The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning.” Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1953): “ Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. The Crucible by Arthur Miller (1953): “ Arthur Miller’s classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in 17th century Salem is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria.”įahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953): “ The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.”Ī Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin (1953): “ Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing–not even murder–to get where he wants to go.”
Invisible Manby Ralph Ellison (1952): “ For not only does Ralph Ellison’s nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.” She is one of those ‘excellent women,’ the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted.” So check out my choices and tell me what you would add or take away!Įxcellent Women by Barbara Pym (1952): “ Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. Somebody else could do their own list of 100 must-read modern classics that has absolutely no overlap with mine, and it would probably be a good list too. This modern classics book list is my best guess about the books that matter from a period of not-quite 50 years in the second half of the twentieth century. And in that spirit, here are my arbitrary rules for what a modern classic is: all the books below were published after 1950 but are at least 20 years old, so nothing after 1997. Literary classifications are arbitrary, in other words. But the term seems to mean something like “books that we think are great and will probably become classics someday but it’s too soon to tell, so we’ll just make a good guess and maybe by giving them that label we can help them stay popular and keep people reading them so they stick around long enough to be classics in their own right.” Part of the problem is that we don’t know what a classic is to begin with, and throwing the word “modern” in front of it only makes things more confusing. But aren’t books from the nineteenth century just straightforward classics? And aren’t books from five years ago too recent to call a classic at all? The term “modern classic” gets thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? I’ve seen lists of modern classics that include books from as far back as the nineteenth century and from as recently as five years ago.
Get The War of the Roses for $1.99 exclusively through Book Riot with this link: Their mutual hatred becomes ammunition in a domestic warfare that escalates in wild and twisted ways until life as they know it is shattered forever. Their extravagant home holds the rich antique collection that originally brought them together, as well as the loving bond they share with their children Evie and Josh.īut when Jonathan finds himself suddenly gripped by what is presumably a heart attack and Barbara confronts the loveless spell between them, things turn sour fast. Jonathan has a stable law career Barbara is an aspiring gourmet entrepreneur with a promising pâté recipe. Jonathan and Barbara Rose are, at first glance, the perfect couple. This modern classics book list is sponsored by The War of the Roses, the modern classic synonymous with love gone wrong.
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