Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A Mountain of Must-Reads

  1. 1984 (1982) by George Orwell 
  2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869) by Jules Verne
  3. Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
  4. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) by Saul Bellow
  5. Alexander of Macedon (1991) by Harold Lamb
  6. All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
  7. American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth
  8. An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser
  9. Ancient Inventions (1995) by Peter James and Nick Thorpe
  10. Animal Farm (1946) by George Orwell
  11. Appointment in Samarra (1934) by John O'Hara
  12. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume
  13. The Art of War (1910) by Sun Tzu
  14. The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud
  15. At Swim-Two-Birds (1938) by Flann O'Brien
  16. Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand
  17. Atonement (2002) by Ian McEwan
  18. Band of Brothers (1992) by Stephen Ambrose
  19. Battle Royale (1999) by Koushun Takami
  20. Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
  21. The Berlin Stories (1946) by Christopher Isherwood
  22. The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
  23. The Blind Assassin (2000) by Margaret Atwood
  24. Blood Meridian (1986) by Cormac McCarthy
  25. Blubber (1974) by Judy Blume 
  26. Brave New World (1965) by Aldous Huxley 
  27. Brideshead Revisited (1946) by Evelyn Waugh
  28. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder
  29. Call It Sleep (1935) by Henry Roth
  30. The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
  31. The Canterbury Tales (1470) by Geoffrey Chaucer
  32. Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller 
  33. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
  34. Charlotte's Web (1952) by E.B. White
  35. A Clockwork Orange (1963) by Anthony Burgess
  36. The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
  37. The Complete Plays of Aristophanes (1984) by Aristophanes
  38. The Complete Shakespeare (1623) by William Shakespeare
  39. The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1986) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  40. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron
  41. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain
  42. Contact (1985) by Carl Sagan
  43. Cop Hater (1956) by Ed McBain
  44. The Corrections (2001) by Jonathon Franzen
  45. Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  46. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
  47. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951) by Anthony Powell
  48. The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller
  49. The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West
  50. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
  51. A Death in the Family (1958) by James Agee
  52. The Death of the Heart (1958) by Elizabeth Bowen
  53. Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey
  54. The Divine Comedy (1867) by Dante
  55. Dog Soldiers (1874) by Robert Stone
  56. Don Quixote (1989) by Miguel De Cervantes
  57. Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
  58. Education of the Wandering Man (1989) by Louis L'Amour
  59. Eaters of the Dead (1976) by Michael Crichton
  60. The Executioner's Song (1977) by Norman Mailer
  61. Exodus (1958) by Leon Uris
  62. Falconer (1977) by John Cheever
  63. Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk
  64. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway
  65. Foucault's Pendulum (1988) by Umberto Eco
  66. Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov
  67. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley
  68. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles
  69. A Game of Thrones (1996) by George R.R. Martin
  70. The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing
  71. Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin
  72. Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
  73. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
  74. Gravity's Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
  75. The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  76. Grendel (1971) by John Gardner
  77. A Handful of Dust (1934) by Evelyn Waugh
  78. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
  79. Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
  80. The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene
  81. Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
  82. The Hobbit (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien
  83. Hour of the Dragon (1935) by Robert E. Howard
  84. Housekeeping (1981) by Marilynne Robinson
  85. A House for Mr. Biswas (1962) by V.S. Naipaul
  86. I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson
  87. I, Claudius (1934) by Robert Graves
  88. The Illiad (1488) by Homer
  89. In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote
  90. Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
  91. Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
  92. Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) by D.H. Lawrence
  93. Les Miserables (1862) by Victor Hugo
  94. Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
  95. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis
  96. The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  97. Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
  98. The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
  99. Lord of the Flies (1955) by William Golding
  100. The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien
  101. Loving (1945) by Henry Green
  102. Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
  103. The Magus (1966) by John Fowles
  104. The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett
  105. The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
  106. McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris
  107. Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot
  108. Midnight's Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
  109. Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville
  110. Money (1984) by Martin Amis
  111. The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy
  112. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
  113. Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs
  114. Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
  115. Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson
  116. Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
  117. Night (1982) by Eli Wiesel
  118. No Exit (1943) by Jean Paul Sartre
  119. Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck
  120. On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
  121. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
  122. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  123. The Painted Bird (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski
  124. Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov
  125. Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
  126. A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster
  127. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde
  128. The Pillars of the Earth (1989) by Ken Follett
  129. Play It As It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
  130. Portnoy's Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
  131. Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt
  132. The Power and the Glory (1939) by Graham Greene
  133. Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen
  134. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
  135. The Prince (1640) by Niccolo Machiavelli
  136. The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman
  137. Rabbit, Run (1960) by John Updike
  138. Ragtime (1975) by E.L. Doctorow
  139. The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis
  140. Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
  141. Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates
  142. The Road Less Traveled (1916) by Dr. Scott M. Peck
  143. Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
  144. Rosemary's Baby (1967) by Ira Levin
  145. The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  146. The Science of God (1998) by Gerald L. Schroeder
  147. Season of Mists (1992) by Neil Gaiman
  148. The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
  149. Shogun (1954) by James Clavell
  150. Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
  151. Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
  152. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury
  153. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) by Richard Ford
  154. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964) by John le Carre
  155. The Stand (1978) by Stephen King
  156. Starship Troopers (1959) by Robert A. Heinlein
  157. The Stranger (1989) by Albert Camus
  158. The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
  159. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens
  160. The Telltale Heart and Other Writings (1843)by Edgar Allan Poe
  161. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
  162. Things Fall Apart (1959) by Chinua Achebe
  163. The Three Musketeers (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
  164. Titus Groan (1946) by Mervyn Peake
  165. To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
  166. To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
  167. Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
  168. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka
  169. Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
  170. Ubik (1969) by Philip K. Dick
  171. Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
  172. Under the Net (1954) by Iris Murdoch
  173. Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
  174. War and Peace (1865) by Leo Tolstoy
  175. War of the Worlds (1897) by H.G. Wells
  176. Watchmen (1986) by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
  177. Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams
  178. We Have Always Lived in a Castle (2006) by Shirley Jackson
  179. White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
  180. White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
  181. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys
  182. The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame
  183. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1897) by Frank Baum
  184. World War Z (2006) by Max Brooks
  185. Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte
  186. You Can't Go Home Again (1940) by Thomas Wolfe 
Graphic Novels
  1. Berlin: City of Stones (2000) by Jason Lutes
  2. Blankets (2003) by Craig Thompson
  3. Bone (2004) by Jeff Smith
  4. The Boulevard of Broken Dreams (2002) by Kim Deitch
  5. The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller
  6. David Boring (2000) by Daniel Clowes
  7. Ed The Happy Clown (1989) by Chester Brown
  8. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) by Chris Ware
  9. Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003) by Gilbert Hernandez

***Carrie has read
***Lorrie has read
***Sam has read
***Tara has read 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

100+ Books to Read Before We Die

This list is a compilation of not only Time Magazine's "ALL TIME 100 Novels" but another list I found and agreed with, though I cannot seem to find it now (I will post it when I pinpoint it). If, in the future, anyone happens upon a list that includes books that are not already included in the list to follow and feels strongly said books should be added to the Master List, feel free to make your case!

I should explain that the idea for such a list came when I was amidst compiling my personal
"Bucket List" or list of things to do before I die. I realized there are several books still sitting patiently inside my current "To Read" queue and that, furthermore, there were maybe one million more I would love to make acquaintance with. If you are like me, hopefully you, too, will take something away from this group - a group dedicated to gradually but consistently chipping away at the evermore ominous mountain of must-reads.


Before we die...

...the very least we could do is read a ridiculous amount of ridiculously good books!