Reading is not just a habit but a way of life, and there could be no better motivation to read classic novels than on Book Lovers Day. From Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, classic novels have entertained readers, educated students and enriched minds for centuries.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and check out the names of those books that everyone must read at some point while growing up. And you can also use this article as a reference in case you have missed any of the titles, and read them before the next Book Lovers Day.

Adventures worth going on

Let’s start with novels where something adventurous takes place, such as going to the centre of the earth, travelling around the world in 80 days, or searching for a pirate’s treasure where X marks the spot. Yes, writers have been imaginative in their plots ever since it became known to them that readers want to read to escape reality. That’s why I would recommend Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island to anyone who wants to go on an adventure to find a pirate’s treasure.

Penned by the Scottish author in 1883, the plot revolves around a youngster named Jim Hawkins, who finds himself in the centre of a treasure hunt. Add a sailing vessel, a one-legged cook and a local physician, and you have a team that had the means to find Captain Flint’s treasure. Unknown to them, a twist in the tale waited for them and things changed for the worse when they reached the Treasure Island. Written in the first-person narrative, the readers can see everything develop from Jim Hawkins’ eyes and that’s what made the novel interesting back then. And even today, it is a must-read book for all youngsters.

Then there is Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days in which a wealthy Englishman Phileas Fogg and his valet Jean Passepartout accept a wager to travel around the world in — you guessed it! — 80 days. Unknown to them, a Scotland Yard detective named Fix also tails them since he suspects Fogg is a bank robber, as he fits the vague description. Does Fogg manage to complete his journey in the 1870s when there were no airplanes and if he does, how does he to do that, is what would interest the readers the most. The duo meets people from different cultures and also helps a few souls on their way, which is why this book shouldn’t be given a miss.

And then there is The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling’s classic that has been converted into multiple films in Hollywood. Published in 1894, the plot of the novel revolves around a young boy named Mowgli, who was raised by wolves after they find him in the jungle when he was a baby, and whose best friend is Baloo, the bear. His nemesis is Shere Khan the tiger, who regards himself as the lord of the jungle and against whom Mowgli takes a stand in the climax. The book teaches its readers a lot of things, including how to survive in a ‘jungle’, how to respect authority and when to rebel, and how to be there for friends.

Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth is also an interesting read as this time he takes the readers into the Earth instead of around it; Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were game changers for children literature when they were published in the 1830s and 1880s respectively. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was intended as a satire when it was published in 1726, but the story has evolved into a classic tale where first Gulliver finds himself to be a giant in the land of tiny people and later is the ‘tiny’ one in a land of giants.

And if you haven’t read Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe then you need to brush up your reading skills. It is also at times considered as the first major English novel, since it predates even Gulliver’s Travels by seven years. Although the plot might seem dated after 300 odd years, when the novel came out, it was well received because it revolved around a castaway who spent 28 years on an island, alone at first and was later joined by his ‘Man Friday ‘, a term that has become synonymous to a friend over the years. How Robinson Crusoe managed to stay alive on the island and who did he encounter during his time is what makes this novel worth your time.

Fantasy for you

And if you are not into the adventure genre, we have something fantastic for you — the ‘Fantasy’ category, in which we will discuss stories that have become part of our lives without our knowing it.

If you are into moralistic stories, then you might have heard of The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights, which could be termed English’s first-ever cliffhanger tales, a collection of largely Middle Eastern stories originating over centuries and translated into English from Arabic by Sir Richard Burton, in the 19th-century. The so-many-stories-in-one-book technique was devised by the narrator of the stories Scheherazade, who was the wife of the ruler Shahryar and told him one story a night, leaving it on a cliffhanger so that he wouldn’t send her away, as was his custom. She continued to do so for 1001 nights and we can’t be more thankful to her, because those stories continue to shape the lives of many who have come across them.

Aesop’s Fables and Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales are also compilations of some of the best moralistic stories we might have come across in our lives. While Aesop’s tales were carried on by generations through memory and were brought into print in the 1480s, Hans Christian Andersen’s 150-odd tales came out between the 1830s and 1840s. Some of the best-known tales teaching the importance of virtue and resilience to children include The Little Mermaid, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Princess and the Pea, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, and Thumbelina. And from Aesop’s Tales, we got the story about The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Crow and the Pitcher, to name a few, which have been instrumental in shaping many lives.

Also, if you are wondering who was behind stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Hensel and Gretel, then the credit for those stories goes to Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Grimm brothers Jacob and Wilhelm, who came up with over 200 such stories between the 1810s and 1850s.

Your interest in fantasy would peak when you will go through Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass, which revolves around a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. She gets to meet different kinds of characters during her adventures, including the Mad Hatter, the King and Queen of Hearts, and of course, the White Rabbit whom she follows into the rabbit hole. He follows the same process in the sequel with similar results, and despite being published between 1865 and 1971, both the books are still well received by children and adults alike.

Anna Swell’s Black Beauty may have been marketed as an adult book when it came out in 1877, but since it teaches readers how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect, it is considered more of a children’s classic today. Take it as an autobiography of a horse named Black Beauty in England at a time when horses were used to pulling cabs. The book follows the life of Black Beauty from his carefree days on an English farm to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to finally his happy retirement in the country. How he manages to go through his life is what makes this novel a wonderful book for children, since every tale he recounts teaches some sort of lesson to the readers.

Then there is P L Travers’ Mary Poppins, J M Barrie’s Peter Pan, C S Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Winnie the Pooh series by A A Milne, all important series to be read and cherished when young, because of their moralistic nature. They were all repeatedly brought to TV and film screens, so if you have watched them but not read them, now is the time to get your hands on the paperback version and travel to a land far, far away, without moving from your reading chair.

Mysteries abound

And finally, in the ‘Mystery’ category, we have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which at the time of its publishing in the early 1890s wasn’t meant for children, but over the years it has become something every teenager should read. Of course, some of his stories are in the school curriculum as well, but reading the first batch of the ‘Holmes Adventures’ is good for your mental health. After all, had it not been for The Red-Headed League, many wouldn’t have found out why a red-headed guy was offered a job that would keep him away from his pawnshop; also, the way Sherlock Holmes deduced the identity of an unknown man from his hat in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle would make you fall in love with the world’s first consulting detective, for sure.

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 5th, 2023