A Book That is Considered to be in the "Classic" Literary Canon

These books fulfill this category for UBN 2025.

Updated January 28, 2025
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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...
Frankenstein
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
A stunningly creepy deluxe hardcover edition with spot gloss, black sprayed edges, black-stained pages, and black endpapers. Part of a six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro.
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...
One hundred years of solitude
Garc©?a M©?rquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Now a Netflix original series! "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. . . . García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound,...
Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua.
Ebook
"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...
Their eyes were watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick "A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." --Zadie Smith One of the most important...
The alchemist
Coelho, Paulo
Paper Book
Combing magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino. Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, The Color Purple writes a message of healing,...
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...
The haunting
Jackson, Shirley
Paper Book
The greatest haunted house story ever written--the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series! One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been...
1984
Orwell, George
Paper Book
75th ANNIVERSARY EDITION "Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power."--The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken
Paper Book
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the...
The Odyssey
Homer.
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 "Wilson's language is fresh, unpretentious and lean...It is rare to find a translation that is at once so effortlessly easy to read and so rigorously considered." --Madeline Miller, author of Circe Composed at the rosy...

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