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2kaboom's "150 Books to improve your mind"

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I started this list by compiling several ‘Best of’ lists for Fiction (American, British, European), Non-Fiction (general), Philosophy, Plays, Collections (Poems, Essays, Complete Works Of-) with the intention of improving my vocabulary and becoming well-read person. This list is by no means final, and I continue to add to it whenever I see fit. If you have any recommendations, please pass them along.

  1. 1.
    Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

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  2. 2.
    ?
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Unabridged)
    by Douglas Adams

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  3. 3.
    A Death in the Family
    by James Agee

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  4. 6.
    Emma (Penguin Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  5. 8.
    Northanger Abbey
    by Jane Austen

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  6. 9.
    Pride and Prejudice (Modern Library Classics)
    by Jane Austen

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  7. 10.
    City of Glass: The Graphic Novel
    by Paul Auster

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  8. 11.
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    by James Baldwin

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  9. 12.

  10. 13.
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    The Adventures of Augie March

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  11. 14.
    Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Bronte

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  12. 15.
    Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
    by Emily Bronte

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  13. 16.
    THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
    by Samuel Butler

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  14. 17.
    A Clockwork Orange
    by Anthony Burgess

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  15. 18.
    L'Etranger (Collection Folio, 2)
    by Albert Camus

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  16. 19.

  17. 20.
    The Canterbury Tales (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

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  18. 21.
    The Cherry Orchard
    by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

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  19. 22.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

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  20. 23.
    Heart of Darkness
    by Joseph Conrad

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  21. 24.
    The Secret Agent (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  22. 25.
    The Last of the Mohicans
    by James Fenimore Cooper

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  23. 27.
    Don Quixote (P.S.)
    by Miguel de Cervantes

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  24. 28.
    Robinson Crusoe (Modern Library Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

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  25. 29.
    A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics)
    by Charles Dickens

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  26. 30.
    Deliverance
    by James Dickey

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  27. 31.
    Crime and Punishment (Enriched Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  28. 33.
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    The count of Monte Christo

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  29. 34.
    The Three Musketeers (Signet Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas père

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  30. 35.
    The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)
    by George Eliot

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  31. 36.
    Invisible Man: A Novel
    by Ralph Ellison

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  32. 37.
    ?

  33. 38.
    The Sound and the Fury (Norton Critical Editions)
    by William Faulkner

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  34. 39.
    As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  35. 40.
    Light in August: The Corrected Text (Modern Library)
    by William Faulkner

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  36. 41.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  37. 42.
    Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

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  38. 43.
    The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion
    by Ford Madox Ford

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  39. 44.
    A Passage to India
    by E.M. Forster

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  40. 45.
    Howards End (Norton Critical Editions)
    by E. M. Forster

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  41. 46.
    Goethe's Faust
    by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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  42. 49.
    The Maltese Falcon
    by Dashiell Hammett

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  43. 50.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Thomas Hardy

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  44. 51.
    The Scarlet Letter (Enriched Classics)
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  45. 52.
    The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
    by Robert A. Heinlein

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  46. 53.
    Stranger in a Strange Land
    by Robert A. Heinlein

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  47. 54.
    Catch-22
    by Joseph Heller

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  48. 55.
    A Farewell to Arms
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  49. 56.
    Sun Also Rises (Scribner Classics)
    by Ernest Hemingway

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  50. 57.
    Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition (Dune Chronicles, Book 1)
    by Frank Herbert

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  51. 59.
    The Odyssey
    by Homer

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  52. 60.
    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Modern Library Classics)
    by Victor Hugo

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  53. 62.
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    BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley

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  54. 63.
    Point Counter Point (British Literature)
    by Aldous Huxley

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  55. 64.
    A Doll's House (Dodo Press)
    by Ibsen Henrik Ibsen

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  56. 65.
    The World According to Garp (Modern Library)
    by John Irving

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  57. 67.

  58. 69.
    The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
    by Maxine Hong Kingston

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  59. 70.
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    Kim
    by Rudyard Kipling

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  60. 71.
    Darkness at Noon
    by Arthur Koestler

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  61. 72.
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    by Harper Lee

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  62. 73.
    Babbitt (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by Sinclair Lewis

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  63. 74.
    The Chronicles of Narnia Box Set (adult) (Narnia)
    by C. S. Lewis

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  64. 75.
    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    by D. H. Lawrence

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  65. 76.
    The Rainbow
    by D.H. Lawrence

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  66. 77.
    The Naked and the Dead: 50th Anniversary Edition
    by Norman Mailer

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  67. 78.
    Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
    by T.E. Lawrence

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  68. 79.
    The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

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  69. 80.
    The Magic Mountain
    by Thomas Mann

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  70. 82.
    Of Human Bondage (Modern Library Classics)
    by W. Somerset Maugham

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  71. 83.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
    by Herman Melville

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  72. 84.
    The Crucible (Penguin Classics)
    by Arthur Miller

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  73. 85.
    Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics)
    by John Milton

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  74. 86.
    Lolita (Everyman's Library Classics)
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  75. 87.
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  76. 88.
    A Bend in the River (Vintage International)
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  77. 89.
    In a Free State: A Novel
    by V.S. Naipaul

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  78. 90.
    A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
    by Flannery O'Connor

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  79. 91.
    Wise Blood: A Novel
    by Flannery O'Connor

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  80. 92.
    Long Day's Journey into Night, Second edition
    by Eugene O'Neill

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  81. 93.
    Appointment in Samarra: A Novel
    by John O'Hara

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  82. 94.
    Animal Farm: Centennial Edition
    by George Orwell

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  83. 95.
    George Orwell's 1984
    by George Orwell

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  84. 96.
    ?
    Dr. Zhivago
    by Boris Pasternak

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  85. 97.
    ?
    Great Tales of Edgar Allen Poe
    by Edgar Allan Poe

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  86. 98.
    ?
    A Dance to the Music of Time (series)
    by Anthony Powell

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  87. 99.
    The Bell Jar
    by Sylvia Plath

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  88. 100.
    Swann's Way (Modern Library Classics)
    by Marcel Proust

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  89. 101.
    The Crying of Lot 49
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  90. 102.

  91. 103.
    V. (Perennial Classics)
    by Thomas Pynchon

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  92. 104.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

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  93. 105.
    Cyrano De Bergerac
    by Edmond Rostand

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  94. 106.
    Call It Sleep: A Novel
    by Henry Roth

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  95. 107.
    ?
    Midnight's Children

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  96. 108.
    The Satanic Verses: A Novel (Bestselling Backlist)
    by Salman Rushdie

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  97. 109.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

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  98. 110.
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (Signet Classics)
    by William Shakespeare

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  99. 111.
    Julius Caesar (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  100. 112.
    Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  101. 113.
    The Tempest (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  102. 114.
    Pygmalion (Dover Thrift Editions)
    by George Bernard Shaw

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  103. 115.
    Frankenstein (Enriched Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

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  104. 116.
    A Town Like Alice
    by Nevil Shute

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  105. 117.
    Trustee from the Toolroom
    by Nevil Shute

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  106. 118.
    One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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  107. 120.
    ?
    The Oedipus Plays of Sophpcles
    by Sophocles

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  108. 121.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition)
    by John Steinbeck

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  109. 123.
    Treasure Island (Kingfisher Classics)
    by Robert Louis Stevenson

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  110. 124.
    ?
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
    by Tom Stoppard

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  111. 125.
    Uncle Tom's Cabin
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe

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  112. 126.
    Gulliver's Travels (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Jonathan Swift

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  113. 127.
    Vanity Fair (Barnes & Noble Classics)
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

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  114. 128.
    The Lord of the Rings
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  115. 129.
    War and Peace
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  116. 131.
    Fathers and Sons
    by Ivan Turgenev

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  117. 133.
    Candide (Modern Library)
    by Voltaire

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  118. 134.
    Slaughterhouse-Five
    by Kurt Vonnegut

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  119. 135.
    All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren

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  120. 136.
    A Handful of Dust (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  121. 137.
    Brideshead Revisited
    by Evelyn Waugh

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  122. 138.
    ?
    The Color Purple
    by Alice Walker

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  123. 139.
    The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  124. 140.
    The House of Mirth (Barnes & Noble Classics)
    by Edith Wharton

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  125. 141.
    The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
    by Eudora Welty

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  126. 142.
    Night

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  127. 143.
    Leaves of Grass
    by Walt Whitman

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  128. 145.
    ?
    The Bridge of San Louis Rey
    by Thornton Wilder

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  129. 146.
    The Glass Menagerie
    by Tennessee Williams

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  130. 147.
    Jeeves and Wooster Omnibus
    by P.G. Wodehouse

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  131. 148.
    To the Lighthouse (Annotated)
    by Virginia Woolf

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  132. 149.
    Notes of a Native Son (Beacon Paperback)
    by James Baldwin

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This is 2kaboom's list. Only 2kaboom can edit it. You can make your own version of this list.
Created by 2kaboom on Jul 12, 2006.