Just Like English Class, But More Fun - Books, Movies, & More

The Hours
by Michael Cunningham

In a novel of love, family inheritance, and desperation, the author offers a fictional account of Virginia Woolf's last days and her friendship with a poet living in his mother's shadow.

Fresh take on: Mrs. Dalloway

The Penelopiad
by Margaret Eleanor Atwood

The author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin presents a cycle of stories about Penelope, wife of Odysseus, through the eyes of the twelve maids hanged for disloyalty to Odysseus in his absence.

Fresh take on: The Odyssey

On Beauty
by Zadie Smith

Struggling with a stale marriage and the misguided passions of his three adult children, long-suffering art professor Howard Belsey finds his family life thrown into turmoil by his son's engagement to the socially prominent daughter of a right-wing icon. By the author of White Teeth.

Fresh take on: Howard's End

Going Bovine
by Libba Bray

Dealing with an illness that will soon result in his death, 16-year-old Cam is intrigued by the stories told by an eccentric girl named Dulcie and so is encouraged to go on a wild road trip across America where their search for a special cure will lead them to the strangest places on the map.

Fresh take on: Don Quixote

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski

A Hamlet-style tale that also celebrates the ancient alliance between humans and dogs follow the coming-of-age of speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.

Fresh take on: Hamlet

A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley

On a prosperous Iowa farm in the 1970s, wealthy farmer Lawrence Cook announces his intentions to divide the farm among his daughters, setting off a family crisis reminiscent of Shakespeare'sKing Lear.

Fresh take on: King Lear

Longbourn
by Jo Baker

A reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the perspectives of its below-stairs servants captures the romance, intrigue and drama of the Bennet household from the sideline perspective of Sara, an orphaned housemaid who becomes subject to the arrival of the militia and the attentions of an ambitious former slave.

Fresh take on: Pride and Prejudice

March
by Geraldine Brooks

In a story inspired by the father character in Little Women and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his marriage and beliefs profoundly challenged by his experiences.

Fresh take on: Little Women