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

These books fulfill this category for UBN 2025.

Updated January 28, 2025
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...
Frankenstein.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851
Paper Book
This series of beautifully packaged and affordably priced editions of classic works of literature from all over the world.encompasses a variety of periods, themes, and authors.
The catcher in the rye.
Salinger, J. D. 1919-2010.
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...
One hundred years of solitude.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, 1928-
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
Paper Book
Their eyes were watching God.
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paper Book
"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 and enduring books of the twentieth century,...
The Alchemist.
Coelho, Paulo
Paper Book
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams." Every few...
The color purple.
Walker, Alice, 1944-
Paper Book
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...
Nineteen eighty-four.
Orwell, George, 1903-1950
Paper Book
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens...
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
The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles A Penguin Classic Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.