SuperSummary Staff Picks
Browse our Staff Picks Collection to find your next reading recommendation, courtesy of our own team of book lovers. With selections ranging from nonfiction titles to plays, poetry, and novels, this diverse Collection has something to offer every literature lover.
Hattie Owen’s life changes the summer she turns 12 and meets the young uncle she never knew existed in Ann M. Martin’s middle-grade novel, A Corner of the Universe (2002). Uncle Adam has been kept a secret because of his mental problems. Adults have trouble handling his emotional extremes, but shy Hattie finds a true friend in her exuberant uncle. Adam teaches Hattie to explore life beyond the safety of her front porch. As Hattie... Read A Corner of the Universe Summary
American Born Chinese is a graphic novel published in 2006 by the American author and illustrator Gene Luen Yang. Through three interweaving stories that span from the 16th century to the present, the novel explores issues of Chinese American identity, anti-Asian racism, and assimilation. American Born Chinese is the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award. The novel also won both the Printz Award from the American Library Association and the... Read American Born Chinese Summary
Published in 1945, Animal Farm by George Orwell (1903-1950) achieved immediate success and remains one of Orwell’s most popular works. A political satire in the guise of a moving and whimsical animal fable, the novella is about a group of farm animals who overthrow their owner, Mr. Jones, and establish animal rule. Although the animals start out with high hopes for Animal Farm as a harmonious and just utopia where “all animals are equal” (19)... Read Animal Farm Summary
A Single Shard (2001) is an award-winning, middle-grade historical novel by Korean American author Linda Sue Park. Park has written multiple children’s books, picture books, and volumes of poetry. Some of her better-known titles include A Long Walk to Water (2010), The Thirty-Nine Clues series in nine volumes (2010), and Prairie Lotus (2020). Much of her historical fiction is based on Korean history. A Single Shard is intended for readers in grades 5 to 7... Read A Single Shard Summary
James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones is a guide to adopting good behaviors through incremental changes to your everyday routines. Avery first published the book in 2018, and this guide refers to the ebook edition. The book has unique pagination, with the page numbers beginning again at the start of each new chapter. Clear likely numbered his book this way because of his emphasis... Read Atomic Habits Summary
American author Karen Cushman’s middle grade novel, Catherine, Called Birdy, explores the life of a young woman in 13th-century England. Published in 1994, the book won the Newbery Honor the following year. It is currently being adapted for the screen by actor, writer, and director Lena Dunham. This detailed work of historical fiction immerses the reader in the very different world of medieval England, with its emphasis on religion as the organizing force behind daily... Read Catherine, Called Birdy Summary
Daisy Miller is a novella by Henry James, first published in Cornhill Magazine in 1878 and in book form a year later. This short piece of fiction explores the differences in class and social expectations in America and Europe, especially for young women just before the turn of the 20th century. James was a member of a prominent and wealthy American family; his education and travels to England and continental Europe allowed him to gain... Read Daisy Miller Summary
Dances with Wolves, a historical-romance novel by Michael Blake, was published in 1988. It tells the story of a Civil War soldier posted to the frontier who meets the buffalo-hunting Comanche people, learns their ways, and becomes one of them, fighting alongside them against the many threats they face. The book became the basis for a blockbuster film that won seven Academy Awards. The 2002 edition contains a Foreword by the author; the e-book version... Read Dances with Wolves Summary
Premiering in 1975, Death and the King’s Horseman is a play written by Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. The play is set in Oyo, Nigeria, during World War II and tells the story of Elesin Oba, the titular king’s horseman who must die by ritual suicide after the Yoruba king dies. The colonial government stops Elesin’s suicide, but the text also suggests that Elesin, a robust man full of life, might not have fulfilled his duty even... Read Death and the King's Horseman Summary
Giovanni’s Room, originally published in 1956, is a romantic tragedy written by author and activist James Baldwin. The book follows American protagonist David’s life and relationships in France during the 1950s. David tries to come to terms with his sexuality after falling in love with Giovanni, an Italian barman, but he also seeks the safety of his heterosexual relationship with another American expatriate, Hella. Due to the story’s depiction of diverse sexual orientations, the novel... Read Giovanni's Room Summary
Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) is American economist John E. Stiglitz’s second major work, published shortly after he became a Nobel laureate. It explores and critiques the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) policies between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Since Stiglitz was a senior vice president of the World Bank between 1993 and 1997, he uses insider knowledge to explain certain structural and functional aspects of the IMF that remain opaque to the public. His... Read Globalization and Its Discontents Summary
Written by Andrew Sean Greer and published in 2017, Less is a satirical comedy novel. It portrays the journey of Arthur Less, who after a difficult breakup plots a round-the-world trip to better understand himself. It won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Plot SummaryApproaching 50, Arthur Less sits in a hotel lobby waiting to be picked up for a literary event. He is a writer and will be interviewing another writer, albeit a sci-fi author... Read Less Summary
Measure for Measure is a play written by William Shakespeare. It was first performed in 1604 and is considered one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” because of its ambiguous tone that shifts between tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare was a prolific poet and playwright during the Elizabethan and Jacobean era. While his earlier works were primarily comedies and histories, Measure for Measure was written during the period in which Shakespeare began to write many of his most... Read Measure For Measure Summary
Meditations is a collection of prose philosophical reflections and exercises composed in Koine Greek by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who lived from 121-180 and ruled from 161-180. Though the precise dating of his compositions is unknown and they are not believed to be presented in chronological order, at least some of the books were written while he was on military campaign in the north of Europe during his reign. Scholars are generally in consensus that... Read Meditations Summary
“Meg Merrilies” (sometimes titled “Old Meg she was a gipsy” or simply “old Meg”) is a short, playful ballad by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was written on Keats’s walking tour of northern England and Scotland in 1818. At the time, Keats was worried about the health of his brother, Tom, and about his own health; the tuberculosis that would soon kill Tom had already begun to manifest in Keats. While his doctor... Read Meg Merrilies Summary
Many scholars agree that “Old Pond” (1686) by Matsuo Bashō is one of the most—if not the most—famous haiku of all time. The term “haiku” translates as “play verse,” and though “Old Pond” appears whimsical and simple—a frog jumping into water and the subsequent splash—Bashō utilizes various literary devices such as key words and onomatopoeia to ensure this three-line poem is both didactic and enjoyable. “Old Pond” is instructional, especially for its use of common... Read Old Pond Summary
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is one of several bestselling nonfiction works by science writer and humorist Mary Roach. Published in 2010, the work focuses on the human side of space travel and offers behind-the-scenes accounts of peculiar and taboo topics such as sex, vomit, and toilets in space. Roach writes from a candid, outsider’s point of view and demystifies some of the grandeur of space travel by reporting... Read Packing for Mars Summary
Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral recounts the story of a young Black woman in the 1920s who decides to pass as white. Ostensibly a coming-of-age story, the novel features a complex treatment of racial barriers and gender inequalities. While the trajectory of the novel is straightforward and relatively typical for the bildungsroman—young woman leaves home, discovers herself through a series of obstacles she must overcome, and finally learns how to... Read Plum Bun Summary
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking is a nonfiction book by Susan Cain, published in 2012. It is considered part of the psychology and self-help genres. The book made several bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio. It also was voted the best nonfiction book of 2012 by the Goodreads Choice Awards and has been translated... Read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Summary
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare written between 1592 and 1594. It is one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays and his second longest. The play depicts the rise of King Richard III of England, also known as Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Shakespeare portrays Richard as a Machiavellian tyrant who uses lies and violence to unjustly seize the throne during a politically turbulent period of England’s history known as the Wars of the Roses... Read Richard III Summary
Published in 2011, Rules of Civility is American author Amor Towles’ acclaimed debut novel. Set at the end of the 1930s during The Great Depression, the narrative follows spunky roommates Katey Kontent and Evelyn Ross as they make their way up the social ladder in New York society. Though much of the narrative takes place at the end of the 1930s, the preface and epilogue are set in 1966 and provide a bookended point of... Read Rules of Civility Summary
She Stoops to Conquer is a play by British writer Oliver Goldsmith, first performed in 1773. The play is a comedy of manners and a romance set in 18th-century England. Goldsmith was an Anglo-Irish poet and dramatist and this play is his most popular and well-known work, with performances still regularly occurring in the 21st century. In 1778, John O'Keeffe wrote a successful sequel to the play, entitled Tony Lumpkin in Town. She Stoops to... Read She Stoops to Conquer Summary
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is widely regarded as a foundational text of the 20th century environmental movement. Originally published as a series in The New Yorker, Carson’s essays carefully articulate the impacts of widespread chemical use for insect and plant control. Throughout the text, Carson emphasizes the ways that humans disregard the interrelation of species on earth, and argues that as a result, humans are at a pivotal moment. If methods of insect control are... Read Silent Spring Summary
The Book of Margery Kempe is a 15th-century autobiography of an English mystic, wife, and mother who devoted much of her life to Christian spirituality. Kempe (b. ca. 1373) was a semi-literate member of the upper-middle class from King’s Lynn, a mercantile town in Norfolk, a county in eastern England. She gave birth over a dozen times before she convinced her husband to embrace a chaste marriage. Kempe claimed to have divine revelations in which... Read The Book of Margery Kempe Summary
“The Grand Inquisitor” is an embedded narrative, or a story within a story, contained in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov. In the novel, “The Grand Inquisitor” is a prose poem composed by the character Ivan Karamazov. Its fictional author, who writes this poem in an increasing state of despair, recites this work to his younger brother, the novice monk Alyosha. “The Grand Inquisitor” imagines Jesus Christ coming to Seville at the time of... Read The Grand Inquisitor Summary
Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last is a work of speculative fiction released in 2015. The novel is a reworking of her Positron series for the website Byliner: four interconnected stories that were digitally released as episodes over the course of a year, starting in March 2012. The project aimed to recapture the literary tradition of serialization, but the final installment was never released, and the novel is intended to bring things together and provide... Read The Heart Goes Last Summary
Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams is a landmark work in the field of psychoanalysis. First published in 1899, it is one of Freud's most famous and influential books. At its core, the book explores the significance of dreams in revealing the unconscious desires, fears, and conflicts of the individual. Freud argues that dreams are not just random collections of images and sensations, as was commonly held in his day. Neither are they inspirations from... Read The Interpretation of Dreams Summary
The Last Letter from Your Lover is a 2010 romance novel by British journalist and writer Jojo Moyes. It centers on the interconnected lives and romances of two women living in London at different times. The first, Ellie Haworth, is a journalist in 2003 who comes across a set of love letters while researching the 1960s. The letters tell the story of Jennifer Stirling, the wife of a wealthy industrialist, and her intense affair with... Read The Last Letter From Your Lover Summary
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry drew heavily on his own experiences when writing his 1943 novella, The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). Like the story's first-person narrator, Saint-Exupéry was a pilot, and the inspiration for the book's central events came from his own 1935 crash-landing in the Sahara Desert. As the story begins, the narrator is still a young child showing off his drawings of boa constrictors eating elephants to the adults around him. The adults react... Read The Little Prince Summary
The Passage is a 2010 novel by Justin Cronin. It is the first novel in a post-apocalyptic horror series that includes The Twelve and City of Mirrors. The Passage is Cronin’s take on the vampire genre. He uses world-building to examine themes of Passages and Transitions, Vampirism as a Metaphor, and The Value of Life. The Passage was well-received and was adapted into a television series for the Fox Network, which aired its final episode... Read The Passage Summary
Philosopher Peter Singer, known for his uncompromising commitment to utilitarian principles, published his opinion editorial “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” in The New York Times Magazine on 5 September 1999. In the essay, Singer argues that the inhabitants of affluent countries have a moral obligation to donate a significant portion of their wealth to charities that can save lives around the world.Singer begins by describing a situation from the 1998 Brazilian film Central Station... Read The Singer Solution to World Poverty Summary
Composed at the turn of the 12th century, La Chanson de Roland (translated as The Song of Roland) recounts the events surrounding the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 CE. The Song of Roland is likely the oldest surviving poem in French and was immensely popular across Europe during the Middle Ages. The poem establishes many tropes and themes that have come to characterize medieval chivalric romances, but Roland is also an epic poem in... Read The Song of Roland Summary
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), by Eric Hoffer, is a philosophical treatise that explores the question of why ordinary people join mass movements and become fanatical devotees of what they perceive as a holy cause. Hoffer argues that prospective fanatics—the soon-to-be true believers—experience personal frustration so intense that their strongest desire is to lose their individuality altogether by surrendering to something greater than themselves. Mass movements exploit this frustration... Read The True Believer Summary
The Woman Warrior (1976) is an experimental memoir by Chinese-American author Maxine Hong Kingston. The book weaves together stories of Kingston’s childhood in California and her mother’s youth in rural China with folklore, legend, and myth, defying easy genre classification.The book is divided into five parts. In the first, “No-Name Woman,” Kingston imagines different life stories for an aunt she never met—a woman who drowned herself and her baby after being expelled from her village... Read The Woman Warrior Summary
Ulysses is a 1922 novel by Irish author James Joyce. The story is a loose adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, portraying a day in the lives of several characters who live in Dublin, Ireland, in June 1904. Ulysses proved controversial on release due to accusations of obscenity but is now celebrated as one of the most important and influential works in the English language. This guide is written using the 1998 Oxford World... Read Ulysses Summary
Walk Two Moons is perhaps the most famous work of Sharon Creech, a celebrated author of young adult fiction. The novel blends elements of both a coming-of-age narrative and a road story, and is set in the same literary universe as several of Creech’s other works, including Absolutely Normal Chaos (1990) and Chasing Redbird (1997). Following its 1994 publication, Walk Two Moons won numerous awards, including the 1995 Newbery Medal and the 1995 Children’s Book... Read Walk Two Moons Summary
When They Call You a Terrorist is a nonfiction memoir published in 2018 by the American authors and activists Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele. Subtitled A Black Lives Matter Memoir, the book chronicles Cullors’s early life in Los Angeles and her role in cofounding Black Lives Matter, a decentralized racial justice movement established after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin shooting. The book’s title refers to accusations of terrorism lobbed at Cullors and her... Read When They Call You a Terrorist Summary
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin is a middle grade fantasy fiction novel that takes inspiration from Chinese folklore and details the journey of a young girl, Minli, as she embarks on a hero's quest to improve her family’s circumstances. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon became a New York Times bestseller and received a Newbery Honor Award and the 2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Lin penned a companion book... Read Where The Mountain Meets The Moon Summary