Personal Canon

A canon in literature is "a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works" or it could be "a criterion or standard of judgment." A personal canon is a private, individual degree, judgment, or approval of literature. These may be books you read over and over again, or are your standards of a particular judgment, comparison, or contrast of other works. They are books that speak to your heart, soul, and mind -- books you do not want to live without. 

Following are my absolute favorite books that are or have become my standard for literature and reading.  They may or may not have a link for review.

classics / fiction / historical fiction

Alcott: Little Women

Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

Austen: Pride and Prejudice / Persuasion / Sense and Sensibility

Bronte: Jane Eyre

Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress in Modern English

Cather: O Pioneers! / My Antonia

Cervantes: Don Quixote

DeFoe: Robinson Crusoe

Dickens: A Christmas Carol / Oliver Twist / A Tale of Two Cities

Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov 

Flaubert: Madame Bovary

Forster: Howards End / A Room With a View

Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Grahame: The Wind in the Willows

Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd / Jude the Obscure / The Mayor of Casterbridge / Return of the Native / Tess of D'Urbervilles / Under the Greenwood Tree

Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms / The Sun Also Rises

Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird

Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Melville: Moby-Dick

Mitchell: Gone With the Wind

Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables

Orwell: 1984

Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago

Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front

Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly

Tolstoy: Anna Karenina / War and Peace

Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Wharton: The Age of Innocence / The House of Mirth / Ethan Frome

Wilder: Little House in the Big Woods / Little House on the Prairie / Farmer Boy / On the Banks of Plum Creek / By the Shores of Silver Lake / Little Town on the Prairie / The Long Winter: First Review Second Review / These Happy Golden Years: First Review Second Review  / The First Four Years: First Review Second Review / A Bonus Review: The Little House Series

Zola: Germinal

non - fiction / histories / biographies

The Bible

Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Beamer: Let's Roll!: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage

Bergreen: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

Boom: The Hiding Place: the Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom, Second review 2022

Brittain: Testament of Youth

Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Equiano: The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings

Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning

Hillenbrand: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Hillman: I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree: A Memoir of a Schindler's List Survivor

Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Johnson: A History of the American People

Lewis: Mere Christianity 

Metaxas: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery / Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Nafisi: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Park: In Order to Live

Paine: Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings 

Popov: Tortured for His Faith, (reread) review

Stewart: Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Thomas: My Grandfather's Son

Thoreau: Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Tomalin: Thomas Hardy

Washington: Up From Slavery

Wells: Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells

Wiesel: Night

Wilder: On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota / On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip From South Dakota (reread) / West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915