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areufreakingserious'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.

  1. 2.
    Things Fall Apart
    by Chinua Achebe

  2. 3.
    Watership Down
    by Richard Adams

  3. 4.
    Aesop's Fables (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Aesop

  4. 5.
    A Death in the Family
    by James Agee

  5. 6.
    The House of the Spirits
    by Isabel Allende

  6. 7.
    Winesburg, Ohio (Bantam Classic)
    by Sherwood Anderson

  7. 8.
    And Still I Rise
    by Maya Angelou

  8. 9.
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    by Maya Angelou

  9. 10.
    Days of Grace
    by Arthur Ashe

  10. 11.
    ?
    The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth
    by David Attenborough

  11. 12.
    Emma (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  12. 13.
    Northanger Abbey (Modern Library Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  13. 14.
    Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  14. 15.
    Sense and Sensibility (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

  15. 16.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

  16. 17.
    Pere Goriot (Signet Classics)
    by Honore de Balzac

  17. 18.
    Growing Up (Plume)
    by Russell Baker

  18. 19.
    Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
    by Samuel Beckett

  19. 20.
    Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887 (Broadview Literary Texts)
    by Edward Bellamy

  20. 21.
    Seize the Day (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
    by Saul Bellow

  21. 24.
    A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
    by Robert Bolt

  22. 25.
    Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings
    by Jorge Luis Borges

  23. 26.
    Fahrenheit 451
    by Ray Bradbury

  24. 27.
    Mother Courage and Her Children
    by Bertolt Brecht

  25. 28.
    ?
    The Ascent of Man
    by Jacob Bronowski

  26. 29.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

  27. 30.
    Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
    by Emily Brontë

  28. 31.
    Selected Poems (Perennial Classics)
    by Gwendolyn Brooks

  29. 33.
    Robert Browning: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by Robert Browning

  30. 34.
    The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Pearl S. Buck

  31. 35.
    The Way of All Flesh (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Samuel Butler

  32. 36.
    The Power of Myth
    by Joseph Campbell

  33. 37.
    The Plague
    by Albert Camus

  34. 38.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

  35. 39.
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    by Lewis Carroll

  36. 40.
    Silent Spring
    by Rachel Carson

  37. 41.
    Death Comes for the Archbishop (Vintage Classics)
    by Willa Cather

  38. 42.
    My Antonia
    by Willa Cather

  39. 43.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  40. 44.
    The Canterbury Tales
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

  41. 45.
    The Cherry Orchard (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Anton Chekhov

  42. 46.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

  43. 47.
    The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics)
    by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

  44. 48.
    The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Wilkie Collins

  45. 49.
    Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

  46. 50.
    Lord Jim (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

  47. 51.
    Alistair Cooke's America
    by Alistair Cooke

  48. 52.
    The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    by James Fenimore Cooper

  49. 53.
    The Chocolate War
    by Robert Cormier

  50. 54.
    The Red Badge of Courage (Tor Classics)
    by Stephen Crane

  51. 55.
    To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family
    by JoAn D. Criddle

  52. 56.
    Lakota Woman
    by Mary Crow Dog

  53. 58.
    Madame Curie: A Biography
    by Eve Curie

  54. 59.

  55. 60.
    Origin of Species
    by Charles Darwin

  56. 61.
    Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  57. 62.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  58. 63.
    Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
    by Sarah L. Delany

  59. 64.
    Bleak House (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  60. 65.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  61. 66.
    Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  62. 67.
    A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  63. 68.
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
    by Emily Dickinson

  64. 69.
    Out of Africa (Modern Library of the World's Best Books)
    by Isak Dinesen

  65. 71.
    A Yellow Raft in Blue Water: A Novel
    by Michael Dorris

  66. 72.
    The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  67. 73.
    Crime and Punishment (Bantam Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  68. 75.
    An American Tragedy (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  69. 76.
    Sister Carrie (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  70. 77.
    The Three Musketeers (Modern Library)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  71. 78.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  72. 79.
    ?
    Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
    by Gerald Early

  73. 80.
    Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  74. 81.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  75. 82.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  76. 83.
    Silas Marner (Bantam Classics)
    by GEORGE ELIOT

  77. 84.
    Murder in the Cathedral
    by T. S. Eliot

  78. 85.
    The Waste Land and Other Poems
    by T. S. Eliot

  79. 86.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

  80. 90.
    Absalom, Absalom! The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  81. 91.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  82. 92.
    The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  83. 93.
    Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Henry Fielding

  84. 94.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  85. 95.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

  86. 96.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ford Madox Ford

  87. 97.
    A Passage to India
    by E.M. Forster

  88. 98.
    Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
    by Anne Frank

  89. 99.
    The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Benjamin Franklin

  90. 102.
    The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel
    by Carlos Fuentes

  91. 103.
    The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    by Ernest J. Gaines

  92. 104.
    The Forsyte Saga (Oxford World's Classics)
    by John Galsworthy

  93. 105.
    One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  94. 106.
    Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)
    by Allen Ginsberg

  95. 107.
    My House
    by Nikki Giovanni

  96. 108.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  97. 109.

  98. 110.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

  99. 111.
    She Stoops to Conquer (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Oliver Goldsmith

  100. 112.
    The Tin Drum (Vintage International)
    by Gunter Grass

  101. 114.

  102. 115.
    Roots
    by Alex Haley

  103. 116.
    Mythology
    by Edith Hamilton

  104. 117.
    Far from the Madding Crowd (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  105. 118.
    Jude the Obscure (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  106. 119.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  107. 120.
    A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
    by Stephen W. Hawking

  108. 121.
    The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  109. 122.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

  110. 123.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

  111. 124.
    For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

  112. 125.
    ?
    The Old Man and The Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

  113. 126.
    The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (Modern Library)
    by O. Henry

  114. 127.
    Hiroshima (Vintage)
    by John Hersey

  115. 128.
    Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse

  116. 129.
    A Single Pebble
    by John Hersey

  117. 130.
    Steppenwolf: A Novel
    by Hermann Hesse

  118. 131.
    The Iliad (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  119. 132.
    The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  120. 133.
    Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
    by Langston Hughes

  121. 134.
    Les Miserables (Modern Library)
    by Victor Hugo

  122. 136.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

  123. 137.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

  124. 138.
    A Doll's House (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henrik Ibsen

  125. 139.
    The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
    by Henry James

  126. 140.
    The Turn of the Screw (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry James

  127. 141.

  128. 142.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce

  129. 143.
    The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)
    by Franz Kafka

  130. 144.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

  131. 145.

  132. 146.
    Complete Poems
    by John Keats

  133. 148.
    Profiles in Courage
    by John F. Kennedy

  134. 149.
    On the Road
    by Jack Kerouac

  135. 150.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    by Ken Kesey

  136. 152.
    The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
    by Maxine Hong Kingston

  137. 153.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

  138. 155.
    Born on the Fourth of July
    by Ron Kovic

  139. 156.
    Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
    by Jonathan Kozol

  140. 157.
    Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence

  141. 158.
    Inherit the Wind
    by Jerome Lawrence

  142. 159.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

  143. 160.
    A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)
    by Aldo Leopold

  144. 161.
    Main Street (Signet Classics)
    by Sinclair Lewis

  145. 162.
    How Green Was My Valley
    by Richard Llewellyn

  146. 163.
    The Call Of The Wild (Scholastic Classics)
    by Jack London

  147. 164.
    ?
    The complete poetical works of Longfellow (The Cambridge poets)
    by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  148. 165.
    The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

  149. 166.
    J.B.: A Play in Verse
    by Archibald MacLeish

  150. 167.

  151. 168.
    Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories
    by Thomas Mann

  152. 169.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

  153. 170.
    Doctor Faustus
    by Christopher Marlowe

  154. 171.
    The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)
    by Karl Marx

  155. 173.
    Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

  156. 174.
    ?
    Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World
    by David Maybury-Lewis

  157. 175.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Carson McCullers

  158. 176.
    The Member of the Wedding
    by Carson McCullers

  159. 178.
    Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)
    by Herman Melville

  160. 179.
    The Crucible (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  161. 180.
    Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  162. 181.

  163. 182.
    The Cruel Sea (Classics of War)
    by Nicholas Monsarrat

  164. 183.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

This is areufreakingserious's list. Only areufreakingserious can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by areufreakingserious on Mar 30, 2006.
 

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