When I was in AP English my senior year, my teacher gave the class a list of books that she felt all college-bound students should read. I vowed I would read every one of them before I died, and then I never looked at the list again. But I kept it. And I thought of it recently and pulled it out. I haven’t made much progress on the list, but I was able to say that I’d read a few of them. So I am renewing my vow—at least to read as many as I can. There are some I’ve never heard of and some I’ve tried to read and know that I don’t like, but there are just as many that I’m looking foward to reading just as soon as my reading is no longer a required thing. Though there are a few I will be knocking off this semester.

Since I know my family and a large majority of my friends love to read, I thought I’d post the list with the books I’ve read noted. Feel free to make suggestions for additons.

* = I have read
Wold Literature
The Bible
The Orestei Trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides-Aeschylus
Lysistrada-Aristophanes
Pere Goriot-Honore de Balzac
The Stranger, The Plague-Albert Camus
Don Quixoite-Miguel de Cervantes
The Cherry Orchard, The Sea Gull, Three Sisters-Anton Chekhov
Madame Curie-Eve Curie
The Inferno-Dante
Crime and Punishment,The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo-Alexander Dumas
Medea *-Euripides
Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
The Diary of a Young Girl *-Anne Frank
The Prophet, Tears and Laughter- Kahil Gilbran
Faust-Goethe
Kon-Tiki, The Ra Expedition, Aku-Aku-Thor Heyerdahl
The Illiad *, The Odyssey *-Homer
Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo
Steppenwolf-Herman Hesse
An Enemy of the People, A Doll’s House-Henrik Ibsen
The Metamorphosis, The Trial- Franz Kafka
The Prince-Machiavelli
Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks-Thomas Mann
Short Stories-Guy de Maupassant
The Misanthrope, The Would-Be Gentleman-Moliere
All Quiet on the Western Front, Bobby Deerfield (Heaven Has No Favorites-original title)-Erich Maria Remarque
Giants in the Earth- O. E. Rolvaag
Cyrano de Bergerac-Edmond Rostand
The Little Prince, Wind, Sand & Stars – Antoine de St. Exuprey
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Hobbit *, The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion- J. R. R. Tolkien
Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons-Ivan Turgenev
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-Jules Vern
Candide-Voltaire
Oedipus Rex *, Antigone *-Sophocles
Mythology, The Greek Way, The Roman Way- Edith Hamilton

British Literature
Everyman-Anonymous
Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
Sonnets from the Portuguese-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems *-Robert Browning
The Pilgrim’s Progress-John Bunyan
The Way of All Flesh-Samuel Butler
The Canterbury Tales *-Jeffery Chaucer
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner *-Samual Taylor Colridge
Lord Jim-Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe-Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations *, A Tale of Two Cities *, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield-Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Rebecca-Daphne DuMaurier
Silas Marner-George Eliot
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Magus-John Fowles
The Forsyte Saga-John Galsworthy
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-Edward Gibbon
Lord of the Flies *-William Golding
She Stoops to Conquer, The Deserted Village-Oliver Goldsmith
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd *, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy
Green Mansions-W. H. Hudson
Brave New World-Aldous Huxley
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses-James Joyce
Poems-John Keats
Captains Courageous, Kim-Rudyard Kipling
The Screwtape Letters-C.S. Lewis
Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterly’s Lover- D. H Lawrence
Morte d’Arthur-Sir Thomas Malory
Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge-Somerset Maugham
Faustus *-Christopher Marlowe
Paradise Lost *, Paradise Regained, Areopagitica-John Milton
Utopia-Thomas Moore
Animal Farm, 1984-George Orwell
Cry, The Beloved Country-Alan Paton
The Rape of the Lock-Alexander Pope
Ivanhoe-Sir Walter Scott
Julius Caesar *, Macbeth *, Hamlet *, Othello *, Romeo and Juliet *, A Midsummer Nights’s Dream *, The Taming of the Shrew *-William Shakespeare
Pygmalion, Androcles and the Lion *, Caesar and Cleopatra, Saint Joan-George Bernard Shaw
Frankenstein *-Mary Shelley
The Rivals, The School for Scandal-Richard B. Sheridan
Kidnapped, Treasure Island-Robert Louis Stevenson
Queen Victoria-Lytton Strachey
Gulliver’s Travels-Jonathan Swift
Poems-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Vanity Fair-William Thackeray
The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlin-T.H. White
Poems *-William Wordsworth

American Literature
Swiftwater-Paul Annixter
Nobody Knows My Name, Go, Tell it on the Moutain, The Fire Next Time-James Baldwin
Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, Humbolt’s Gift-Saul Bellow
Fahrenheit 451-Ray Bradbury
The Good Earth-Pearl S. Buck
Silent Soring, The Sea Around Us-Rachel Carson
My Antonia, Death Comes to the Archbishop-Willa Cather
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Innocents Abroad, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It- Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer-James Fenimore Cooper
The Red Badge of Courage-Stephen Crane
Life with Father-Clarence Day
Poems-Emily Dickinson
The Story of Philosophy-Will Durant
An American Tragedy-Theodore Dreiser
The Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison
Essays-Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I Lay Dying, The Sound and The Fury-William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby *- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Autobiography-Benjamin Franklin
Poems *-Robert Frost
The Scarlet Letter *, The House of the Seven Gables-Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Old Man and The Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms-Ernest Hemingway
Hiroshima, A Single Pebble-John Hersey
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow-Washington Irving
The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Modern Instance-William Dean Howells
The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller, The American, The Portrait of a Lady-Henry James
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey
The Story of My Life-Helen Keller
Andersonville-MacKinley Kantor
A Separate Peace *-John Knowles
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, Inherit the Wind- Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Arrowsmith, Babbit, Main Street-Sinclair Lewis
To Kill a Mockingbird *-Harper Lee
The Ugly American-William Lederer
The Call of the Wild-Jack London
J. B. –Archibald MacLeish
Spoon River Anthology-Edgar Lee Masters
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, A Member of the Wedding-Carson McCullers
Moby Dick-Herman Melville
Death of a Salesman *, The Crucible *-Arthur Miller
Bridges at Toko-Ri, Hawaii, The Source-James Michner
The Octopus-Frank Norris
The Emperor Jones, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, Desire Under the Elms, A Moon for the Misbegotten-Eugene O’Neill
The Yearling-Marjorie K. Rawlings
Poems-Edwin Arlington Robinson
Catcher in the Rye *- J. D. Salinger
The People, Yes. Abraham Lincoln-Carl Sandburg
The Human Comedy-William Saroyan
The Jungle-Upton Sinclair
The Red Pony, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl-John Steinbeck
The Agony and the Ecstasy-Irving Stone
Uncle Tom’s Cabin-Harriet B. Stowe
Walden, Civil Disobedience *-Henry D. Thoreau
Thurber, Carnival, My Life and Hard Times-James A. Thurber
Trinity, Exodus, QBVII-Leon Uris
Up From Slavery-Booker T. Washington
Leaves of Grass-Walt Whitman
All the King’s Men, A Place to Come To-Robert Penn Warren
Our Town *, The Skin of Our Teeth-Thorton Wilder
Summer and Smoke, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-Tennessee Williams
The Friendly Persuasion, Except for Me and Thee-Jessamyn West
Look Homeward, Angel-Thomas Wolfe
Black Boy-Richard Wright