Students often look for must read classics to gain knowledge and life lessons. Among the hundreds of thousands of books to read in college, a few are actually worth reading. If you are one of the people interested in reading classics, you can get a list that is available online on your local library site for books that are worth reading. The list below is non-exhaustive, but it offers books that students can start with.

Best Books That Every Student Should Read

1. Don Quixote

The story follows the life of Alonso Quixano. He read a lot of chivalric and romance novels, and eventually, the man lost his sanity. He believed that he lives in the era of knights, and chivalry is antiquated. Alonso Quixano started to go to inns and demanded that he should be treated like a knight. He saved a young boy and made the master swear to treat the boy fairly only to have his wishes denied after he has left the scene. The book is one of the samples of a world where individuals may be sometimes right even if they are alone in their endeavors.

2. Hamlet

You might have to write a Hamlet essay. This tragedy is about revenge and deceit. One of the free essay examples online discusses research papers on Hamlet. The hamlet essay describes the story of how a young Hamlet seeks revenge for the murderer of his father and provides criticism regarding protagonists as well as antagonists’ actions. Hamlet can’t understand why his mother married Claudius, the accused murderer just after a month after the death of his father. He acted mad to investigate Claudius. The rest became a story of deception with friends, accusing Ophelia of unfaithfulness and a lot more. This tragedy became popular with Hamlet’s soliloquy of “To be or not to be?”

3. The Grapes of Wrath

This novel is one of the best books for college students. It was written by John Steinbeck, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category. The story is about the adventures of an Oklahoma farmer as he moves his family into California to find work. The setting was the Great Depression, and the book showed valuable lessons of courage, love, perseverance and friendship. Tom Joad is the main character of this story, and when he has moved with his family to California, he found out that the workers get exploited, have low wages and some of the farmers almost starve. They organized a labor union, which turned violent.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird

If you ask your professors what books should I read while in university, there’s a huge chance that they will recommend you “To Kill a Mockingbird.” This is a story about two kids, Scout and Jem, living in the fictional town of Maycomb. Their father, Atticus, was a lawyer and agreed to defend a black man called Tom Robinson from being convicted of rape. You can research and write a paper on the topics and burning issues revealed in the book.

5. The Scarlet Letter

The story revolved around Hester Prynne, who conceived a daughter and lived a life of sin, guilt, and repentance. Hester was required to wear a Scarlet Letter A on her dress because she was sentenced to public humiliation. The events described were in the time of Puritan Boston, where people were very conservative.

These are just some of the best books ever written. They have stood the test of time as they expressed truth, conflicts and life. If a student considers the period it was written, he or she will discover that the book was influenced heavily by the events of the time. There are themes of love, death, hate, faith as well as life that touched the emotions of many people. No matter who is reading the book, the situations and the characters still have connections to the events and the feelings present in today’s lives. These masterpieces show how history can make little changes to human behavior as well as attitude.

Reading Literature while in College

All in all, remember that it is better to open yourself to the world of literature while you are studying as It helps in having an open mind, knowing more information about the previous times and getting insights on what the future holds. If you want to read the best books of all time, look no further than your university library. You can also check online PDFs and electronic editions if you can’t find some of the classics. The list above contains only a few great examples of literary creations. And there is one thing for sure, if you start reading classic literature, your life will never be the same again.