1984

Don't listen to the press — they don't know how many books you've read. While George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is an undisputed literary classic, and also served as the basis for the greatest television ad of all-time, its themes of public manipulation and government surveillance seem especially poignant in recent days. Despite being first released in 1949, it's currently the best-selling book on Amazon, and its publisher just ordered another 75,000 copies. These first-editions are likely to become even more collectible as the years go on, but if they're a little more than you typically spend on dead trees, we'd recommend the recent Penguin Modern Classics edition, with a cover design from David Pearson that's among the best we've ever seen.