It’s that time of year again. Summer is ending and the new school year brings the promise of new friends, new teachers, and new things to learn.
One of my absolute favorite things about back to school season was all of the new books I was going to get a chance to read. Classics like Shakespeare and Jane Austen, to Hemingway and Tolkien. I couldn’t get enough of them. Even now, I have several shelves in my home library filled with the classics that I loved so much.
What is a Classic?
A classic is a book that has been well loved by society for many, many years. It most often will speak to society in a timeless way that has lasting cultural significance. Classics often explore universal themes, like love, loss, betrayal, heroes, morality, and the human condition. These themes occur throughout time periods, making it easy to relate to the book decades, even hundreds of years later. Classics typically exhibit masterful craftsmanship, with exceptional writing quality, engaging plots, and memorable characters.
Why Read a Classic?
- Improve Your Vocabulary
- Learn Lessons
- Learn History and Culture
- Practice Critical Thinking
Here are some of my favorite classics.
- Pride and Prejudice by jane Austen
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- Hamlet by Shakespeare
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
- Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
- Macbeth by Shakespeare
- Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
- Beowulf by Unknown
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- Common Sense by Thomas Paine
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Pearl by John Steinbeck
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Art of War by Sun-Tzu
- Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
- The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame