Thinking about this idea of “New Adult” books (which Angela discussed here on Thursday), over on my personal blog I took a look at the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best books of the 20th Century, and found that half of the books on the list fit into one or another definition of New Adult.

As I looked over this list of the 20th century that could be called New Adult, I realized that the “classics” (both of the 20th Century and before) are in many ways the original “Adult Books for Teens.” Books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Call of the Wild, and The Great Gatsby were and are many teens’ first exposure to adult literature: often because they are taught in class, but also because, although they were originally written for adults, they have been reclassified down as young adult or even children’s book (in the case of To Kill a Mockingbird).

So, to try to get a handle on what books to discuss, rather than just the amorphous word “classics”, I went to Rollie Welch’s A Core Collection for Young Adults, 2nd ed. (Neal-Schuman, 2011). Welch lists just under 900 books that he considers to be the core collection that a YA collection should have. Welch says he includes “classic titles that have long been included on recommended reading lists for both high school and college classes.” So I went through Welch’s list and jotted down which titles were originally published for adults. I don’t claim to have been particularly scientific about the process, since there were so many titles to get through, but my rough calculation is that about 90 of Welch’s 900 are (or were) adult books, for a healthy 10%.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Welch includes a number of contemporary popular adult novels like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Lovely Bones, and some Nicholas Sparks books. But the largest group of these adult books are the same books that we all read in high school. Many of the same titles from the Modern Library list: The Great Gatsby, The Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange, The Catcher in the Rye, The Call of the Wild; a healthy contingent are 19th Century Classics like Jane Austen, The Brontes, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Mark Twain; and of course, there is the ever-present Shakespeare.

I don’t intend to start an argument here about the Dead White Men’s Canon, or whether we should be teaching the “classics” in high school. What I’m interested in here is the idea of introducing teens to adult books, whatever books they may be. Indeed, in many cases, as I hinted above, these books have become intrinsically linked with high school and are not even seen as adult books any longer (when was the last time most of us read Huck Finn or Catcher in the Rye?). I think this is a really powerful testimony to the reading abilities of teens, which often gets unwittingly (or maybe sometimes wittingly) disparaged around discussions of YA literature, when, for instance, we say that teens won’t or can’t read a particular challenging book. But we know that many teens are able to read and enjoy Hawthorne, Hemingway, and Hurston.

I don’t have a grand point to make here about the classics.  This is a more a celebration of the fact that teens have been reading adult books for a very long time, and will continue to do so.  For anyone interested, here’s the list I made of the adult books for the Core Collection.  Feel free to discuss any aspect of this list below:

Adams, Douglas, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Adams, Richard, Watership Down Alcott, Louisa May, Little Women Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Atwood, Margaret, Handmaid’s Tale, The Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice Austin, Jane, Pride and Prejudice Babbitt, Natalie, Tuck Everlasting Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre Bronte, Charlotte, Wuthering Heights Burgess, Anthony, Clockwork Orange, A Burroughs, Edgar Rice, Tarzan of the Apes Card, Orson Scott, Ender’s Game Card, Orson Scott, Ender’s Shadow Chabon, Michael, Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales Clarke, Arthur C., 2001: A Space Odyssey De Saavedra, Miguel Cervantes, Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha, The Dickens, Charles, Christmas Carol, A Dickens, Charles, Tale of Two Cities, A Dickinson, Emily , Collected Poems Of Emily Dickinson Dimery, Robert (EDT), 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die Doyle, Arthur Conan, Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Fitzgerald, F. Scott, Great Gatsby, The Golding, William, Lord of the Flies Griffin, John Howard, Black Like Me Gruen, Sara, Water for Elephants Hamilton, Edith, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes Hansberry, Lorraine, Raisin in the Sun, A Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Scarlet Letter, The Hemingway, Ernest, Old Man and the Sea, The Henry, O. , Best Short Stories of O. Henry, The Hosseini, Khaled, Thousand Splendid Suns, A Hughes, Langston, Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes were Watching God Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Keyes, Daniel, Flowers for Algernon King, Stephen, Stand, The King, Stephen, Body, The King, Stephen, Firestarter King, Stephen, Stand, The Knowles, John, Separate Peace, A Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild Le Guin, Ursula, Wizard of the Earthsea Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird London, Jack, Call of the Wild, The Mezrich, Ben, Accidental Billionaires, The: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal Montgomery, Lucy Maud, Anne of Green Gables Moore, Alan, Watchmen Niffenegger, Audrey, Time Traveler’s Wife, The O’Brien, Robert C., Z for Zachariah O’Brien, Tim, Things They Carried, The Orwell, George, 1984 Orwell, George , Animal Farm Pelzer, David, Child Called It, A Remarque, Erich Maria , All Quiet on the Western Front Salinger, J.D., Catcher in the Rye, The Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood Satrapi, Marjane, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Sebold, Alice, Lovely Bones, The Shakespeare, Hamlet Shakespeare, MacBeth Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein Sinclair, Upton, Jungle, The Small, David, Stitches: A Memoir Smith, Betty, Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Sparks, Nicholas, Notebook, The Sparks, Nicholas, Walk to Remember, A Spiegelman, Art, Maus, A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History Spiegelman, Art, Maus II, A Survior’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began Steinbeck, John, Of Mice and Men Steinbeck, John, Grapes of Wrath, The Stevenson, Robert Louis, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, The Tolkien, J.R.R., Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Twain, Mark, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Verne, Jules, Journey to the Center of the Earth, A Verne, Jules, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five Walker, Alice, Color Purple, The Wells, H.G., Invisible Man, The Wells, H.G., Island of Dr. Moreau, The Wells, H.G., Time Machine, The Wells, H.G., War of the Worlds, The Wiesel, Elie, Night Wright, Richard, Native Son Wright, Richard, Black Boy