Must-Read Books

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

Pixi's Blog

Random collection of thoughts, articles, guides and tips that I want to hang onto.

Must-Read Books

One thought on “Must-Read Books”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Share this:

One thought on “Must-Read Books”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Cookies