill's arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature.

Set in Manhattan's Lower East Side and peopled with working-class drug addicts, intelligent hookers, stable housewives, smug yuppies, and sensually deprived professionals, Bad Behavior depicts a cruel and tender world where romance and modern perversity go hand in hand. Gaitskill delivers powerful stories of dislocation, longing, and desire that depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation groping for human connection.

Between the past, recent, and upcoming screen adaptations, plus Geraldine Brooks' recent March, interest in Little Women has never really waned. The story of four very different sisters and their steadfast mother living in genteel poverty in Concord, Massachusetts, while Mr. March is away as a chaplain in the Civil War continues to enchant. That Louisa May Alcott herself didn't much like the story is beside the point. Jo stands as a rebellious feminist icon, while the dramas, joys, griefs, and relationships of the sisters stand as enduring symbols of comfort, devotion, and perseverance.

Somehow I got through high school without reading this book. I can't recall why, because it was definitely taught at my school. I'm guessing I either had a rogue teacher or an odd combination of classes that that enabled me to miss this one. Whatever it was, this was starting to feel like the most glaring gap in my reading, and I have to admit I knew very little of the story. I ended up listening to the audio book on a long drive. Listening to the refined narrator read the lyrical language was a pleasure, and it's good to finally know the story of the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby.

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

The Bridge of Years tells the story of a Belgian family during the years between the two world wars.  The family is held together by mother Melanie, a tenacious businesswoman who keeps the farm running. She and her philosopher husband Paul, and their three very different children, face a changing Europe and must decide how to face the challenges of another impending war. I read this book on a whim, not having heard of May Sarton or the novel before, and it was truly a hidden gem. Written in 1946, this novel isn't far removed from the time in which it's set, but I highly recommend it for fans of historical fiction.

A dark mansion. Mysterious wailing through the corridors. A beautiful walled garden with no entrance. These are just a few of the mysteries that kept me reading this book over and over as a kid. It was also one of my first introductions to unlikeable characters. Mary Lennox is a surly child, with few redeeming qualities (and several other characters aren't much better). But the settings themselves emerge as characters: the manor, the moors, and especially the garden, which serves as respite, friend, and healer. My only disappointment with this book, on attempting a reread with my daughter, is Mary's hateful and racist language at the beginning. Though fitting for the story and character, like the Little House books it's something that requires further discussions with young readers.

I have mixed feelings on Jane Eyre. The positive: Jane is amazing. Charlotte Bronte's writing is amazing. The story is compelling and surprisingly readable, and it's one from my bucket list. The negative: those men! Rochester and St. John Rivers, both manipulating mansplainers. Maybe reading Jane Eyre in the 21st century predisposes me to feel more bitterness toward them than Bronte intends. Jane herself is also frustrating in her deference to both men, but also admirable in her independence. In short, I haven't quite sorted out how I feel about Jane, and that's one reason I think she remains so fascinating to so many readers.

On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. 

As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

This 1945 Newbery Honor winner is a classic and powerful novel about the effects of bullying. When students begin targeting a classmate who wears the same dress to school each day, she claims that she has 100 dresses at home. The bullying intensifies until the girl is pulled from school. The students are remorseful, but they realize they've lost their chance to apologize. This book is somewhat subtle, but readers who pay attention will be prompted to think about regrets and standing up for what's right.

When a young woman otherwise destined for a life of service is swept off her feet by rich widower Maxim de Winter, she dreams of a wonderful life together at Manderly, the country estate he owns. But soon after their marriage and arrival at Manderly, she realizes that the shadow of Maxim's late wife looms large and threatens her life, sanity, and their future together. While not a scary read, the tension underlying this entire book is masterful and the surprises continue until the very last page.

Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea. 

My Antonia tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting.

When Claudia and her brother, Jamie decide to run away, they don't just run anywhere: they make their home in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. While there, they sleep in opulent beds, bathe in the fountain, and stumble on an art mystery that captures their imaginations. I adored this book as a kid and I think it's one I would still love as an adult. I loved the kids' resourcefulness, the fantasy of camping out in an amazing place like a museum, and I loved the idea that kids could be enthralled by--and potentially solve--a mystery that rocks the art world.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

In her great historical epic set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.

I chose this book as my cozy read for my 2021 More Joy, Less Stress Reading Challenge after hearing from so many readers that it fit the bill. They were absolutely right! The premise of this book doesn’t seem like much: Penelope discovers that her father’s painting is worth a small fortune. Her adult children have their own ideas about what she should do about the discovery.

The Shell Seekers moves between past and present, revisiting various times in Penelope’s life, including her Bohemian youth during World War II. Penelope is truly an unforgettable character. I loved the slow reveal of her life told over decades and I know that I’ll be rereading this in years to come.

It’s been a long time since I picked up an Agatha Christie novel and I’ve been eager to read this classic. The Orient Express is stuck in the snow and when one of the passengers is murdered, Hercule Poirot is ready to solve the case.

Christie writes clever puzzles that are fun to piece together alongside her detectives. Dan Stevens (of Downton Abbey) does a fantastic job narrating this.

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte. So begins Roots, one of the most extraordinary and influential books of our time. Through the story of one family, his family, Alex Haley unforgettably brings to life the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him: slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workmen and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects...and one author.

It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. . . .

Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsy, were spinsters living a quiet life in a watch shop with their elderly father until the Nazis invaded Holland. They soon became involved in the underground resistance, hiding Jews in a secret room above their shop. Ultimately, they were discovered and sent to prison and concentration camps. In The Hiding Place, Corrie tells their story.

While much of their story is grounded in their deep religious faith, non-religious readers will still appreciate the resilience, courage, and unending positivity they demonstrated in even the most dire circumstances.

Kindred is famous for being the first science fiction novel written by a black woman. That's significant, but the science fiction part of this story--the time travel--isn't what makes it so compelling.

In the 1970s, a 26-year-old black woman is suddenly pulled back through time to save the life of a young boy who grows to be a slave owner in 1800s Maryland. Yanked without warning between present and past and back again, she returns multiple times throughout his life (as only minutes or hours pass in her own), and she realizes that she must keep him alive so he can father her great-grandmother. But through this, she also must live the life of a slave and face all the indignities, hardships, and heartbreaks that come with it.

This is an illuminating look at the lives of slaves, cognizant of our modern ideas that the people who were slaves must have been tougher than people now, somehow superhuman in their ability to endure. But the wounds from the whips and chains and inhuman disregard for their lives and families were real, and Butler sensitively examines the ways in which the people were beaten and worn into submission.

Light on the sci-fi aspects (sudden unexplained time travel is the only element) and a fast, worthwhile but difficult read (due to the subject matter). Highly recommended.

The Color Purple is the story of two sisters--one a missionary to Africa and the other a child wife living in the South--who remain loyal to one another across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.

In The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck paints an indelible portrait of China in the 1920s, when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-Lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century.

It's a classic for a reason. My fifth grader loved traveling through the wardrobe and into the magical land of Narnia. Unforgettable characters and an epic battle between good and evil make this an essential childhood read for fantasy lovers.

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.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen."

"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead.

"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die.

"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?

In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation while in her mind she is much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house, she is flooded with far-away remembrances. And, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa reexamines the choices she has made, hesitantly looking ahead to growing old. Undeniably triumphant, this is the inspired novelistic outline of human consciousness.

This saga of the lives of two families in a small southwestern Ohio town chronicles the town's political, cultural, and social transformation, between 1868 and 1932, through the eyes of the local women's literary club.

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 - June 7, 1967) was an American poet and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. I haven't read any Parker yet, and while I'm generally more likely to read short stories than poetry, I'm also tempted by the clever turns of phrase in her poems. Basically, I'm ready to pick up any collection of Parker's work I can find.

When her family learns of their ties to the wealthy d'Urbervilles, Tess's family pressures her to claim her place and elevate the family from poverty. The plan goes horribly wrong and Tess finds herself a grief-stricken, ruined woman. When she finds love and a potential new life with Angel Clare, she must decide whether to keep her past a secret or risk his rejection. Tess is truly a woman of her time, as are the characters around her, but Thomas Hardy was ahead of his. Hardy deftly illustrates the hypocrisy that dictated the expectations of women in this time and the pressures they faced to be pure, chaste, and angelic (the name "Angel" is a bit ironic here.). I loved this book, though it filled me rage on Tess's behalf. It was a little slow moving in the middle, but it's worth it to stick it out to the end.

This extraordinarily sensitive and insightful portrait of religious life centers on Philippa Talbot, a highly successful professional woman who leaves her life among the London elite to join a cloistered Benedictine community. In this gripping narrative of the crises surrounding the ancient Brede abbey, Rumer Godden penetrates to the mysterious, inner heart of a religious community—a place of complexity and conflict, as well as joy and love. It is a place where Philippa, to her own surprise and her friends’ astonishment, finds her life by losing it.

Powered by the dreams and struggles of three generations, The Thorn Birds is the epic saga of a family rooted in the Australian sheep country. At the story's heart is the love of Meggie Cleary, who can never possess the man she desperately adores, and Ralph de Bricassart, who rises from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican...but whose passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life.

The Bell Jar 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 The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

The second book in the treasured Little House series, Farmer Boy is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved story of how her husband, Almanzo, grew up as a farmer boy far from the little house where Laura lived.

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier year. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

The story of Billy and his two hunting dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann, was one of my favorites growing up. I read it multiple times--and sobbed every time. Many readers don't like how sad this story is, but I always loved the bond between Billy and the dogs, as well as the bond between the dogs. It's worth reading for the way it depicts respect for nature and animals, as well as life in poverty in the Ozarks.

James Herriot's heartwarming memoir of his life as a veterinarian in Yorkshire.

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

This children’s literature classic is the quintessential science fiction/fantasy kid-lit book. Meg Murry, her younger brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin are thrust into magical adventures through the universe, guided by three quirky and supernatural women, to rescue their father.

I must admit: I was not one of the child readers enraptured by this book. My tastes as a kid, though, did not veer toward fantasy or science fiction. I’m curious how this would hold up for my kids–it’s on our list to try.

Anne is well-known, well-loved, and never at a loss for words. When Anne, an orphan, is mistakenly sent to Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, an elderly brother and sister who wanted a boy to help with the farm, she shakes up their lives and the lives of others in Avonlea with her sense of adventure and optimistic spirit. I re-read Anne in 2017 and have been enjoying the Netflix series Anne with an E for a little darker, more grown-up perspective on Anne.

This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river; General Sash, about to meet the final enemy.

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

I still remember one of my elementary school teachers reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes aloud to us. It brought so many things to light: the aftermath of the atomic bombs in Japan, children battling fatal illnesses, a peek at life and culture in Japan. This short novel based on a true story brings history, empathy, and culture into one moving story that you (or your kids) will always remember.