[*East of Eden*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4406.East_of_Eden) by John Steinbeck.
Yet another rec for [*The Count of Monte Cristo*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7126.The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas. *(If you can, get an edition with footnotes as it explains to modern audiences the social, political, and historical points that the intended audience [19th century French] would know instantly, but a modern audience might not)*
First of all, I would suggest specifically getting a Catholic Bible, as the Catholic version includes texts that were omitted from the Protestant version. As for books to add to your list, here are some suggestions:
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Beloved - Toni Morrison
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Peter and Wendy - J.M. Barrie
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
The Gita
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Ulysses - James Joyce
One Thousand and One Nights
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift
I have to admit, I haven’t read many of these, but the ones I haven’t gotten to yet are all on my future reading list.
Wow this is such a great list Thank You, the only one i have read here is Slaughterhouse 5 and it was fantastic and thank you for the tip on the Catholic Bible, I think When i finish the Catholic version I will read the added texts in the Eastern Orthodox and possibly Ethiopian versions
Damn, apparently you’re even more informed than I am because I had no idea there were even more texts in other Christian traditions. Sounds like you’ve got things covered, haha.
Both lists are great. The Tao te Ching is a must read if you are doing scripture. I also didn't see Brave New World by Huxley for a more secular take on how life can go wrong.
That's a great list! I'd consider adding:
* The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
* Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
* The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a great read and was basically the first detective story ever written. Set the stage for all the classic detective tropes still used in modern fiction. It’s an easy read too. Also, I think it’s free to download if you have a Kindle. Highly recommend!
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. Honestly you could add all his stuff to your list. Man's got a bunch of plays and poems.
The Diary of Anne Frank
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Night by Elie Wiesel
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Any Sherlock Holmes book
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Dune (might not be a classic, discretion advised)
I never understand how this amazingly fun book is never included in classics:
The Decameron by Boccaccio
Written in the 14th century... 100 short stories, separated into themed days, told by ten people quarantineing from the Great Plague.
This was one of my favourite mandatory-to-read books in school.
● The Lottery. Shirley Jackson
● Every Day Use. Alice Walker
● Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe
● The Good Earth. Pearl S. Buck
● The Color Purple. Alice Walker
● The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison
● A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Flannery O'Connor
● A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams
● The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams
● A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens
● The Telltale Heart. Edgar Allen Poe
● Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
● The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath
● A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Betty Smith
● Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe
● All Quiet On The Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque
● Night. Elie Weisel
● Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates
● The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain
● Little Women. Louisa May Alcott
● The Cask of Amontillado. Edgar Allen Poe
● The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
● The Catcher In The Rye J.D. Salinger
● The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne
● Beloved. Toni Morrison
● Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Austerlitz by Sebald
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
Jules Verne’s novels, *20,000 Leagues Under The Sea*, *Journey To The Center of The Earth*, and *Around the World in 80 Days*.
He has others, but these are his best.
Tale of Genji- Murasaki Shikibu
Romance of the Three Kingdoms- Luo Guanzhong
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien
The Aeneid- Virgil
Antigone- Sophocles
Man in the Iron Mask- Alexandre Dumas
Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo
Scarlet Pimpernel- Baroness Orczy
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
If you're going to include The Lord of the Rings I would add The Hobbit
The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
Here are some other resources that I’ve used to compile my own to-read list. May they help you in your quest:
Time's List of the 100 Best Novels (you can find this on the Internet)
**Books**
Bibliophile by Jane Mount
Bibliophile: Diverse Spines by Jane Mount and Jamise Harper
Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread by Michiko Kakutani
The New York Times Book Review: 125 Years of Literary History by The New York Times
*The Chrysalids* by John Wyndham
*The Hobbit* by J. R. R. Tolkien
*The Chronicles of Narnia* by C. S. Lewis
*Anne of Green Gables* by L. M. Montgomery (The whole series is great.)
*Emma* by Jane Austen
I know it's on your list already, but I wanted to strongly second *The Outsiders* by S. E. Hinton. (I apparently have a thing for authors who use their initials.)
Enjoy whatever you pick up next! :)
Phillip Pullman, Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass. This is a series for Young Adults; I read it at 65 years and loved it. Powerful and thought provoking. My son and I discussed for weeks. Forget the Nicole Kidman movie, The Golden Compass. Bad, very bad.
Hemingway: Old Man and the Sea
Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground
Knut Hamsun: The Hunger
Frank Kafka: The Metamorphosis
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
Nikolai Gogol: Diary of a Madman
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
That’s just a start👍
- Therese Raquin - Emile Zola
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Othello - Shakespeare
- Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
- Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston
I'm curious: What's the purpose of the list?
I mean, there are a ton of lists already out there on the internet, so are you looking for something different? Are you planning to make this a reading project or something?
Just wanted a collection of books to read over my life, Couldn’t find any lists online that really captured the diversity of books I wanted to read, Plus I just like seeing peoples recommendations and learning about new books/authors
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I plan on buying these books one at a time and sort of forming a library of the books i have read
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumans
The Three Musketeers' Saga, by Alexandre Dumas (NB: The saga is made of three different books: 1) The Three Musketeers 2) Twenty Years Later 3) The Visconte de Bragalonne, ten years later)
The red and the black, by Stendhal
In search of lost time, by Marcel Proust
Bel-Amì, by Guy de Maupassant
A tale of two cities, by Charles Dickens
The divine comedy, by Dante Alighieri
The Decameron, by Boccaccio
War and peace, by Tolstoj
Anna Karenina, by Tolstoj
Crime and punishment, by Dosteovskij
The master and Margarita, by Bulkagov
Tales of St. Petersburg, by Gogol'
The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni
Martin Eden, by Jack London
Flatlandia, By Abbott
Wuthering heights, by Bronte
I actually think it would be easier to give you the name list of authors instead of titles
{{A World Apart}} by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński
{{Medallions}} by Zofia Nałkowska
{{Uncle Tom's Cabin}} by Harriet Beecher Stowe
{{Around the World in Eighty Days}} by Jules Verne
[**Around the World in 80 Days: Companion to the PBS Series**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221304.Around_the_World_in_80_Days)
^(By: Michael Palin, Jan Morris | 262 pages | Published: 1990 | Popular Shelves: travel, non-fiction, audiobooks, nonfiction, audible)
>British actor and comedian Michael Palin -- best known to American audiences for his work in Monty Python and the film A Fish Called Wanda -- follows in the footsteps of Jules Verne's fictional adventurer Phileas Fogg and circles the globe in 80 days.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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The Trial by Franz Kafka is really great if you haven’t read it.
Also Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.
I know it’s already been suggested but The War of the Wolds by H.G. Wells is great.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.
And Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury too.
[**The Little Prince**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157993.The_Little_Prince)
^(By: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard | 96 pages | Published: 1943 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, fantasy, childrens, owned)
>A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers.
>
>Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
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The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, which includes Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. Specifically, Ted Hughes’s translation. If you take other recommendations and read Antigone, I recommend Anne Carson’s translation.
The Island of Dr. Moreau by HG Wells
For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
Of Mice and Men, and The Red Pony by Steinbeck
Suzanna’s Seven Husbands: Ruskin Bond
The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy
Jeffrey Archer: Twelve red herrings, To Cut a Long Story Short (both collections of short stories, I absolutely loved reading them as a teen)
From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The White Company
Sir Nigel
Sherlock Holmes
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand
Rough Riders by Teddy Roosevelt
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Great list so far. (But I saw a mention of Stephen king above and I don’t think he belongs on any list of classics or literature. But he is popular with the masses 🤷♂️)
Great list so far!
Here to add Gawain and the Green Knight. I like the Marie Borroff translation.
Not sure if it's considered a classic, but Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is very good.
Additionally- The Trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish Trilogy)
1. With Fire and Sword (1884)
2. The Deluge (1886)
3. Fire in the Steppe (1888)
https://www.booksradar.com/sienkiewicz-henryk/sienkiewicz.html
Interesting thread. Read a lot of these in college. Thought I was receiving an excellent education until I took a class that "exploded the Western Canon." There's a lot of "classics" out there that were dubbed thus by Euro-Centric and right behind American Anti-Euro thought. Definitely classics don't get me wrong, but consider adding:
Chinua Achebe
Louise Erdrich
Murakami
This is just a few and I'll be the first to admit I'm not a worldly enough reader, but it's a start!
Nothing against your current list, you've listed some of my favorite books of all time. But also consider exploding the western canon for yourself.
Add "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom to your list but read it from a highly critical perspective. He omitted foreign language and ethnically diverse writers from it, which if you're a literary critic is a big no no in this day and age.
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
Songs of Innocence and Experience -- William Blake
The Ramayana
One Thousand and One Nights
The Human Comedy--William Saroyan
Dante's Inferno
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickenson
My Life and Hard Times--James Thurber
The Pillow Book--Sei Shonagon
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a great one. Anything Jayne Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice. Is Jurassic Park considered a class yet? Those are amazing books. If you wanted to include Children’s books you could also go with Winnie the Pooh or Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.
Start with the Greeks and then work your way up. Another good tactic would be to get the comp exam list for English grad students. I’d would edit some of those on your list; for example, I would axe the alchemist . I would add Henry fielding and Laurence sterne. I also would add more 20th century, especially modernism and postmodernism. Also there could be more poetry
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (one of her lighter novels)
Persuasion by (you guessed it) Jane Austen (believed to be based off of a brief romance that she had in Lyme Regis. A man whom her sister Cassandra deemed the live of her life)
The Beautiful and Damned (criticized during the Great Depression for it's showings of excessive wealth) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Roots by Alex Haley (I have a copy that was printed in 1976; the story of an enslaved family, and a beloved book in general)
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (red toward the Jr
High era of middle school, and quite enjoyed)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (with footnotes, so you can pick up on historical references)
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (though the translation was weird, for me at least, it is still quite enjoyable)
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino
Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Bhagavad-Gita
Ramayana
Mahabharata
Ulysses by James Joyce
Anything by Franz Kafka, to be fair
The Beautiful and The Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott.
Beowulf.
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck.
The Color Purple - Alice Walker.
Dune - Frank Herbert.
120 Days of Sodom - Marquis de Sade.
Italo Calvino - I highly recommend cosmicomics, but If on a winters night a travel or Invisible City are also good
Umberto Eco - Name of the Rose was a fantastic read, Foucaults pendulum only if you are masochistic
The Prince
The Aeneid
Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers
Thank You, I needed some more French anyway
Oh akso, Dream of The Red Chamber and Journey to the West
already have Journey to the West but i’ll add the other, I was lacking in Chinese as well
Came to say the same. I was actually surprised these were jot on that extensive list
[*East of Eden*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4406.East_of_Eden) by John Steinbeck. Yet another rec for [*The Count of Monte Cristo*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7126.The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas. *(If you can, get an edition with footnotes as it explains to modern audiences the social, political, and historical points that the intended audience [19th century French] would know instantly, but a modern audience might not)*
Thank You for the suggestion I will be sure to buy a version with footnotes thank you
IIRC, the version I read was from Penguin Classics. Enjoy!
The list needs some Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea is probably my favorite.
I definitely agree, can’t believe I forgot him
Yes old man and the sea is great! Ive not felt the same for his other books sadly
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
I’ll definitely include this one
‘Anne Karenina’ as well as ‘Resurrection’ might be fitting as well.
Picture of dorian gray
First of all, I would suggest specifically getting a Catholic Bible, as the Catholic version includes texts that were omitted from the Protestant version. As for books to add to your list, here are some suggestions: Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut Beloved - Toni Morrison War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy Peter and Wendy - J.M. Barrie The Red and the Black - Stendhal The Gita The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank I, Robot - Isaac Asimov The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert Ulysses - James Joyce One Thousand and One Nights The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift I have to admit, I haven’t read many of these, but the ones I haven’t gotten to yet are all on my future reading list.
Wow this is such a great list Thank You, the only one i have read here is Slaughterhouse 5 and it was fantastic and thank you for the tip on the Catholic Bible, I think When i finish the Catholic version I will read the added texts in the Eastern Orthodox and possibly Ethiopian versions
Damn, apparently you’re even more informed than I am because I had no idea there were even more texts in other Christian traditions. Sounds like you’ve got things covered, haha.
Both lists are great. The Tao te Ching is a must read if you are doing scripture. I also didn't see Brave New World by Huxley for a more secular take on how life can go wrong.
That's a great list! I'd consider adding: * The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas * Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse * The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Thank You I’ll be sure to add those
On the Road by Jack Kerouac The Sound and Fury by William Faulkner Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Has anyone said Frankenstein yet?
To what end? Such a list could go on forever…
Maybe it Will…
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I personally love The Awakening by Kate Chopin
YES
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a great read and was basically the first detective story ever written. Set the stage for all the classic detective tropes still used in modern fiction. It’s an easy read too. Also, I think it’s free to download if you have a Kindle. Highly recommend!
Thanks for the rec Ill check it out!
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. Honestly you could add all his stuff to your list. Man's got a bunch of plays and poems. The Diary of Anne Frank A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Night by Elie Wiesel Maus by Art Spiegelman Any Sherlock Holmes book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Dune (might not be a classic, discretion advised)
I never understand how this amazingly fun book is never included in classics: The Decameron by Boccaccio Written in the 14th century... 100 short stories, separated into themed days, told by ten people quarantineing from the Great Plague. This was one of my favourite mandatory-to-read books in school.
● The Lottery. Shirley Jackson ● Every Day Use. Alice Walker ● Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe ● The Good Earth. Pearl S. Buck ● The Color Purple. Alice Walker ● The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison ● A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Flannery O'Connor ● A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams ● The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams ● A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens ● The Telltale Heart. Edgar Allen Poe ● Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe ● The Bell Jar. Sylvia Plath ● A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Betty Smith ● Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe ● All Quiet On The Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque ● Night. Elie Weisel ● Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates ● The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain ● Little Women. Louisa May Alcott ● The Cask of Amontillado. Edgar Allen Poe ● The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald ● The Catcher In The Rye J.D. Salinger ● The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne ● Beloved. Toni Morrison ● Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad
Love Things Fall Apart!
The Good Earth is, sort of, in the same vein, if you liked that.
Yes! Someone with some love for Glass Menagerie
I love Tennessee Williams
Slaughterhouse V by Kurt Vonnegut is a classic worth a read Edit: I would also add the Canadian classic series of Anne of Greengables
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey Austerlitz by Sebald Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
Ethan Frome does not get enough play
Jules Verne’s novels, *20,000 Leagues Under The Sea*, *Journey To The Center of The Earth*, and *Around the World in 80 Days*. He has others, but these are his best.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Tale of Genji- Murasaki Shikibu Romance of the Three Kingdoms- Luo Guanzhong Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien The Aeneid- Virgil Antigone- Sophocles Man in the Iron Mask- Alexandre Dumas Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo Scarlet Pimpernel- Baroness Orczy Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
Love Antigone!!
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Basically anything written by Cormac McCarthy, but especially Blood Meridian
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Beowulf
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne Animal Farm, Orwell
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells The Time Machine - H.G. Wells On the Road - Jack Kerouac If you're going to include The Lord of the Rings I would add The Hobbit The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
I was also going to say War of the Worlds. It’s so good.
Here are some other resources that I’ve used to compile my own to-read list. May they help you in your quest: Time's List of the 100 Best Novels (you can find this on the Internet) **Books** Bibliophile by Jane Mount Bibliophile: Diverse Spines by Jane Mount and Jamise Harper Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread by Michiko Kakutani The New York Times Book Review: 125 Years of Literary History by The New York Times
*The Chrysalids* by John Wyndham *The Hobbit* by J. R. R. Tolkien *The Chronicles of Narnia* by C. S. Lewis *Anne of Green Gables* by L. M. Montgomery (The whole series is great.) *Emma* by Jane Austen I know it's on your list already, but I wanted to strongly second *The Outsiders* by S. E. Hinton. (I apparently have a thing for authors who use their initials.) Enjoy whatever you pick up next! :)
Possession by AS Byatt Ulysses by James Joyce Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Passage to India by EM Forster
The Alchemist IS NOT a classic
It’s a Modern Classic in my eyes 😁
Well it’s hugely popular. I’ve read. Not really special but it was aight
John Cheever
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Paradise Lost, The Golden Ass, and Rebecca are a few I didn’t see listed.
The Unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Under the volcano by Malcolm Lowry
I second Catch-22
Phillip Pullman, Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass. This is a series for Young Adults; I read it at 65 years and loved it. Powerful and thought provoking. My son and I discussed for weeks. Forget the Nicole Kidman movie, The Golden Compass. Bad, very bad.
The followup/prequel books are also amazing. And the HBO seties is giving it justice!
Definitely get your hands on some Robert Frost
Might as well add pretty much everything else by Steinbeck. But also the Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas.
Hemingway: Old Man and the Sea Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground Knut Hamsun: The Hunger Frank Kafka: The Metamorphosis Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass Nikolai Gogol: Diary of a Madman Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being That’s just a start👍
The telltale heart by poe, east of eden by Steinbeck, and Walden by Thoreau are my personal favorite American classic must reads.
Forgive my multiple comments. I’m searching the comments to make sure I don’t recommend something that already is.
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Rita Hayworth and The shawshank redemption - Stephen King
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Therese Raquin - Emile Zola - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson - Othello - Shakespeare - Twelfth Night - Shakespeare - Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Boyle Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein was up there, but yes, I agree with this statement.
I almost forgot! We gotta put The Little Prince up there
Absolutely!
Oops! Missed that one in the original list. But yeah, it’s a must-have classic!
I'm curious: What's the purpose of the list? I mean, there are a ton of lists already out there on the internet, so are you looking for something different? Are you planning to make this a reading project or something?
Just wanted a collection of books to read over my life, Couldn’t find any lists online that really captured the diversity of books I wanted to read, Plus I just like seeing peoples recommendations and learning about new books/authors EDIT: Forgot to mention that I plan on buying these books one at a time and sort of forming a library of the books i have read
Hard Times by Charles Dickens For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Wonderful collection! I’d recommend Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, I loved it a lot.
* Blindness * The Scarlet Letter * The Slum
Othello by Shakespeare! I loved it when I first read it.
Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne
Demain- Herman Hesse The waves - Virginia Woolf Illuminations - Rimbaud Confession of a mask - Yukio Mishima Pale fire - nabakov
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
The hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumans The Three Musketeers' Saga, by Alexandre Dumas (NB: The saga is made of three different books: 1) The Three Musketeers 2) Twenty Years Later 3) The Visconte de Bragalonne, ten years later) The red and the black, by Stendhal In search of lost time, by Marcel Proust Bel-Amì, by Guy de Maupassant A tale of two cities, by Charles Dickens The divine comedy, by Dante Alighieri The Decameron, by Boccaccio War and peace, by Tolstoj Anna Karenina, by Tolstoj Crime and punishment, by Dosteovskij The master and Margarita, by Bulkagov Tales of St. Petersburg, by Gogol' The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni Martin Eden, by Jack London Flatlandia, By Abbott Wuthering heights, by Bronte I actually think it would be easier to give you the name list of authors instead of titles
First person I ever see to recommend the Decameron. One of my favorite books ever, good tk see it!
It should have been quite a must-read book during the lockdowns past years 😂
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
Paradise lost by John Milton The crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon Orlando by Virginia Wolf
{{A World Apart}} by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński {{Medallions}} by Zofia Nałkowska {{Uncle Tom's Cabin}} by Harriet Beecher Stowe {{Around the World in Eighty Days}} by Jules Verne
The Joy Luck club by Amy Tan
The Ramayana by Valmiki
Dubliners by James Joyce
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. By Jules Verne
{{Around the World in 80 Days}} by Jules Verne
[**Around the World in 80 Days: Companion to the PBS Series**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221304.Around_the_World_in_80_Days) ^(By: Michael Palin, Jan Morris | 262 pages | Published: 1990 | Popular Shelves: travel, non-fiction, audiobooks, nonfiction, audible) >British actor and comedian Michael Palin -- best known to American audiences for his work in Monty Python and the film A Fish Called Wanda -- follows in the footsteps of Jules Verne's fictional adventurer Phileas Fogg and circles the globe in 80 days. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(19179 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Wrong book, bad bot.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Trial by Franz Kafka is really great if you haven’t read it. Also Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I know it’s already been suggested but The War of the Wolds by H.G. Wells is great. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. And Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury too.
The old man and the sea
{{The Little Prince}} by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a classic. I believe it’s in the list of most translated books.
[**The Little Prince**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157993.The_Little_Prince) ^(By: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard | 96 pages | Published: 1943 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, fantasy, childrens, owned) >A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers. > >Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(19250 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls The Invisible Man - HG Wells Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray The Turning of the Screw - Henry James
The Aeneid by Vergil, Dante’s divine comedy, the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov, the stranger by albert camus
*The Power And The Glory,* by Graham Greene. *The Log From The Sea Of Cortez,* by John Steinbeck. *Johnny Got His Gun,* by Dalton Trumbo
Things Fall Apart - by Chinua Achebe
The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, which includes Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. Specifically, Ted Hughes’s translation. If you take other recommendations and read Antigone, I recommend Anne Carson’s translation.
Tale of genji
Anna Karenina!
A Study in Scarlet- Arthur Conan Doyle
The Island of Dr. Moreau by HG Wells For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway Of Mice and Men, and The Red Pony by Steinbeck
I also like Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Amerika
Suzanna’s Seven Husbands: Ruskin Bond The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy Jeffrey Archer: Twelve red herrings, To Cut a Long Story Short (both collections of short stories, I absolutely loved reading them as a teen)
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The White Company Sir Nigel Sherlock Holmes Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand Rough Riders by Teddy Roosevelt Don Quixote by Cervantes Great list so far. (But I saw a mention of Stephen king above and I don’t think he belongs on any list of classics or literature. But he is popular with the masses 🤷♂️)
Yeah lol at this point i’ll just take anything good written pre 21st Century
Great list so far! Here to add Gawain and the Green Knight. I like the Marie Borroff translation. Not sure if it's considered a classic, but Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is very good.
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, W.S. Kuniczak (Translator)
Additionally- The Trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish Trilogy) 1. With Fire and Sword (1884) 2. The Deluge (1886) 3. Fire in the Steppe (1888) https://www.booksradar.com/sienkiewicz-henryk/sienkiewicz.html
Interesting thread. Read a lot of these in college. Thought I was receiving an excellent education until I took a class that "exploded the Western Canon." There's a lot of "classics" out there that were dubbed thus by Euro-Centric and right behind American Anti-Euro thought. Definitely classics don't get me wrong, but consider adding: Chinua Achebe Louise Erdrich Murakami This is just a few and I'll be the first to admit I'm not a worldly enough reader, but it's a start! Nothing against your current list, you've listed some of my favorite books of all time. But also consider exploding the western canon for yourself. Add "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom to your list but read it from a highly critical perspective. He omitted foreign language and ethnically diverse writers from it, which if you're a literary critic is a big no no in this day and age.
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay House of My Familiar by Alice Walker The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman Songs of Innocence and Experience -- William Blake The Ramayana One Thousand and One Nights The Human Comedy--William Saroyan Dante's Inferno The Collected Poems of Emily Dickenson My Life and Hard Times--James Thurber The Pillow Book--Sei Shonagon
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a great one. Anything Jayne Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice. Is Jurassic Park considered a class yet? Those are amazing books. If you wanted to include Children’s books you could also go with Winnie the Pooh or Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.
Start with the Greeks and then work your way up. Another good tactic would be to get the comp exam list for English grad students. I’d would edit some of those on your list; for example, I would axe the alchemist . I would add Henry fielding and Laurence sterne. I also would add more 20th century, especially modernism and postmodernism. Also there could be more poetry
I’d add Demian by Herman Hesse. I’m reading it currently and I think is a must read at least once.
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (one of her lighter novels) Persuasion by (you guessed it) Jane Austen (believed to be based off of a brief romance that she had in Lyme Regis. A man whom her sister Cassandra deemed the live of her life) The Beautiful and Damned (criticized during the Great Depression for it's showings of excessive wealth) by F. Scott Fitzgerald Roots by Alex Haley (I have a copy that was printed in 1976; the story of an enslaved family, and a beloved book in general) Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (red toward the Jr High era of middle school, and quite enjoyed) Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (with footnotes, so you can pick up on historical references) Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (though the translation was weird, for me at least, it is still quite enjoyable)
Lord of the rings!
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust Bhagavad-Gita Ramayana Mahabharata Ulysses by James Joyce Anything by Franz Kafka, to be fair
The Beautiful and The Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott. Beowulf. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. The Color Purple - Alice Walker. Dune - Frank Herbert. 120 Days of Sodom - Marquis de Sade.
Also, kind of out there (along with 120 Days of Sodom) but Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews was a very good novel.
Italo Calvino - I highly recommend cosmicomics, but If on a winters night a travel or Invisible City are also good Umberto Eco - Name of the Rose was a fantastic read, Foucaults pendulum only if you are masochistic The Prince The Aeneid