Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Literature-ly Challenged

I've long been reminded of how deficient my knowledge is in the area of the great, classical novels. Never have I read Moby Dick, The Odyssey, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. While in middle school, I can vaguely recall having perused The Scarlet Letter; each of the Literature courses I took in college focused only on short stories. Therefore, I have added an item to my "To Do in Life" list -- read 100 of the great classics.

I've scoured several sources on the Internet to help identify a few of the top 100 novels. However, I'm 25 books shy of the 100 I seek. Listed below are the titles I have thus far, in alphabetical order. Any other suggestions out there?

  1. 1984
  2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
  3. A Farewell to Arms
  4. A Tale of Two Cities
  5. All Quiet on the Western Front
  6. Animal Farm
  7. Around the World in 80 Days
  8. Beowulf
  9. Brave New World
  10. Call of the Wild
  11. Catch 22
  12. Civil Disobedience
  13. Crime and Punishment
  14. Dante's Inferno
  15. Death of a Salesman
  16. Doctor Zhivago
  17. Don Quixote
  18. Dracula
  19. Farenheit 451
  20. For Whom the Bell Tolls
  21. Frankenstein
  22. Grapes of Wrath
  23. Great Expectations
  24. Gulliver's Travels
  25. Ivanhoe
  26. Jane Eyre
  27. Jonathan Livingston Seagull
  28. Les Miserables
  29. Little Women
  30. Lord of the Flies
  31. Moby Dick
  32. My Antonia
  33. Oedipus
  34. Of Mice and Men
  35. Old Man and the Sea
  36. Oliver Twist
  37. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  38. Pride and Prejudice
  39. Red Badge of Courage
  40. Robinson Crusoe
  41. Sense and Sensibility
  42. Silas Marner
  43. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  44. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  45. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  46. The Arabian Nights
  47. The Caine Mutiny
  48. The Canterbury Tales
  49. The Catcher in the Rye
  50. The Count of Monte Cristo
  51. The Great Gatsby
  52. The Hounds of the Baskervilles
  53. The House of Seven Gables
  54. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  55. The Iliad
  56. The Invisible Man
  57. The Jungle
  58. The Last of the Mohicans
  59. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
  60. The Odyssey
  61. The Prince and the Pauper
  62. The Scarlet Letter
  63. The Secret Garden
  64. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  65. The Three Musketeers
  66. The Vicar of Wakefield
  67. The Winds of War
  68. To Kill a Mockingbird
  69. Treasure Island
  70. Ulysses
  71. Uncle Tom's Cabin
  72. Walden
  73. War and Peace
  74. War of the Worlds
  75. Wuthering Heights

5 comments:

Jimmy said...

An impressive list and a fun item for your to-do list. Some other suggestions:

On the Road-Jack Kerouac.
Light In August-William Faulkner
Meditations-Marcus Aurelius
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass-Lewis Carroll.
Faust-Goethe
The Iron Heel-Jack London
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Slaughterhouse-Five-Kurt Vonnegut

I'll keep thinking . . .

Defiantly Damned said...

I knew you would have some good ideas. I am in awe of your literary wisdom, my Lord. :)

Jimmy said...

Flattery will get you everywhere ;)

I'd save Dracula for Halloween. That would be the perfect time for that.

If you're in need of a good laugh, Catch-22 made me laugh myself silly. I mean big, belly laughs. That's rare for a book.

Heather said...

I agree with some of Jimmy's list. Alice in Wonderland is a GREAT read, and my husband is reading Meditations right now. What about these:

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Also, I don't know how you feel about sci-fi, but there are some classics there as well, including the book that got me into sci-fi:

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein


Oh, yeah...hi, I'm Heather! I've been away for a bit, but now I'm back, catching up...you can thank Jimmy for my finding you, I'm a fairly new member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade...Merry Meet!

Heather said...

By the way, thanks for the list...there are three books on here I've never heard of and 39 that I've heard of but never read...looks like you're not the only one who needs to get busy!

Oh, and one more I forgot:

Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw