Skip to main content
W
Wright Memorial Public Library
All Lists
Genre Guides
A Book That is Considered to be in the "Classic" Literary Canon
Unpublished
Share
These books fulfill this category for UBN 2025.
Updated January 28, 2025
C
Concord Public Library
A list cannot be published until it has at least four items.
List was unpublished.
List was published.
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Audiobook
F. Scott Fitzgerald's modern classic is one of the key novels of the 20th century. Jay Gatsby is one of the most famous residents of Long Island, New York. His sumptuous mansion, lavish parties and glamorous lifestyle are renowned throughout the neighbourhood. And yet, beyond the status symbols, no...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Frankenstein
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus (1818) is a combination of Gothic horror story and science fiction first conceived for a writing challenge by Lord Byron when she was just eighteen. It is the story of Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science who...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you really...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
One hundred years of solitude
Garc©?a M©?rquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
From the Nobel Prize winning novelist, this epic tale of seven generations of the Buendia family spans a hundred years of Latin American history. The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love--in rich,...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua.
Paper Book
"A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." --Barack Obama "African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe." --Toni...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Their eyes were watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Paper Book
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The alchemist
Coelho, Paulo
Paper Book
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * OVER 80 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE "Translated into 80 languages, the allegory teaches us about dreams, destiny, and the reason we are all here."--Oprah Daily, "Best Self-Help Books of a Generation" "It's a brilliant, magical, life...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their correspondence. With a new Preface by the author.
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Night
Wiesel, Elie
Paper Book
A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The haunting
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House- Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a 'haunting...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
1984
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... This 75th Anniversary Edition includes: *...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken
Paper Book
An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s. In this classic novel, Ken Kesey's hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
The Odyssey
Homer.
Paper Book
A lean, fleet-footed translation that recaptures Homer's "nimble gallop" and brings an ancient epic to new life. The first great adventure story in the Western canon, the Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about...
Comment
Save
Cancel
Check Availability
Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or
log in here.