Classics To Read

Friends and family recommend books faster than I can read them, so this list collects all those recommendations in one place.

  1. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Japan/Asia) -- Tyler or Seidensticker translation
  2. Ulysses by James Joyce (Ireland/Western Europe)
  3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (Ireland/Western Europe)
  4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia/South America) -- ? translation
  5. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (England/Western Europe) 
  6. King Lear by William Shakespeare (England/Western Europe)
  7. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville (USA/North America)
  8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (USA/North America)
  9. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (USA/North America)
  10. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (USA/North America)
  11. The Chosen by Chaim Potok (USA/North America)
  12. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (France/Western Europe)
  13. Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile by Pierre Beaumarchais (France/Western Europe)
  14. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (Spain/Western Europe)
  15. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Poland/England/Africa)
  16. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (England/Western Europe)
  17. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (England/Western Europe)
  18. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates by Daniel Defoe (England/Western Europe)
  19. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (England/Western Europe)
  20. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (England/Western Europe)
  21. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence (England/Western Europe)
  22. Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh (England/Western Europe)
  23. The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin (England/Western Europe)
  24. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (England/Western Europe)
  25. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (England/Western Europe)
  26. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Russia/Eastern Europe)
  27. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Russia/Eastern Europe)
  28. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russia/Eastern Europe)
  29. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Russia/Eastern Europe)
  30. Dracula by Bram Stoker (Ireland/Romania/England/Europe)
  31. The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne (USA/North America)
  32. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (England/Europe)
  33. Wit by Margaret Edson (North America)
  34. The Catcher in the Rye by
  35. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by
  36. I Know why the Caged Bird Sings by
  37. by Kurt Vonnegut
  38. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton (Australia)
  39. The Book Thief by (Australia, Europe)
  40. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys



2 comments:

  1. MelApril 23, 2013 at 4:25 PM

    Have you read The Book Thief yet? You really, really should. It is one of the best, hands down, books set in the Holocaust and I say do not say that lightly because I read a ton of Holocaust focused fiction books for awhile. The Book Thief outshone all of them.

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  2. JessicaApril 23, 2013 at 6:01 PM

    I haven't read The Book Thief yet. I've been trying to get through the Newberry Award winners (and then this year's ALA awards came out, and there were 3 more I just had to read), but I think I'll move The Book Thief up the list -- it seems like everyone who's read it has had an equally strong reaction.

    My little brother teaches high school English, and he's worked with Richmond's Holocaust Museum on teaching the Holocaust (specifically, teaching the Holocaust through graphic novels), so I'll have to see if he's read it yet.

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