Books are and have been here to entertain us, teach us and in general, make us feel better. We can explore the world through books, using our imagination and the author’s text. Book reading has taken a setback due to all the entertainment that we can view and enjoy with a click of a button.
Who has hours to read a book, when they can waste hours watching 30 second long clips. That can easily be changed by reading classics, books which have always been great. Here are some that you should definitely read at least once.
1984 – George Orwell
The world has become an Orwellian nightmare. Governments and companies spy on people and tell them what to do, all the time. In all seriousness, 1984 is a novel about a totalitarian society that uses telescreens to control and keep an eye out on the population. They also manipulate the population to do as they want, to snuff out any signs of rebellion.
Read the book and then take a look at your smartphone. See the similarities?
The Lord of the Rings
Three books are in this series so one should prepare for a lengthier reading session. Cast your eyes back to Middle Earth and enjoy a good story about good versus evil and what actually makes good, good. Heroics are entertaining, but are they the true good that we should strive for?
If you want, the Hobbit and Silmarillion will also shed light on the stories of Middle Earth and the world prior to the one as can be seen in the Hobbit and LotR books.
Hamlet
William Shakespeare is to this day one of the most relevant poets and playwrights. Hamlet is one of his most iconic works and this tragedy should point you in the direction of pondering. What is wrong with the world? To be or not to be? Hamlet has plenty of monologues, but each and every one of them is important to the plot and understanding of the play.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
While most would go for Tom Sawyer as the book to read, it is actually Huckleberry Finn that is the book everybody should read. Friendship and societal norms are challenged in this book that seems like a children’s adventure novel but is actually much more.
To Kill a Mockingbird
We all love a good coming-of-age story, especially one which is, while humorous, pretty gloomy at times. This book shows us that the world is a tough place, but that there is beauty in it. Harper Lee hit the nail on the head with this classic.
2000: A Space Odyssey
Thrust into space, on their way to Saturn’s moon Iapetus, Frank Poole, and David Bowman are met with life-threatening situations as they struggle to investigate monoliths that were discovered on Earth and other planets close by.
These are some of the classics that everybody should read at least once in their lives. There are hundreds of such books so start with these and the rest should reveal themselves in no time.