Favorite Book List from an accidental Lit. Major-
Discover an accidental Literature Major's favorite book list—curated must-reads from classic to contemporary. Find your next literary obsession in this expertly picked collection.
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Light in August
by William Faulkner
From the Nobel Prize winner—one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the twentieth century—a novel set in the American South during Prohibition about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality. Light in August features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. “Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” —William Faulkner
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
A masterpiece ahead of its time, a prescient rendering of a dark future, and the inspiration for the blockbuster film Blade Runner One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back—with lethal force. Praise for Philip K. Dick “The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the world.”—John Brunner “A kind of pulp-fiction Kafka, a prophet.”—The New York Times “[Philip K. Dick] sees all the sparkling—and terrifying—possibilities . . . that other authors shy away from.”—Rolling Stone
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman, his job is to burn books, which are forbidden.
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Cancer Ward
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the "cancerous" Soviet police state. --Publisher
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The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
In his darkly comic short story collection, the author brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation.
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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughters' memories and feelings
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Woman Hollering Creek
by Sandra Cisneros
A collection of stories by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The lovingly drawn characters of these stories give voice to the vibrant and varied life on both sides of the Mexican border with tales of pure discovery, filled with moments of infinite and intimate wisdom.
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The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage ... and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review
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The Ice Storm
by Rick Moody
The year is 1973. As a freak winter storm bears down on an exclusive, affluent suburb in Connecticut, cark skid out of control, men and women swap partners, and their children experiment with sex, drugs, and even suicide. Here two families, the Hoods and the Williamses, com face-to-face with the seething emotions behind the well-clipped lawns of their lives-in a novel widely hailed as a funny, acerbic, and moving hymn to a dazed and confused era of American life.
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
A Magical love story that is as sad as it is joyous.
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The Stone Diaries
by Carol Shields
An aged woman discovers herself as she reflects upon her life in the 20th century.
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Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. “The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind.”—The New Yorker One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love—love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
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The Cutting Room
by Louise Welsh
When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of seemingly violent photographs, he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence, and deviousness that leads Rilke into a dark underworld of transvestite clubs, seedy bars, and porn shops. In this hidden city haunted by a host of vividly drawn characters, Rilke comes face to face with the dark desires and illicit urges that lurk behind even the most respectable facades.
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Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and a baffling new world, the characters in Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations.
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Somewhere In Time
by Richard Matheson
Like What Dreams May Come, which inspired the upcoming movie starring Robin Williams, Somewhere in Time is the powerful story of a love that transcends time and space, written by one of the Grand Masters of modern fantasy. Matheson's classic novel tells the moving, romantic story of a modern man whose love for a woman he has never met draws him back in time to a luxury hotel in San Diego in 1896, where he finds his soul mate in the form of a celebrated actress of the previous century. Somewhere in Time won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1979 movie version, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, remains a cult classic whose fans continue to hold yearly conventions to this day.
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Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A special 25th anniversary edition of the beloved book that has changed millions of lives with the story of an unforgettable friendship, the timeless wisdom of older generations, and healing lessons on loss and grief—featuring a new afterword by the author “A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was his college professor Morrie Schwartz. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live. “The truth is, Mitch,” he said, “once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.
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The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author—an irresistible novel exploring the slippery alchemy of attracting opposites, and the struggle to rebuild one’s life after unspeakable tragedy Travel writer Macon Leary hates travel, adventure, surprises, and anything outside of his routine. Immobilized by grief, Macon is becoming increasingly prickly and alone, anchored by his solitude and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts. Then he meets Muriel, an eccentric dog trainer too optimistic to let Macon disappear into himself. Despite Macon’s best efforts to remain insulated, Muriel up-ends his solitary, systemized life, catapulting him into the center of a messy, beautiful love story he never imagined. A fresh and timeless tale of unexpected bliss, The Accidental Tourist showcases Tyler’s talents for making characters—and their relationships—feel both real and magical. “Incandescent, heartbreaking, exhilarating…One cannot reasonably expect fiction to be much better than this.” —The Washington Post
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Looking Backward
by Edward Bellamy
First published in 1888 and a phenomenal best-seller, "Looking Backward" is Edward Bellamy's utopian novel about ninteenth-century Bostonian who awakes after a sleep for more than one hundred years to find himself in the year 2000 in a world of near-perfect cooperation, harmony, and prosperity. More than just a fanciful novel, "Looking Backward" was, in effect, Bellamy's blueprint for a socialist-type state, conceived in response to problems of the Gilded Age brought on in part by the pace of the late-nineteenth-century industrialization. The novel had an enormous impact at the time of its publication, setting in motion a wave of reform activity and creating a vogue for utopian novels that continued over the next three decades. In addition to an extensive introduction, Daniel Borus's new edition of "Looking Backward" contains a chronology of Bellamy's life, a bibliography, questions to consider when reading the novel, and an index.