If you’re looking to start reading full English novels, you might find yourself lost in the millions of available books out there, unsure as to where you should start. It can be tempting to jump right in and buy a thousand-word fantasy novel, but chances are slim that you’ll comprehend enough of what you read to make it worth your time as a student right at the beginning.
Most teachers suggest that reading in a foreign language is highly effective ONLY when you understand at least 80% of the vocabulary – Otherwise, you’ll find yourself getting hung up on words you don’t understand, rather than focusing on overall sentence comprehension. So, you should try to find a book that matches your vocabulary level, while still being enough of a challenge for you to pick up a few new words along the way.
And don’t forget, reading and writing are absolutely necessary to become a fully fluent English speaker. These skills will really boost your conversational skills, too, since you’ll become more familiar with the process of thinking in English (and in correct English grammar).
Fortunately, we’re here to help. Below, you’ll find a variety of options, each with a brief plot synopsis and an excerpt from the pages. These will be sorted according to level, with the easiest books being placed at the top, and the hardest at the bottom. So, you can progress through this entire list if you feel up for it!
Aesop’s Fables
A collection of English children’s stories and fairy tales.
In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”
“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”
Charlotte’s Web
A short children’s story about a pig who befriends a spider during their time at a farm.
The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.
James and the Giant Peach
A fantasy story about a young child who travels the world from inside a giant peach.
James’s large frightened eyes travelled slowly round the room.
The creatures, some sitting on chairs, others reclining on a sofa, were all watching him intently.
Creatures? Or were they insects?
An insect is usually something rather small, is it not? A grasshopper, for example, is an insect.
So what would you call it if you saw a grasshopper as large as a dog? As large as a large dog. You could hardly call that an insect, could you?
Stuart Little
Stuart Little, a mouse born to human parents, has a variety of adventures in New York City.
When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way.
He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too–wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane.
Harry Potter
Harry Potter, a young orphan living with his surviving family, discovers his aptitude for magic and is invited to join a school for wizards.
Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys’ front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls.
Hatchet
After a devastating plane crash, Brian Robeson is left stranded alone in the Canadian wilderness. Survival becomes the priority.
Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below. It was a small plane, a Cessna 406–a bush plane–and the engine was so loud, so roaring and consuming and loud, that it ruined
any chance for conversation.
Not that he had much to say. He was thirteen and the only passenger on the plane with a pilot named—what was it? Jim or Jake or something—who was in his mid-forties and who had been silent as he worked to prepare for take-off. In fact, since Brian had come to the small airport in Hampton, New York, to meet the plane—driven by his mother—the pilot had spoken only five words to him
The Hunger Games
In an apocalyptic and dystopian future, teenage contestants fight each other to the death in a national competition.
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping. I prop myself up on one elbow. There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them. Sitting at Prim’s knees, guarding her, is the world’s ugliest cat. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash. Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me.
The Giver
In an orderly and plain futuristic society, one child becomes the sole bearer of the communities collective memories and history, and must choose what to do with his newfound knowledge.
It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane.
At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were delivered by cargo planes to the landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the river bank and watched, intrigued, the unloading and then the takeoff directed to the west, always away from the community.
Ender’s Game
A talented child is chosen to become the savior of the human race as an alien invasion threatens impending doom.
The monitor lady smiled very nicely and tousled his hair and said, ‘Andrew, I suppose by now you’re just absolutely sick of having that horrid monitor. Well, I have good news for you. That monitor is going to come out today. We’re going to take it right out, and it won’t hurt a bit.’
Ender nodded. It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.
The Hobbit
An extremely famous fantasy novel about a Hobbit and his quest to retrieve untold riches from the clutches of a fearsome dragon.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Fahrenheit 451
In a dystopian future where books are burned and history is forgotten, one citizen realizes the error in his societies’ ways and tries to change it.
“When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I’d say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule-book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then — motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.”
Montag sat in bed, not moving.
“And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?”
“I think so.”
Lord of the Flies
An island filled with children and no adults soon leads to unparalleled chaos and violent mayhem.
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.
The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.
Romeo and Juliet
Two star-crossed lovers and their tale of romance and secrecy.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d
love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Heart of Darkness
A sailor travels through the Congo rivers to find Kurtz, a man of incredible wealth and fame, but soon discovers that all is not as it seems.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway – a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
Frankenstein
A doctor strives to create life, and must soon recapture the creature he has born.
I am by birth a Genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics; and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; and it was not until the decline of life that he thought of marrying, and bestowing on the state sons who might carry his virtues and his name down to posterity.
That concludes my list of personal recommendations! If you’re looking for a more comprehensive list, check out Goodreads.com, they have huge lists designed for different grade levels (in school) that you can use as a guide. If you decide to read through all of the books here, or similarly challenging books, I can guarantee you’ll come out the other end far more experienced with thinking in English.
