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[AppleBlade]

I decided that I want be better read so I made a list of classics and modern classics and plan on adding them to my life long bucket list of goals. Could anyone look at the list and tell me if there are any glaring omissions or inclusions (i.e. books that should definitely be on these lists or books on here that do not belong). Thanks.

SORRY ABOUT THE FORMATTING
They are in order by authors first name
List of Classic Books to Read
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
Dracula Bram Stoker
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
Bleak House Charles Dickens
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
Life and Adventures of Nicholas N. Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri
A Room with a View E.M. Forster
Howards End E.M. Forster
The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allen Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allen Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue Edgar Allen Poe
The Pit and the Pendeulum Edgar Allen Poe
The Raven Edgar Allen Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allen Poe
Ethan Frome Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
Beyond Good & Evil Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostroyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostroyevsky
Middlemarch George Eliot
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The Time Machine H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells
Uncle Tom’s Chabin Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
Moby-Dick Herman Melville
Siddartha Herman Hesse
At the Mountains of Madness Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulu Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Dunwich Horror Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Call of the Wild Jack London
White Fang Jack London
Ulysses James Joyce
Emma Jane Austen
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
Persuasion Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Paradise Lost John Milton
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathon Swift
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne
Journey to the Center of the... Jules Verne
Around the World in Eighty Days Jules Verne
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Alice’s Adventures in Wonder.... Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Conn. Yankee in King Arthur’s... Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Don Quixote Miguel Cervantes
The House of Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlett Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
Babbitt Sinclair Lewis
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Tess of the d’Ubervilles Thomas Hardy
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
Candide Voltaire
Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray




Modern Classics to Read
Watchmen Alan Moore
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
The Assistant Bernard Malamud
The Fixer Bernard Malamud
The Natural Bernard Malamud
A Tree grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Blood Meridian, or the... Cormac McCarthy
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
White Noise Don DeLillo
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's... Douglas Adams
Ragtime E.L. Doctorow
A Passage to India E.M. Forster
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O'Brien
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 George Orwell
Animal Farm George Orwell
The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
Living Henry Green
Loving Henry Green
Party Going Henry Green
Call It Sleep Henry Roth
Atonement Ian McEwan
On the Road Jack Kerouac
A Death in the Family James Agee
Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin
Deliverance James Dickey
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides
The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosiński
The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré
Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
East of Eden John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Rabbit, Run John Updike
Rabbit Redux John Updike
Rabbit is Rich John Updike
Rabbit at Rest John Updike
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
Are You There God? It's Me... Judy Blume
The Brief Wondrous Life of Os.. Junot Diaz
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's... Ken Kesey
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
The Giver Lois Lowry
Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
The Book Thief Markus Zusak
The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Gilead Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Money Martin Amis
The A. A. of Kavalier & Clay Michael Chabon
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
Do Android Dream of Electric Philip K. Dick
Ubik Philip K. Dick
American Pastoral Philip Roth
Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
The Sportswriter Richard Ford
Native Son Richard Wright
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren
Dog Soldiers Robert Stone
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
Herzog Saul Bellow
Humboldt’s Gift Saul Bellow
Mr. Sammler’s Planet Saul Bellow
Seize the Day Saul Bellow
Ravelstein Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
Beloved Toni Morrison
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr Biswas V.S. Naipaul
The Moviegoer Walker Percy
Lord of the Flies William Golding
Possession A.S. Byatt
Light in August William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
Count Zero William Gibson
Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson
Neuromancer William Gibson
Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs
The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron
Sophie’s Choice William Styron
White Teeth Zadie Smith
]

 

[MrOogieBoogie]

You've got a lot of 'em covered, nice.

The only suggestion I will make is this:

Read this first. It is the absolute definition of "modern classic" in every sense of the word.

 

[Wuthering_Heights]

Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

My man.

 

[braves01]

Add this:

 

[ComputerMKII]

Don't do it just because people said you should. 95% of these books must be fucking boring to anyone but a professor in literature.

 

[Red]

Don't do it just because people said you should. 95% of these books must be fucking boring to anyone but a professor in literature.

No.

They are great books for a reason.


Reading that list would provide a great basis for an understanding of modern thought, storytelling, and culture. Knowing your literary history helps give you a sense of your place in the world. That's without mentioning the smaller details of their individual moral lessons.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

I'd also suggest Demian or Steppenwolf in addition to Siddartha. Gotta get that Hesse love.

Don't do it just because people said you should. 95% of these books must be fucking boring to anyone but a professor in literature.

Some of them, but certainly not 95%. Maybe 5-10%. A lot of those books are genuinely entertaining.

 

[shira]

No.

They are great books for a reason.

Classic just means "interesting at the time"

Books are out. It's all about movies & cliff notes now.
Why spend 10-12 hours when you get the gist of it in a few minutes.

 

[Foliorum Viridum]

I would say to find a good lecture on YT or something about a book if you don't get why it's a classic. I'm doing English Literature in uni and a lot of books are boring to read these days, but interesting to learn about in the context of a lecture. Just a tip if you want something to do after reading some that don't interest you!

 

[zerotol]

That's a pretty good list.

If you ever think your job sucks, read the Grapes Of Wrath! Such a great book.

 

[Red]

Classic just means "interesting at the time"

Books are out. It's all about movies & cliff notes now.
Why spend 10-12 hours when you get the gist of it in a few minutes.

I am not sure of the truth % here.

"Classic" means timeless. We as humans communicate through words and stories. That is fundamental to us. The listed books all explore aspects of our core human condition. That does not change with time.

 

[Risible]

Classic just means "interesting at the time"

Books are out. It's all about movies & cliff notes now.
Why spend 10-12 hours when you get the gist of it in a few minutes.

I honestly can't tell if this is masterful commentary or shitty troll...

 

[GremlinFool]

Some of those books are legitimately terrible (Jane Eyre and Ethan Frome immediately come to mind).

Charlotte Bronte has no conception of restraint and proper pacing. She spares no detail but manages to say absolutely nothing worthwhile about her repugnant characters.

 

[joe2187]

I'd also suggest Demian or Steppenwolf in addition to Siddartha. Gotta get that Hesse love.


.

I'll back these as well

If you have any Jack London books on that list the best to get is The Sea Wolf you wont regret it

 

[teruterubozu]

Great list. Is most of this from the Library of America series with the stripes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_America

I would add "Summer" by Edith Wharton on there too.

 

[Silas Lang]

I would say to find a good lecture on YT or something about a book if you don't get why it's a classic. I'm doing English Literature in uni and a lot of books are boring to read these days, but interesting to learn about in the context of a lecture. Just a tip if you want something to do after reading some that don't interest you!

I agee with this. I also enjoy reading a little about the author before starting a novel as well. Understanding the social/historical context under which the book was written definately helps me understand it a lot better, well when reading the "classics" anyways.

 

[Grimm Fandango]

The Iliad by Homer. Get the Richard Lattimore translation as it's arguably the best (don't read some piss poor translation, there is no comparison).

 

[ComputerMKII]

My English literature teacher hated Pride and Prejudice, hated the fact he had to re-read it every year for professional reasons, and found it appalling that most of his students ended up loving it. He would say things like "Won't they just fuck already?" and complained about how it went on and on and nothing important happened for 400 pages.

 

[GusBus]

That's a terrific list. However, getting through all of them will be very challenging. Many of these titles are quite long, in addition to being very dense. Just know what you're getting into as it's a serious time commitment (albeit, a fruitful one).

 

[Red]

My English literature teacher hated Pride and Prejudice, hated the fact he had to re-read it every year for professional reasons, and found it appalling that most of his students ended up loving it. He would say things like "Won't they just fuck already?" and complained about how it went on and on and nothing important happened for 400 pages.

I also hate pride and prejudice. Talk about long winded. I'd like to read a critical analysis of it, maybe then I'd find it more valuable.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

You are ignoring a continent there:

1888 Azul Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)
1899 Dom Casmurro Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Brazil)
1900 El Moto Joaquin Garcia Monge (Costa Rica)
1902 Os Sertões Euclides da Cunha (Brazil)
1915 Los de abajo Mariano Azuela (Mexico)
1922 Trilce Cesar Vallejo (Peru)
1922 Paulicéia desvairada Mário de Andrade (Brazil)
1922 Desolación Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
1922 La señorita Etcétera Arqueles Vela (Mexico)
1924 La vorágine José Eustasio Rivera (Colombia)
1926 Don Segundo Sombra Ricardo Guiraldes (Argentina)
1928 Macunaíma Mário de Andrade (Brazil)
1929 Doña Bárbara Romulo Gallegos (Venezuela)
1929 Los siete locos Roberto Arlt (Argentina)
1931 Altazor Vicente Huidobro (Chile)
1934 Huasipungo Jorge Icaza (Ecuador)
1936 Angústia Graciliano Ramos (Brazil)
1940 La invención de Morel Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina)
1940 Mamita Yunai Carlos Luis Fallas (Costa Rica)
1941 El mundo es ancho y ajeno Ciro Alegria (Peru)
1944 Ficciones Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
1945 A rosa do povo Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Brazil)
1946 El señor presidente Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala)
1948 El túnel Ernesto Sabato (Argentina)
1948 Adán Buenosayres Leopoldo Marechal (Argentina)
1949 Hombres de maiz Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala)
1949 El Aleph Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
1949 El reino de este mundo Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)
1950 Canto general Pablo Neruda (Chile)
1950 El laberinto de la soledad Octavio Paz (Mexico)
1950 La vida breve Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay)
1953 Los pasos perdidos Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)
1955 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo (Mexico)
1956 Grande Sertão: Veredas João Guimarães Rosa (Brazil)
1956 La hora 0 Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua)
1958 Gabriela, cravo e canela Jorge Amado (Brazil)
1959 Hijo de hombre Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay)
1962 Sobre héroes y tumbas Ernesto Sábato (Argentina)
1962 La muerte de Artemio Cruz Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
1963 Rayuela Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
1963 La ciudad y los perros Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
1964 A Paixão segundo G.H. Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
1965 Tres tristes tigres Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Cuba)
1966 Paradiso Jose Lezama Lima (Cuba)
1967 Cien años de soledad Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
1969 El mundo alucinante Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba)
1970 El Obsceno Pajaro de la Noche Jose Donoso (Chile)
1974 Yo, el supremo Augusto Roa Bastos (Paraguay)
1974 El limonero real Juan José Saer (Argentina)
1975 Terra nostra Carlos Fuentes (Mexico)
1975 El otoño del patriarca Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
1976 El beso de la mujer araña Manuel Puig (Argentina)
1978 Maitreya Severo Sarduy (Cuba)
1978 Casa de campo José Donoso (Chile)
1980 Respiración artificial Ricardo Piglia (Argentina)
1981 La guerra del fin del mundo Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
1982 La casa de los espíritus Isabel Allende (Chile)
1985 El amor en los tiempos del cólera Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia)
1985 El Desfile del Amor Sergio Pitol (Mexico)
1988 El imperio de los sueños Giannina Braschi (Puerto Rico)
1988 O Alquimista Paulo Coelho (Brasil)
1989 Como agua para chocolate Laura Esquivel (Mexico)
1990 Agosto Rubem Fonseca (Brazil)
1992 Antes que anochezca Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba)
1995 Maqroll el gaviero Álvaro Mutis (Colombia)
1998 Yo-Yo Boing! Giannina Braschi (Puerto Rico)
1998 Los detectives salvajes Roberto Bolaño (Chile)
2000 La fiesta del chivo Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
2001 La reina de América Jorge Majfud (Uruguay)
2002 Ojos, de otro mirar: poemas Homero Aridjis (Mexico)
2002 Poesía Dulce María Loynaz (Cuba)
2004 2666 Roberto Bolaño (Chile)
2011 United States of Banana Giannina Braschi (Puerto Rico)

 

[Mumei]

Don't do it just because people said you should. 95% of these books must be fucking boring to anyone but a professor in literature.

No way. Some of them are probably boring, but definitely not 95%.

Anyway, going through my books I have some stuff I think deserves notice (including some non-fiction):

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Beowulf, Anonymous
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake
Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois
If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino
The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino
Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
Exile and Kingdom, Albert Camus
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Siderius Nuncius or the The Sidereal Messenger, by Galileo Galilei
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong
The Theory of Communicative Action, Jurgen Habermas
The Odyssey, Homer
Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
The Complete Fairytales, George MacDonald
The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald
The Princess and Curdie, George MacDonald
The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov
The Eye, Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
Every Single Thing He's Written Including The Stuff I Haven't Read, Vladimir Nabokov
A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, Kenzaburo Oe
Sonnets and Shorter Poems, Franceso Petrarch
The Republic, Plato
The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust, duh
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Complete Poems, Sappho
Moral Essays, Volume III: de Beneficiis, Seneca
Stuff, William Shakespeare
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer
Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
Largesse (Parti Pris (Reunion Des Musees Nationaux (France)).), Jean Starobinski
The Portable Voltaire, Voltaire
Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, Paul Veyne
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
Augustus, John Edward Williams
Musashi, Eiji Yoshikawa
The Ladies' Paradise, Emile Zola

For some authors I only listed a couple to keep it shorter. How do you feel about genre classics? I feel like they are worth mentioning, even if they don't have the same prestige.

I also hate pride and prejudice. Talk about long winded. I'd like to read a critical analysis of it, maybe then I'd find it more valuable.

Perhaps you should read this edition? I enjoyed it.

 

[teruterubozu]

^ Nice inclusion of classic Japanese authors. I would also add "Silence" by Shusaku Endo, "Woman in the Dunes" by Kobo Abe and "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" by Yukio Mishima.

 

[Ultima_5]

Catcher in the Rye is by far one of my favorite books ever.

Also subscribing to this thread as I plan on reading more once i graduate

Also, don quiote is great, but very long. I was surprised i found parts of it funny despite it's age.

Also, the odyssey is a must read. Especially for someone on a video game forum. You'll see how pretty much all fantasy media to this day is riffing from it. I think it's broken up in to sections though, so you should read one at a time. Then take a break because its like 1000+ pages.

Also, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau are the best hg wells books. I'd put one of them over 20,000 leagues under the sea which i found boring as hell.

 

[Fritz]

I'd rather shorten the list if it is supposed to be an actual reading list. Maybe limit it to one by each author? Even that is daunting.

Either way I'd add:

Love in the times of cholera - Marquez

A hero of our time - Lermontov

The lady with the dog - Tchechov

A question of upbringing - Powell

The never ending story - Ende

The dead souls - Gogol

The Prince - Machiavelli

All quiet on the western front - Remarque


Some of my translations might be off here but I think these are pretty grand!

 

[Metrotab]

Subscribing to this thread for a nicely compiled list of interesting books to read. Thanks OP.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

I love Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth is the only not-crazy person in that entire book, and she looks on, dismayed, as the insanity around her piles higher and higher. It's basically 400 pages of "what the fuck is wrong with you people."

 

[slit]

I decided that I want be better read so I made a list of classics and modern classics and plan on adding them to my life long bucket list of goals. Could anyone look at the list and tell me if there are any glaring omissions or inclusions (i.e. books that should definitely be on these lists or books on here that do not belong). Thanks.

SORRY ABOUT THE FORMATTING
They are in order by authors first name
List of Classic Books to Read
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
Dracula Bram Stoker
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
Bleak House Charles Dickens
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
Life and Adventures of Nicholas N. Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri
A Room with a View E.M. Forster
Howards End E.M. Forster
The Cask of Amontillado Edgar Allen Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allen Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue Edgar Allen Poe
The Pit and the Pendeulum Edgar Allen Poe
The Raven Edgar Allen Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allen Poe
Ethan Frome Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka
Beyond Good & Evil Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostroyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostroyevsky
Middlemarch George Eliot
Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
The Time Machine H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells
Uncle Tom’s Chabin Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
Moby-Dick Herman Melville
Siddartha Herman Hesse
At the Mountains of Madness Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulu Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Dunwich Horror Howard Philips Lovecraft
The Call of the Wild Jack London
White Fang Jack London
Ulysses James Joyce
Emma Jane Austen
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
Persuasion Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Paradise Lost John Milton
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathon Swift
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne
Journey to the Center of the... Jules Verne
Around the World in Eighty Days Jules Verne
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Alice’s Adventures in Wonder.... Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Conn. Yankee in King Arthur’s... Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Don Quixote Miguel Cervantes
The House of Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlett Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
Babbitt Sinclair Lewis
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Tess of the d’Ubervilles Thomas Hardy
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
Candide Voltaire
Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray




Modern Classics to Read
Watchmen Alan Moore
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
The Assistant Bernard Malamud
The Fixer Bernard Malamud
The Natural Bernard Malamud
A Tree grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Blood Meridian, or the... Cormac McCarthy
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
White Noise Don DeLillo
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's... Douglas Adams
Ragtime E.L. Doctorow
A Passage to India E.M. Forster
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O'Brien
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 George Orwell
Animal Farm George Orwell
The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
Living Henry Green
Loving Henry Green
Party Going Henry Green
Call It Sleep Henry Roth
Atonement Ian McEwan
On the Road Jack Kerouac
A Death in the Family James Agee
Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin
Deliverance James Dickey
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides
The Painted Bird Jerzy Kosiński
The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré
Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
East of Eden John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Rabbit, Run John Updike
Rabbit Redux John Updike
Rabbit is Rich John Updike
Rabbit at Rest John Updike
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
Are You There God? It's Me... Judy Blume
The Brief Wondrous Life of Os.. Junot Diaz
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's... Ken Kesey
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
The Giver Lois Lowry
Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
The Book Thief Markus Zusak
The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Gilead Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
Money Martin Amis
The A. A. of Kavalier & Clay Michael Chabon
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
Do Android Dream of Electric Philip K. Dick
Ubik Philip K. Dick
American Pastoral Philip Roth
Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth
Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
The Sportswriter Richard Ford
Native Son Richard Wright
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren
Dog Soldiers Robert Stone
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
Herzog Saul Bellow
Humboldt’s Gift Saul Bellow
Mr. Sammler’s Planet Saul Bellow
Seize the Day Saul Bellow
Ravelstein Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
Beloved Toni Morrison
Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr Biswas V.S. Naipaul
The Moviegoer Walker Percy
Lord of the Flies William Golding
Possession A.S. Byatt
Light in August William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
Count Zero William Gibson
Mona Lisa Overdrive William Gibson
Neuromancer William Gibson
Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs
The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron
Sophie’s Choice William Styron
White Teeth Zadie Smith
]

I'm not reading through all this.

 

[Old Lace]

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

 

[Kwixotik]

I'm not reading through all this.

You could just ctrl+f to see if whatever book you were going to recommend is already on there.

However, OP, if your list is already that long maybe you should just start reading them instead of adding a bunch more.

 

[Verbal Intercourse]

Covers more than what you're looking for but worth a look:

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading

 

[Puddles]

You've got a lot of 'em covered, nice.

The only suggestion I will make is this:

Read this first. It is the absolute definition of "modern classic" in every sense of the word.

Half of the book is descriptions of mountains or descriptions of sunsets. I'm pretty sure that literally 50% of the words in the book are allocated to one of those two areas.

I thought it was awesome for the first 100 pages or so, but I just couldn't take it after awhile. Cormac McCarthy is a fucking asshole. I could go on, but I'll just say fuck his overwrought similes.

The Comanche scene is awesome though.

 

[archnemesis]

The list is missing Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. It's one of my favorite classics.

 

[joe2187]

I'm not reading through all this.

Enters thread about reading

TLDR

 

[ymmv]

I decided that I want be better read so I made a list of classics and modern classics and plan on adding them to my life long bucket list of goals. Could anyone look at the list and tell me if there are any glaring omissions or inclusions (i.e. books that should definitely be on these lists or books on here that do not belong). Thanks.

Skip Jules Verne, add a few Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Too many cyberpunk novels. Drop the Stephenson book and only keep Gibson's Neuromancer,. Add more classics like these:

Frank Herbert - Dune
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination or The Demolished Man
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light
Ursula K. Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness

The Gollancz SF masterworks series is excellent to start with. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks

 

[Fritz]

Another very important author you've missed is Umberto Eco!

 

[Puddles]

Read Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Skip the sequels and just make up an ending in your head. They suck, but the original is, IMO, one of the top 10 novels of the past 25 years, all genres, full stop.

 

[braves01]

Another very important author you've missed is Umberto Eco!

Yeah, he's good. I'd recommend The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetary.

 

[Puddles]

Also read Blindness by Jose Saramago. Easily one of the best novels I've read.

 

[teruterubozu]

Skip Jules Verne, add a few Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Too many cyberpunk novels. Drop the Stephenson book and only keep Gibson's Neuromancer,. Add more classics like these:

Frank Herbert - Dune
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination or The Demolished Man
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light
Ursula K. Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness

The Gollancz SF masterworks series is excellent to start with. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks

Such a wonderful book. I would also switch up some of those Philip K. Dick novels on the list, but I guess "Ubik" and "Do Androids" is fine.

 

[Grimm Fandango]

Also, the odyssey is a must read. Especially for someone on a video game forum. You'll see how pretty much all fantasy media to this day is riffing from it. I think it's broken up in to sections though, so you should read one at a time. Then take a break because its like 1000+ pages.

Agreed and I'm gonna repeat myself in saying if you decide to read it, get a decent translation. Nothing that removes all the poetry and metaphors.

 

[blainethemono]

You've got a lot of 'em covered, nice.

The only suggestion I will make is this:

Read this first. It is the absolute definition of "modern classic" in every sense of the word.

Probably the best book I've ever read. I would probably read Suttree or something over The Road though.

 

[Tashi]

Damn. I wish I read as much as you guys.

 

[Zebra]

I am soo bookmarking this thread.

Skip Jules Verne, add a few Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Boooo. I think 20,000 Leagues is well worth a read. But Doyle should definitely be on the list.

 

[Red]

Thanks for the suggestion, Mumei, but I'm not sure I'm willing to read the entire book again. It seemed to me like an early Victorian romcom.

 

[Mumei]

Thanks for the suggestion, Mumei, but I'm not sure I'm willing to read the entire book again. It seemed to me like an early Victorian romcom.

Haha

Well, even with benefit of annotations I wouldn't say it was my favorite classic, though I did still quite like it. I don't think anything bored me quite so much as The Good Soldier Svejk, though. Perhaps Fanfarlo. I expected better of Baudelaire.

Anyway, since other people are listing them, here some genre classics, things I forgot, young adult / children's lit, and even a couple comics/manga:

Politics, Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
Vorkosigan Saga, Lois McMaster Bujold
Superman: Secret Identity, Kurt Busiek
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940, George Chauncey
The Dark is Rising Sequence, Susan Cooper
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, Robert Darnton
The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Women's War, Alexandre Dumas (AFTER Monte Cristo and Musketeers)
Sandman, Neil Gaiman
The Mikado, W.S. Gilbert (preferable to watch, especially if you like musicals or operettas)
Howl, Allen Ginsburg
Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K LeGuin
The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Ursula K LeGuin
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K LeGuin
Dune, Frank Herbert
A Wrinkle in Time, Madelein L'Engle
Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen
Little Nemo in Slumberland, Winsor McCay
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck, Don Rosa
Contact, Carl Sagan
Merlin Trilogy, Mary Stewart
Blankets, Craig Thompson
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
Monster, Naoki Urasawa
Pluto, Naoki Urasawa
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship Of Her Own Making, Catherynne Valente
The Habitation of the Blessed, Catherynne Valente
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
Latro in the Mist, Gene Wolfe
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe

I didn't list anything that was ongoing; and again some of these I wouldn't necessarily call them "classic", but they are certainly recommended.

 

[RedNalgene]

I didn't come in here to add to the book list as I think the list is pretty comprehensive already, and I've subscribed to this thread. But I came in here to say how excited I am to see this many gaf'ers interested in the classics. Such a good insight into the community!

 

[Grakl]

You are ignoring a continent there:

2004 2666 Roberto Bolaño (Chile)

You didn't bold this, so I'm pointing it out. 2666 is a modern classic.

 

[AppleBlade]

OP here, thanks for the contributions everybody, I've already made a few additions to my list. A couple of responses:

- It's funny that Pride & Prejudice got picked out as an example of a "poor" classic because that is the one I am currently reading. I like it so far. It has a playful air about it that I hope I find in many of the other classics I plan to read.

- The lists were created using Modern Library's top 100 and the Time 100 since 1923. I also used a couple of other lists I found online (feedbook's harvard list of classics, etc.)

- The reason I have so much cyberpunk on here is because the genre is a favorite of mine (at least in film and video games), I actually had to restrain myself from not adding more.

 

[el retorno]

I didn't see east of eden by Steinbeck . One of my favorite books.