Reading List

Just for Teens: Classics

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

FIC Twain

Mark Twain

This delicious send-up of life on the slave-era Mississippi bears a warning to those who would over-analyze it:
NOTICE.
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.

The Call of the Wild

J London

Jack London

Jack London tells a powerful tale of a dog forced into the Klondike gold rush. "Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego."

Cannery Row

FIC Steinbeck, J.

John Steinbeck

"Lee Chong's grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply. It was small and crowded but within its single room a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live and to be happy -- clothes, food, both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee Chong's a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood. The one commodity Lee Chong did not keep could be had across the lot at Dora's."

A Christmas Carol and Other Stories

FIC Dickens

Charles Dickens

The author of David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities turns his hand to a collection of ghost stories: "Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

811 Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me --
The simple News that Nature told --
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see --
For love of Her -- Sweet -- countrymen --
Judge tenderly -- of Me

Dandelion Wine

FIC Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Though Bradbury is most famous for his Science Fiction, he wrote many excellent realistic stories like this one. "It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."

Ethan Frome

FIC Wharton, E.

Edith Wharton

"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was."

The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings

FIC Tolkein

J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's epic fantasy masterpiece, like the never-ending road of Bilbo's song, begins humbly enough at the door of his home, "when Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence."

Foundation

S Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Galactic civilization is collapsing into chaos, and only one man truly sees and understands the danger, laying a plan that others must carry out when he is gone, for a Foundation upon which the galactic empire can be built anew: "HARI SELDON-. . . born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as -79 to the year 1 F.E."

Frankenstein

FIC Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The grim but compassionate novel that spawned the gothic horror genre, Shelley's tale of the Modern Prometheus is framed by letters from an arctic explorer who little knows what awaits him when he sets out and writes, "To Mrs. Saville, England St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17- You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."

The Hound of the Baskervilles

FIC Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Perhaps the most famous and extraordinary tale of "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night..."

Macbeth

822.33 Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

The shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, and among the most accessible for a modern audience, 'The Scottish Play' is one of the greatest works ever written in the English language. Watch it, perform it, or read it straight through, and don't let your teachers ruin it with their quizzes. "Scene I. A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches."

Moby Dick

FIC Melville

Herman Melville

Though Melville wrote many excellent short stories, perhaps most notable for the pathos of Bartleby the Scrivener and for his light, humorous touch in I and My Chimney and The Lightning Rod Man, his greatest and most enduring work is this leviathan of literature. A gripping story, rich in the historical flavor of its time, Moby Dick is the original Great American Novel. "Call me Ishmael."

My First Summer in the Sierra

917.94 Muir

John Muir

"In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons, --spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven. Then the lolling, panting flocks and herds are driven to the high, cool, green pastures of the Sierra."

Nine Stories

FIC Salinger

J. D. Salinger

These powerful works of short fiction by the author of The Catcher in the Rye include "For Esme, with Love and Squalor," perhaps his best-loved story throughout the world. "Just recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place in England on April 18th. It happens to be a wedding I'd give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation first arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make the trip abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged."

Pride and Prejudice

FIC Austen, Jane

Jane Austen

Elizabeth Bennet experiences the highs, lows, and hilarity of life in Austen's 19th-century England, where "it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

The Red Badge of Courage

FIC Crane

Stephen Crane

"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp fires set in the low brows of distant hills."

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems

821.7 COLERIDGE

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

With poetry as haunting and arresting as the Ancient Mariner's eye, Coleridge extolls the wonders of the natural world, and gives life to the world of the supernatural.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination

SS Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

This collection of short stories by the master of horror, mystery, and the surreal, features such famous tales as The Telltale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum: "I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence--the dread sentence of death--was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears."

Three Men Out

M Stout

Rex Stout

The Nero Wolfe mysteries have twice been made into television series, and are famous throughout the world. Narrated by Wolfe's confidential assistant -- a Giants fan before the team moved to San Francisco -- these three short novellas show Wolfe in top form. "At the end of the sixth inning the score was Boston 11, New York 1. I would not have believed that the day would ever come when, seated in a lower box between home and first, at the seventh and deciding game of the World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, I would find myself glomming a girl..."

Wuthering Heights

FIC Bronte

Emily Bronte

"1801-I have just returned from a visit to my landlord-the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us."

Just for Teens: Classics			Back to Booklist


	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn		FIC Twain
		Mark Twain
		This delicious send-up of life on the slave-era Mississippi bears a warning to those who would over-analyze it: NOTICE. Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.


	The Call of the Wild		J London
		Jack London
		Jack London tells a powerful tale of a dog forced into the Klondike gold rush. "Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego."


	Cannery Row		FIC Steinbeck, J.
		John Steinbeck
		"Lee Chong's grocery, while not a model of neatness, was a miracle of supply. It was small and crowded but within its single room a man could find everything he needed or wanted to live and to be happy -- clothes, food, both fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You could buy at Lee Chong's a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You could work out combinations to fit almost any mood. The one commodity Lee Chong did not keep could be had across the lot at Dora's."


	A Christmas Carol and Other Stories		FIC Dickens
		Charles Dickens
		The author of David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities turns his hand to a collection of ghost stories: "Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."


	The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson		811 Dickinson
		Emily Dickinson
		This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me -- The simple News that Nature told -- With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see -- For love of Her -- Sweet -- countrymen -- Judge tenderly -- of Me


	Dandelion Wine		FIC Bradbury
		Ray Bradbury
		Though Bradbury is most famous for his Science Fiction, he wrote many excellent realistic stories like this one. "It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."


	Ethan Frome		FIC Wharton, E.
		Edith Wharton
		"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was."


	The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings		FIC Tolkein
		J. R. R. Tolkien
		Tolkien's epic fantasy masterpiece, like the never-ending road of Bilbo's song, begins humbly enough at the door of his home, "when Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence."


	Foundation		S Asimov
		Isaac Asimov
		Galactic civilization is collapsing into chaos, and only one man truly sees and understands the danger, laying a plan that others must carry out when he is gone, for a Foundation upon which the galactic empire can be built anew: "HARI SELDON-. . . born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069. The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era as -79 to the year 1 F.E."


	Frankenstein		FIC Shelley
		Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
		The grim but compassionate novel that spawned the gothic horror genre, Shelley's tale of the Modern Prometheus is framed by letters from an arctic explorer who little knows what awaits him when he sets out and writes, "To Mrs. Saville, England St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17- You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."


	The Hound of the Baskervilles		FIC Doyle
		Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
		Perhaps the most famous and extraordinary tale of "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night..."


	Macbeth		822.33 Shakespeare
		William Shakespeare
		The shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, and among the most accessible for a modern audience, 'The Scottish Play' is one of the greatest works ever written in the English language. Watch it, perform it, or read it straight through, and don't let your teachers ruin it with their quizzes. "Scene I. A desert place. Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches."


	Moby Dick		FIC Melville
		Herman Melville
		Though Melville wrote many excellent short stories, perhaps most notable for the pathos of Bartleby the Scrivener and for his light, humorous touch in I and My Chimney and The Lightning Rod Man, his greatest and most enduring work is this leviathan of literature. A gripping story, rich in the historical flavor of its time, Moby Dick is the original Great American Novel. "Call me Ishmael."


	My First Summer in the Sierra		917.94 Muir
		John Muir
		"In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons, --spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rainstorm, which usually falls in November. In a few months the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven. Then the lolling, panting flocks and herds are driven to the high, cool, green pastures of the Sierra."


	Nine Stories		FIC Salinger
		J. D. Salinger
		These powerful works of short fiction by the author of The Catcher in the Rye include "For Esme, with Love and Squalor," perhaps his best-loved story throughout the world. "Just recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place in England on April 18th. It happens to be a wedding I'd give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation first arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make the trip abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged."


	Pride and Prejudice		FIC Austen, Jane
		Jane Austen
		Elizabeth Bennet experiences the highs, lows, and hilarity of life in Austen's 19th-century England, where "it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."


	The Red Badge of Courage		FIC Crane
		Stephen Crane
		"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp fires set in the low brows of distant hills."


	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems		821.7 COLERIDGE
		Samuel Taylor Coleridge
		With poetry as haunting and arresting as the Ancient Mariner's eye, Coleridge extolls the wonders of the natural world, and gives life to the world of the supernatural. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.


	Tales of Mystery and Imagination		SS Poe
		Edgar Allan Poe
		This collection of short stories by the master of horror, mystery, and the surreal, features such famous tales as The Telltale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum: "I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence--the dread sentence of death--was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears."


	Three Men Out		M Stout
		Rex Stout
		The Nero Wolfe mysteries have twice been made into television series, and are famous throughout the world. Narrated by Wolfe's confidential assistant -- a Giants fan before the team moved to San Francisco -- these three short novellas show Wolfe in top form. "At the end of the sixth inning the score was Boston 11, New York 1. I would not have believed that the day would ever come when, seated in a lower box between home and first, at the seventh and deciding game of the World Series between the Giants and Red Sox, I would find myself glomming a girl..."


	Wuthering Heights		FIC Bronte
		Emily Bronte
		"1801-I have just returned from a visit to my landlord-the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us."