Washington Irving's "The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon." It's 30 separate pieces -- two of which you've heard of ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Wi

Washington Irving's "The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon." It's 30 separate pieces -- two of which you've heard of ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle.") But the larger work is a collection of essays by a travel-loving man, so even those two stories are cast as rural tales he'd heard during his travels. They're surprisingly modern -- funny, witty -- yet also very personal. (Irving wrote them in England while dearly missing his homeland of America.) Another interesting book if you're living in California: Two Years Before the Mast. Basically a blog kept by a sailor on a ship in the 1830s -- except he was an educated man who just took the job for his health, so his writing and observations are really succinct and vivid.