5 Books You Absolutely Must Read in Your Lifetime (You Better Start Now)
Jewel Team is bringing you our list of books essential to reading for a ‘life well lived’. Unlike famous book series, we are far more realistic, and only recommend you read these five pieces. Easy-peasy!
1 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin
This timeless classic is an ironic and gentle novel from our favourite English writer. We love reading this to time travel back into couple of centuries ago. Film interpretations are great too, but the book will allow you to reproduce all the details just the way you want to. Who said Elizabeth has a face of Keira Knightly? The unhurried sequence of representation is Austin’s signature style which makes her books so delightful to read. We are on to mastering Emma.
2 Vanity Fair, William Thackeray
Undoubtedly, this piece of classic literature is a book for all times. Thackeray describes the English society of the nineteenth century and he compares it with a fair - loud, many-coloured and unprincipled. What is wonderful about this literary work, is that it still applies to modern society. This is a wonderfully sarcastic novel, with rich and detailed language and lasting about eight hundred pages is a delightful way of spending time.
3 Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy is universally known for his monstrous Talmud of War and Peace, which has been recommended to reading by one US president for the purposes of developing stamina and endurance. (We-know-who and we-know-why that individual needed stamina!) Still, being a remarkably fruitful writer, Tolstoy has produced an enormous amount of literary works, some of which are outrageously insane as much as others are remarkably beautiful. Anna Karenina rightfully belongs to the latter category. This is a complex and elegant piece about delicacies of female psychology, and not just a book about “that hysterical woman who threw herself under the train”. Apologies for the spoiler, but now that you know what it all ends like, you are bound to read how it starts.
4 Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling
All eight books of the saga! Although this truly enchanting book has not been around long enough to be referred as ‘all-time classic’, we reckon it has great future belonging to every library around the world. Although we hardly belong to the generation which was lucky enough to be raised while the books have been published, we still enjoy diving right into the middle of this wonderfully-written fairy tale. Another good reason for actually reading the books is that they provide key to understanding the crumpled film adaptation.
5 Plays and stories, Anton Chekhov
Chekhov is a favourite in grad schools and writing classes, but true understanding of his simple yet deep and captious writing style only comes with age. Reader’s age. Chekhov is a very ‘adult’ writer, who is best appreciated when one has experienced life long enough. You need to appreciate the subtleties of the melancholic smile Chekhov’s stories leave for their reader. And like a true masterpiece, Cheknov’s stories reveal new facets of melancholy with every new re-read. Be prepared to a life-long relationship with Chekhov.
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