Although I planned on doing this when Moonie first discussed it, I've only now gotten myself together and actually made the list. I received a few recommendations, but mostly I chose books based on the fill-in-the-gap principle. These are books I think I should have read, and not necessarily classics or popular works. Because the limit was 100, I purposely excluded nonfiction (though I need still to replace Foucault). And now I need a drink. Honestly. Who knew the list itself would take several hours to compile??
A
Adams, Richard. Watership Down
Alcott, Louisa May. Good Wives
Alcott, Louisa May. Jo’s Boys
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Men
Alexander, Lloyd. The Prydian Chronicles
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
B
Baxter, Charles. Feast of Love
Bellow, Saul. Henderson the Rain King
Bradbury, Ray. Farenheit 451
Bronte, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Bronte, Charlotte. Villette
Brooks, Gwendolyn. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods
Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
Buck, Pearl S.. The Good Earth
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange
Byars, Betsy. Summer of the Swans
C
Camus, Albert. The Stranger
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers!
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer
D
Dante. The Inferno
De Beauvoire, Simone. She Came to Stay
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles
Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy
Du Maurier, Rebecca. Rebecca
E
Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose
Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Eliot, George. Middlemarch
Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man
Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex
F
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Forster, E.M.. A Passage to India
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish
G
Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book
George, Jean Craighead. Julie of the Wolves
H
Hammet, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea
Herbert, Frank. Dune
Homer. The Iliad
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite-Runner
Hurston, Nora Zeale. Their Eyes Were Watching God
I
Irving, John. The Cider House Rules
J
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Joyce, James. The Dubliners
K
Kaye, M.M.. The Far Pavilions
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible
Kipling, Rudyard. Kim
Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
L
L’Engle Madeline. And Both Were Young
L’Engle, Madeline. Meet the Austins
Lawrence, D.H.. Sons and Lovers
Lewis, Sinclair. Kingsblood Royal
Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars
M
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind
Moore, Alan. Watchmen
Morrison, Toni. Beloved
N
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita
Naslund, Sena Jeter. Ahab’s Wife
O
O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins
P
Paterson, Katherine. Jacob Have I Loved
Pears, Iain. Stone’s Fall
Peet, Mal. Tamar
Pessl, Marisha. Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar
Porter, Katherine Anne. Ship of Fools
Pullman, Philip. The Golden Compass
R
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged
Rawls, Wilson. Where the Red Fern Grows
Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children
S
Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
Shikibu, Murasaki. The Tale of Genji
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queen
Steinbeck, John. Cannery Row
Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy
Stoker, Bram. Dracula
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels
T
Taylor, Mildred D.. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
U
Updike, John. The Poorhouse Fair
V
Virgil. The Aeneid
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five
W
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple
Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisted
Welty, Eudora. The Optimist’s Daughter
Wharton, Edith. House of Mirth
Woodson, Jacqueline. After Tupac & D Foster
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own
Wright, Richard. Native Son
4 comments:
Yeah, just doing the list is quite a bit of homework, but at least it makes the commitment that much stronger. You reacquaint yourself with your friends on the shelves, and, having held them again...
You're off and running/reading!
dude. i totally spent days on mine. haha. "hours." awesome list :)
is the true confessions of charlotte doyle still in print? i read and reread it as a kid. wrote my first novel (in seventh grade) inspired by, or, erm, based on it.
I loved And Both Were Young. I can't remember if I read it as a teenager or as an adult, although I've always had a thing for books about boarding school.
I spent a couple of days obsessing about my list - in a good way though. I had so much fun making mine. I have only read ten books on your list. I didn't realize that Number the Stars was by Lois Lowry. My mother-in-law had the book sitting around her house and I read it a few years ago when I was there.
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