The Best Classic Books to Have on Your Bookshelf

"Play It As It Lays" ($12)

Ranked among Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005, Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays" captures the essence of 1960s Los Angeles, with all its glamor and its shadows. It's a very dark look at womanhood and abortion in a pre-Roe landscape. Didion's other classic hits include "The White Album," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," and "Democracy."