High School Reading
For some reason I've felt like reading. And since I didn't do much of it in high school (or college, for that matter) I've decided to do it now. I found this list online. Feel free to comment or add/subtract from the list. I'm kinda glad I'm reading these now. I mean, I like the books I've read so far but I can also imagine being very irritated by them when I was younger. I've stricken through the ones I've just read. I haven't decided if I'm gonna re-read anything that I actually read previously (or that we read in class). Hmm. It's a pretty long list. Wonder how long it's gonna take me. Maybe I should rule some of these out. Any help out there to narrow it down?
Beowulf
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Christiie, Agatha Murder on the Orient Express
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Forester, C.S. Horatio Hornblower
Frankle, Viktor Man’s Search for Meaning
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Golding, William Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad Homer The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Keller, Helen Story of My Life
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur The Crucible
Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George Animal Farm
Orwell, George 1984
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Poe, Edgar Allan Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William Macbeth
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles Antigone
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John The Pearl
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire Candide
Walker, Alice
Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee
Wright, Richard Native Son
6 witty retorts:
just read one at a time and only cut it off your list if you really don't like it. a tale of two cities by dickens is one of my favorites. also liked invisible man and several others...you are on goodreads right?
I would read "Sense and Sensibility" or "Persuasion" by Austen instead.
Also, I think you can skip Chopin's "The Awakening" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." I hated that book.
catch-22, vanity fair and a tale of two cities.
i think you do have to read gatsby because it's iconic and there are pervasive literary and even pop-cultural references to it.
don't read freakin war & peace. read anna karenina instead.
last of the mohicans is incredibly boring. i reject it.
you don't need to actually read the greeks unless you desperately want to. as a classicist i feel entitled to tell you this. that scratches the homer and sophocles.
if you ever do decide to read beowulf i recommend picking up the seamus heaney translation because it juxtaposes the original old english text with the modern english translation. it's kind of neat-o to be able to follow it in the original, and also to see how much english has changed. i would recommend a similar approach to chaucer, middle english next to the modern english.
you know what feels sooo good? reading all the plays so you have lots of things crossed off your long list.
and i'm spent.
oh yes - and fire any book you hate from your list, i agree, no obligation to read the whole thing.
I've only read a handful either -- despite my bookworm-ish behavior for much of my youth I think I need to add a few to my list -- but I have read Great Gatsby and remember feeling that I wish I had that part of my life to do over again. Maybe cliff notes and the notable sections?
Also, I hear Animal Farm is a political in it's intentions - communist I believe, so maybe some extra curricular on that one if you go there.
I'd add Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, for some reason I really enjoyed that one in school - perhaps it had symbolism?
I think you should read the "Hunger Game" series. At first the topic may seem disturbing...but seriously...so good!
Post a Comment