101 Great Books List recommended by the College Board. (Hat Tip: Michele)
The books in bold are the ones I, just like Michele (I'm all about
originality here), read either in high school or in college. Or during
some point in time during my adult life.
I should probably note that the English department at my high school
was the largest department within the entire school. More than a few of
the teachers had their MA's and had started work on their PhD's and
were teaching literature at the college level, but were sick and tired
of the "publish or perish" business so prevalent in universities that
they came and taught at my school. These teachers, of course, had some
rather unorthodox views about classic literature and passed these ideas
along. You'll notice them when you come to them in my list. Achebe,
Chinua - Things Fall Apart Agee, James - A Death in the Family Austin, Jane - Pride and Prejudice Note that the misspelling of Austen's
last name is done by the people who force your kids to study their
asses off for the SAT. I love Austen. This is my favorite novel of
hers. Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain Beckett, Samuel -
Waiting for Godot Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre Honestly. What 17 year old girl hasn't read this one?
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights Ditto.
Camus, Albert - The Stranger Still don't know what it was about.
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop I grew up in Nebraska. She's our most famous author. I liked My Antonia better, though. I was told the public school kids had to read "O Pioneers," but we never had to.
Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote I'd rather watch The Man From La Mancha
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness Never read this, but I did read Lord Jim We went through it sentence by sentence and deconstructed the language. Oy.
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans American Lit.
If I'm remembering correctly, it was the first American novel. Or was
Fenimore Cooper the first American novelist? Ah, who cares. Best
character name that SO didn't fit the character---Natty Bumppo! Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno And people worry that their kids see too much
violence on TV. Hmmph. Yeah, yeah, I know. Morality tale. Still, one of
the goriest books I've ever read.
Defoe, Daniel-Robinson Crusoe Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment Convinced me at age seventeen I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Russians. Ever.
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays Yawn.
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies I never had to read this
for class. This book was for the level three girls (translation: not
the brightest bulbs in the box) But my friend was level three and
needed help so I read it to help her.
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms Gag. I hate Hemingway.
Always have. I'd only read a few of his short stories, and one of them
described this WWI Vet camping, all of his buddies were dead, he was
sad. I remember he was opening a can of oranges to go with his fish
supper and it took FOREVER for this guy to put one in his mouth. This
overly described slice of orange was supposedly a metaphor for loss and
war being horrible and all of that bullshit. But I also hate that I was
enough of a spineless sap at age seventeen to have read this book to
please a boy who wanted to get into my pants. I told him I loved it,
even though I thought it was crap. He thought that Henry's love for
Catherine was "the ideal." Henry was an idiot. Ugh. I tried to disagree
with him, but in the end he was just SO in favor of this book that I
didn't want to disappoint him. Like I said, SPINELESS SAP! (And no, he
didn't get into my pants. Not so spineless after all, I suppose.) Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey Both of these. In Latin. Impressive, no? Heh.
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House Did anyone ever get out of reading this one?
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man If you're ever to read Joyce, this is the book to attempt. Forget Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses.
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild Never read this actually, but I did read To Build a Fire. I've never been so cold in all my life as when I read that.
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street. One of the best short stories I've ever read.
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm The husband tells me that I'm missing something rather good by not having read this. We read <1>1984 instead.
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar What? Are they trying to get young girls to off themselves?
Poe, Edgar Allen - Selected Tales Fall of the House of Usher.
Scariest. Story. Ever.
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front (The English
department apparently wasn't too fond of this book. Everyone I know has
read it. I haven't.) Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac The schnozz!
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet I only read Macbeth in high school. The rest I read at other times. We didn't read Romeo and Juliet
at my high school. I found out why from Mrs. H.---she said that
Shakespeare was good, but the English department felt there was too
much emphasis paid to the man's works and that other, perfectly good
works were ignored in his favor. Hence, we read Macbeth instead of R&J (they wanted to envoke the "what the hell?" aspect that Macbeth
does so well) She was also highly invested in the argument that
Shakespeare did not write all of the works attributed to him. She
believed Christopher Marlowe was the true author and she didn't feel
like "perpetuating a fraud" until the matter was settled. Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie - Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone I know I read it, but for the life of me, I can't remember a thing about it.
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex What first walks on four legs, then on two, then on three? Ugh. Sick, sick, sick.
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin I like Tuptim's adaptation better.
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden Yawn.
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide Ah, the good old days of political theory class.
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Warton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass Yawn. I know, I'm showing a
distinct lack of appreciation for American poets of the
transcendentalist movement. Which seems particularly neglectful and
unappreciative given my own views. Well, pfft. Wilde, Oscar - The
Picture of Dorian Gray Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie Woolf,
Virginia - To the Lighthouse Wright, Richard - Native Son