Independent Book Study List
*thanks to Goodreads.com for the following overviews!
17th Century
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Shakespeare – choose a comedy, tragedy, or history you have not previously read.
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Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan) - Often rated as important as the Bible as a Christian document, this famous story
of man's progress through life in search of salvation remains one of the most entertaining allegories of faith ever
written. Set against realistic backdrops of town and country, the powerful drama of the pilgrim's trials and temptations
follows him in his harrowing journey to the Celestial City.
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Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe) - One of Western culture's most enduring myths recounts a learned German
doctor's sale of his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Elizabethan playwright Christopher
Marlowe transformed the Faust legend into the English language's first epic tragedy, a vivid drama that abounds in
psychological insights and poetic grandeur.
18th Century
 Gulliver’s Travels (Johnathon Swift) - Shipwrecked castaway Lemuel Gulliver’s encounters with the petty,
diminutive Lilliputians, the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the abstracted scientists of Laputa, the philosophical
Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Swift’s fantastic and
subversive book remains supremely relevant in our own age of distortion, hypocrisy, and irony.
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Robinson Crusoe (Daniel DeFoe) - Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is
the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and originality of
Defoe's famous book. Robinson Crusoe, set ashore on an island after a terrible storm at sea, is forced to make do with
only a knife, some tobacco, and a pipe. He learns how to build a canoe, make bread, and endure endless solitude. That
is, until, twenty-four years later, when he confronts another human being.
19th Century
 Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen) - Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love
with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behavior
leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to
conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—
and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a
society where status and money govern the rules of love.
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Emma (Jane Austen) - Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and
sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of
others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match
for her protégée Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected.
With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as
Jane Austen's most flawless work.
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Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) - Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners--one of the most popular novels of all
time--that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as
they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.
Independent Book Study List
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Frankenstein (Mary Shelly) - At once a Gothic thriller, a passionate romance, and a cautionary tale about the dangers
of science, Frankenstein tells the story of committed science student Victor Frankenstein. Obsessed with discovering
the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being
from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the creature's hideousness. Tormented by
isolation and loneliness, the once-innocent creature turns to evil and unleashes a campaign of murderous revenge
against his creator, Frankenstein.
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Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) - A wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr. Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff
is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not
reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to
exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the
accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the
poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.
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Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel
regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. She takes up the
post of governess at Thornfield, falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and discovers the impediment to their lawful
marriage in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than
Victorian society traditionally allowed.
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Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens) - After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor
Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men,
Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become
enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will
to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and they soon fall under the lethal
shadow of La Guillotine.
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Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens) - The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken
in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by
evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain
Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance,
the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, in Oliver Twist Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing
in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.
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Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) - In what may be Dickens's best novel, humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to
the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman — and one day, under sudden and enigmatic
circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In this gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge
and reward, the compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is
excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride.
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The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde) - Oscar Wilde's madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret
engagements, and lovers’ entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and
premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a
success on stage for all time periods.
Independent Book Study List

Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) - Like Peter Pan, Dorian Gray wishes to never grow old or ugly. He gets his
heart's desire, but is burdened with a painting of himself that ages instead.
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War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells) - Man had not yet learned to fly when H.G. Wells conceived this story of a Martian
attack on England. Giant cylinders crash to Earth, disgorging huge, unearthly creatures armed with heat-rays and
fighting machines. Amid the boundless destruction they cause, it looks as if the end of the world has come.
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The Time Machine (H.G. Wells) - With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave
explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever
propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the
subterranean Morlocks - who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men
of tomorrow as well.
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Dracula (Bram Stoker) - A true masterwork of storytelling, Dracula has transcended generation, language, and
culture to become one of the most popular novels ever written. It is a quintessential tale of suspense and horror,
boasting one of the most terrifying characters ever born in literature: Count Dracula, a tragic, night-dwelling specter
who feeds upon the blood of the living, and whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, and the
beautiful. But Dracula also stands as a bleak allegorical saga of an eternally cursed being whose nocturnal atrocities
reflect the dark underside of the supremely moralistic age in which it was originally written -- and the corrupt desires
that continue to plague the modern human condition.
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You Never Can Tell (George Bernard Shaw) - The play is set in a seaside town and tells the story of Mrs. Clandon and
her three children, Dolly, Phillip and Gloria, who have just returned to England after an eighteen-year stay in Madeira.
The children have no idea who their father is and, through a comedy of errors, end up inviting him to a family lunch.
At the same time a dentist named Mr. Valentine has fallen in love with the eldest daughter, Gloria. However, Gloria
considers herself a modern woman and claims to have no interest in love or marriage.
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Major Barbara (George Bernard Shaw) - When a Salvation Army officer learns that her father, a wealthy armaments
manufacturer, has donated lots of money to her organization, she resigns in disgust but eventually sees the truth of her
father's reasoning that social iniquity derives from poverty; it is only through accumulating wealth and power that
people can help each other.
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Pygmalion (aka My Fair Lady) - The Pygmalion of legend falls in love with his perfect female statue and persuades
Venus to bring her to life so that he can marry her. But Shaw radically reworks Ovid's tale to give it a feminist slant:
while Higgins teaches Eliza to speak and act like a duchess, she also asserts her independence, adamantly refusing to
be his creation.
20th Century
 Watership Down (Richard Adams) - Fiver and a small group of rabbits, forewarned by a premonition, escapes the
death that befalls the rest of their warren and set off to find a safer place to live. Along the way, the rabbits encounter
many dangers.
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Animal Farm (George Orwell) - Tired of their servitude to man, a group of farm animals revolt and establish their
own society, only to be betrayed into worse servitude by their leaders, the pigs, whose slogan becomes: "All animals
are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." This 1945 satire addresses the socialist/ communist
philosophy of Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Independent Book Study List
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Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) - Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through
clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers.
Bernard Marx seems alone harboring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage
Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress.
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) - A comedic tour de force for sci-fi fans. A group of
interstellar misfits careen through outer space commenting on everything they encounter and some things they don't.
It's the first in a series that includes The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis) - Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer at a British college, is thoroughly disgusted with the
presence of nitwits in the school.
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Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) - Marlowe sets out to find Kurtz, a legendary ivory trader, in the wilds of Africa.
As he journeys through the interior of the continent, Marlowe comes face to face with the brutality of colonialism. Be
on the lookout for shrunken heads.
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A Room with a View (E. M. Forster) - Lucy Honeychurch is in Italy with her aunt when she meets George Emerson, to
whom she is attracted against her better judgment--he is beneath her socially. Lucy must choose between George and
a more "suitable" suitor when she returns to England.
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Lord of the Flies (William Golding) - William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys
marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first, it seems as though it's all going to be great fun; but
the fun before long becomes furious & life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic & death. As ordinary
standards of behavior collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket &
homework & adventure stories—& another world is revealed beneath, primitive & terrible.
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The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro) - Stevens, an English butler who strives for perfection, has difficulty
reconciling his idea that he worked for a great man with the popular reaction against his former employer, whose
connections to Nazis in the World War II era are dubious.

Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) - The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for
someone or something named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a
drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense,
which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language
pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play
remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time.
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The Power of One (Courtenay, Bryce) - A chicken, music, race, boxing and coming of age in South Africa at the
dawn of the Apartheid era.
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Grendel (John Gardner) - The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic
Beowulf, tells his side of the story in a book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
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Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) - Incredibly funny, incredibly tragic memoir about extreme poverty in Ireland in the
Depression.
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The Once and Future King (T.H. White) – Retelling of the King Arthur Tales.
Independent Book Study List
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The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follet) - The spellbinding epic set in twelfth-century England, The Pillars of the Earth
tells the story of the lives entwined in the building of the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known—and a
struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother.
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And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are
invited to a lonely mansion on Indian Island by a host who fails to appear but leaves a recording accusing all of
undetected murder. Cut off by his orders, one by one each die according to a nursery rhyme Ten Little Indians. A
confession in a bottle solves how nobody remains alive.
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The Children of Men (P.D. James) - A story of a world with no children and no future. The human race has become
infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become
commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time
reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience
with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his
desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.
21st Century
 Atonement (Ian McEwan) - On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s
flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. But
Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that
will change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and
into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and
authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon) - Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for
fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules,
and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive
universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favorite (logical) detective, Sherlock
Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is deeply funny, poignant, and fascinating in its portrayal of a person
whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.