Read to Learn! Classics for Teens and Adults

Learn something new by studying the classics and participating in our September SweetBean Challenge on Beanstack!

Updated August 27, 2024
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The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
Buck lives a content life. Half St. Bernard, half Shepard, he is top dog on a California ranch. But the Gold Rush in the Klondike has produced an enormous demand for sled dogs so, when a gardener at the ranch needs to pay a gambling debt, stealing and selling Buck is a quick way to do it.
David Copperfield
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
'The most perfect of all the Dickens novels' Virginia Woolf David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of...
Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
Shelley's suspenseful and intellectually rich gothic tale confronts some of the most important and enduring themes in all of literature--the power of human imagination, the potential hubris of science, the gulf between appearance and essence, the effects of human cruelty, the desire for revenge and...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book...
The hobbit, or, There and back again
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
This edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic is illustrated with 48 paintings by noted artist Michael Hague. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed...
Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, or, The lad with the silver button : the original text
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paper Book
Robert Louis Stevenson always considered "Kidnapped," the tale of 17-year-old David Balfour's adventures in the remote islands and highlands of Scotland with renegade soldier Alan Breck Stewart, to be his greatest novel, but when the classic adventure tale was published in 1886, it was without much...
The metamorphoses
Ovid
Paper Book
Ovid’s magnificent panorama of the Greek and Roman myths-presented by a noted poet, scholar, and critic.Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture-the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and...
Book Club 2 Go. Pride and prejudice
Austen, Jane
Other
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister...
Siddhartha : an Indian poem
Hesse, Hermann
Paper Book
In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Gazing through the portal of Japanese culture at the amorous exploits of Prince Hikaru Genji, this novel tells the story of a time when indigenous Japanese culture still held prominence over the Chinese culture that would come to dominate Japan.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Shakespeare, William
CD
Shakespeare's most famous play is one of the greatest stories in the literature of the world. Distressed by his father's death and his mother's over-hasty remarriage, Hamlet, prince of Denmark is faced by a specter from beyond the grave bearing a grim message of murder and revenge. The...

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