This is a reading list for college-bound high school students I was given by my
American Literature teacher (Hi, Mrs. Madrigal from Perry High School, Perry, Ohio,
wherever you are. See, I was paying attention!) when I was a junior in high school
(c. 1981). It's loaded up with dead white guys, and somewhat America-centric, but
what else would you expect? If you have read all of these, you are truly an
exceptional human being. Listing is alphabetical by author (or title, for anonymous
works). Items in red are dramas.
Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Adler, How to Read a Book
Allen, Only Yesterday
Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
Bellamy, Looking Backward
Benedict, Patterns of Culture
Benet, John Brown's Body
The Bible
Boswell, Life of Johnson
Bowen (C.D.), Yankee from Olympus
Bronowski, Common Sense of Science
Bronte (Charlotte), Jane Eyre
Bronte (Emily), Wuthering Heights
Brooks, The Flowering of New England
Buck, The Good Earth
Bulfinch's Mythology
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
Burdick and Lederer, The Ugly American
Butler, The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Carson, The Sea Around Us
Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Cather, My Antonia
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Chase, The Power of Words
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
Cheney, The Story of Modern Art
Clark, The Ox-bow Incident
Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Lord Jim
Cooper, Leatherstocking Tales
Copland, What to Listen For in Music
Curie, Madame Curie
Crane, Red Badge of Courage
Dante, Inferno
Davenport, Mozart
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, David Copperfield
Dickens, Great Expectations
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
Dreiser, An American Tragedy
Dumas, The Three Musketeers
Eliot, Adam Bede
Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Emerson, Essays
Faulkner, Go Down Moses
Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
Fenton, Long Long Ago: The Story of Fossils
The Federalist Papers
Fermi, Atoms in the Family
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Forster, A Passage to India
Franklin (Benjamin), Autobiography
Frazer, The Golden Bough
Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga
Gardner, Art through the Ages
Golding, Lord of the Flies
Goldsmith, She Stoopd to Conquer
Greene, The Power and the Glory
Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology
Hardy, The Return of the Native
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Hemingway, Farewell to Arms
Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea
Hersey, Hiroshima
Homer, Iliad
Homer, Odyssey
Howells, A Traveler from Altruria
Hoyle, Frontiers of Astronomy
Hudson, Green Mansions
Hugo, Les Miserables
Huxley, Brave New World
Ibsen, A Doll's House
Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Kipling, Jungle Book
Lee (Harper), To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis (C.S.), Out of the Silent Planet
Lewis (Sinclair), Arrowsmith
Lewis (Sinclair), Main Street
Lin Yutang, Wisdom of China and India
Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
London, Call of the Wild
Mansfield, Short Stories
Marx, Capital
Marquand, The Late George Apley
Maugham, Of Human Bondage
McCullers, Members of the Wedding
Melville, Moby Dick
Miller (Arthur), The Crucible
Miller (Arthur), Death of a Salesman
Monserrat, The Cruel Sea
Nordhoff and Hall, Mutiny on the Bounty
O'Neil, Emperor Jones
Orwell, Animal Farm
Orwell, 1984
Osborn, Our Plundered Planet
Parkman, Oregon Trail
Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago
Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
Plutarch, Lives
Poe, Tales
Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Richter, The Sea of Grass
Roberts, Northwest Passage
Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth
Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars
Sachs, Our Musical Heritage
Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Sandburg, Lincoln
Saroyan, The Human Comedy
Sarton, Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance
Shaw, Pygmalion
Shaw, St. Joan
Scott, Ivanhoe
Sheridan, School for Scandal
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Treasure Island
Stone, Lust for Life
Strachey, Eminent Victorians
Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Teale, Adverntures in Nature
Thackeray, Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Walden
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
Twain, Huckelberry Finn
Twain, Life on the Mississippe
Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
Virgil, Æneid
Warren, All the King's Men
Wells, Outline of History
Wharton, Ethan Frome
White (EB), One Man's Meat
Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Whyte (W.H.), Organization Man
Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Wilder, Our Town
Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Wister, The Virginian
Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Wright, Native Son
Live in the Columbus area and interested in joining our happy band? E-mail me atgwgrant@yahoo.com.
