This is a recommended reading list of classic books and other pieces of writing. These literary works are ones which are considered classics, and ones which I have seen recommended in numerous places as worth reading.
Title | Author | Read? |
---|---|---|
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea | Jules Verne | ✔ |
A Bend in the River | V. S. Naipaul | x |
A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | x |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Mark Twain | x |
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Alexander Solzenhitsyn | x |
A Fine Balance | Rohinton Mistry | x |
A Modest Proposal | Jonathan Swift | x |
A Parchment of Leaves | Silas House | x |
A Passage to India | E. M. Forster | x |
A Prayer For Owen Meany | John Irving | ✔ |
A Soldier of the Great War | Mark Helprin | x |
A Suitable Boy | Vikram Seth | x |
A Town Like Alice | Nevil Shute | x |
A Wizard of Earthsea | Ursula K. Le Guin | x |
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys | Nathaniel Hawthorne | x |
Adam Bede | George Eliot | x |
Agnes Grey | Anne Brontë | x |
Ali and Nino: A Love Story | Kurban Said | x |
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | ✔ |
All Quiet On The Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque | x |
All the President's Men | Carl Bernstein | x |
Allan Quatermain | Henry Rider Haggard | x |
American Pastoral | Philip Roth | x |
American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis | x |
An Artist of the Floating World | Kazuo Ishiguro | x |
Angela's Ashes | Frank McCourt | x |
Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging | Louise Rennison | x |
Animal Farm | George Orwell | ✔ |
Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | x |
Anne of Green Gables Series | L.M. Montgomery | ✔ |
Antigone | Sophocles | x |
Around the World in Eighty Days | Jules Verne | x |
Artemis Fowl Series | Eoin Colfer | x |
As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | x |
Atonement | Ian McEwan | x |
Austerlitz | W. G. Sebald | x |
Barchester Towers | Anthony Trollope | x |
Behind The Scenes At The Museum | Kate Atkinson | x |
Bel-Ami | Guy de Maupassant | x |
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation | Unknown | x |
Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks | x |
Black Beauty | Anna Sewell | x |
Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | x |
Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh | x |
Bridge to Terabithia | Katherine Paterson | x |
Bridget Jones's Diary | Helen Fielding | x |
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept | Paulo Coelho | x |
Captain Corelli's Mandolin | Louis de Bernieres | x |
Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | x |
Charlotte's Web | E. B. White | ✔ |
Clarissa | Samuel Richardson | x |
Cold Comfort Farm | Stella Gibbons | x |
Collected Fictions | Jorge Luis Borges | x |
Common Sense | Thomas Paine | x |
Cranford | Elizabeth Gaskell | x |
Crime And Punishment | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | x |
Cross Stitch | Diana Gabaldon | x |
Daddy-Long-Legs | Jean Webster | x |
Dangerous Liaisons | Pierre Choderlos De Laclos | x |
Daniel Deronda | George Eliot | x |
Daughter of Fortune | Isabel Allende | x |
Dead Souls | Nikolai Gogol | x |
Discworld Series | Terry Pratchett | ✔ |
Do Lado de Swan | Marcel Proust | x |
Doctor Faustus | Thomas Mann | x |
Does It Matter? | Alan Wilson Watts | x |
Don Quixote | Miguel De Cervantes | x |
Dracula | Bram Stoker | x |
Dubliners | James Joyce | x |
Dune | Frank Herbert | x |
East Of Eden | John Steinbeck | x |
Eclipse of the Crescent Moon | Géza Gárdonyi | x |
Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | x |
Evil Genius | Catherine Jinks | x |
Far From The Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy | x |
Farenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | x |
Flowers In The Attic | Virginia Andrews | x |
For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | x |
Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | x |
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe | Fannie Flagg | x |
Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | x |
Good Omens | Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman | ✔ |
Goodnight Mister Tom | Michelle Magorian | x |
Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake | x |
Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan Swift | ✔ |
Haroun and the Sea of Stories | Salman Rushdie | x |
Harry Potter Series | J.K. Rowling | ✔ |
Heart Of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | x |
Heidi | Johanna Spyri | x |
Herzog | Saul Bellow | x |
High Fidelity | Nick Hornby | x |
His Dark Materials Trilogy | Philip Pullman | ✔ |
Holes | Louis Sachar | x |
House Of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | x |
Housekeeping | Marilynne Robinson | x |
How the Grinch Stole Christmas | Dr. Seuss | x |
I Capture The Castle | Dodie Smith | x |
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou | x |
I, Juan de Pareja | Elizabeth Borton de Treviño | x |
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller | Italo Calvino | x |
In Search of Lost Time | Marcel Proust | x |
Island | Aldous Huxley | x |
It | Stephen King | x |
Ivanhoe | Sir Walter Scott | x |
Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | ✔ |
John Brown | W.E.B. Du Bois | x |
Johnny Tremain | Esther Forbes | x |
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull | Richard Bach | x |
Journey to the Center of the Earth | Jules Verne | x |
Journey to the End of the Night | Louis-Ferdinand Celine | x |
Jude The Obscure | Thomas Hardy | x |
Just So Stories | Rudyard Kipling | ✔ |
Kane And Abel | Jeffrey Archer | x |
Katherine | Anya Seton | x |
Kidnapped | Robert Louis Stevenson | x |
Kim | Rudyard Kipling | x |
King Solomon's Mines | Henry Rider Haggard | x |
La Confidential | James Ellroy | x |
Lanark | Alasdair Gray | x |
Les Misérables | Victor Hugo | x |
Life of Pi | Yann Martel | x |
Little Lord Fauntleroy | Frances Hodgson Burnett | ✔ |
Little Women | Louisa May Alcott | ✔ |
Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | x |
Looking for Alaska | John Green | x |
Lord Jim | Joseph Conrad | x |
Lord Of The Flies | William Golding | ✔ |
Lorna Doone | R. D. Blackmore | x |
Love In The Time Of Cholera | Gabriel García Márquez | x |
Lucky Jim | Kingsley Amis | x |
Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert | x |
Madeline | Ludwig Bemelmans | x |
Magician | Raymond E Feist | x |
Malone Dies | Samuel Beckett | x |
Man And Boy | Tony Parsons | x |
Mary Barton | Elizabeth Gaskell | x |
Master And Commander | Patrick O'Brian | x |
Memoirs Of A Geisha | Arthur Golden | x |
Men Without Women | Ernest Hemingway | x |
Middlemarch | George Eliot | x |
Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie | x |
Moby Dick | Herman Melville | x |
Moll Flanders | Daniel Defoe | x |
Money | Martin Amis | x |
Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolf | x |
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont | Elizabeth Taylor | x |
Murder on the Orient Express | Agatha Christie | ✔ |
Narrative of Sojourner Truth | Sojourner Truth | x |
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Frederick Douglass | x |
Nightmare Abbey | Thomas Love Peacock | x |
Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | ✔ |
Nostromo | Joseph Conrad | x |
Noughts And Crosses | Malorie Blackman | x |
Of Mice And Men | John Steinbeck | x |
On The Road | Jack Kerouac | x |
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey | ✔ |
One Hundred Years Of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | x |
Oscar And Lucinda | Peter Carey | x |
Papillon | Henri Charriere | x |
Patriot Games | Tom Clancy | x |
Perfume | Patrick Süskind | x |
Point Blanc | Anthony Horowitz | x |
Possession | A. S. Byatt | x |
Public Enemy Number Two | Anthony Horowitz | x |
Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier | x |
Rights of Man | Thomas Paine | x |
River God | Wilbur Smith | x |
Rob Roy | Sir Walter Scott | x |
Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | ✔ |
Rubyfruit Jungle | Rita Mae Brown | x |
Scarlet and Black | Stendhal | x |
Scoop | Evelyn Waugh | x |
Shirley | Charlotte Brontë | x |
Shogun | James Clavell | x |
Silas Marner | George Eliot | x |
Silent Spring | Rachel Carson | x |
Skeleton Key | Anthony Horowitz | x |
Slaughterhouse 5 | Kurt Vonnegut | ✔ |
Song in the Silence | Elizabeth Kerner | x |
Song of Solomon | Toni Morrison | x |
Sons And Lovers | D. H. Lawrence | x |
Sophie's World | Jostein Gaarder | x |
Steppenwolf | Hermann Hesse | x |
Stormbreaker | Anthony Horowitz | x |
Sunset Song | Lewis Grassic Gibbon | x |
Swallows And Amazons | Arthur Ransome | x |
Sybil | Benjamin Disraeli | x |
Tales from the Arabian Nights | Richard Francis Burton | x |
Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys | Nathaniel Hawthorne | x |
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy | x |
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | ✔ |
The Adventures of Pinocchio | Carlo Collodi | x |
The Adventures of Robin Hood | Roger Lancelyn Green | x |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | ✔ |
The Aeneid | Virgil | x |
The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton | x |
The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho | x |
The Alexandria Quartet | Lawrence Durrell | x |
The Aspern Papers | Henry James | x |
The Awakening | Kate Chopin | x |
The Beach | Alex Garland | x |
The Big Sleep | Raymond Chandler | x |
The Black Arrow | Robert Louis Stevenson | x |
The Black Sheep | Honore De Balzac | x |
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting | Milan Kundera | x |
The Bottle Factory Outing | Beryl Bainbridge | x |
The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | x |
The Call of the Wild | Jack London | ✔ |
The Canterbury Tales | Geoffrey Chaucer | x |
The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | x |
The Celtic Queen | Brian Dyer | x |
The Charterhouse of Parma | Stendhal | x |
The Chronicles of Narnia Series | C.S. Lewis | ✔ |
The Clan Of The Cave Bear | Jean M Auel | ✔ |
The Collector | John Fowles | x |
The Color Purple | Alice Walker | x |
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | Arthur Conan Doyle | ✔ |
The Complete Works | Charles Dickens | ✔x |
The Complete Works | Edgar Allan Poe | ✔x |
The Complete Works | Jane Austen | ✔ |
The Complete Works | Roald Dahl | ✔x |
The Complete Works | William Shakespeare | ✔x |
The Count Of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | x |
The Crucible | Arthur Miller | x |
The Cruel Sea | Nicholas Monsarrat | x |
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon | ✔ |
The Day Of The Jackal | Frederick Forsyth | x |
The Day Of The Triffids | John Wyndham | x |
The Dead | James Joyce | x |
The Death of Ivan Ilych | Leo Tolstoy | x |
The Deerslayer | James Fenimore Cooper | x |
The Diary Of A Nobody | George and Weedon Grossmith | x |
The Divine Comedy | Dante Alighieri | x |
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds | Paul Zindel | x |
The Epic of Gilgamesh | Anonymous | x |
The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer | x |
The Far Pavilions | M. M. Kaye | x |
The Fault in Our Stars | John Green | ✔ |
The Firm | John Grisham | x |
The Forsyte Saga | John Galsworthy | x |
The Four Million | O. Henry | x |
The Giver | Lois Lowry | x |
The Glass Menagerie | Tennessee Williams | x |
The God Of Small Things | Arundhati Roy | x |
The Godfather | Mario Puzo | x |
The Good Soldier | Ford Madox Ford | x |
The Grapes Of Wrath | John Steinbeck | x |
The Great Gatsby | F Scott Fitzgerald | ✔ |
The Green Mile | Stephen King | x |
The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood | x |
The Happy Prince and Other Stories | Oscar Wilde | x |
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | ✔ |
The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | ✔ |
The Horse Whisperer | Nicholas Evans | ✔ |
The House of Mirth | Edith Wharton | x |
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame | Victor Hugo | x |
The Hunger Games Trilogy | Suzanne Collins | ✔ |
The Iliad | Homer | x |
The Importance of Being Earnest | Oscar Wilde | x |
The Joy Luck Club | Amy Tan | x |
The Jungle | Upton Sinclair | x |
The Jungle Book | Rudyard Kipling | x |
The Last of the Mohicans | James Fenimore Cooper | x |
The Leavenworth Case | Anna Katharine Green | x |
The Little Prince | Antoine De Saint-Exupery | x |
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy | J.R.R. Tolkien | ✔ |
The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold | x |
The Mabinogion | Unknown | ✔ |
The Magic Faraway Tree | Enid Blyton | ✔ |
The Magus | John Fowles | x |
The Maltese Falcon | Dashiell Hammett | x |
The Man in the Iron Mask | Alexandre Dumas | x |
The Man Who Was Thursday | G.K. Chesterton | x |
The Man Who Would Be King | Rudyard Kipling | x |
The Master And Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | x |
The Mayor Of Casterbridge | Thomas Hardy | x |
The Mill on the Floss | George Eliot | x |
The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins | x |
The Name Of The Rose | Umberto Eco | x |
The Napoleon of Notting Hill | G.K. Chesterton | x |
The New York Trilogy | Paul Auster | x |
The Night Before Christmas | Clement Clarke Moore | x |
The Odyssey | Homer | x |
The Old Man And The Sea | Ernest Hemingway | x |
The Once And Future King | T. H. White | x |
The Pearl | John Steinbeck | x |
The Perilous Gard | Elizabeth Marie Pope | x |
The Periodic Table | Primo Levi | x |
The Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux | x |
The Picture Of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | x |
The Pilgrim's Progress | John Bunyan | x |
The Pillars Of The Earth | Ken Follett | x |
The Plague | Albert Camus | x |
The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver | x |
The Portrait of a Lady | Henry James | x |
The Power Of One | Bryce Courtenay | x |
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Muriel Spark | x |
The Prince | Niccolò Machiavelli | x |
The Prince and the Pauper | Mark Twain | x |
The Princess and Curdie | George MacDonald | x |
The Princess and the Goblin | George MacDonald | x |
The Princess Diaries | Meg Cabot | x |
The Prisoner of Zenda | Anthony Hope | x |
The Professor | Charlotte Brontë | x |
The Prophet | Khalil Gibran | x |
The Prose Edda | Snorri Sturlson | x |
The Pursuit Of Love | Nancy Mitford | x |
The Quiet American | Graham Greene | x |
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists | Robert Tressell | x |
The Rainbow | D. H. Lawrence | x |
The Red Badge of Courage | Stephen Crane | x |
The Riddle of the Sands | Erskine Childers | x |
The Runaway Jury | John Grisham | x |
The Running Man | Michael Gerard Bauer | x |
The Scarlet Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne | x |
The Secret Agent | Joseph Conrad | x |
The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ | Sue Townsend | x |
The Secret Garden | Frances Hodgson Burnett | ✔ |
The Secret History | Donna Tartt | x |
The Shell Seekers | Rosamunde Pilcher | x |
The Shipping News | Annie Proulx | x |
The Sicilian | Mario Puzo | x |
The Silver Sword | Ian Serraillier | x |
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. | Washington Irving | x |
The Stand | Stephen King | x |
The Standoff | Chuck Hogan | x |
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson | x |
The Stranger | Albert Camus | x |
The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | x |
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Anne Brontë | x |
The Thin Man | Dashiell Hammett | x |
The Thirty-Nine Steps | John Buchan | x |
The Thorn Birds | Colleen McCollough | x |
The Three Musketeers | Alexandre Dumas | x |
The Time Machine | H.G. Wells | x |
The Time Traveller's Wife | Audrey Niffenegger | x |
The Tin Drum | Gunter Grass | x |
The Trial | Franz Kafka | x |
The Turn of the Screw | Henry James | x |
The Unbearable Lightness of Being | Milan Kundera | x |
The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle | ✔ |
The War Of The Worlds | H. G. Wells | x |
The Wasp Factory | Iain Banks | x |
The Water Babies | Charles Kingsley | x |
The Way We Live Now | Anthony Trollope | x |
The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | ✔ |
The Witch of Blackbird Pond | Elizabeth George Speare | x |
The Woman In White | Wilkie Collins | x |
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz | L. Frank Baum | ✔ |
The World According To Garp | John Irving | x |
The Yellow Wallpaper | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | ✔ |
They Used To Play On Grass | Terry Venables and Gordon Williams | x |
Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | x |
Three Men In A Boat | Jerome K. Jerome | x |
Through The Looking Glass | Lewis Carroll | ✔ |
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | John Le Carre | x |
To a God Unknown | John Steinbeck | x |
To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | x |
Trainspotting | Irvine Welsh | x |
Treasure Island | Robert Louis Stevenson | ✔ |
Tristram Shandy | Laurence Sterne | x |
Tuesdays With Morrie | Mitch Albom | x |
Ulysses | James Joyce | x |
Uncle Tom's Cabin | Harriet Beecher Stowe | x |
Under the Greenwood Tree | Thomas Hardy | x |
Under the Volcano | Malcolm Lowry | x |
USA Trilogy | John Dos Passos | x |
Utopia | Thomas More | x |
Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | x |
Villette | Charlotte Brontë | x |
Waiting for the Barbarians | J.M. Coetzee | x |
Walden | Henry David Thoreau | x |
War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | x |
Watership Down | Richard Adams | x |
Waverley | Sir Walter Scott | x |
Westward Ho! | Charles Kingsley | x |
What Katy Did Series | Susan Coolidge | ✔ |
White Fang | Jack London | x |
Winnie-the-Pooh | A.A. Milne | ✔ |
Wise Blood | Flannery O'Connor | x |
Wise Children | Angela Carter | x |
So …..anything good!