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C ast your mind back 20, 30, maybe even 40 years: It is around this time of the summer that, as a teenager in school, you would be scrambling to read the books on your assigned summer reading list. Often, this list would include the classics—Orwell, Steinbeck, Hemingway—and often, you would have left it to the last minute.
Most teenagers simply do not appreciate the beauty of a reading list, nor the importance of sinking into canonical texts. These books are iconic for a reason. They transport us, they transform us, and they stay with us. At the time, we may not have given this the weight it deserved, but now we can. Our Marketplace shelves are stacked with the same books we may have shunned as half-formed humans, but now understand to be culturally—and spiritually—significant.
This week's shortlist allows us to right the wrongs of our youth by acquiring rare and beautiful copies of the books that changed our lives, even if we embraced their lessons only reluctantly at the time.
If the words "last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again," live rent free in your head, this might be the book for you. This first edition, first impression, dating from 1938, is being sold with an accompanying letter penned by Du Maurier in which she references the famous first lines of the book.
Few dystopian novels have imprinted themselves in our culture like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Without this book we would not have the disconcerting concepts of the watchful Big Brother, the punishing Thought Police, or the mind-bending Doublethink. The book has proven to be so prophetic and canny, that it is constantly being referenced in the public discourse. This first edition from the United Kingdom's printing offers an opportunity to own the source material.
John Steinbeck was one of America's most influential writers of the 20th century. The Grapes of Wrath was released in 1939, and chronicles the plight of sharecroppers in the Dust Bowl during The Depression. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction as well as the National Book Award. Its release came after another Steinbeck reading list classic, Of Mice and Men, and before his triumphant East of Eden.
It is difficult to find a first edition of Hemingway's Spanish War epic in such nice condition. The striking black background tends to show scratches and rubs, and the red and blue of the spine are generally found faded. This one, however, shows only the slightest wear, commensurate with it's 86 years of age. If Hemingway's minimalist prose has found its way into your heart, this book belongs in your collection.
Another Nobel laureate, William Faulkner distinctive depictions of life in Mississippi have made him a canonical figure in American fiction. The Sound and the Fury tells the story of the fall of a grand Southern family through the generations, utilizing multiple narrators and stream-of-consciousness technique to unsettle and haunt the reader.
