Books to Read Before College

If someone would've given me a heads-up before starting college about books I should read, I would have had it easy. English professors are always referencing some book in relation to another. It makes sense. If you are struggling with the content of one novel, comparing it to another may lend some clarity. Not to mention- if you are well versed in the book department, you will have killer essays. It's always great to reference a classic to demonstrate how thoroughly you've analyzed your reading. Here are some books that will undoubtably be mentioned at some point in college:

1. 1984 by George Orwell

2. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

4. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

5. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

7. Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov

8. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

9. The Stranger by Albert Camus

10. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

11. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

12. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

13. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

14. Candide by Voltaire

15. Beloved by Toni Morrison

16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

17. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

18. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros

19. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift

20. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

21. The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer

22. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

23. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

24. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

25. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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