This Side of Paradise

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920). Fitzgerald’s first novel, it is widely considered one of the definitive expressions of the "Lost Generation." It focuses on the coming of age of Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy Princeton student, who exemplifies the young men and women of the 20s who grew up to find "all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken."

Tom Jones

Tom Jones  by Henry Fielding (1749). Squire Allworthy provides a loving home to his bad nephew Blifil and the bastard orphan Tom. Lusty Tom is sent away after an affair with a local girl whom Blifil desires, and he begins his picaresque adventures on the way to London, including love affairs, duels, and imprisonment.

Treasure Island

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1881–82). Young John Hawkins was told to beware a man with one leg. But after discovering a treasure map, he acquires a ship and hires—you guessed it—one-legged Long John Silver to cook for his ship and hire the crew, a band of villainous pirates.

Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (1759–67). Sterne promises the “life and opinions” of his protagonist. Yet halfway through the fourth volume of nine, we are still in the first day of the hero’s life thanks to marvelous digressions and what the narrator calls “unforeseen stoppages”—detailing the quirky habits of his eccentric family members and their friends.

True Grit

True Grit by Charles Portis (1968). In this epic and often comic tale of retribution, greed, and ambition, sixty-nine-year-old spinster Mattie Ross recalls her youthful struggle to hunt down her father’s killer in the wild Indian territory of the 1870s. While Ross studies her scripture, she breaks bread with the foul-mouthed, seldom-sober Marshall who is helping her.