Earlier this week, I read an article on
Book Riot where the author attempted to
compile a list fulfilling these requirements to be "well-read:"
A familiarity with the monuments of Western literature, an at least passing interest in the high-points of world literature, a willingness to experience a breadth of genres, a special interest in the work of one’s immediate culture, a desire to share in the same reading experiences of many other readers, and an emphasis on the writing of the current day.
I was intrigued by the list and wondered how many of the books I had read and/or wanted to read. Here it is. Strikeout are titles I've read, and bold are the titles I want to read. (Despite the well-read moniker, I have no desire to attempt some of them). And underlined are the ones I know nothing about. If you have input on those, let me know if they are worth my time.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- A
tlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Beowulf
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
- The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- Faust by Goethe
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Gospels
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
- Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
- The Iliad by Homer
The Inferno by Dante
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exepury
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus, King by Sophocles
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Pentateuch
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
- The Stand by Stephen King
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
1984 by George Orwell
- 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James
I've read 39. Not too shabby?
Great list, I'm saving it for later! Love seeing Murakami on there. :)
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I've heard only amazing things about Kavalier and Clay, so I'm thinking that's probably one to keep on the list (though it IS long...). Howl and Casino Royale are both short AND cult classics - I haven't read CR but I've read a couple of other Bond novels. They're a bit hit and miss (and very much of their time) but easy reads! I wonder how many I've read...???
ReplyDeleteAmerican Pastoral is my only experience with Philip Roth...I plan on keeping it that way ;-)
ReplyDeleteInteresting list. You've definitely read a lot of them! I only read 25.
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind if I do a similar post on my blog :-)