I know predicting the future is always a challenge and full of uncertainties, but I’m still curious to see if you have any predictions of any modern books that might one day be regarded as a classic.
I personally haven’t read any that falls under this category. When I think of classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, or even childrens classics like The Velveteen Rabbit, it’s difficult for me to see exactly what actually made them classics. But maybe you’re better at this than I am. And I would love to hear your guesses on which you think will be a classic one day.
If I had to choose one, I’d hesitantly say The Hunger Games, as it’s easy to read but also has a lot to say about challenging a Communist regime. It was assigned in high school back in 2010. So at least one English teacher saw some literary value in it.
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The Martian is Andy Weir’s most famous book, but I believe in 50 years Project Hail Mary will be regarded as the better work. Unless he writes something that surpasses both.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
100%
The Expanse saga, at least in the scifi circles. It’s just a really good scifi/space opera and the TV series will boost its popularity even further.
If I had to choose one, I’d hesitantly say The Hunger Games, as it’s easy to read but also has a lot to say about challenging a Communist regime.
Um, what? You looked at that regime and thought communist? Lol. That is not a communist regime, it’s clearly capitalist.
Yeah, I did a double take at that. It’s a book about the evils of capitalism, OP. You might want to re-read it.
It might be the conservative mythos that capitalism = freedom and that capitalism and communism are exact opposites, so that no-freedom = communist.
The mid-century Ayn Randian individual vs. collective schema lingers still. How someone who attended high school in 2010, and also cares to read, still hasn’t reasoned his way out of that remedial economic/moral view is sort of concerning.
To me it just seems like a vague, authoritarian aesthetic. Like clearly the “you live in a district and can’t leave” is inspired by the soviet union or communist China, but the “people in the capital are entertained by bread and circuses” feels more like a capitalist critique imo.
It’s a YA novel and I don’t think it is really a critique of anything except authoritarianism / “the man”
Living in a mining town can (and in this case, was) absolutely a critique of capitalism.
Totally agree, I’m no apologist. But the USSR had coal mines as well, with similar levels of exploitation and poverty. So to me it always felt more like a comment on poverty rather than “this is a coal mine in West Virginia”.
Too many mixed aesthetics in HG to be a critique on capitalism alone imo
The govt in the Hunger Games is not communist; it’s very obviously a critique of capitalism and the overconsumption and huge class differences that come along with it.
Harry Potter
Be careful that you don’t confuse “current popularity” with potential classic status. What matters is how other artists view and learn and feed upon in a book.
Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” is a possibility. Emily St John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” could be.
Your English teacher didn’t do a very good job if you came away from The Hunger Games thinking it was a critique of communism!
The hunger games is more about reality tv and child soldiers. Nothing to do with communism lol. Plus the differences in class
If you think the hunger games are a critique of communism… Your English teacher did not do a good job.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life and left me thinking about it and its characters for months afterwards.
There is too much noise today. Sadly it will be “Harry Potter”.
There’s always been too much noise.
What will eventually become “The Classics” are the books that English students fall in love with because they’re the people that are going to be teaching it in 50 years.
Maybe at the college level, otherwise they get handed an “approved” list which are usually older than the 1940’s when there were far fewer books being written, i.e. much less noise.
The newest thing we read in High School was Ordinary People, but the next newest after that was Grapes of Wrath.
Demon Copperhead is the quintessential Appalachian Novel. However, the one thing that’ll make it harder to become a classic is that it won’t be taught in schools, due to the R rated content.
It’s impossible to say - what we love now may fall out of favor and then come back strong or simply disappear … and who knows who will be “rediscovered” 100 years from now.
Underground Railroad no doubt. I suspect My Year of Rest and Relaxation may also achieve “classic status” but that one’s a bit more up in the air
Have you read " Hidden in Plain sight" ? … I have been looking for these books for a while and I heard hidden in plain sight was good. ( I’m.super into quilts, sewing… so it’s up my alley)
The Hunger Games, as it’s easy to read but also has a lot to say about challenging a Communist regime. It was assigned in high school back in 2010. So at least one English teacher saw some literary value in it.
Incredible.