I know, I know. It came out today, but you're number 372 on the holds list, so what's there to get excited about? Well, I'm number 373, so you can be thankful you're not me (and do try not to spill too much stuff on the book before you give to me, please?). While we wait, I thought we could check out some of the books author Suzanne Collins told Entertainment Weekly are her favorites.
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
A headstrong young woman's life becomes entwined with three disparate men: A dashing soldier, a wealthy landowner and a sheep farmer. (This is where Katniss got her name!)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Thirteen-year-old Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin are guided by unearthly strangers as they go on a journey through space and time to search for Meg's and Charles' scientist father who disappeared while experimenting with a new form of space travel.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words and numbers while finding a cure for his boredom.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Francie Nolan's family experience growing up in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, 1902-1919.
1984 by George Orwell
In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The novel begins after a plane wreck deposits a group of boys, aged six to 12, on an isolated tropical island. The struggle to survive and impose order on their existence quickly evolves from a battle against nature into a battle against their own primitive instincts.
Germinal by Emile Zola
Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
In a small Georgia mill town during the Depression, four misfits form a group that revolves around a deaf-mute whose sole companion has been sent to an insane asylum.
Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway's classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.
