250 Reading List.

Here is the list of "classics" I will be reading for this challenge. To see the list of books I have completed, go here. For the most part, they are alphabetical by author's last name.


  1. Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
  2. Adams, Richard: Watership Down
  3. Aeschylus: Oresteia
  4. Albee, Edward: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
  5. Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
  6. Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Ultima
  7. Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  8. Aristophanes: Lysistrata
  9. Aristophanes: The Frogs
  10. Arnow, Harriette: The Dollmaker
  11. Atwood, Margaret: A Handmaid’s Tale
  12. Atwood, Margaret: Alias Grace
  13. Austen, Jane: Emma
  14. Austen, Jane: Mansfield Park
  15. Austen, Jane: Persuasion
  16. Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
  17. Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility
  18. Barrie, J.M.: Peter Pan
  19. Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
  20. Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
  21. Bronte, Charlotte: Villete
  22. Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
  23. Bunyon, John: Pilgrim’s Progress
  24. Burns, Olive: Cold Sassy Tree
  25. Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange
  26. Camus, Albert: Fall
  27. Camus, Albert: Stranger
  28. Cather, Willa: My Antonia
  29. Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!
  30. Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales
  31. Chekov, Anton: Cherry Orchard
  32. Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
  33. Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
  34. Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
  35. Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
  36. Conrad, Joseph: Lord Jim
  37. Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
  38. Crane, Stephen: Red Badge of Courage
  39. Dante: The Divine Comedy
  40. deCervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote
  41. De Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John: Letters from an American Farmer
  42. De Saint-Exupery, Antonie: The Little Prince
  43. Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
  44. Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
  45. Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
  46. Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield
  47. Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
  48. Dickens, Charles: Hard Times
  49. Dickens, Charles: Nicholas Nickleby
  50. Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist
  51. Dickens, Charles: Tale of Two Cities
  52. Dostoevesky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
  53. Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
  54. Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Idiot
  55. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
  56. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Lost World
  57. Dreiser, Theodore: American Tragedy
  58. Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
  59. Du Maurier, Daphne: Rebecca
  60. Dumas, Alexandre: Count of Monte Cristo
  61. Dumas, Alexandre: The Man in the Iron Mask
  62. Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
  63. Eliot, T.S.: Murder in the Cathedral
  64. Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land
  65. Eliot, George: Middlemarch
  66. Eliot, George: Mill on the Floss
  67. Eliot, George: Silas Marner
  68. Ellison, Ralph: The Invisible Man
  69. Euripedes: Medea
  70. Faulks, Sebastian: Birdsong
  71. Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom!
  72. Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying
  73. Faulkner, William: Light in August
  74. Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury
  75. Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
  76. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender is the Night
  77. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Beautiful and Damned
  78. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
  79. Flaubert, Gustav: Madame Bovary
  80. Forster, E.M.: Passage to India
  81. Forster, E.M.: Room With a View
  82. Gaines, Ernest: A Lesson Before Dying
  83. Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford
  84. Gaskell, Elizabeth: Mary Barton
  85. Gaskell, Elizabeth: Wives and Daughters
  86. Goethe, Johann: Faust
  87. Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
  88. Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock
  89. Greene, Graham: The Power and Glory
  90. Hansberry, Lorraine: A Raisin in the Sun
  91. Hardy, Thomas: Far From the Madding Crowd
  92. Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure
  93. Hardy, Thomas: Mayor of Casterbridge
  94. Hardy, Thomas: Return of the Native
  95. Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  96. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of Seven Gables
  97. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
  98. Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
  99. Hellman, Lillian: Little Foxes
  100. Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell to Arms
  101. Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and the Sea
  102. Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises
  103. Hesse, Hermann: Siddhartha
  104. Hesse, Hermann: Steppenwolf
  105. Homer: The Iliad
  106. Homer: The Odyssey
  107. Hugo, Victor: Les Miserables
  108. Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  109. Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
  110. Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
  111. Ibsen, Henrick: Doll’s House
  112. Ibsen, Henrick: Enemy of the People
  113. Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day
  114. James, Henry: Daisy Miller
  115. James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
  116. James, Henry: Turn of the Screw
  117. James, Henry: Washington Square
  118. Johnson, Ben: Volpone
  119. Joyce, James: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  120. Joyce, James: The Dead This was traded for The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
  121. Joyce, James: The Dubliners
  122. Joyce, James: Ulysses
  123. Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis
  124. Kafka, Franz: The Trial
  125. Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
  126. Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
  127. Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible
  128. Kipling, Rudyard: Kim
  129. Knowles, John: A Separate Peace
  130. Laurence, Margaret: The Stone Angel
  131. Lawrence, D.H.: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
  132. Lawrence, D.H.: Sons and Lovers
  133. Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
  134. Lewis, Sinclair: Babbitt
  135. Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street
  136. London, Jack: The Call of the Wild
  137. London, Jack: White Fang
  138. Machiavelli, Niccolo: The Prince
  139. Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice
  140. Marlowe, Christopher: Doctor Faustus
  141. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: One Hundred Years of Solitude
  142. Melville, Herman: Billy Budd
  143. Melville, Herman: Moby Dick
  144. Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman
  145. Miller, Arthur: The Crucible
  146. Milton, John: Paradise Lost
  147. Mitchell, Margaret: Gone with the Wind
  148. Moliere: Misanthrope
  149. Morrison, Toni: Beloved
  150. Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon
  151. Morrison, Toni: Sula
  152. Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye
  153. Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita
  154. Nabokov, Vladimir: Pnin
  155. Norris, Frank: McTeague
  156. O’Brian, Tim: Going After Cacciato
  157. O’Conner, Flannery: Wise Blood
  158. Orczy, Baroness: The Scarlet Pimpernel
  159. Orwell, George: 1984
  160. Orwell, George: Animal Farm
  161. Paine, Thomas: Common Sense
  162. Pasternak, Boris: Doctor Zhivago
  163. Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country
  164. Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
  165. Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates
  166. Pope, Alexander: Rape of the Lock
  167. Proulx, Annie: The Shipping News
  168. Rand, Ayn: Atlas Shrugged
  169. Rand, Ayn: The Fountainhead
  170. Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front
  171. Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
  172. Richardson, Samuel: Clarissa
  173. Richardson, Samuel: Pamela
  174. Rostand, Edmond: Cyrano de Bergerac
  175. Salinger, J.D.: The Catcher in the Rye
  176. Scott, Sir Walter: Ivanhoe
  177. Scott, Sir Walter: Lady of the Lake
  178. Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  179. Shakespeare, William: A Winter’s Tale
  180. Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra
  181. Shakespeare, William: As You Like It
  182. Shakespeare, William: Hamlet
  183. Shakespeare, William: Henry IV
  184. Shakespeare, William: Julius Caesar
  185. Shakespeare, William: King Lear
  186. Shakespeare, William: Macbeth
  187. Shakespeare, William: Merchant of Venice
  188. Shakespeare, William: Much Ado About Nothing
  189. Shakespeare, William: Othello
  190. Shakespeare, William: Richard III
  191. Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet
  192. Shakespeare, William: The Tempest
  193. Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night
  194. Shaw, George Bernard: Mrs. Warren’s Profession
  195. Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
  196. Silko, Leslie Marmon: Ceremony
  197. Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
  198. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
  199. Sophocles: Antigone
  200. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
  201. Spark, Muriel: Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
  202. Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men
  203. Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
  204. Steinbeck, John: The Winter of Our Discontent
  205. Steinbeck, John: Travels with Charley in Search of America
  206. Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  207. Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island
  208. Stoker, Bram: Dracula
  209. Stoppard, Tom: Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead
  210. Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  211. Swift, Jonathon: Gulliver’s Travels
  212. Tan, Amy: The Joy Luck Club
  213. Thackeray, William Makepeace: Vanity Fair
  214. Thoreau, Henry David: Civil Disobedience
  215. Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
  216. Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Hobbit
  217. Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Lord of the Rings
  218. Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
  219. Tolstoy, Leo: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
  220. Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
  221. Trollope, Anthony: Barchester Towers
  222. Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons
  223. Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  224. Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  225. Verne, Jules: Journey to the Center of the Earth
  226. Verne, Jules: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
  227. Virgil: The Aenid
  228. Voltaire: Candide
  229. Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse Five
  230. Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
  231. Welch, James: Winter in the Blood
  232. Wells, H.G.: The Time Machine
  233. Wells, H.G.: The War of the Worlds
  234. Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome
  235. Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence
  236. Wharton, Edith: The Glimpses of the Moon
  237. Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth
  238. White, T.H.: The Once and Future King
  239. Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
  240. Wilder, Thornton: Our Town
  241. Williams, Tennessee: A Streetcar Named Desire
  242. Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
  243. Williams, Tennessee: The Glass Menagerie
  244. Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway
  245. Woolf, Virginia: Night and Day
  246. Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One’s Own
  247. Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse
  248. Woolf, Virginia: The Voyage Out
  249. Wright, Richard: Native Son
  250. Zola, Emile: Germinal

22 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 20, 2010 at 11:55 PM

    Wow, I must say this is the most ambitious reading list I have ever seen for a year's project...Gone With the Wind, Middlemarch, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Atlas Shrugged, Ulysses, and Little Women alone could take some of us a few months to get through! However, I love your list and think there are so many titles on here that everyone should read and you will hopefully enjoy! Best wishes for the year...

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 21, 2010 at 10:22 PM

    After I left the above post, I found out from your FAQ's section that I was under an incorrect perception that this was a 1 year challenge...that instead you had planned to take 3 years...thank goodness! But still, a very ambitious challenge and one that I find quite inspiring...so I guess I should say...Best wishes through 2012! :)

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  3. Melissa (Avid Reader)May 4, 2010 at 12:00 PM

    What a fantastic list. I checked to see how many I've read from this list (108) and I'm definitely going to make an effort to get to quite a few others. Good luck! I can't wait to see your reviews of the books as you read them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gilion at Rose City ReaderJuly 13, 2010 at 2:45 PM

    Oh! I love a list. How did you compile this one?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gilion at Rose City ReaderJuly 13, 2010 at 2:47 PM

    Never mind my question -- I just found your FAQ page.

    ReplyDelete
  6. SheJuly 29, 2010 at 11:23 PM

    What an awesome challenge! It looks like you've got a lot of great books on there-- I'm interested to see what you think about all of them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownDecember 26, 2010 at 2:51 PM

    You should consider reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell when you're finished. Its not on your list but if you like her other works you should definitely look into this one. One of my favorite books.

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  8. LoriDecember 29, 2010 at 10:11 AM

    This is an amazing list! I definitely want to read these books. In fact, I might steal the list from you. (I'm a book list collector) Best of luck! I can't wait to read along.

    ReplyDelete
  9. SarahEmDecember 31, 2010 at 12:53 AM

    You should really consider adding Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons to your list. It is SO good! Here's the link to it on Goodreads in case you want to check it out: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92780.Cold_Comfort_Farm

    :)

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  10. AnonymousJune 17, 2011 at 3:13 PM

    Your list is really interesting and full of great ideas! Good luck with your project!

    ReplyDelete
  11. EvaJuly 2, 2011 at 12:48 PM

    Since I was here, I couldn't resist checking: I've read 115, or almost half, of your list. However, I know I'll never read the whole thing since there are several authors on there I don't care for. hehe

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  12. SherrySeptember 3, 2011 at 12:09 PM

    129. What a lovely list. I would like to join you on your journey, but I have so many literary roads I'm already traveling that it would be impossible to add another. Happy reading!

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  13. *ೃ༄ JillianNovember 5, 2011 at 10:17 PM

    Since everyone else is counting: I have read 24 of these! Which admittedly isn't much, but it's way more than I'd read this time last year. :-)

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  14. M.November 9, 2011 at 12:58 PM

    Thoughtful list. I suggest you substitute Fanny Burney's 1778 epistolary novel Evelina for Richardson' s Clarissa: It was Jane Austen's favorite - and is about 2/5 as long!
    Available as an Oxford World Classic ppbk..

    ReplyDelete
  15. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2012 at 7:21 AM

    Just discovered your list, love the number of classical texts on it. I loved studying the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid in Classical Civilisation classes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  16. Roof Beam ReaderJanuary 20, 2012 at 7:52 AM

    I've only read 96 of these - but a few of them are on my challenge list(s) for this year, so I should definitely be able to break 100 before 2012 is out. Trailing behind you!

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  17. Carol Ann WeaverFebruary 10, 2012 at 2:50 PM

    I've read 103 of them and many more will be finished soon. I just had a Shakespeare marathon the last 8 days,and then I find that you were having one too! LOL! I started my quest with The Well-Educated Mind List, but I like your list better! It took me eight years to complete it. Some were really hard tomes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. Carol Ann WeaverFebruary 10, 2012 at 2:59 PM

    By the way, here is the list: http://carolhomeschool2.blogspot.com/p/well-educated-mind-list.html

    ReplyDelete
  19. AnonymousApril 8, 2012 at 1:31 PM

    This is quite an admirable task you've set yourself! I've only read 59 of them myself. The only book I am disappointed not to see on your list is Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." It is an absolutely superb book, that I read and reviewed recently. Published in 1848 it just about falls into your Victorian celebration. I may well join you in that although June/July is a smidgin busy already - would it do to just read 1 book for the celebration? Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  20. Lemon TreeMay 4, 2012 at 3:25 AM

    What a list! I've never read most of them, so it's a good references for me. Good luck. I'll make a list myself at my blog http://half-filledattic.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  21. neal callMay 19, 2012 at 11:12 PM

    I love these lists. I've read about 105. You say that you didn't get that many of them in your English degree? 'Cause I did, probably the majority of what I've read.

    ReplyDelete
  22. ShonnaJanuary 29, 2013 at 5:54 PM

    Great list. I've read 80 of these, but some of them many years ago in my university days.

    ReplyDelete

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