In case you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a bunch of extremely rich people made consistently terrible decisions while dressed impeccably, The Great Gatsby has you covered: a story about love, wealth, illusions, and the dangers of throwing parties for people who won’t even stay to help clean up.

Lord of the Flies is what happens when you give a group of schoolboys freedom, no supervision, and zero Wi-Fi. When a plane crashes on a deserted island, stranding a bunch of British boys who were presumably on their way somewhere with proper adult oversight and tea. Miraculously, no grown-ups survive. Tragically, the boys do. They build shelters (badly), maintain a signal fire (inconsistently), and reassure the littluns that the mysterious “beast” on the island probably isn’t real. But things spiral fast, and when they do, the schoolchild in the boys rapidly disappears.

Oliver Twist is the story of what happens when a very small boy makes the catastrophic error of politely asking for more food. Sweet, polite, and apparently terrifying to the adults in charge of the workhouse, they react to his request as though he’s asked for the moon, the stars, and a side of pudding. So starts his unplanned adventure which sees him stroll to London, get arrested, rescued, kidnapped again (London was wild back then), accidentally shot (a bit inconvenient), and swept up into a cast of characters who range from “unexpectedly kind” to “could use a hug and perhaps a sunny holiday.”

Our 4-minute unserious book review about Charlotte Bronte’s classic, Jane Eyre. A woman who absolutely refuses to calm down about injustice, no matter how inconvenient it makes things for everyone involved. A principle we could do with remembering today. It’s a tale of a fierce governess, a reformed brooder, one extremely flammable attic, and the enduring moral that if you simply refuse to compromise your principles for four hundred pages, things may eventually work out.

“If you thought your last family holiday was full of drama, you clearly haven’t met the residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is less a love story and more a multi-generational soap opera set in the English moors, featuring a cast of people who all desperately need therapy and maybe a long weekend at a spa.” A four-minute humorous book review of Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights. A light-hearted literary commentary of the adventures of Cathy, Heathcliff et al, for book lovers and readers – it does contain spoilers of a sort (sorry), but they have been around for over 175 years…