List: 5 Classics
/I guess the word “classic” is a bit subjective; I would consider the following books to be among the most important ever:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens | A love triangle (lol, I oversimplify plots like nobody's business!) unfolds during the Reign of Terror. So much has been written about Dickens - I won't bore you with what this book is (INCREDIBLE, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING); I'll tell you what it isn't: it isn't boring, it isn't lame or dry. In weaving thousands of stories together with his words Dickens creates a soul-wrenching heartbreaker that everyone should read. Amazon | Goodreads
Lord of the Flies by William Golding | Everybody read this in school, right? Need a refresher? A plane crashes on an isolated island and a group of schoolboys must learn to survive without society's influence. This book offers a particularly intense and unsettling reading experience, but its message rings, to me, so true, and so powerful. A particularly disturbing aspect of the story is that you can apply its allegory to almost any period in global history, proving the idea that some forms of evil are innate, deep-seated, and not to be ignored. Amazon | Goodreads
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | Arguably the least depressing story on this list (whoops), this romance tells the tale of Elizabeth Bennett and her family as they navigate life, love, and loss in historical England. I realize it's an understatement to call this book a classic but truly - it's all there. Austen is a witty and sharp writer who just ... fucking ... gets ... people. She's a rock star and deserves every ounce of respect she's earned. Amazon | Goodreads
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck | The Joads, a farm family from Oklahoma, migrate west during the Great Depression. Despite having read this years ago, the tragedy of this book continues to wriggle and worm its way into the way I look at America today. It's almost the opposite of Lord of the Flies in that it paints a portrait of innate goodness - compassion, kindness, perseverance and hope. It paints a portrait of simple people pursuing - fighting for - a simple life. It paints a portrait of America as a great disappointment and I can't help but feel like while we should have learned from it, we didn't. Amazon | Goodreads
The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne | In seventeenth-century Massachusetts, woman named Hester Prynn is punished for having a child out of wedlock. It is important to note that her lover remains unidentified and safe. It is also important to note that this book could be a lot better; it's not the most well-written or the most progressive and it doesn't necessarily address its themes in a broad and satisfying way. But it's a significant read for me because it taught me - at the age of 14 - how woman are almost universally punished for having sex. Amazon | Goodreads