20 Classic Books you should have read by now

20 Classic Books you should have read by now

Since we all deserve a little love in our lives, we’re ready to play matchmaker!

Whether you prefer your love stories cute, funny, or bittersweet, we’ll help you find a romantic YA book you can fall hard for…!

Check out this liste of 25 best books to read to fall in love again


1. 1984 by George Orwell

 
 

 

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...

A startling and haunting novel, 1984 creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

 

Relatable Quote: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

 

 

Humbert Humbert - scholar, aesthete and romantic - has fallen completely and utterly in love with Lolita Haze, his landlady's gum-snapping, silky skinned twelve-year-old daughter. Reluctantly agreeing to marry Mrs Haze just to be close to Lolita.

Humbert suffers greatly in the pursuit of romance; but when Lo herself starts looking for attention elsewhere, he will carry her off on a desperate cross-country misadventure, all in the name of Love. Hilarious, flamboyant, heart-breaking and full of ingenious word play, Lolita is an immaculate, unforgettable masterpiece of obsession, delusion and lus

 

Relatable Quote: “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

3. The Master and Margarita
by Mikhaïl Boulgakov

 

 

 

The underground masterpiece of twentieth-century Russian fiction, this classic novel was written during Stalin’s regime and could not be published until many years after its author’s death.

 

When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a pyschiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.

“One of the truly great Russian novels of [the twentieth] century.” —New York Times Book Review

“The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative, and poignant . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune

 

Relatable Quote:“ “Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde

 

 

The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Fearing the story was indecent, the magazine’s editor had deleted hundreds of words without Wilde’s knowledge. Even so, the book still offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers. The novel was later released in a longer.



revised version of 20 chapters. Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian’s beauty. Realizing that his beauty will fade, Dorian sells his soul to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a wild life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.

 

Relatable Quote:“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 

 

Since its immediate success in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has remained one of the most popular novels in the English language. Jane Austen called this brilliant work "her own darling child" and its vivacious heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr.

Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring. And Jane Austen's radiant wit sparkles as her characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, making this book the most superb comedy of manners of Regency England. 

Relatable Quote:“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

 

 

"Jane Eyre" ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage.

She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester. However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.

 

"Renowned artists are commissioned to design the binding for each of [White's Books]'s beautifully crafted hardcovers." --Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

 

Relatable Quote :“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

 

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.


Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

"Marvelous . . . Miss Lee's original characters are people to cherish in this winning first novel."―The New York Times

"A novel of great sweetness, humor, compassion, and of mystery carefully sustained."―Harper's Magazine

Relatable Quote: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

8. The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in 1925, it is often referred to as "The Great American Novel," and as the quintessential work which captures the mood of the "Jazz Age."

The novel takes place following the First World War.

American society enjoyed prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel, and a literary classic.

It seems to me, though, that no American novel comes closer than "Gatsby" to surpassing literary artistry, and none tells us more about ourselves. In an extraordinarily compressed space -- the novel is barely 50,000 words long -- Fitzgerald gives us a meditation on some of this country's most central ideas, themes, yearnings and preoccupations: the quest for a new life, the preoccupation with class, the hunger for riches and "the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

~The Washington Post“The quintessential Jazz Age novel.”

Rated 48 of the 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

~The GuardianRanked 2nd of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century

~Modern Library

Ranked 46 of the 100 Books of the Centur

 

Relatable Quote: “I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

9. Crime and Punishment by Fiodor Dostoïevski

 

A desperate young man plans the perfect crime—the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law—if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical.

religious and social commentary. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror. Crime and Punishment takes the reader on a journey into the darkest recesses of the criminal and depraved mind, and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil . . . a man who cannot escape his own conscience.

 

Relatable Quote: “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

10. Persuasion by Jane Austen

 

First published in 1818, Persuasion was Jane Austen's last work. Its mellow character and autumnal tone have long made it a favorite with Austen readers. Set in Somersetshire and Bath, the novel revolves around the lives and love affair of Sir Walter Elliot, his daughters Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary, and various in-laws, friends, suitors, and other characters, In Anne Elliot, the author created perhaps her sweetest, most appealing heroine.

At the center of the novel is Anne's thwarted romance with Captain Frederick Wentworth, a navy man Anne met and fell in love with when she was 19. At the time, Wentworth was deemed an unsuitable match and Anne was forced to break off the relationship. Eight years later, however, they meet again. By this time Captain Wentworth has made his fortune in the navy and is an attractive "catch." However, Anne is now uncertain about his feelings for her. But after various twists and turns of fortune, the novel ends on a happy note.
In Persuasion, as in such novels as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, Austen limned the plight of young women who could escape the constraints of family life only by marrying, and suggest the foolishness of women who believed they were free and not dependent on the financial and social resources of men. At the same time, Persuasion offers an ironic and subtle paean to the true love that enables one woman to rise above straitened economic circumstances and the stifling social conventions that restricted women to narrowly circumscribed lives in the common sitting room.
Sure to appeal to admirers of Jane Austen, Persuasion will delight any reader with its finely drawn characters, gentle satire, and charming re-creation of the genteel world of the 19th-century English countryside.

 

Relatable Quote: “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

11. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

 

 

Seventeen-year-old Julie Clarke has her future all planned out--move out of her small town with her boyfriend Sam, attend college in the city; spend a summer in Japan. But then Sam dies. And everything changes.

 

Venture back in time to Victorian London to join literature's greatest detective team — the brilliant Sherlock Holmes and his devoted assistant, Dr. Watson — as they investigate a dozen of their best-known cases. Originally published in 1892, this is the first and best collection of stories about the legendary sleuth. It's also the least expensive edition available.
Featured tales include several of the author's personal favorites: "A Scandal in Bohemia" — in which a king is blackmailed by a former lover and Holmes matches wits with the only woman to attract his open admiration — plus "The Speckled Band," "The Red-Headed League," and "The Five Orange Pips." Additional mysteries include "The Blue Carbuncle," "The Engineer’s Thumb," "The Beryl Coronet," "The Copper Beeches," and four others.

Relatable Quote: “Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details.”

12. The Brothers Karamazov by Fiodor Dostoïevski

 

The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.

This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal
inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.

 

Relatable Quote: “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

 

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

 

Introduction and Notes by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex. Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man.

He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

Relatable Quote: “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

14. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

 

Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.

 

It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with "woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the "girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.

Relatable Quote: “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

15. The Godfather by Mario Puzo

 

With its brilliant and brutal portrayal of the Corleone family, The Godfather burned its way into our national consciousness. This unforgettable saga of crime and corruption, passion and loyalty continues to stand the test of time, as the definitive novel of the Mafia underworld.



A #1 New York Times bestseller in 1969, Mario Puzo’s epic was turned into the incomparable film of the same name, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It is the original classic that has been often imitated, but never matched. A tale of family and society, law and order, obedience and rebellion, it reveals the dark passions of human nature played out against a backdrop of the American dream.

 

“A staggering triumph...The definitive novel about a sinister fraternity of crime.”—The Saturday Review

“You can’t stop reading it, and you’ll find it hard to stop dreaming about it.”—New York Magazine
 
Relatable Quote: “Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone”

16. Animal Farm by George Orwell

 

 

Animal Farm by George Orwell is an allegorical work of fiction. Depicting rising revolt among the animals, who wish to take over the humans, the author wrote one of the best satire of the era. Animals, who live in Mr. Jones farm are tired of serving human and find it very exploiting as they use animals for all their needs. Rebellion starts on the day when Mr. Jones forgets to feed the animals. Under the charge of two pigs: Napoleon and Snowball, animals thus plan to invade humans and take over the farm.

 

The attempt is initiated by changing the farm's name to ‘Animal Farm'. Agenda raised was to seek benefits to four legged animals and other animals of the farm, for which they selected ideals, who got corrupted with passing time. The book reflects incidents and events that led to Russian Revolution in 1917, followed by Soviet Union's Stalinist Era. George Orwell, who was a democratic socialist was in opposition of Joseph Stalin and Moscow-directed Stalinism, result to which is a book like Animal farm- one of his best satirical fiction novel. About the author: Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell was born in 25 June 1903. He was an English essayist, critic, novelist and journalist. His area of focus was awareness of social injustice and democratic socialism, while he was in opposition of dictatorship. His works includes literary criticism, fiction, poetry and polemical journalism. Best known for the dystopian novel: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945), George Orwell was ranked the second greatest British writers since 1945 by The Times. A Children’s Bookshelf Selection: Each month our editor’s pick the best books for children and young adults by age to be a part of the children’s bookshelf. These are editorial recommendations made by our team of experts. Our monthly reading list includes a mix of bestsellers and top new releases and evergreen books that will help enhance a child’s reading life.

 

Relatable Quote: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

17. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

 

 

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.


“Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably.”
Kirkus Reviews, starred review  

 

“More lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man.” — Washington Post Book World

At 50 years old, García Márquez's masterpiece is as important as ever. . . To experience a towering work like One Hundred Years of Solitude is to be reminded of the humility we should all feel when trying to assert what is true and what is false.” — LitHub

Relatable Quote: “It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”

18. The Outsider by Stephen King

 

 

 


An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens—Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest.

 

Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King’s story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.

 

“What begins as a manhunt for an unlikely doppelgänger takes an uncanny turn into the supernatural. King’s skillful use of criminal forensics helps to ground his tale in a believable clinical reality where the horrors stand out in sharp relief.”

“Absolutely riveting. . . another shockingly dark book—perfect for longtime fans, of whom there are, well, zillions.”

 
 
Relatable Quote: “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold . . .” The pillow seemed to sink a little, and Johnny died.”

19. The Castle by Franz Kafka

 

'K. kept feeling that he had lost himself, or was further away in a strange land than anyone had ever been before' A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats - this is the setting for Kafka's story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village and access to the castle.

 

Kafka breaks new ground in evoking a dense village community fraught with tensions, and recounting an often poignant, occasionally farcical love-affair. He also explores the relation between the individual and power, and asks why the villagers so readily submit to an authority which may exist only in their collective imagination. Published only after Kafka's death, The Castle appeared in the same decade as modernist masterpieces by Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Mann and Proust, and is among the central works of modern literature. This translation follows the text established by critical scholarship, and manuscript variants are mentioned in the notes. The introduction provides guidance to the text without reducing the reader's own freedom to make sense of this fascinatingly enigmatic novel. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Relatable Quote: “I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”

20. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

 

 

I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed.

 

If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

Out of a narrative shadowed by terror, gleam sharp perceptions, brilliant intense images and sardonic wit ― Independent

The Handmaid's Tale is both a superlative exercise in science fiction and a profoundly felt moral story -- Angela Carter

Relatable Quote: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”