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Jan. 21st, 2011 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeOkay. First, Japanese will appear shortly. Second, a while back (I think a couple years ago?) a friend of mine emailed me a list someone had emailed her of Classics Everyone Should Read. Everyone has one of these lists. They just sort of pop up everywhere, like dandelions. Or herpes.
Anyway, I was using this list as the first-round basis for raiding the free Kindle books on Amazon when I realized that... actually, there was a lot of stuff missing. So I sent it tolireavue. And she realized there was a lot of stuff missing. And then we went rampaging all over the place shrieking in chorus as we discovered names that should be on here but weren't and cackled over the snarky commentary. And then we ran out of steam, so, internets! I am presenting you This List. If you have something you think should be on here but isn't, leave a comment! Give me not only your title and author, but also a reason you think it should be on this list. Note: we've put authors on here we don't actually agree with, but that have been influential nonetheless.
Homer Iliad, Odyssey
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes. These four playwrights can often be found together in one book. Go for that, as a collection will have their most influential plays. Important as all plays that come after basically use the themes these guys did. Aristophanes is often credited with the invention of slapstick comedy.
The Bible. Even as literature, contains most of the plots ever invented.
Plato. Dialogues. Most of our civilization is based on these.
Aristotle. Anything. What Plato didn’t affect, Aristotle did.
Virgil. Anything. The Roman counterpart to Homer.
Horace. Anything
Ovid. Anything (But I recommend his ‘dirty’ poetry.) If you can get him translated by Robert Graves, he is a lot of fun.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations
St. Augustine. Confessions. (The now typical bad boy reforms story.)
The Song of Roland. (For the beginning of the philosophy of chivalry.)
The Nibelungenlied. )Aka the basis for Wagner’s operas. And a lot of modern writing, like LotR.)
Beowulf. (Myth still used in modern stories.)
St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. (The basis of modern Catholic philosophy.)
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales.
Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince. (The basis of modern politics.)
Desiderius Erasmus. The Praise of Folly. (To balance Machiavelli.)
Sir Thomas More. Utopia. (The original!!)
François Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel
Michel de Montaigne. Essays. (Even though he’s French, he’s had a lot of influence on English thought.)
Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote (Read the kid’s version.) Jag's note: Why?
Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene.
Francis Bacon. Essays. (Also thought to be the writer of Shakespeare’s plays...HA!)
William Shakespeare. Plays and poetry.
Christopher Marlowe. Faustus
Rene Descartes. Discourse on Method. (Since it still influences modern education.)
John Milton. Paradise Lost. On His Blindness. (Especially OHB!)
Moliere. Plays. But we both recommend: The School for Women and Imaginery Invalid.
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe
Jonathon Swift. Gulliver’s Travels and most especially, A Modest Proposal.
William Congreve. The Way of the World.
Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock
Andrew Marvell. Poems. Especially, To His Coy Mistress.
Montesquieu. Persian Letters.
Voltaire. Candide
Henry Fielding. Tom Jones. (The movie with Albert Finney is a hoot.)
Samuel Johnson. Dictionary
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Social Contract. Emile. (Aka how not to raise children. That’s me, being sarcastic.)
Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy. (The very first stream of consciousness novel.)
James Boswell. Journal Life of Samuel Johnson. (The beginning of Biography) Jag's note: Really?
Mary Wollstonecraft. The Vindication of the Rights of Women. (Also, mother to Mary Shelley.)
Goethe. Faust.
William Wordsworth. Poems.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Kubla Khan. (Aka why not to begin brilliant poetry while stoned on opium.)
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Emma
Oliver Goldmith. The Vicar of Wakefield.
George Gordon, Lord Byron. Don Juan. (The original Byronic hero!)
Percy Shelley. Poems
John Keates. Poems
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Anything, especially his Journal.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Scarlet Letter. House of Seven Gables.
Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America
John Stuart Mill. The Subjection of Women.
William Blake. Absolutely anything and everything. But he's not to everyone's taste.
Charles Darwin. The Origin of the Species. (Still banned in some States, BTW)
Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre (And once/if you’ve read that, go read Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair.)
Charles Dickens. We suggest: Christmas Carol. Tale of Two Cities.
Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers. The Count of Monte Cristo.
Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience. Walden.
Karl Marx. Das Capital
George Eliot. Adam Bede. Middlemarch
Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Billy Budd. (Which we both preferred!)
Anthony Trollope. Especially the Barchester Towers books.
William Makepeace Thackery. Vanity Fair. (Grandfather to Virginia Woolf.)
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary.
Henrik Ibsen. Plays.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. (No, not War and Peace. Too long, too boring. Cast of thousands. And we both agreed on that.)
Thomas Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Mark Twain. Anything.
Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
Walt Whitman. Poetry.
Henry James. The American. The Ambassadors
Marcel Proust. Remembrance of Things Past.
Oscar Wilde. Plays. Especially: The Importance of Being Earnest. And his children’s stories: The Selfish Giant. The Happy Prince.
Bram Stoker. Dracula.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes.
Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage.
Joseph Conrad. The Secret Agent. Lord Jim. Heart of Darkness.
W. B. Yeats. Poetry
Gerald Manley Hopkins. Poetry
Sigmund Freud. Interpretations of Dreams.
Carl Jung. Symbols of Transformation.
George Bernard Shaw. Plays.
Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. (Then rent the movie with Dirk Bogart.)
James Joyce. The Dubliners. (Especially The Dead, then rent the Houston family flick.)
Edith Wharton. Age of Innocence.
Jean Paul Sartre. Nausea (‘Cause if we had to suffer through this, you should too. Snicker.)
Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex.
C S Lewis. The Prize by Joy. Screwtape Letters. Mere Christianity.
Edith Hamilton. Mythology
Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited
Quentin Crisp. The Naked Civil Servant.
Virginia Woolf. Anything, especially Orlando. A Room of One’s Own.
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Poetry. (‘Cause if you read her, you have to read him.)
John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men.
Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea.
William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. As I Lay Dying. Absalom, Absalom!
John Berendt. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (Goes wonderfully with Faulkner!)
Umberto Eco. Name of the Rose
Jack Kerouac. On the Road.
Allan Ginsberg. Howl! (‘Cause we had to have the Beats represented.)
Edna St Vincent Millay. Poems.
Isak Dineson. Out of Africa
Northrope Frye and Harold Bloom. Any of their Criticisms.
Eugene O’Neill. Anything but especially: Long Days Journey into Night.
Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman.
Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Graham Greene. Anything.
Penelope Lively. Moon Tiger.
Pearl S Buck. The Pavilion of Women. The Good Earth.
Mary Wesley. Absolutely anything! We both adore her.
Dorothy Dunnett. The Lymond Chronicles.
Ngaio Marsh. We both love: Light Thickens.
Agatha Christie. Anything.
Josephine Tey. Brat Farrar. Daughter of Time.
Dorothy L. Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey stories.
Georgette Heyer. For her Regency romances (she created the genre!) and even her mysteries.
Jean Plaidy. Anything. Great historical fiction.
Mary Daly. Anything.
Germaine Greer. The Female Eunuch.
Gloria Steinman. Essays.
Barbara Tuckman. The March of Folly.
Nancy Friday. Secret Garden.
Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead.
Leon Uris. Exodus.
John Updike. Rabbit, Run.
Phillip Roth. Portnoy’s Complaint.
Joseph Heller. Catch 22
J D Salinger. Catcher in the Rye.
Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Mordecai Richler. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Leonard Cohen. The Spice Box of the Earth
Irving Layton. Poetry, especially, Blueberries.
Margaret Atwood. Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Laurence. A Jest of God.
Stephen Leacock. Sunshine Sketches.
Robertson Davies. Tempest Tost.
John Irving. Anything.
John Knowles. A Separate Peace. (Still banned in some states.)
Robert Graves. I, Claudius
J R R Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings
C S Lewis. Narnia series.
George Macdonald. The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and my personal favourite, The Light Princess.
Susan Cooper. The Dark is Rising series.
Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book.
Frances Hogdson Burnett. The Secret Garden.
Scott O’Dell. Island of the Blue Dolphin.
Elizabeth Speare. Witch of Blackbird Pond
Frank Stockton. The Lady or the Tiger.
Farley Mowat. Lost in the Barrens. Curse of the Viking Grave. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be.
Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank.
S E Hinton. The Outsiders.
Kit Pearson. The Sky Is Falling.
Geoffrey Trease. Cue for Treason.
Rosemary Sutcliff. Anything, but especially: Eagles of the Ninth.
Jack London. Call of the Wild. (Though I preferred The Sea Wolf.)
Jules Verne. Around the World in 80 Days. 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas.
Dylan Thomas. A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Anne books, especially Anne of Green Gables. The Blue Castle.
E. Nesbit. Anything.
Edward Eager. Half Magic.
Norton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth
Anna Sewell. Black Beauty
Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island.
Andre Norton. Anything.
Arthur Ransome. Swallows and Amazons.
Ursula Leguin. The Earthsea books. (Which the recent tv movie massacred!)
T H White. The Once and Future King.
Alan Garner. Anything.
Leon Garfield. Anything and everything. We adore him.
Roald Dahl. Anything.
Phillipa Pearce. Tom’s Midnight Garden.
Elswyth Thane. The Tryst. (A great ghost love story.) And her Dawn’s Early Light series. Hard to find, but worthwhile, I think, especially since they take place in your part of the world.)
STUFF ANNA THINKS YOU SHOULD READ
Bulfinch's Mythology
The Decameron aka where Shakespeare stole some stuff from
The Mabinogion
Stephen King.
Velveteen Rabbit.
Kipling's Just So stories
Hitchhiker's Guide series
At least some Asimov and Heinlein.
Victor Hugo. In the original or not.
William Gibson, Neuromancer The beginning of cyberpunk.
Joseph Campbell Seriously, why wasn't he on the other list?
D'Aulaire's Greek Mythology. Look, I grew up with it, okay? I am all kinds of shocked and appalled at its absence.
Lewis Carroll, if you somehow escaped without reading him.
JM Barrie, Peter Pan
Gilgamesh WTF WHY IS IT NOT ON HERE ALREADY.
Octavia Butler. Because she is awesome. And because her books are not all about the white people. But mostly? She's just awesome, 'kay?
Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle. Mother Night. Take your pick, but why wasn't he there already?
Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. WTFF listmakers.
George Orwell. Animal Farm, 1984.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World.
Either My Side of the Mountain or Hatchet for your standard kid surviving in the woods tropes. See what came after Jungle Book! :P
Swiss Family Robinson
Ruth Stiles Gannett My Father's Dragon (per Chris' recommendation).
Philip K Dick
Frank Herbert Dune. Just Dune. Pretend nothing else happened but this book, but if you want the galaxy-spanning SF books you want Asimov's Foundation series and Dune.
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Neil Gaiman. Pick something. Sandman, American Gods, etc.
Niven & Pournelle. Mote in God's Eye series, both for old-school SF and for a pair of authors who write really well together.
Midrashim
Arthur M Miller. Canticle for Leibowitz. Dystopic SF.
Sun-Tzu Art of War
Brian Jacques How is Redwall not on here?
E.B. WHite Charlotte's Web.
HG Wells Time Machine, War of the Worlds
Arthur C Clarke At least 2001: A Space Odyssey, just so you don't have to sit through Kubrick.
Orson Scott Card Ender's Game.
Howard Zinn, for history books. That aren't ten kinds of dense.
Woodward & Bernstein, All the President's Men. What. I like history. It made me want to be a journalist.
Barbara Ehrenrich. Nickel and Dimed at least.
Shel Silverstein. Seriously, giant children's author, wtf.
Kahlil Gibran The Prophet, for Christian mystic win.
TS Eliot At least The Wasteland, preferably also Prufrock. I know, I know, probably overrated by your high school English teacher. And yet there is a reason for it. Read him not for a class and find out.
Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot. Find a good production if you can. Absurdism makes slightly more sense when staged.
James Goldman Lion in Winter
Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire
Lorraine Hansbury Raisin in the Sun
Langston Hughes Poetry.
e e cummings Poetry.
Robert Frost Poetry.
Arthur Miller The Crucible (what, just Death? Bah.)
Rodgers & Hammerstein. Changed the face of American musical theatre.
Jonathan Larsen Rent. The first thing I remember reading/seeing about AIDS, let alone people who were adults when it came out.
Upton Sinclair The Jungle, at least.
Anton Chekov. He did more than talk about guns on the mantel. Cherry Orchard, at least.
D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers, among others
E.M. Forster A Passage to India, Maurice, A Room with a View
Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish (or at least the part on the Panopticon), The History of Sexuality
Alfred Kinsey The Kinsey Reports
Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Jag's note: It's an open secret now, but once upon a time it was suspenseful and the ending was shocking.
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) (Scheherazade)
JAG'S AWESOME LIST OF AWESOME
Monica Furlong Wise Child, Juniper
George MacDonald Son of the Day and Daughter of the Night. (since the other was already on there. Pbbthth)
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash. The rebellious teenagerhood of cyberpunk.
L Frank Baum At least the first five or six Oz books.
Ian Fleming One or two James Bonds, because he was influential, like it or not.
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia
Murasaki The Tale of Genji
Sei Shonagon The Pillow Book
Hesse Siddhartha
The Tao Te Ching
The Koran
The Mahabharata and/or the Bhagavad Gita
The Kama Sutra (no, it's not all about sex)
Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books
Roger Zelazny Anything. I favor Amber.
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange
Toni Morrison Beloved, plus anything
Alice Walker The Color Purple
Maya Angelou Anything
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Dashiell Hammett The Thin Man, at least
Raymond Chandler Anything
Mickey Spillane Anything Mike Hammer
Michael Crichton Eaters of the Dead and Jurassic Park are good
Robert Graves White Goddess
James Frazer Golden Bough
William Goldman The Princess Bride (no, there is no S Morgenstern version, I promise)
Peter S. Beagle The Last Unicorn
Sir Walter Scott Ivanhoe
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
Isabel Allende House of the Spirits
Garcia Lorca Poetry
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera
Paul Coelho The Alchemist
Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
Donatien deSade Justine, etc. IT's worth having some background on the man, as influential/controversial as his ideas were.
Ayn Rand Probably the same. Read her once, take notes and try to comprehend, and then never read it again.
Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
Friederich Nietzsche
Alan Moore Watchmen (helped give rise to the modern anti-hero)
Art Spiegelman Maus
Elie Wiesel Night
Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man
Richard Adams Watership Down
Pablo Neruda Anything
Anyway, I was using this list as the first-round basis for raiding the free Kindle books on Amazon when I realized that... actually, there was a lot of stuff missing. So I sent it to
lireavue. And she realized there was a lot of stuff missing. And then we went rampaging all over the place shrieking in chorus as we discovered names that should be on here but weren't and cackled over the snarky commentary. And then we ran out of steam, so, internets! I am presenting you This List. If you have something you think should be on here but isn't, leave a comment! Give me not only your title and author, but also a reason you think it should be on this list. Note: we've put authors on here we don't actually agree with, but that have been influential nonetheless.Homer Iliad, Odyssey
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes. These four playwrights can often be found together in one book. Go for that, as a collection will have their most influential plays. Important as all plays that come after basically use the themes these guys did. Aristophanes is often credited with the invention of slapstick comedy.
The Bible. Even as literature, contains most of the plots ever invented.
Plato. Dialogues. Most of our civilization is based on these.
Aristotle. Anything. What Plato didn’t affect, Aristotle did.
Virgil. Anything. The Roman counterpart to Homer.
Horace. Anything
Ovid. Anything (But I recommend his ‘dirty’ poetry.) If you can get him translated by Robert Graves, he is a lot of fun.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations
St. Augustine. Confessions. (The now typical bad boy reforms story.)
The Song of Roland. (For the beginning of the philosophy of chivalry.)
The Nibelungenlied. )Aka the basis for Wagner’s operas. And a lot of modern writing, like LotR.)
Beowulf. (Myth still used in modern stories.)
St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. (The basis of modern Catholic philosophy.)
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales.
Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince. (The basis of modern politics.)
Desiderius Erasmus. The Praise of Folly. (To balance Machiavelli.)
Sir Thomas More. Utopia. (The original!!)
François Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel
Michel de Montaigne. Essays. (Even though he’s French, he’s had a lot of influence on English thought.)
Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote (Read the kid’s version.) Jag's note: Why?
Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene.
Francis Bacon. Essays. (Also thought to be the writer of Shakespeare’s plays...HA!)
William Shakespeare. Plays and poetry.
Christopher Marlowe. Faustus
Rene Descartes. Discourse on Method. (Since it still influences modern education.)
John Milton. Paradise Lost. On His Blindness. (Especially OHB!)
Moliere. Plays. But we both recommend: The School for Women and Imaginery Invalid.
Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe
Jonathon Swift. Gulliver’s Travels and most especially, A Modest Proposal.
William Congreve. The Way of the World.
Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock
Andrew Marvell. Poems. Especially, To His Coy Mistress.
Montesquieu. Persian Letters.
Voltaire. Candide
Henry Fielding. Tom Jones. (The movie with Albert Finney is a hoot.)
Samuel Johnson. Dictionary
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Social Contract. Emile. (Aka how not to raise children. That’s me, being sarcastic.)
Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy. (The very first stream of consciousness novel.)
James Boswell. Journal Life of Samuel Johnson. (The beginning of Biography) Jag's note: Really?
Mary Wollstonecraft. The Vindication of the Rights of Women. (Also, mother to Mary Shelley.)
Goethe. Faust.
William Wordsworth. Poems.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Kubla Khan. (Aka why not to begin brilliant poetry while stoned on opium.)
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Emma
Oliver Goldmith. The Vicar of Wakefield.
George Gordon, Lord Byron. Don Juan. (The original Byronic hero!)
Percy Shelley. Poems
John Keates. Poems
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Anything, especially his Journal.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Scarlet Letter. House of Seven Gables.
Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America
John Stuart Mill. The Subjection of Women.
William Blake. Absolutely anything and everything. But he's not to everyone's taste.
Charles Darwin. The Origin of the Species. (Still banned in some States, BTW)
Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre (And once/if you’ve read that, go read Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair.)
Charles Dickens. We suggest: Christmas Carol. Tale of Two Cities.
Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers. The Count of Monte Cristo.
Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience. Walden.
Karl Marx. Das Capital
George Eliot. Adam Bede. Middlemarch
Herman Melville. Moby Dick. Billy Budd. (Which we both preferred!)
Anthony Trollope. Especially the Barchester Towers books.
William Makepeace Thackery. Vanity Fair. (Grandfather to Virginia Woolf.)
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary.
Henrik Ibsen. Plays.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. (No, not War and Peace. Too long, too boring. Cast of thousands. And we both agreed on that.)
Thomas Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Mark Twain. Anything.
Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
Walt Whitman. Poetry.
Henry James. The American. The Ambassadors
Marcel Proust. Remembrance of Things Past.
Oscar Wilde. Plays. Especially: The Importance of Being Earnest. And his children’s stories: The Selfish Giant. The Happy Prince.
Bram Stoker. Dracula.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes.
Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage.
Joseph Conrad. The Secret Agent. Lord Jim. Heart of Darkness.
W. B. Yeats. Poetry
Gerald Manley Hopkins. Poetry
Sigmund Freud. Interpretations of Dreams.
Carl Jung. Symbols of Transformation.
George Bernard Shaw. Plays.
Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. (Then rent the movie with Dirk Bogart.)
James Joyce. The Dubliners. (Especially The Dead, then rent the Houston family flick.)
Edith Wharton. Age of Innocence.
Jean Paul Sartre. Nausea (‘Cause if we had to suffer through this, you should too. Snicker.)
Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex.
C S Lewis. The Prize by Joy. Screwtape Letters. Mere Christianity.
Edith Hamilton. Mythology
Evelyn Waugh. Brideshead Revisited
Quentin Crisp. The Naked Civil Servant.
Virginia Woolf. Anything, especially Orlando. A Room of One’s Own.
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Poetry. (‘Cause if you read her, you have to read him.)
John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men.
Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea.
William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. As I Lay Dying. Absalom, Absalom!
John Berendt. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. (Goes wonderfully with Faulkner!)
Umberto Eco. Name of the Rose
Jack Kerouac. On the Road.
Allan Ginsberg. Howl! (‘Cause we had to have the Beats represented.)
Edna St Vincent Millay. Poems.
Isak Dineson. Out of Africa
Northrope Frye and Harold Bloom. Any of their Criticisms.
Eugene O’Neill. Anything but especially: Long Days Journey into Night.
Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman.
Truman Capote. Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Graham Greene. Anything.
Penelope Lively. Moon Tiger.
Pearl S Buck. The Pavilion of Women. The Good Earth.
Mary Wesley. Absolutely anything! We both adore her.
Dorothy Dunnett. The Lymond Chronicles.
Ngaio Marsh. We both love: Light Thickens.
Agatha Christie. Anything.
Josephine Tey. Brat Farrar. Daughter of Time.
Dorothy L. Sayers. Lord Peter Wimsey stories.
Georgette Heyer. For her Regency romances (she created the genre!) and even her mysteries.
Jean Plaidy. Anything. Great historical fiction.
Mary Daly. Anything.
Germaine Greer. The Female Eunuch.
Gloria Steinman. Essays.
Barbara Tuckman. The March of Folly.
Nancy Friday. Secret Garden.
Norman Mailer. The Naked and the Dead.
Leon Uris. Exodus.
John Updike. Rabbit, Run.
Phillip Roth. Portnoy’s Complaint.
Joseph Heller. Catch 22
J D Salinger. Catcher in the Rye.
Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Mordecai Richler. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Leonard Cohen. The Spice Box of the Earth
Irving Layton. Poetry, especially, Blueberries.
Margaret Atwood. Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Laurence. A Jest of God.
Stephen Leacock. Sunshine Sketches.
Robertson Davies. Tempest Tost.
John Irving. Anything.
John Knowles. A Separate Peace. (Still banned in some states.)
Robert Graves. I, Claudius
J R R Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings
C S Lewis. Narnia series.
George Macdonald. The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and my personal favourite, The Light Princess.
Susan Cooper. The Dark is Rising series.
Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book.
Frances Hogdson Burnett. The Secret Garden.
Scott O’Dell. Island of the Blue Dolphin.
Elizabeth Speare. Witch of Blackbird Pond
Frank Stockton. The Lady or the Tiger.
Farley Mowat. Lost in the Barrens. Curse of the Viking Grave. The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be.
Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank.
S E Hinton. The Outsiders.
Kit Pearson. The Sky Is Falling.
Geoffrey Trease. Cue for Treason.
Rosemary Sutcliff. Anything, but especially: Eagles of the Ninth.
Jack London. Call of the Wild. (Though I preferred The Sea Wolf.)
Jules Verne. Around the World in 80 Days. 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas.
Dylan Thomas. A Child’s Christmas in Wales.
Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Anne books, especially Anne of Green Gables. The Blue Castle.
E. Nesbit. Anything.
Edward Eager. Half Magic.
Norton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth
Anna Sewell. Black Beauty
Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island.
Andre Norton. Anything.
Arthur Ransome. Swallows and Amazons.
Ursula Leguin. The Earthsea books. (Which the recent tv movie massacred!)
T H White. The Once and Future King.
Alan Garner. Anything.
Leon Garfield. Anything and everything. We adore him.
Roald Dahl. Anything.
Phillipa Pearce. Tom’s Midnight Garden.
Elswyth Thane. The Tryst. (A great ghost love story.) And her Dawn’s Early Light series. Hard to find, but worthwhile, I think, especially since they take place in your part of the world.)
STUFF ANNA THINKS YOU SHOULD READ
Bulfinch's Mythology
The Decameron aka where Shakespeare stole some stuff from
The Mabinogion
Stephen King.
Velveteen Rabbit.
Kipling's Just So stories
Hitchhiker's Guide series
At least some Asimov and Heinlein.
Victor Hugo. In the original or not.
William Gibson, Neuromancer The beginning of cyberpunk.
Joseph Campbell Seriously, why wasn't he on the other list?
D'Aulaire's Greek Mythology. Look, I grew up with it, okay? I am all kinds of shocked and appalled at its absence.
Lewis Carroll, if you somehow escaped without reading him.
JM Barrie, Peter Pan
Gilgamesh WTF WHY IS IT NOT ON HERE ALREADY.
Octavia Butler. Because she is awesome. And because her books are not all about the white people. But mostly? She's just awesome, 'kay?
Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle. Mother Night. Take your pick, but why wasn't he there already?
Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. WTFF listmakers.
George Orwell. Animal Farm, 1984.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World.
Either My Side of the Mountain or Hatchet for your standard kid surviving in the woods tropes. See what came after Jungle Book! :P
Swiss Family Robinson
Ruth Stiles Gannett My Father's Dragon (per Chris' recommendation).
Philip K Dick
Frank Herbert Dune. Just Dune. Pretend nothing else happened but this book, but if you want the galaxy-spanning SF books you want Asimov's Foundation series and Dune.
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Neil Gaiman. Pick something. Sandman, American Gods, etc.
Niven & Pournelle. Mote in God's Eye series, both for old-school SF and for a pair of authors who write really well together.
Midrashim
Arthur M Miller. Canticle for Leibowitz. Dystopic SF.
Sun-Tzu Art of War
Brian Jacques How is Redwall not on here?
E.B. WHite Charlotte's Web.
HG Wells Time Machine, War of the Worlds
Arthur C Clarke At least 2001: A Space Odyssey, just so you don't have to sit through Kubrick.
Orson Scott Card Ender's Game.
Howard Zinn, for history books. That aren't ten kinds of dense.
Woodward & Bernstein, All the President's Men. What. I like history. It made me want to be a journalist.
Barbara Ehrenrich. Nickel and Dimed at least.
Shel Silverstein. Seriously, giant children's author, wtf.
Kahlil Gibran The Prophet, for Christian mystic win.
TS Eliot At least The Wasteland, preferably also Prufrock. I know, I know, probably overrated by your high school English teacher. And yet there is a reason for it. Read him not for a class and find out.
Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot. Find a good production if you can. Absurdism makes slightly more sense when staged.
James Goldman Lion in Winter
Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire
Lorraine Hansbury Raisin in the Sun
Langston Hughes Poetry.
e e cummings Poetry.
Robert Frost Poetry.
Arthur Miller The Crucible (what, just Death? Bah.)
Rodgers & Hammerstein. Changed the face of American musical theatre.
Jonathan Larsen Rent. The first thing I remember reading/seeing about AIDS, let alone people who were adults when it came out.
Upton Sinclair The Jungle, at least.
Anton Chekov. He did more than talk about guns on the mantel. Cherry Orchard, at least.
D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers, among others
E.M. Forster A Passage to India, Maurice, A Room with a View
Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish (or at least the part on the Panopticon), The History of Sexuality
Alfred Kinsey The Kinsey Reports
Robert Louis Stevenson Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Jag's note: It's an open secret now, but once upon a time it was suspenseful and the ending was shocking.
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) (Scheherazade)
JAG'S AWESOME LIST OF AWESOME
Monica Furlong Wise Child, Juniper
George MacDonald Son of the Day and Daughter of the Night. (since the other was already on there. Pbbthth)
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash. The rebellious teenagerhood of cyberpunk.
L Frank Baum At least the first five or six Oz books.
Ian Fleming One or two James Bonds, because he was influential, like it or not.
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia
Murasaki The Tale of Genji
Sei Shonagon The Pillow Book
Hesse Siddhartha
The Tao Te Ching
The Koran
The Mahabharata and/or the Bhagavad Gita
The Kama Sutra (no, it's not all about sex)
Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books
Roger Zelazny Anything. I favor Amber.
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange
Toni Morrison Beloved, plus anything
Alice Walker The Color Purple
Maya Angelou Anything
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Dashiell Hammett The Thin Man, at least
Raymond Chandler Anything
Mickey Spillane Anything Mike Hammer
Michael Crichton Eaters of the Dead and Jurassic Park are good
Robert Graves White Goddess
James Frazer Golden Bough
William Goldman The Princess Bride (no, there is no S Morgenstern version, I promise)
Peter S. Beagle The Last Unicorn
Sir Walter Scott Ivanhoe
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan
Isabel Allende House of the Spirits
Garcia Lorca Poetry
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera
Paul Coelho The Alchemist
Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
Donatien deSade Justine, etc. IT's worth having some background on the man, as influential/controversial as his ideas were.
Ayn Rand Probably the same. Read her once, take notes and try to comprehend, and then never read it again.
Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
Friederich Nietzsche
Alan Moore Watchmen (helped give rise to the modern anti-hero)
Art Spiegelman Maus
Elie Wiesel Night
Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man
Richard Adams Watership Down
Pablo Neruda Anything