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karenbeth's "Recommended Reading List for the Well Educated Adult"

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When I was in high school 9th and 12th Grade English Teacher had a "Recommended Reading List for the Well Educated Adult". I had the list for several years after and liked that I had a list of classics and quality books, both fiction and non-fiction. Sometime in the last 5 years I lost the list. This list is an attempt to re-create it and have a major lists of books folks should read.

This list has been compiled from various lists which can be found online and also from my own personal input. Hopefully it will not be easy to tell which is which.

Accept no substitute. :)

  1. 1.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

  2. 2.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

  3. 3.
    Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  4. 4.
    The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  5. 5.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Bantam Classic)
    by Sherwood Anderson

  6. 6.
    My Antonia
    by Willa Cather

  7. 8.
    Things Fall Apart
    by Chinua Achebe

  8. 9.
    Watership Down
    by Richard Adams

  9. 10.
    Aesop's Fables (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Aesop

  10. 11.
    The House of the Spirits
    by Isabel Allende

  11. 12.
    And Still I Rise
    by Maya Angelou

  12. 13.
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    by Maya Angelou

  13. 14.
    Days of Grace
    by Arthur Ashe

  14. 15.
    Emma (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  15. 16.
    Northanger Abbey (Modern Library Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  16. 17.
    Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  17. 18.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

  18. 19.
    Pere Goriot (Signet Classics)
    by Honore de Balzac

  19. 20.
    Growing Up (Plume)
    by Russell Baker

  20. 21.
    Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
    by Samuel Beckett

  21. 22.
    Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887 (Broadview Literary Texts)
    by Edward Bellamy

  22. 23.
    Seize the Day (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

  23. 25.
    A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
    by Robert Bolt

  24. 26.
    Fahrenheit 451
    by Ray Bradbury

  25. 27.
    ?
    The Ascent of Man
    by Jacob Bronowski

  26. 28.
    Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
    by Emily Brontë

  27. 29.
    Selected Poems (Perennial Classics)
    by Gwendolyn Brooks

  28. 31.
    Robert Browning: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by Robert Browning

  29. 32.
    The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Pearl S. Buck

  30. 33.
    The Way of All Flesh (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Samuel Butler

  31. 34.
    The Power of Myth
    by Joseph Campbell

  32. 35.
    The Plague
    by Albert Camus

  33. 36.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

  34. 37.
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll

  35. 38.
    Silent Spring
    by Rachel Carson

  36. 39.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop (Vintage Classics)
    by Willa Cather

  37. 40.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  38. 41.
    The Canterbury Tales
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

  39. 42.
    The Cherry Orchard (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Anton Chekhov

  40. 43.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

  41. 44.
    The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics)
    by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

  42. 45.
    The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Wilkie Collins

  43. 46.
    Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
    by Jorge Luis Borges

  44. 47.
    Go Ask Alice
    by Anonymous

  45. 48.
    ?
    The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth
    by David Attenborough

  46. 49.
    The Chocolate War
    by Robert Cormier

  47. 50.
    Mother Courage and Her Children
    by Bertolt Brecht

  48. 51.
    Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

  49. 52.
    Lord Jim (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

  50. 53.
    Alistair Cooke's America
    by Alistair Cooke

  51. 54.
    The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    by James Fenimore Cooper

  52. 55.
    The Red Badge of Courage (Tor Classics)
    by Stephen Crane

  53. 56.
    Lakota Woman
    by Mary Crow Dog

  54. 58.
    Madame Curie: A Biography
    by Eve Curie

  55. 59.

  56. 60.
    Origin of Species
    by Charles Darwin

  57. 61.
    Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  58. 62.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  59. 63.
    Bleak House (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  60. 64.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  61. 65.
    Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  62. 66.
    A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  63. 67.
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
    by Emily Dickinson

  64. 68.
    Out of Africa (Modern Library of the World's Best Books)
    by Isak Dinesen

  65. 70.
    A Yellow Raft in Blue Water: A Novel
    by Michael Dorris

  66. 71.
    The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  67. 72.
    Crime and Punishment (Bantam Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  68. 74.
    An American Tragedy (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  69. 75.
    Sister Carrie (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  70. 76.
    The Three Musketeers (Modern Library)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  71. 77.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  72. 78.
    Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  73. 79.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  74. 80.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  75. 81.
    Silas Marner (Bantam Classics)
    by GEORGE ELIOT

  76. 82.
    Murder in the Cathedral
    by T. S. Eliot

  77. 83.
    The Waste Land and Other Poems
    by T. S. Eliot

  78. 84.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

  79. 87.
    Absalom, Absalom! The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  80. 88.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  81. 89.
    The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  82. 90.
    Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Henry Fielding

  83. 91.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  84. 92.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

  85. 93.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ford Madox Ford

  86. 94.
    A Passage to India
    by E.M. Forster

  87. 95.
    Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
    by Anne Frank

  88. 96.
    The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Benjamin Franklin

  89. 98.
    The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel
    by Carlos Fuentes

  90. 99.
    One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  91. 100.
    Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)
    by Allen Ginsberg

  92. 101.
    My House
    by Nikki Giovanni

  93. 102.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  94. 103.

  95. 104.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

  96. 105.
    She Stoops to Conquer (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Oliver Goldsmith

  97. 106.
    The Tin Drum (Vintage International)
    by Gunter Grass

  98. 108.

  99. 109.
    Roots
    by Alex Haley

  100. 110.
    Mythology
    by Edith Hamilton

  101. 111.
    Far from the Madding Crowd (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  102. 112.
    Jude the Obscure (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  103. 113.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  104. 114.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

  105. 115.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

  106. 116.
    For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

  107. 117.
    ?
    The Old Man and The Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

  108. 118.
    The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (Modern Library)
    by O. Henry

  109. 119.
    Hiroshima (Vintage)
    by John Hersey

  110. 120.
    Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse

  111. 121.
    A Single Pebble
    by John Hersey

  112. 122.
    Steppenwolf: A Novel
    by Hermann Hesse

  113. 123.
    The Iliad (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  114. 124.
    The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  115. 125.
    Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
    by Langston Hughes

  116. 126.
    Les Miserables (Modern Library)
    by Victor Hugo

  117. 128.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

  118. 129.
    A Doll's House (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henrik Ibsen

  119. 130.
    The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
    by Henry James

  120. 131.
    The Turn of the Screw (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry James

  121. 132.

  122. 133.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce

  123. 134.
    The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)
    by Franz Kafka

  124. 135.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

  125. 136.

  126. 137.
    Complete Poems
    by John Keats

  127. 139.
    Profiles in Courage
    by John F. Kennedy

  128. 140.
    On the Road
    by Jack Kerouac

  129. 141.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    by Ken Kesey

  130. 143.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

  131. 144.
    Born on the Fourth of July
    by Ron Kovic

  132. 145.
    Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
    by Jonathan Kozol

  133. 146.
    Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence

  134. 147.
    Inherit the Wind
    by Jerome Lawrence

  135. 148.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

  136. 149.
    A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)
    by Aldo Leopold

  137. 150.
    Main Street (Signet Classics)
    by Sinclair Lewis

  138. 151.
    How Green Was My Valley
    by Richard Llewellyn

  139. 152.
    The Call Of The Wild (Scholastic Classics)
    by Jack London

  140. 153.
    ?
    The complete poetical works of Longfellow (The Cambridge poets)
    by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  141. 154.
    The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

  142. 155.
    J.B.: A Play in Verse
    by Archibald MacLeish

  143. 156.

  144. 157.
    Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories
    by Thomas Mann

  145. 158.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

  146. 159.
    Doctor Faustus
    by Christopher Marlowe

  147. 160.
    The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)
    by Karl Marx

  148. 162.
    Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

  149. 163.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Carson McCullers

  150. 164.
    The Member of the Wedding
    by Carson McCullers

  151. 166.
    Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)
    by Herman Melville

  152. 167.
    The Crucible (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  153. 168.
    Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  154. 169.

  155. 170.
    The Cruel Sea (Classics of War)
    by Nicholas Monsarrat

  156. 171.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

  157. 172.
    Sula (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Toni Morrison

  158. 173.
    Bailey's Cafe
    by Gloria Naylor

  159. 174.
    A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
    by Flannery O'Connor

  160. 175.
    Long Day's Journey into Night
    by Eugene O'Neill

  161. 176.
    Nineteen Eighty-Four
    by George Orwell

  162. 177.
    Animal Farm
    by George Orwell

  163. 178.
    Learning Tree
    by Gordon Parks

  164. 179.
    ?
    DR. ZHIVAGO
    by BORIS PASTERNAK

  165. 180.
    Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Alan Paton

  166. 181.
    The Bell Jar (P.S.)
    by Sylvia Plath

  167. 182.
    Plato: Republic
    by Plato

  168. 183.
    Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
    by Edgar Allan Poe

  169. 184.
    The Chosen
    by Chaim Potok

  170. 186.
    The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon

  171. 187.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

  172. 188.
    Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie (Perennial Classics)
    by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

  173. 189.
    Cyrano de Bergerac (French Edition)
    by Edmond Rostand

  174. 190.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

  175. 191.

  176. 192.
    Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years
    by Carl Sandburg

  177. 193.
    The Human Comedy
    by William Saroyan

  178. 194.
    No Exit and Three Other Plays
    by Jean-Paul Sartre

  179. 195.
    The Nine Tailors
    by Dorothy L. Sayers

  180. 196.
    Ivanhoe (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Walter Scott

  181. 197.
    Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)
    by William Shakespeare

  182. 198.
    Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  183. 199.
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  184. 200.
    Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  185. 201.
    Man and Superman (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  186. 202.
    Pygmalion (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  187. 203.
    Saint Joan (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  188. 204.
    Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

  189. 205.
    The School for Scandal (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  190. 206.
    The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition
    by Upton Sinclair

  191. 207.
    Ceremony (Contemporary American Fiction Series)
    by Leslie Marmon Silko

  192. 208.
    Antigone (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  193. 209.
    Oedipus Rex (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  194. 210.
    Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by John Steinbeck

  195. 211.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

  196. 212.
    Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
    by Robert Louis Stevenson

  197. 213.
    Uncle Tom's Cabin (Bantam Classics)
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  198. 214.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

  199. 215.
    The Joy Luck Club
    by Amy Tan

  200. 216.
    Race
    by STUDS TERKEL

  201. 217.
    Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics)
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

  202. 218.
    The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]
    by Dylan Thomas

  203. 219.
    Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry David Thoreau

  204. 220.
    Tocqueville: Democracy in America (Library of America)
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

  205. 221.
    Anna Karenina
    by Leo Tolstoy

  206. 222.
    War and Peace (Modern Library Classics)
    by Leo Tolstoy

  207. 223.
    A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
    by Barbara W. Tuchman

  208. 224.
    Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ivan Turgenev

  209. 225.

  210. 226.
    Rabbit, Run
    by John Updike

  211. 227.
    The Aeneid (Penguin Classics)
    by Virgil

  212. 228.
    Candide: Or Optimism (Penguin Classics)
    by Voltaire

  213. 229.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

  214. 230.
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker

  215. 231.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

  216. 232.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

  217. 233.
    Night
    by Elie Wiesel

  218. 234.
    The Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells

  219. 235.
    Thirteen Stories
    by Eudora Welty

  220. 236.
    The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

  221. 237.
    The Once and Future King
    by Terence Hanbury White

  222. 238.
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    by Oscar Wilde

  223. 239.
    The Picture of Dorian Gray (Modern Library Classics)
    by Oscar Wilde

  224. 240.
    Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

  225. 242.
    A Streetcar Named Desire
    by Tennessee Williams

  226. 243.
    The Glass Menagerie
    by Tennessee Williams

  227. 244.
    ?
    The Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams
    by William C Williams

  228. 245.
    The Piano Lesson
    by August Wilson

  229. 246.
    Look Homeward, Angel
    by Thomas Wolfe

  230. 247.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

  231. 248.
    William Wordsworth: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by William Wordsworth

  232. 249.
    Native Son (Perennial Classics)
    by Richard A. Wright

  233. 251.

  234. 252.
    The Handmaid's Tale
    by Margaret Atwood

  235. 253.
    The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  236. 254.
    Hobbit
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  237. 255.
    The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)
    by Robert A. Caro

  238. 256.
    John Adams
    by David McCullough

  239. 257.
    The Chronicles of Narnia
    by C.S. Lewis

  240. 258.
    Mere Christianity
    by C. S. Lewis

  241. 259.
    Love Medicine: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Louise Erdrich

  242. 260.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

  243. 261.
    All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)
    by Cormac McCarthy

  244. 262.
    The Human Stain: A Novel American Trilogy (3)
    by Philip Roth

  245. 263.
    A Thousand Acres: A Novel
    by Jane Smiley

  246. 264.
    Alexander Hamilton
    by Ron Chernow

  247. 265.
    The God of Small Things
    by Arundhati Roy

  248. 266.
    White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)
    by Don DeLillo

  249. 267.
    Johnny Got His Gun
    by Dalton Trumbo

  250. 268.
    Zondervan NIV Study Bible
    by Zondervan

  251. 269.
    The Koran (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

  252. 270.
    City of God
    by St. Augustine

  253. 271.
    The Confessions of St. Augustine
    by Augustine

  254. 272.
    Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

  255. 273.
    The Second Sex
    by Simone de Beauvoir

  256. 274.
    Silence
    by Shusaku Endo

  257. 275.
    A Rumor of War
    by Philip Caputo

  258. 276.
    The Things They Carried
    by Tim O'Brien

  259. 277.
    Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
    by Mark Bowden

  260. 278.
    Of the Imitation of Christ (Vintage Spiritual Classics)
    by THOMAS KEMPIS

  261. 279.
    Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
    by Nathan McCall

  262. 280.
    Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
    by Eric Schlosser

  263. 281.
    A Confederacy of Dunces
    by John Kennedy Toole

  264. 282.
    Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
    by Joseph J. Ellis

  265. 283.
    Survival In Auschwitz
    by Primo Levi

  266. 284.
    The Giver
    by Lois Lowry

This is karenbeth's list. Only karenbeth can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by karenbeth on Aug 18, 2006.
 

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