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somewherelse'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. :)

-jsherry

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

  37. 42.
    My Antonia
    by Willa Cather

  38. 43.
    Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)
    by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  39. 44.
    The Canterbury Tales
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

  40. 45.
    The Cherry Orchard (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Anton Chekhov

  41. 46.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

  42. 47.
    The Ox-Bow Incident (Modern Library Classics)
    by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

  43. 48.
    The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Wilkie Collins

  44. 49.
    Go Ask Alice
    by Anonymous

  45. 50.
    Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

  46. 52.
    Alistair Cooke's America
    by Alistair Cooke

  47. 53.
    The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    by James Fenimore Cooper

  48. 54.
    The Chocolate War
    by Robert Cormier

  49. 55.
    The Red Badge of Courage (Tor Classics)
    by Stephen Crane

  50. 56.
    To Destroy You Is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family
    by JoAn D. Criddle

  51. 57.
    Lakota Woman
    by Mary Crow Dog

  52. 59.
    Madame Curie: A Biography
    by Eve Curie

  53. 60.

  54. 61.
    The Origin of Species
    by Charles Darwin

  55. 62.
    Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  56. 63.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

  57. 64.
    Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
    by Sarah L. Delany

  58. 65.
    Bleak House (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  59. 66.
    Great Expectations (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  60. 67.
    Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  61. 68.
    A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

  62. 69.
    The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
    by Emily Dickinson

  63. 70.
    Out of Africa (Modern Library)
    by Isak Dinesen

  64. 72.
    A Yellow Raft in Blue Water: A Novel
    by Michael Dorris

  65. 73.
    The Brothers Karamazov (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  66. 74.
    Crime and Punishment (Bantam Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  67. 76.
    An American Tragedy (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  68. 77.
    Sister Carrie (Signet Classics)
    by Theodore Dreiser

  69. 78.
    The Three Musketeers (Modern Library)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  70. 79.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

  71. 80.
    ?
    Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture
    by Gerald Early

  72. 81.
    Adam Bede (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  73. 82.
    Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  74. 83.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

  75. 84.
    Silas Marner (Bantam Classics)
    by GEORGE ELIOT

  76. 85.
    Murder in the Cathedral
    by T. S. Eliot

  77. 86.
    The Waste Land and Other Poems
    by T. S. Eliot

  78. 87.
    Invisible Man
    by Ralph Ellison

  79. 91.
    Absalom, Absalom! The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  80. 92.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  81. 93.
    The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text
    by William Faulkner

  82. 94.
    Tom Jones (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Henry Fielding

  83. 95.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  84. 96.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

  85. 97.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ford Madox Ford

  86. 98.
    A Passage to India
    by E.M. Forster

  87. 99.
    Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
    by Anne Frank

  88. 100.
    The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Benjamin Franklin

  89. 102.
    The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel
    by Carlos Fuentes

  90. 103.
    The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    by Ernest J. Gaines

  91. 104.
    The Forsyte Saga (Oxford World's Classics)
    by John Galsworthy

  92. 105.
    One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  93. 106.
    Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)
    by Allen Ginsberg

  94. 107.
    My House
    by Nikki Giovanni

  95. 108.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  96. 109.

  97. 110.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

  98. 111.
    She Stoops to Conquer (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Oliver Goldsmith

  99. 112.
    The Tin Drum
    by Gunter Grass

  100. 114.

  101. 115.
    Roots
    by Alex Haley

  102. 116.
    Mythology
    by Edith Hamilton

  103. 117.
    Far from the Madding Crowd (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  104. 118.
    Jude the Obscure (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  105. 119.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

  106. 120.
    A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
    by Stephen W. Hawking

  107. 121.
    The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  108. 122.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

  109. 123.
    A Farewell To Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

  110. 124.
    For Whom the Bell Tolls (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

  111. 125.
    The Old Man and The Sea
    by Ernest Hemingway

  112. 126.
    The Best Short Stories of O. Henry (Modern Library)
    by O. Henry

  113. 127.
    Hiroshima (Vintage)
    by John Hersey

  114. 128.
    Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse

  115. 129.
    A Single Pebble
    by John Hersey

  116. 130.
    Steppenwolf: A Novel
    by Hermann Hesse

  117. 131.
    The Iliad (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  118. 132.
    The Odyssey (Penguin Classics)
    by Homer

  119. 133.
    Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Classics)
    by Langston Hughes

  120. 134.
    Les Miserables (Modern Library)
    by Victor Hugo

  121. 136.
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    by Zora Neale Hurston

  122. 137.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

  123. 138.
    A Doll's House (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henrik Ibsen

  124. 139.
    The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
    by Henry James

  125. 140.
    The Turn of the Screw (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry James

  126. 141.

  127. 142.
    Ulysses
    by James Joyce

  128. 143.
    The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)
    by Franz Kafka

  129. 144.
    The Trial
    by Franz Kafka

  130. 145.

  131. 146.
    Complete Poems
    by John Keats

  132. 148.
    Profiles in Courage
    by John F. Kennedy

  133. 149.
    On the Road
    by Jack Kerouac

  134. 150.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
    by Ken Kesey

  135. 152.
    The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
    by Maxine Hong Kingston

  136. 153.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

  137. 155.
    Born on the Fourth of July
    by Ron Kovic

  138. 156.
    Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
    by Jonathan Kozol

  139. 157.
    Sons and Lovers
    by D. H. Lawrence

  140. 158.
    Inherit the Wind
    by Jerome Lawrence

  141. 159.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

  142. 160.
    A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections)
    by Aldo Leopold

  143. 161.
    Main Street (Signet Classics)
    by Sinclair Lewis

  144. 162.
    How Green Was My Valley
    by Richard Llewellyn

  145. 163.
    The Call Of The Wild
    by Jack London

  146. 164.
    ?
    The complete poetical works of Longfellow (The Cambridge poets)
    by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  147. 165.
    The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

  148. 166.
    J.B.: A Play in Verse
    by Archibald MacLeish

  149. 167.

  150. 168.
    Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories
    by Thomas Mann

  151. 169.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

  152. 170.
    Doctor Faustus
    by Christopher Marlowe

  153. 171.
    The Communist Manifesto (Signet Classics)
    by Karl Marx

  154. 173.
    Of Human Bondage (Bantam Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

  155. 174.
    Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World
    by David Maybury-Lewis

  156. 175.
    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    by Carson McCullers

  157. 176.
    The Member of the Wedding
    by Carson McCullers

  158. 178.
    Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)
    by Herman Melville

  159. 179.
    The Crucible (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  160. 180.
    Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
    by Arthur Miller

  161. 181.

  162. 182.
    The Cruel Sea (Classics of War)
    by Nicholas Monsarrat

  163. 183.
    Beloved
    by Toni Morrison

  164. 184.
    Sula (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Toni Morrison

  165. 185.
    Bailey's Cafe
    by Gloria Naylor

  166. 186.
    A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
    by Flannery O'Connor

  167. 187.
    Long Day's Journey into Night
    by Eugene O'Neill

  168. 188.
    Nineteen Eighty-Four, Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell

  169. 189.
    Animal Farm
    by George Orwell

  170. 190.
    Learning Tree
    by Gordon Parks

  171. 191.
    DR. ZHIVAGO
    by BORIS PASTERNAK

  172. 192.
    Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)
    by Alan Paton

  173. 193.
    The Bell Jar (P.S.)
    by Sylvia Plath

  174. 194.
    Plato: Republic
    by Plato

  175. 195.
    Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
    by Edgar Allan Poe

  176. 196.
    The Chosen
    by Chaim Potok

  177. 198.
    The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon

  178. 199.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

  179. 200.

  180. 201.
    Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie (Perennial Classics)
    by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

  181. 202.
    Cyrano de Bergerac (French Edition)
    by Edmond Rostand

  182. 203.
    Call It Sleep: A Novel
    by Henry Roth

  183. 204.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

  184. 205.

  185. 206.
    Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years
    by Carl Sandburg

  186. 207.
    The Human Comedy
    by William Saroyan

  187. 208.
    No Exit and Three Other Plays
    by Jean-Paul Sartre

  188. 209.
    The Nine Tailors
    by Dorothy L. Sayers

  189. 210.
    Ivanhoe (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Walter Scott

  190. 211.
    Hamlet ( Folger Library Shakespeare)
    by William Shakespeare

  191. 212.
    Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  192. 213.
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)
    by William Shakespeare

  193. 214.
    Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

  194. 215.
    Man and Superman (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  195. 216.
    Pygmalion (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  196. 217.
    Saint Joan (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

  197. 218.
    Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

  198. 219.
    The School for Scandal (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  199. 220.
    On the Beach
    by Nevil Shute

  200. 221.
    The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition
    by Upton Sinclair

  201. 222.
    Ceremony (Contemporary American Fiction Series)
    by Leslie Marmon Silko

  202. 223.
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics)
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  203. 224.
    Antigone (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  204. 225.
    Oedipus Rex (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sophocles

  205. 226.
    Of Mice and Men
    by John Steinbeck

  206. 227.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

  207. 228.
    Treasure Island (Signet Classics)
    by Robert Louis Stevenson

  208. 229.
    Uncle Tom's Cabin (Bantam Classics)
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  209. 230.
    Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics)
    by Jonathan Swift

  210. 231.
    The Joy Luck Club
    by Amy Tan

  211. 232.
    Race
    by STUDS TERKEL

  212. 233.
    Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics)
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

  213. 234.
    The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]
    by Dylan Thomas

  214. 235.
    Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Henry David Thoreau

  215. 236.
    Tocqueville: Democracy in America (Library of America)
    by Alexis de Tocqueville

  216. 237.
    Anna Karenina
    by Leo Tolstoy

  217. 238.
    War and Peace (Modern Library Classics)
    by Leo Tolstoy

  218. 239.
    A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
    by Barbara W. Tuchman

  219. 240.
    Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Ivan Turgenev

  220. 241.

  221. 242.
    Rabbit, Run
    by John Updike

  222. 243.
    The Aeneid (Penguin Classics)
    by Virgil

  223. 244.
    Candide: Or Optimism (Penguin Classics)
    by Voltaire

  224. 245.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

  225. 246.
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker

  226. 247.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

  227. 248.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

  228. 249.
    Night
    by Elie Wiesel

  229. 250.
    The Time Machine
    by H. G. Wells

  230. 251.
    Thirteen Stories
    by Eudora Welty

  231. 252.
    The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

  232. 253.
    The Once and Future King
    by Terence Hanbury White

  233. 254.
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    by Oscar Wilde

  234. 255.
    The Picture of Dorian Gray (Modern Library Classics)
    by Oscar Wilde

  235. 256.
    Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

  236. 257.
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

  237. 259.
    A Streetcar Named Desire
    by Tennessee Williams

  238. 260.
    The Glass Menagerie
    by Tennessee Williams

  239. 261.
    ?
    The Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams
    by William C Williams

  240. 262.
    The Piano Lesson
    by August Wilson

  241. 263.
    Look Homeward, Angel
    by Thomas Wolfe

  242. 264.
    Mrs. Dalloway
    by Virginia Woolf

  243. 265.
    William Wordsworth: Poems (Highbridge Classics)
    by William Wordsworth

  244. 266.
    The Caine Mutiny: A Novel
    by Herman Wouk

  245. 267.
    Native Son (Perennial Classics)
    by Richard A. Wright

  246. 269.

  247. 270.
    The Handmaid's Tale
    by Margaret Atwood

  248. 271.
    The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary, One Vol. Edition
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  249. 272.
    Hobbit
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

  250. 273.
    The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)
    by Robert A. Caro

  251. 274.
    John Adams
    by David McCullough

  252. 275.
    The Chronicles of Narnia
    by C.S. Lewis

  253. 276.
    Mere Christianity
    by C. S. Lewis

  254. 277.
    Love Medicine: A Novel (P.S.)
    by Louise Erdrich

  255. 278.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

  256. 279.
    All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)
    by Cormac McCarthy

  257. 280.
    The Human Stain: A Novel American Trilogy (3)
    by Philip Roth

  258. 281.
    A Thousand Acres: A Novel
    by Jane Smiley

  259. 282.
    Alexander Hamilton
    by Ron Chernow

  260. 283.
    The God of Small Things
    by Arundhati Roy

  261. 284.
    White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)
    by Don DeLillo

  262. 285.
    Johnny Got His Gun
    by Dalton Trumbo

  263. 286.
    Zondervan NIV Study Bible
    by Zondervan

  264. 287.
    The Koran (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

  265. 288.
    City of God
    by St. Augustine

  266. 289.
    The Confessions of St. Augustine
    by Augustine

  267. 290.
    Leaves of Grass (Bantam Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

  268. 291.
    The Second Sex
    by Simone de Beauvoir

  269. 292.
    Silence
    by Shusaku Endo

  270. 293.
    A Rumor of War
    by Philip Caputo

  271. 294.
    The Things They Carried
    by Tim O'Brien

  272. 295.
    Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
    by Mark Bowden

  273. 296.
    Of the Imitation of Christ (Vintage Spiritual Classics)
    by THOMAS KEMPIS

  274. 297.
    Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America
    by Nathan McCall

  275. 298.
    The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
    by Louis Menand

  276. 299.
    Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
    by Eric Schlosser

  277. 300.
    A Confederacy of Dunces
    by John Kennedy Toole

  278. 301.
    Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
    by Joseph J. Ellis

  279. 302.
    Kindred (Bluestreak)
    by Octavia Butler

  280. 303.
    Survival In Auschwitz
    by Primo Levi

  281. 304.
    The Giver
    by Lois Lowry

  282. 305.
    The Forever War
    by Joe Haldeman

  283. 306.
    Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (Unabridged)
    by Koren Zailckas

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Created by somewherelse on Nov 15, 2007.
 

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