Classic Books

A friend and I made this list over the summer. Every book on this list is a classic or a book we think everyone should read.

I thought I should share this with others :D

AA Milne – Winnie the Pooh
Aelister Crowley - Moonchild
Agitha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express
Alasdair Gray – Lanark
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Alexandre Dumas - Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandra Damas - Man In the Iron Mask
Alexandra Damas - The Three Musketeers
Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
Alice Walker – The Color Purple
Anne Rice – Interview With A Vampire
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Hope (Hawkins) - The Prisoner of Zenda
Antoine De Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince
Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha
Arthur Ransome - Swallows and Amazons
AS Byatt – Possession
Astrid Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking
Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife
Ayn Rand – Anthem
Bill Bryson - Notes From A Small Island
Bram Stoker – Dracula
Brothers Grimm - Cinderella
Brothers Grimm – Hansel and Gretle
Brothers Grimm – Little Red Riding Hood
Brothers Grimm – Rapunzel
Brothers Grimm – Rumplestiltskin
Brothers Grimm – Snow White
Brothers Grimm – The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats
Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind
Charles Dickens - 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
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
CS Lewis - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia)
-- Prince Caspian
-- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
-- The Silver Chair
-- The Horse and His Boy
-- The Magician's Nephew
-- The Last Battle
CS Lewis - The Screwtape Letters
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code
Dante Alegheri - The Inferno
Daphne Du Maurier – Rebecca
David Mitchel - Cloud Atlas
D. H. Lawrence - The Rainbow
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Douglas Adams – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
EB White - Charlotte’s Web
Edgar Allen Poe - The Raven
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan
Edward Bulwer-Lytton - Last Days of Pompeii
Edward Everett Hale - Man Without a Country
Emile Zola - Germinal
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
Enid Blyton - The Faraway Tree Collection
Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Secret Garden
Frank Herbert – Dune
Frederick Schiller - Joan of Arc
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love In The Time Of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gaston Leroux - Phantom of the Opera
George Elliot - Middlemarch
George Orwell - Animal Farm
George Orwell - 1984
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Helen Fielding - Bridget Jones’s Diary
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
H.G. Wells - The First Men in the Moon
H.G. Wells - The Food of the Gods
H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man
H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Howard Pyle - Knights of the Round Table
Howard Pyle - Robin Hood
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory
Ian McEwan – Atonement
Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Jack London - The Sea Wolf
Jack London – White Fang
James Joyce - Ulysses
James Fenimore Cooper - Last of the Mohicans
Jane Austin – Emma
Jane Austin - Mansfield Park
Jane Austin - Northanger Abbey
Jane Austin – Persuasion
Jane Austin – Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austin - Sense and Sensibility
JD Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
-- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
-- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
-- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
-- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
-- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
-- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.M. Coetzee - Waiting for the Barbarians
John Green - An Abundance of Katherines
John Green - Looking for Alaska
John Green - Paper Towns
John Green - The Fault in Our Stars
John Green & David Levithan - Will Grayson, Will Grayson
John Grisham - Theodore Bone, Kid Lawyer
John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meaney
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
John Steinbeck - East of Eden
John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
JRR Tolkien – The Hobbit
-- The Fellowship of the Ring
-- The Two Towers
-- The Return of the King
Jules Verne - A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne - From the Earth to the Moon
Jules Verne - Master of the World
Jules Verne - Off on a Comet
Jules Verne - Robur the Conqueror
Jules Verne - Tigers and Traitors
Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Kahaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
LM Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
Lois Lowry - The Giver
Louis De Bernieres - Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Ferdinand Celine - Journey to the End of the Night Louis
Louisa M Alcott – Little Women
Madeleine L’Endle - A Wrinkle In Time
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Mark Mathabane - Kaffir Boy
Mark Twain - Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Margret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein
Mitch Albom - The Five People You Meet In Heaven
Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton - The Lost World
Miguel De Cervantes - Don Quixote
Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust
Nevil Shute - A Town Like Alice
Orson Scott Card - Ender’s Game
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Philip Pullman - Northern Lights (The Golden Compass)
-- The Subtle Knife
-- The Amber Spyglass
Ray Bradbury - All Summer In A Day
Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451
Ray Bradbury - Martian Chronicles
Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers
Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Richard Matheson - I Am Legend
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
Salman Rushdie - Midnight’s Children
Sebastian Faulks - Birdsong
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare - Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery
Sir Cannon Doyle - The Hound Of the Baskervilles
Sir Cannon Doyle - The Lost World
Sir Thomas More – Utopia
Sir Walter Scott - The Lady of the Lake
Sophocles - Oedipus the King
Stella Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm
Stephen King - Carrie
Stephen King - The Green Mile
Stephen King – The Shining
Susanna Clarke - Johnathon Strange & Mr. Norrel
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Thomas Hardy - Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Unknown - Beowulf
Unknown - The Arabian Nights
Von Goethe – Faust
Victor Hugo - Les Misérables
Vikram Seth – A Suitable Boy
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Walter Lord - A Night To Remember
Washington Irving - Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving - The Headless Horseman
W. G. Sebald - Austerlitz
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair
Yann Martel – Life of Pi

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lauren Redmond on October 15, 2011 at 7:20pm

you forgot northanger abbey and mansfield park by jane austen!

i'm an austen fan :D great looking list!

Permalink Reply by Evyn Church on October 15, 2011 at 9:02pm

Thanks! I don't know how we didn't think of Jane Austen :)

Permalink Reply by Lauren Redmond on October 15, 2011 at 9:27pm

oh you did, you just forgot two of her books :D

Permalink Reply by Evyn Church on October 15, 2011 at 9:35pm

Wha-- Oh! We did :D I just added those to the list! (Haha, sorry, it's late for me)

(Btw we = me and my friend Sarah who helped me create this list)

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Cooley on October 17, 2011 at 2:55pm

Yes!!! You included Homer and Sophocles, both of which are FABULOUS to read, But you left out Virgil's Aeneid and Catullus' Carmina! How could you?!?!? (& by the way, Yann Martel's Life of Pi SUCKED when I read it.) You also left out Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Michael Scott's series, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, and the Tunnels series!!!

Permalink Reply by Anna Weiss on November 23, 2011 at 9:44pm

i read 47 of those books!!!

Permalink Reply by Evyn Church on November 24, 2011 at 10:20am

That's awesome! But you might want to recount... Some more books have been added :)

For some reason we didn't have anything by John Green on it so that had to be fixed :D

Permalink Reply by Kathryn Foley on December 12, 2011 at 8:33pm

*copies, paste to word document, saves* Thank you for the list! I want to read more classics or must read books :D

Permalink Reply by Evyn Church on December 12, 2011 at 8:36pm

And that's exactly why this list was started!

Thank you for making me smile while I attempt to tell my teacher that I learned something this semester in his class... Stupid final exams...

Permalink Reply by Alyssa Rae on December 13, 2011 at 9:36am

This list is fabulous, and amazingly extensive. But might I suggest Faulkner (Sound and the Fury)? Also, Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)?

:) I definitely need to add some (ha, or most?) of these to my own list... So little time...

Permalink Reply by Lydia Beller-McKenna on December 13, 2011 at 8:48pm

Although Jude the Obscure is by far my favorite of Hardy's, you probably should add Mayor of Casterbridge... = major classic.

Permalink Reply by Sarah on December 31, 2011 at 6:44pm

I've read and loved The Catcher in the Rye and all of John Green's books (except TFIOS, of course).

I've read The Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, The Bell Jar, and Beowulf for school, and have had lukewarm to negative opinions on them (except for The Giver, which I'd probably give a 7.5 or 8).

I've also read Ender's Game, A Wrinkle in Time, The War of the Worlds, and the first four Harry Potter books (I didn't like the fourth one, that's why I stopped), and they were all okay.

I'm reading Jane Eyre and Interview With a Vampire, but I'm not really enjoying either.

I gave up on Life of Pi and Little Women.

So yeah, I'm unfortunately a little too picky a reader. But I also think that an essential book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.