Reading List
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 at
gwgrant@yahoo.com.
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