Monday, August 10, 2009

Books to Read Before You Die

Books to Read Before You Die List:

(in no particular order)
  • The Odyssey
  • The Canterbury Tales
  • Greek and Roman Mythology
  • Dante--the Inferno, if you only want to read one of the sections of the Comedy
  • The Bible--the psalms, the pentateuch, the Gospels, Revelation
  • Dickens--David Copperfield; A Christmas Carol; Great Expectations
  • Stevenson--Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Jane--all, of course, but if I had to pick, either P&P or Persuasion
  • Hugo--either of his major novels
  • Poe's Short stories
  • Bronte sisters: Wuthering Heights (emily), Villette (Charlotte). Not sure about Anne's novel b/c I haven't read it yet.
  • Anna Karenina
  • The Brothers K
  • Wilde's poems, esp. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"; The Picture of Dorian Gray; the plays (esp. The Importance of Being Earnest; An Ideal Husband)
  • Shakespeare: high points--Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Henry V
  • Milton: Paradise Lost
  • The Romantic Poets
  • Mary W. Shelley: Frankenstein
  • Stoker: Dracula
  • L. Frank Baum: The "Oz" books
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" Series
  • LM Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
  • Lois Lowry: The Giver; Number the Stars
  • The Diary of Anne Frank
  • Elie Wiesel: Night
  • St Augustine: Confessions
  • Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
  • Woolf: To the Lighthouse; Night and Day; the Common Readers; Mrs. Dalloway; the Waves; The Years; essays/diaries (as you like)
  • Lots of good poetry (which is up for debate)--Ozymandias, Kubla Kahn, The Highwayman, much Tennyson
  • Frost, Dickenson (American poets, etc)
  • Michael Cunningham, "The Hours"
  • "Eugene Onegin" (either as the book or the opera, which is superb)
  • O Henry "The Gift of the Magi" (short story)
  • The Oedipus trilogy
  • Wharton: The Age of Innocence, Summer, Ethan Frome, The Customs of the Country
  • James: Washington Square; the Portrait of a Lady (the ending, alone, is worth the entire book); probably Wings of the Dove
  • Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter (for early American writing); his short stories (which are wonderfully odd and scary)
  • Alcott: Little Women
  • Lewis: Narnia books; The Great Divorce; 'Till We Have Faces (novel); The Screwtape Letters
  • Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series
  • Albert Camus: either "The Stranger" or "The Plague"
  • Probably Don Quioxte, even though I haven't read it yet.
  • C. Marlowe, poetry, "Dr. Faustus"
  • Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"
  • Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, the Pearl
  • FS Fitzgerald: Gatsby

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