Books! A list to be well-read

This list comes from bookriot.com.

Some I’ve read, some I disagree with. Vehemently. Like Fifty Shades of Grey, are you serious? So perhaps this list is more about being familiar enough with the story to understand a reference rather than a literal to-be-read list. Because I will never read 50 Shades. (I have however read some delightful snarky reviews). Terry Pratchett (among others) wrote some great parodies, maybe I’ll count those here in the future!

I would add or replace some on the list with these:

1. I, Claudius by Robert Graves. Excellent historical fiction
2. The Once and Future King by White. To this day there are so many references to Merlin and Arthur. Wart’s childhood learning about the futility of war should be a must-read in school
3. Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman. Armageddon can be so funny!

 

So here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay  by Michael Chabon I have never heard of this book
6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth I have never heard of this book
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. Beloved by Toni Morrison
12. Beowulf Check! Read this one in college Nordic and Celtic mythology
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
15. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz on my to-read list
16. Call of the Wild  by Jack London
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer pretty sure we covered some of this in high school. I’m good.
19. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming the movies aren’t enough? I say nay to this book
20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Does it count if I don’t remember it? No? oh well, then.
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White checked this one off in elementary school
23. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
24. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
25. The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe I’ve read a few
26. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor 
27. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
28. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky I’ve read this and The Idiot. I remember being impressed with how the characters conversed on the train
29. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown oh yes. very good
30. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin Never heard of it
33. Dune by Frank Herbert
34. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer I read extremely loud and incredibly close
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
37. Faust by Goethe
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley check!
39. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
40. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
41. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
42. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn check!
43. The Gospels as in the bible? i went to church as a kid, that’s enough.
44. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
45. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens check!
46. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald check!
47. Hamlet by William Shakespeare I’ve seen a few movies.
48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49. Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling check!
50. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
51. The Help by Kathryn Stockett check!
52. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams check! seems to change each time I read it
53. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien check! 
54. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
55. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins check! excellent series. like most, the books are better than the movies
57. if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
58. The Iliad by Homer check! greek mythology, you make me feel so knowledgeable
59. Inferno by Dante check! True story: I read this to prepare for a road rally I organized to Hell, Michigan. Yes it was nerdy.
60. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
61. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
62. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman check for some of it. my mom was into poetry so if I got really bored I’d read some
63. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
64. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis check. weird series, really
65. The Little Prince by Antoine  de Saint-Exepury check. I think.
66. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
67. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
69. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
71. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
72. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie check. I enjoy some of her books, but she really did hide important characters frequently
73. The Odyssey by Homer woo-hoo, greek mythology class strikes again
74. Oedipus the King by Sophocles woo-hoo, greek mythology class strikes again
75. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
76. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
77. The Pentateuch
78. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen check! also pride and prejudice and zombies, because I’m well-rounded like that.
79. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
80. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
81. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare gah, i think so but so much easier to comprehend with actors, as intended
82. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne check! damn pastor
83. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut maybe. i don’t care for Vonnegut. I read Galapagos and finished it out of a sense of duty. life is too short for that anymore
84. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
85. The Stand by Stephen King check!many times. I love this book
86. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
87. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
88. Their Eyes Were Watching by Zora Neale Hurston
89. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
90. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
91. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
92. Ulysses by James Joyce
93. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
94. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
95. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
96. Watchmen by Alan Moore
97. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
98. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
99. 1984 by George Orwell yes. super scary and all too easy to imagine
100. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James Just say no

Would you add or subtract any from this list?