Your English teacher might force these nine classics on you, but as it turns out, they’re actually incredible! See how many of them you can read through this summer:
- To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck
- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
- A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
- Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Night, Elie Wiesel
Here’s a description of a tenth classic that you’ll want to familiarize yourself with.
The War of the Worlds
By H. G. Wells
This is the granddaddy of all alien invasion stories, first published by H.G. Wells in 1898. The novel begins ominously, as the lone voice of a narrator tells readers that “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s…”
Things then progress from a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth’s comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England’s military suffers defeat after defeat.
Which of these books did you like the most? What did you learn and what will you carry with you into the school year? Let us know via social media!
