1. All the cool kids are doing it. Actually, all the cool people (and probably some uncool people) are doing it. In a post-Harry Potter world, YA lit is officially trendy—and if you want in on the pop culture conversation, you’re going to have to pick up The Hunger Games or Eleanor & Park. Everyone—from…
So there’s this hobbit. You may have heard of him. He is unwisely chosen to venture beyond the gates of hell to destroy a powerful ring on which the fate of Middle Earth depends—a quest that should ABSOLUTELY kill him but doesn’t. He’s joined by a few burdensome, incompetent fools, mainly to emphasize that these are unlikely heroes (like most British protagonists), and…
The full title of John Bunyan’s 1678 masterpiece is The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream; Wherein is Discovered the Manner of his Setting Out, His Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country. It has been translated into more languages than any book, ever, except for…
Vanity Fair, published in 1847, follows the adult lives of two women opposite in breeding, personality, ambition, hair color, and pretty much everything else. Becky Sharp is a 19th-century Mean Girl, unleashing her inner sociopath at every opportunity, while Amelia Sedley is a naïve wallflower who barely provokes an opinion of any kind. I, for…