Read in English
Learn English by readingreal books, at your level.
Passage has 106 English books you can read today, all public-domain classics in their full text: 22 beginner, 45 intermediate and 39 advanced. The oldest is Don Quixote (1605), the newest The Faraway Bride (1930). Authors include Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf and G. K. Chesterton.
Picking your first English book
Every English book in Passage carries one of three levels. Beginner books suit readers who know the basics and want a first whole book. Intermediate books expect everyday English to feel familiar. Advanced books have longer sentences and richer vocabulary.
English classics are a good fit for reading practice because so many of them were written to be read aloud in families and serialised in magazines: clear plots, lots of dialogue. Older spellings like “to-day” and “connexion” turn up in the nineteenth-century books, and the grammar note will point them out.
English books for beginners 22
A Little Princess- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Anne of Green Gables
Black Beauty
Daddy-Long-Legs
Doctor Dolittle in the Moon
Emily of New Moon
Five Children and It
Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon- Grimms' Fairy Tales
Just So Stories
Peter Pan
Pollyanna
Shen of the Sea
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
The Jungle Book
The Railway Children
The Secret Garden
The Story of Doctor Dolittle
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Through the Looking-Glass
Intermediate English books 45
A Christmas Carol
A Princess of Mars
A Study in Scarlet
Armageddon 2419 A.D.
Captain Blood
Carmilla- Don Quixote
- Dracula
- Flying for France: With the American Escadrille at Verdun
- Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
Kidnapped
King Solomon's Mines- Little Women
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories- Miss Mole
- Moby Dick
- Sónnica
Tarzan of the Apes- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Blue Castle
The Call of the Wild
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes- The Count of Monte Cristo
The Dunwich Horror- The Faraway Bride
- The Hound of the Baskervilles
The House Without a Key
The Invisible Man
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Lost World
The Man in the Queue- The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
The Prisoner of Zenda- The Return of Sherlock Holmes
The Scarlet Pimpernel- The Sign of the Four
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- The Thirty-Nine Steps
- The Time Machine
The War of the Worlds
The Wind in the Willows
Three Men in a Boat
Treasure Island- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Advanced English books 39
- A Room of One's Own
A Tale of Two Cities
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
An American Tragedy- Crime and Punishment
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Elmer Gantry
Emma- Frankenstein
Great Expectations
Heart of Darkness
Jane Eyre
Kim- Lady Audley's Secret
Last and First Men
Middlemarch
Mrs Dalloway
Oliver Twist
Orlando
Pride and Prejudice
Robinson Crusoe
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
The Age of Innocence- The Brothers Karamazov
- The Circular Study
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales- The Great Gatsby
- The Innocence of Father Brown
- The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
- The Moonstone
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Scarlet Letter- The Three Partners
The Turn of the Screw- The Wisdom of Father Brown
- The Woman in White
To the Lighthouse- War and Peace
Wuthering Heights
Questions about reading in English
Can you learn English by reading books?
Yes, once you know the basics. Reading shows you vocabulary and grammar in real context, and a book gives you thousands of sentences of practice. The two things that make it work are a book at the right level and help with the sentences you can't untangle. Passage marks every English book beginner, intermediate or advanced, and explains any sentence you tap.
What are good English books for beginners?
Passage marks 22 English books as beginner. A few to start with: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Each one is the full original book, and any sentence you tap is explained.
How do I choose my level?
Start one level below where you think you are, and tap freely. If you understand the gist of most pages and only need help with a few sentences each page, the level is right. If you're tapping every line, go down a level.
What language are the explanations in?
You choose: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese. Each explanation gives a natural translation of the sentence, a short grammar note and the key words.
Are the English books free?
The books are public-domain classics. Passage is free to download and free to start. Passage Pro unlocks every book, unlimited explanations, unlimited saved words and all eight practice games, for $24.99 a year or $2.99 a month in the US, and the yearly plan starts with a 7-day free trial.