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40 books
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7 voters
American Classics Books
Showing 1-50 of 2,524
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 405 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.93 — 5,797,078 ratings — published 1925
To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback)
by (shelved 377 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.26 — 6,757,961 ratings — published 1960
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 316 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.80 — 3,835,127 ratings — published 1951
Of Mice and Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 297 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.89 — 2,781,206 ratings — published 1937
The Grapes of Wrath (Hardcover)
by (shelved 233 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.02 — 980,113 ratings — published 1939
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Paperback)
by (shelved 216 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.83 — 1,326,005 ratings — published 1884
The Scarlet Letter (Paperback)
by (shelved 188 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.44 — 907,619 ratings — published 1850
East of Eden (Paperback)
by (shelved 182 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.43 — 616,046 ratings — published 1952
Little Women (Little Women, #1)
by (shelved 178 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.17 — 2,417,145 ratings — published 1868
The Old Man and the Sea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 166 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.81 — 1,283,082 ratings — published 1952
Fahrenheit 451 (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 157 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,761,417 ratings — published 1953
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Paperback)
by (shelved 137 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 1,005,202 ratings — published 1876
Moby-Dick or, The Whale (Paperback)
by (shelved 132 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.56 — 607,924 ratings — published 1851
The Sun Also Rises (Paperback)
by (shelved 123 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.79 — 486,727 ratings — published 1926
Slaughterhouse-Five (Paperback)
by (shelved 122 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,463,391 ratings — published 1969
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback)
by (shelved 117 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.82 — 347,963 ratings — published 1929
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 112 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.05 — 1,180,677 ratings — published 1963
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 110 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 442,644 ratings — published 1957
Gone With the Wind (Paperback)
by (shelved 109 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.31 — 1,249,563 ratings — published 1936
The Age of Innocence (Paperback)
by (shelved 104 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 192,411 ratings — published 1920
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback)
by (shelved 102 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 314,095 ratings — published 1940
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by (shelved 95 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 878,641 ratings — published 1961
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
by (shelved 94 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.99 — 380,999 ratings — published 1937
The Crucible (Paperback)
by (shelved 90 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.61 — 456,215 ratings — published 1953
The Color Purple (Paperback)
by (shelved 88 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.28 — 743,279 ratings — published 1982
The Sound and the Fury (Paperback)
by (shelved 88 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.86 — 193,755 ratings — published 1929
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Hardcover)
by (shelved 86 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.20 — 772,604 ratings — published 1962
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Paperback)
by (shelved 84 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 240,795 ratings — published 1852
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Paperback)
by (shelved 80 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 504,614 ratings — published 1943
The Call of the Wild (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 77 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.91 — 465,381 ratings — published 1903
The House of Mirth (Paperback)
by (shelved 75 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 104,525 ratings — published 1905
As I Lay Dying (Paperback)
by (shelved 75 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.72 — 184,217 ratings — published 1930
In Cold Blood (Paperback)
by (shelved 74 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.09 — 717,237 ratings — published 1966
The Awakening (Paperback)
by (shelved 72 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.69 — 224,401 ratings — published 1899
Ethan Frome (Paperback)
by (shelved 71 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.46 — 135,983 ratings — published 1911
Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)
by (shelved 70 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.97 — 481,980 ratings — published 1987
Walden or, Life in the Woods (Paperback)
by (shelved 65 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 202,237 ratings — published 1854
Death of a Salesman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 64 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.59 — 255,516 ratings — published 1949
My Ántonia (Paperback)
by (shelved 62 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.84 — 145,939 ratings — published 1918
Tender Is the Night (Paperback)
by (shelved 61 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.77 — 148,000 ratings — published 1934
The Red Badge of Courage (Paperback)
by (shelved 60 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.30 — 109,252 ratings — published 1895
Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1)
by (shelved 60 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.06 — 151,446 ratings — published 1943
The Pearl (Paperback)
by (shelved 59 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.56 — 265,376 ratings — published 1947
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 58 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.85 — 249,170 ratings — published 1958
Invisible Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 56 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.92 — 200,156 ratings — published 1952
The Bluest Eye (Paperback)
by (shelved 55 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.13 — 292,937 ratings — published 1970
A Streetcar Named Desire (Paperback)
by (shelved 55 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.98 — 331,059 ratings — published 1947
The Yellow Wall-Paper (Paperback)
by (shelved 52 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.07 — 345,555 ratings — published 1892
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
by (shelved 51 times as american-classics)
avg rating 4.30 — 573,734 ratings — published 1969
The Jungle (Paperback)
by (shelved 50 times as american-classics)
avg rating 3.78 — 153,243 ratings — published 1906
“I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound." - Carol Kennicott”
―
―
“We like to think of the old-fashioned American classics as children's books. Just childishness, on our part.
The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has blabbed about children's stories.
Why?—Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.”
― Studies in Classic American Literature
The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children's tales, we miss all that.
One wonders what the proper high-brow Romans of the third and fourth or later centuries read into the strange utterances of Lucretius or Apuleius or Tertullian, Augustine or Athanasius. The uncanny voice of Iberian Spain, the weirdness of old Carthage, the passion of Libya and North Africa; you may bet the proper old Romans never heard these at all. They read old Latin inference over the top of it, as we read old European inference over the top of Poe or Hawthorne.
It is hard to hear a new voice, as hard as it is to listen to an unknown language. We just don't listen. There is a new voice in the old American classics. The world has declined to hear it, and has blabbed about children's stories.
Why?—Out of fear. The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. And it is like trying to use muscles that have perhaps never been used, or that have been going stiff for ages. It hurts horribly.
The world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. It can only dodge. The world is a great dodger, and the Americans the greatest. Because they dodge their own very selves.”
― Studies in Classic American Literature
