Books that impacted us as students

We asked members what books had the most impact on them as students. Do any of these remind you of your school days?

All Books

The hero-narrator of "The Catcher in the Rye" is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices -- but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.

The catcher in the rye

Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010.

"The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period irreversibly encoded in the American identity. Hawthorne built one of the most incisive and devastating human dramas ever written out of a community and its outcasts: Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, whose affair leaves one emblazoned with her sin and the other distraught with hidden guilt; their daughter Pearl, born into ostracism; and Roger Chillingworth, driven to vengeance by hatred. Though these characters face a set of specifically troubling circumstances, their words and actions point to moral truths inherent in human affairs, independent of time and place. The text of this edition, approved by the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association, is the result of an exhaustive examination of Hawthorne's manuscript and other historical records. Robert Milder provides an enlightening new scholarly introduction and bibliography. Tom Perrotta, whose novel The Leftovers--now a hit HBO show--was influenced by Hawthorne's work, provides a thoughtful foreword on how he came to appreciate Hawthorne's masterpiece. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators"--

The scarlet letter : a romance

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864, author.

Walden, or Life in the woods

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world, and did. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battle not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves? You will learn the answers to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this remarkable book. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, "Atlas shrugged" is Ayn Rand's magnum opus, which launched an ideology and a movement. With the publication of this work in 1957, Rand gained an instant following and became a phenomenon. "Atlas shrugged" emerged as a premier moral apologia for Capitalism, a defense that had an electrifying effect on millions of readers (and now listeners) who have never heard Capitalism defended in other than technical terms.

Atlas shrugged

Rand, Ayn, author.

An exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s, this is the story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.

The great Gatsby

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940.

The story of Saleem Sinal, born precisely at midnight, August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent. Saleem's life parallels the history of his nation.

Midnight's children : [a novel]

Rushdie, Salman.

Macon Dead, Jr., known as Milkman, grows up in "his father's money-haunted, death-haunted house with his silent sisters and strangely passive mother" and with his friend Guitar who is connected to the secret avengers called the Seven Days, falls in love with his cousin Hagar, learns from bootlegging Aunt Pilate, and then heads south, lured by the promise of buried gold and the mysteries of his heritage.

Song of Solomon

Morrison, Toni, author.

A collection of stories includes "The Moon is down," which details the transformation of ordinary life under Nazi rule in an unnamed Scandinavian country under German occupation, as well as "Cannery Row," "The Pearl," and "East of Eden."

Novels, 1942-1952 : the moon is down ; Cannery Row ; The pearl ; East of Eden

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.

The general theory of employment, interest and money

Keynes, John Maynard, 1883-1946, author.

Presents a new translation of the classic reflecting the life and times of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars, in a book accompanied by an index of historical figures, textual annotation, a chapter summary, and an introduction.

War and peace

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910, author.

Set in the Culture universe, this is Iain M. Banks' latest novel, following the success of Feersum Endjinn. The Culture ships strive to retrieve an ancient, powerful artefact before it falls into the hands of their rivals.

Excession

Banks, Iain, 1954-2013, author.

From the Publisher: This second volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features his acknowledged masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Written in an incredibly compressed five-month period, the novel had an electrifying impact upon publication in 1939, unleashing a political storm with its vision of America's dispossessed struggling for survival. It continues to exert a powerful influence on American culture, and has inspired artists as diverse as John Ford, Woody Guthrie, and Bruce Springsteen. Tracing the journey of the Joad family from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the migrant camps of California, Steinbeck creates an American epic, spacious, impassioned, and pulsating with the rhythms of living speech. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and has since sold millions of copies worldwide. The text of The Grapes of Wrath has been newly edited based on Steinbeck's manuscript, typescript, and proofs. Many errors have been corrected and words omitted or misconstrued by his typist have been restored. In addition, The Harvest Gypsies, his 1936 investigative report on migrant workers which laid the groundwork for the novel, is included as an appendix. The Long Valley (1938) displays Steinbeck's brilliance as a writer of short stories, including such classics as The Chrysanthemums, The White Quail, Flight, and The Red Pony. Set in the Salinas Valley landscape which was Steinbeck's enduring inspiration, the stories explore moments of fear, tenderness, isolation, and violence with poetic intensity. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, an account of the 1940 marine biological expedition in which Steinbeck participated with his close friend Ed Ricketts, is a unique blend of science, philosophy, and adventure, as well as one of Steinbeck's most revealing expositions of his core beliefs. First published in 1941 as part of the collaborative volume Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck's narrative was reissued separately a decade later, augmented by the moving tribute About Ed Ricketts.

The grapes of wrath and other writings, 1936-1941

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968.

"Science fiction's supreme masterpiece, Dune will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, it is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who will become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. Paul's noble family is named stewards of Arrakis, whose sands are the only source of a powerful drug called "the spice." After his family is brought down in a traitorous plot, Paul must go undercover to seek revenge, and to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream. A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction."--

Dune

Herbert, Frank, author.

"This new translation brings Virgil's masterpiece newly to life for English-language readers. It's the first in centuries crafted by a translator who is first and foremost a poet, and it is a glorious thing. David Ferry has long been known as perhaps our greatest contemporary translator of Latin poetry, his translations of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics having established themselves as much-admired standards. He brings to the Aeneid the same genius, rendering Virgil's formal metrical lines into an English that is familiar and alive. Yet in doing so, he surrenders none of the feel of the ancient world that resonates throughout the poem, and gives it the power that has drawn readers to it for centuries. In Ferry's hands, the Aeneid becomes once more a lively, dramatic poem of daring and adventure, of love and loss, of devotion and death. Never before have Virgil's twin gifts of poetic language and urgent, compelling storytelling been presented so powerfully for English-language readers. Ferry's Aeneid will be a landmark, a gift to longtime lovers of Virgil, and the perfect entry point for new readers."--Dust jacket.

The Aeneid

Virgil, author.

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. The narrator's relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values

Pirsig, Robert M.

Primary source.

The Andy Warhol diaries

Warhol, Andy, 1928-1987, author.

Fear and loathing in Las Vegas and other American stories

Thompson, Hunter S.

Ishi stumbled into the twentieth century on the morning of August 29, 1911, when, desperate with hunger and with terror of the white murderers of his family, he was found in the corral of a slaughter house near Oroville, California. Finally identified as an Indian by an anthropologist, Ishi was brought to San Francisco by Professor T.T. Waterman and lived there the rest of his life under the care and protection of Alfred Kroeber and the staff of the University of California's Museum of Anthropology.

Ishi in two worlds : a biography of the last wild Indian in North America

Kroeber, Theodora, author.

A sanitorium in the Swiss Alps reflects the societal ills of pre-twentieth-century Europe, and a young marine engineer rises from his life of anonymity to become a pivotal character in a story about how a human's environment affects self identity.

The magic mountain

Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955.

Explores the history and concepts of physics, including quantum mechanics and relativity theory, within the framework of Eastern thought to unravel the mysteries of the physical universe.

The dancing wu li masters : an overview of the new physics

Zukav, Gary.

North and South draws on Gaskell's own experiences of the poverty and hardship of life in the industrial north of England. Her heroine, Margaret Hale, is taken from the wealthy south by her nonconformist minister father, to live in a fictional northern town. The stark differences are explored through Margaret's abrupt change in circumstance, and her sympathetic reaction to the plight of the northerners. She comes into conflict with a local mill owner who proposes marriage to her. The two undergo a series of misunderstandings and changes of heart before they are reunited.

North and south

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865.

Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran. A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

The plague

Camus, Albert, 1913-1960, author.

Scout Finch, the young daughter of a local attorney in the Deep South during the 1930s, tells of her father's defense of an African-American man charged with the rape of a white girl.

To kill a mockingbird

Lee, Harper.