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

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Note: books marked "not worth consuming" simply mean that I read them, but didn’t particularly enjoy them. Many will disagree, but that is why I made this my list!

Thanks to -jsherry for posting the original list.

  1. 1.
    Outlander
    by Diana Gabaldon

  2. 2.
    Go Ask Alice
    by Anonymous

  3. 4.
    Things Fall Apart
    by Chinua Achebe

  4. 5.
    Watership Down
    by Richard Adams

  5. 6.
    Aesop's Fables (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Aesop

  6. 7.
    A Death in the Family
    by James Agee

  7. 8.
    The House of the Spirits
    by Isabel Allende

  8. 9.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Bantam Classic)
    by Sherwood Anderson

  9. 10.
    And Still I Rise
    by Maya Angelou

  10. 11.
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    by Maya Angelou

  11. 12.
    Days of Grace
    by Arthur Ashe

  12. 13.
    ?
    The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth
    by David Attenborough

  13. 14.
    Emma (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  14. 15.
    Northanger Abbey (Modern Library Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  15. 16.
    Pride and Prejudice (Penguin 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. 26.
    A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
    by Robert Bolt

  24. 27.
    Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
    by Jorge Luis Borges

  25. 28.
    Fahrenheit 451
    by Ray Bradbury

  26. 29.
    Mother Courage and Her Children
    by Bertolt Brecht

  27. 30.
    ?
    The Ascent of Man
    by Jacob Bronowski

  28. 31.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

  29. 32.
    Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
    by Emily Brontë

  30. 33.
    Selected Poems (Perennial Classics)
    by Gwendolyn Brooks

  31. 35.
    Robert Browning: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by Robert Browning

  32. 36.
    The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Pearl S. Buck

  33. 37.
    The Way of All Flesh (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Samuel Butler

  34. 38.
    The Power of Myth
    by Joseph Campbell

  35. 39.
    The Plague
    by Albert Camus

  36. 40.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

  37. 41.
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll

  38. 42.
    Silent Spring
    by Rachel Carson

  39. 43.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop (Vintage Classics)
    by Willa Cather

  40. 44.
    My Antonia
    by Willa Cather

  41. 45.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  42. 46.
    The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

  43. 47.
    The Cherry Orchard (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Anton Chekhov

  44. 48.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

  45. 49.
    The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics)
    by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

  46. 50.
    The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Wilkie Collins

  47. 51.
    Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

  48. 52.
    Lord Jim (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

  49. 53.
    Alistair Cooke's America
    by Alistair Cooke

  50. 54.
    The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    by James Fenimore Cooper

  51. 55.
    The Chocolate War
    by Robert Cormier

  52. 56.
    The Red Badge of Courage (Tor Classics)
    by Stephen Crane

  53. 57.
    To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family
    by JoAn D. Criddle

  54. 58.
    Lakota Woman
    by Mary Crow Dog

  55. 60.
    Madame Curie: A Biography
    by Eve Curie

  56. 61.

  57. 62.
    Origin of Species
    by Charles Darwin

  58. 63.
    Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  59. 63.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  60. 64.
    Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
    by Sarah L. Delany

  61. 65.
    Bleak House (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  62. 66.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  63. 67.
    Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  64. 68.
    A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  65. 69.
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
    by Emily Dickinson

  66. 70.
    Out of Africa (Modern Library of the World's Best Books)
    by Isak Dinesen

  67. 72.
    A Yellow Raft in Blue Water: A Novel
    by Michael Dorris

  68. 73.
    The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  69. 74.
    Crime and Punishment (Bantam Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  70. 76.
    An American Tragedy (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  71. 77.
    Sister Carrie (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  72. 78.
    The Three Musketeers (Modern Library)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  73. 79.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  74. 80.
    ?
    Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
    by Gerald Early

  75. 81.
    Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  76. 82.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  77. 83.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  78. 84.
    Silas Marner (Bantam Classics)
    by GEORGE ELIOT

  79. 85.
    Murder in the Cathedral
    by T. S. Eliot

  80. 86.
    The Waste Land and Other Poems
    by T. S. Eliot

  81. 87.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

  82. 91.
    Absalom, Absalom! The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  83. 92.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  84. 93.
    The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  85. 94.
    Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Henry Fielding

  86. 95.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  87. 96.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

  88. 97.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ford Madox Ford

  89. 98.
    A Passage to India
    by E.M. Forster

  90. 99.
    Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
    by Anne Frank

  91. 100.
    The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Benjamin Franklin

  92. 102.
    The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel
    by Carlos Fuentes

  93. 103.
    The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    by Ernest J. Gaines

  94. 104.
    The Forsyte Saga (Oxford World's Classics)
    by John Galsworthy

  95. 105.
    One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  96. 106.
    Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)
    by Allen Ginsberg

  97. 107.
    My House
    by Nikki Giovanni

  98. 108.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  99. 109.

  100. 110.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

  101. 111.
    She Stoops to Conquer (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Oliver Goldsmith

  102. 112.
    The Tin Drum (Vintage International)
    by Gunter Grass

  103. 114.

  104. 115.
    Roots
    by Alex Haley

  105. 116.
    Mythology
    by Edith Hamilton

  106. 117.
    Far from the Madding Crowd (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  107. 118.
    Jude the Obscure (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  108. 119.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  109. 120.
    A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
    by Stephen W. Hawking

  110. 121.
    The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  111. 122.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

  112. 123.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

  113. 124.
    For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

  114. 125.
    ?
    The Old Man and The Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

  115. 126.
    The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (Modern Library)
    by O. Henry

  116. 127.
    Hiroshima (Vintage)
    by John Hersey

  117. 128.
    Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse

  118. 129.
    A Single Pebble
    by John Hersey

  119. 130.
    Steppenwolf: A Novel
    by Hermann Hesse

  120. 131.
    The Iliad (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  121. 132.
    The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  122. 133.
    Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
    by Langston Hughes

  123. 134.
    Les Miserables (Modern Library)
    by Victor Hugo

  124. 136.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

  125. 137.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

  126. 138.
    A Doll's House (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henrik Ibsen

  127. 139.
    The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
    by Henry James

  128. 140.
    The Turn of the Screw (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry James

  129. 141.

  130. 142.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce

  131. 143.
    The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)
    by Franz Kafka

  132. 144.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

  133. 145.

  134. 146.
    Complete Poems
    by John Keats

  135. 148.
    Profiles in Courage
    by John F. Kennedy

  136. 149.
    On the Road
    by Jack Kerouac

  137. 150.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    by Ken Kesey

  138. 152.
    The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
    by Maxine Hong Kingston

  139. 153.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

  140. 155.
    Born on the Fourth of July
    by Ron Kovic

  141. 156.
    Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
    by Jonathan Kozol

  142. 157.
    Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence

  143. 158.
    Inherit the Wind
    by Jerome Lawrence

  144. 159.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

  145. 160.
    A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)
    by Aldo Leopold

  146. 161.
    Main Street (Signet Classics)
    by Sinclair Lewis

  147. 162.
    How Green Was My Valley
    by Richard Llewellyn

  148. 163.
    The Call Of The Wild (Scholastic Classics)
    by Jack London

  149. 164.
    ?
    The complete poetical works of Longfellow (The Cambridge poets)
    by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  150. 165.
    Machiavelli's The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

  151. 166.
    J.B.: A Play in Verse
    by Archibald MacLeish

  152. 167.

  153. 168.
    Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories
    by Thomas Mann

  154. 169.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

  155. 170.
    Doctor Faustus
    by Christopher Marlowe

  156. 171.
    The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)
    by Karl Marx

  157. 173.
    Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

  158. 174.
    ?
    Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World
    by David Maybury-Lewis

  159. 175.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Carson McCullers

  160. 176.
    The Member of the Wedding
    by Carson McCullers

  161. 178.
    Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)
    by Herman Melville

  162. 179.
    The Crucible (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  163. 180.
    Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  164. 181.

  165. 182.
    The Cruel Sea (Classics of War)
    by Nicholas Monsarrat

  166. 183.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

  167. 184.
    Sula (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Toni Morrison

  168. 185.
    Bailey's Cafe
    by Gloria Naylor

  169. 186.
    A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
    by Flannery O'Connor

  170. 187.
    Long Day's Journey into Night
    by Eugene O'Neill

  171. 188.
    Nineteen Eighty-Four
    by George Orwell

  172. 189.
    Animal Farm
    by George Orwell

  173. 190.
    Learning Tree
    by Gordon Parks

  174. 191.
    ?
    DR. ZHIVAGO
    by BORIS PASTERNAK

  175. 192.
    Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Alan Paton

  176. 193.
    The Bell Jar (P.S.)
    by Sylvia Plath

  177. 194.
    Plato: Republic
    by Plato

  178. 195.
    Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
    by Edgar Allan Poe

  179. 196.
    The Chosen
    by Chaim Potok

  180. 198.
    The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon

  181. 199.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

  182. 200.

  183. 201.
    Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie (Perennial Classics)
    by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

  184. 202.
    Cyrano de Bergerac (French Edition)
    by Edmond Rostand

  185. 203.
    Call It Sleep: A Novel
    by Henry Roth

  186. 204.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

  187. 205.

  188. 206.
    Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years
    by Carl Sandburg

  189. 207.
    The Human Comedy
    by William Saroyan

  190. 208.
    No Exit and Three Other Plays
    by Jean-Paul Sartre

  191. 209.
    The Nine Tailors
    by Dorothy L. Sayers

  192. 210.
    Ivanhoe (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Walter Scott

  193. 211.
    Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)
    by William Shakespeare

  194. 212.
    Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  195. 213.
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  196. 214.
    Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  197. 215.
    Man and Superman (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  198. 216.
    Pygmalion (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  199. 217.
    Saint Joan (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  200. 218.
    Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

  201. 219.
    The School for Scandal (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  202. 220.
    On the Beach
    by Nevil Shute

  203. 221.
    The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition
    by Upton Sinclair

  204. 222.
    Ceremony (Contemporary American Fiction Series)
    by Leslie Marmon Silko

  205. 223.
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics)
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  206. 224.
    Antigone (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  207. 225.
    Oedipus Rex (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  208. 226.
    Of Mice and Men (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
    by John Steinbeck

  209. 227.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

  210. 228.
    Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
    by Robert Louis Stevenson

  211. 229.
    Uncle Tom's Cabin (Bantam Classics)
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  212. 230.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

  213. 231.
    The Joy Luck Club
    by Amy Tan

  214. 232.
    Race
    by STUDS TERKEL

  215. 233.
    Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics)
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

  216. 234.
    The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]
    by Dylan Thomas

  217. 235.
    Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry David Thoreau

  218. 236.
    Tocqueville: Democracy in America (Library of America)
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

  219. 237.
    Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Leo Tolstoy

  220. 238.
    War and Peace (Modern Library Classics)
    by Leo Tolstoy

  221. 239.
    A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
    by Barbara W. Tuchman

  222. 240.
    Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ivan Turgenev

  223. 241.

  224. 242.
    Rabbit, Run
    by John Updike

  225. 243.
    The Aeneid (Penguin Classics)
    by Virgil

  226. 244.
    Candide: Or Optimism (Penguin Classics)
    by Voltaire

  227. 245.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

  228. 246.
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker

  229. 247.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

  230. 248.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

  231. 249.
    Night
    by Elie Wiesel

  232. 250.
    The Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells

  233. 251.
    Thirteen Stories
    by Eudora Welty

  234. 252.
    The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

  235. 253.
    The Once and Future King
    by Terence Hanbury White

  236. 254.
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    by Oscar Wilde

  237. 255.
    The Picture of Dorian Gray (Modern Library Classics)
    by Oscar Wilde

  238. 256.
    Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

  239. 257.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

  240. 259.
    A Streetcar Named Desire
    by Tennessee Williams

  241. 260.
    The Glass Menagerie
    by Tennessee Williams

  242. 261.
    ?
    The Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams
    by William C Williams

  243. 262.
    The Piano Lesson
    by August Wilson

  244. 263.
    Look Homeward, Angel
    by Thomas Wolfe

  245. 264.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

  246. 265.
    William Wordsworth: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by William Wordsworth

  247. 266.
    The Caine Mutiny: A Novel
    by Herman Wouk

  248. 267.
    Native Son (Perennial Classics)
    by Richard A. Wright

  249. 269.

  250. 270.
    The Handmaid's Tale
    by Margaret Atwood

  251. 271.
    The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  252. 272.
    Hobbit
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  253. 273.
    The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)
    by Robert A. Caro

  254. 274.
    John Adams
    by David McCullough

  255. 275.
    The Chronicles of Narnia
    by C.S. Lewis

  256. 276.
    Mere Christianity
    by C. S. Lewis

  257. 277.
    Love Medicine: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Louise Erdrich

  258. 278.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

  259. 279.
    All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)
    by Cormac McCarthy

  260. 280.
    The Human Stain: A Novel American Trilogy (3)
    by Philip Roth

  261. 281.
    A Thousand Acres: A Novel
    by Jane Smiley

  262. 282.
    Alexander Hamilton
    by Ron Chernow

  263. 283.
    The God of Small Things
    by Arundhati Roy

  264. 284.
    White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)
    by Don DeLillo

  265. 285.
    Johnny Got His Gun
    by Dalton Trumbo

  266. 286.
    Zondervan NIV Study Bible
    by Zondervan

  267. 287.
    The Koran (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

  268. 288.
    City of God
    by St. Augustine

  269. 289.
    The Confessions of St. Augustine
    by Augustine

  270. 290.
    Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

  271. 291.
    The Second Sex
    by Simone de Beauvoir

  272. 292.
    Silence
    by Shusaku Endo

  273. 293.
    A Rumor of War
    by Philip Caputo

  274. 294.
    The Things They Carried
    by Tim O'Brien

  275. 295.
    Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
    by Mark Bowden

  276. 296.
    Of the Imitation of Christ (Vintage Spiritual Classics)
    by THOMAS KEMPIS

  277. 297.
    Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
    by Nathan McCall

  278. 298.
    The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
    by Louis Menand

  279. 299.
    Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
    by Eric Schlosser

  280. 300.
    A Confederacy of Dunces
    by John Kennedy Toole

  281. 301.
    Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
    by Joseph J. Ellis

  282. 302.
    Kindred (Bluestreak)
    by Octavia E. Butler

  283. 303.
    Survival In Auschwitz
    by Primo Levi

  284. 304.
    The Giver
    by Lois Lowry

  285. 305.
    The Forever War
    by Joe Haldeman

  286. 306.
    Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (Unabridged)
    by Koren Zailckas

  287. 308.
    A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander)
    by Diana Gabaldon

  288. 309.
    The Fiery Cross (Outlander)
    by Diana Gabaldon

  289. 310.
    ?
    Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander)
    by Diana Gabaldon

  290. 311.
    Drums of Autumn (Outlander)
    by Diana Gabaldon

This is cozycoleman's list. Only cozycoleman can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by cozycoleman on Jan 21, 2007.
 

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