The Penultimate Reading List

Summertime is quickly drawing to a close, and some of you -no doubt- have enjoyed (or at least attempted to enjoy) reading a few good books during these past few months.

However, just in the case you didn’t, and if you’re looking for a good list from which to choose, either for yourself, your children, or others, here’s an EXCELLENT starting point.

Most are novels, some are not, many are classics, some are from antiquity, some from modernity, some obscure, while others (and their authors) renown. In some cases, authors are not listed because many -if not most- of the works are so renown, or they’re simply unknown; and in the cases where some help could help identify or clarify, the author’s name is provided.

While by no means is this list wholly complete, it’s a damn good start.

If anyone has read at least 1/3 of these, they may consider themselves reasonably well read.
 (While I’ve not read all of the selections, I have read many – and am familiar with most.)

And remember, if you can’t read, you’re doomed!
Don’t ban books!

1.) Daphnis & Chloe (Longus),
2.) I, Robot (Isaac Asimov),
3.) To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee),
4.) Lord of the Flies (William Golding),
5.) The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas),
6.) Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift),
7.) The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck),
8.) The Catcher in the Rye (J.D.Salinger),
9.) The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle),
10.) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley),

11.) 1984 (George Orwell),
12.) The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells),
13.) David Copperfield (Charles Dickens),
14.) Don Quixote (Don Quijote de la Mancha),
15.) Moby-Dick (Herman Mellville),
16.) Metamorphoses (Ovid),
17.) The Napoleon of Notting Hill (G.K.Chesterton),
18.) Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan)
19.) Ulysses (James Joyce),
20.) Catch-22 (Joseph Heller),

21.) Robinson Crusoe,
22.) Clarissa (Samuel Richardson),
23.) Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë),
24.) The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne),
25.) Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert),
26.) The Brothers Karamazov ( Fyodor Dostoyevsky),
27.) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stephenson),
28.) The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde),
29.) The Call of the Wild (Jack London),
30.) The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame),

31.) Men Without Women (Ernest Hemingway),
32.) Brave New World (Aldous Huxley),
33.) The Plague (Albert Camus),
34.) Charlotte’s Web (E.B.White),
35.) The Lord Of The Rings (J.R.R.Tolkein),
36.) On the Road (Jack Kerouac),
37.) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
38.) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov),
39.) The Tin Drum (Günter Wilhelm Grass),

40.) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,
41.) Song of Solomon (Toni Morrisson),
42.) If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,
43.) The Executioner’s Song,
44.) The BFG (Roald Dahl),
45.) I Claudius (Robert Graves),
46.) Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut),
47.) Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell),
48.) Absalom, Absalom! (William Faulkner),
49.) Of Human Bondage (W.Somerset Maugham),
50.) To the Lighthouse (Virginia Wolfe),

51.) Portnoy’s Complaint,
52.) A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess),
53.) From Here To Eternity,
54.) The World According to Garp,
55.) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
56.) Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury),
57.) The Hunt for Red October (Tom Clancy),
58.) Lord Jim (Jospeh Conrad),
59.) Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell),
60.) A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway),

61.) The Postman Always Rings Twice (James M. Cain),
62.) The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie),
63.) Les Misérables (Victor Hugo),
64.) The Hobbit (J.R.R.Tolkein),
65.) A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens),
66.) The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S.Lewis),
67.) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll),
68.) A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens),
69.) Dracula (Bram Stoker),
70.) The Odyssey (Homer),

71.) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain),
72.) Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck),
73.) Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy),
74.) Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe),
75.) The Complete Works by William Shakespeare,
76.) The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux),
77.) Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt),
78.) Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne),
79.) The Abolition of Man (C.S.Lewis),
80.) Bleak House (Charles Dickens),

81.) Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray),
82.) Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse),
83.) Little Women (Louisa May Alcott),
84.) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams),
85.) The Color Purple (Alice Walker),
86.) The Iliad (homer),
87.) The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri),
88.) Common Sense (Thomas Paine),
89.) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne),
90.) As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner),

91.) Beowulf,
92.) Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Fannie Flagg),
93.) The Epic of Gilgamesh,
94.) The Constitution of the United States of America,
95.) Leatherstocking Tales,
96.) The Joy Luck Club,
97.) Just So Stories,
98.) Dubliners,
99.) The Canterbury Tales,
100.) Twelve Years a Slave,

101.) A Modest Proposal,
102.) Walden & Civil Disobedience,
103.) Winnie-the-Pooh,
104.) Murder on the Orient Express,
105.) An Experiment in Criticism,
106.) Little House on the Prairie,
107.) The Master and Margarita,
108.) Sense and Sensibility,
109.) The Complete Sherlock Holmes,
110.) Jude the Obscure,

111.) The Sea-Wolf,
112.) Bridge to Terabithia,
113.) The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,
114.) Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There,
115.) East of Eden,
116.) The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon,
117.) The Adventures of Robin Hood,
118.) All the President’s Men,
119.) The Complete Tales (Beatrix Potter),
120.) Orthodoxy,

121.) The Jungle,
122.) The Prophet (K.Gibran),
123.) The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairytales,
124.) Complete Fairy Tales & Stories (H.C. Andersen),
125.) Confessions (Augustine of Hippo),
126.) On Liberty (J.S. Mill),
127.) Island,
128.) The Island of Doctor Moreau,
129.) On Fairy-Stories (J.R.R. Tolkein),
130.) The Four Loves,

131.) Narrative of Sojourner Truth,
132.) The Last of the Mohicans: A narrative of 1757,
133.) Pippi Longstocking,
134.) The Souls of Black Folk,
135.) Pudd’nhead Wilson/Those Extraordinary Twins,
136.) The Sicilian,
137.) War and Peace,
138.) Idylls of the King,
139.) The Art of War (Sun Tzu),
140.) The Last Cavalier,

141.) The Space Trilogy (C.S.Lewis),
142.) John Brown (W.E.B.DuBois),
143.) The Virginian,
144.) Medea (Euripides),
145.) The Everlasting Man,
146.) The Jungle Book,
147.) Archy and Mehitabel (Don Marquis),
148.) A Subway Named Mobius,
149.) The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.,
150.) Fields for President (W.C.Fields),

151.) The Diary of a Country Parson 1758-1802 (James Woodforde),
152.) History of My Life, Vols. 1-2 (Giacomo Chevalier de Seingalt Casanova),
153.) Now and Then… (Gil Scott-Heron),
154.) The Iliad,
155.) Paradise Lost,
156.) The Oresteia,
157.) The Republic,
158.) Candide,
159.) The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway),
160.) The Golden Ass (Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis),

161.) The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle),
162.) Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand),
163.) Aesop’s Fables,
164.) The Stranger (Albert Camus),
165.) Silas Marner,
166.) The Red Badge of Courage,
167.) The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights,
168.) Apology (Plato),
169.) The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank).
170.) Le Morte d’Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table,

171.) Politics (Aristotle),
172.) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
173.) Moll Flanders,
174.) Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
175.) The Complete Plays (Aristophanes),
176.) Jason and the Golden Fleece (The Argonautica),
177.) The Glass Menagerie,
178.) The Time Machine (H.G.Wells),
179.) The Prince and the Pauper,
180.) The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck),

181.) Watership Down (Richard Adams),
182.) The Art of Love (Ovid),
183.) The Unbearable Lightness of Being,
184.) Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H.Lawrence),
185.) The Invisible Man (H.G.Wells),
186.) The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky),
187.) The Gift of the Magi (O.Henry),
188.) A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry),
189.) The Swiss Family Robinson,
190.) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
200.) The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,

201.) Elvis is Dead And I Don’t Feel So Good Myself (Lewis Grizzard),
202.) The Yosemite (John Muir),
203.) A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola,
204.) The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli),
205.) Peter Pan,(J.M.Barrie)
206.) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
207.) East of the Sun and West of the Moon (Peter Christen Asbjørnsen),
208.) The Life of Reason (George Santayana),
209.) Tao Te Ching,
210.) Loss and Gain (John Henry Newmann).