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Short and Highly Opinionated Reading List |
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The point of this list is to push ajar a heavy door to a vast domain. I hope something here will lead you to the same delight that all serious writers experience in their discovery of the great writers and thinkers of the world.
The lists are in roughly chronological order of publication.
| Non-Fiction The Tyranny of Words -- Stuart Chase The Writer's Handbook (any year you can get your hands on) The Elements of Style -- Strunk and White The Hero With a 1000 Faces -- Joseph Campbell Character analysis -- Wilhelm Reich Memories, Dreams, Reflections -- C.G. Jung The art of Fiction -- by John Gardner On Becoming a Novelist -- by John Gardner On Moral Fiction -- by John Gardner The Screenwriter's Workbook -- by Syd Field Make Your Words Work -- Gary Provost What If? -- anne Bernays and Pamela Painter Starting From Scratch -- Rita Mae Brown |
Fiction The Canterbury Tales -- Geoffrey Chaucer The Collected plays of William Shakespeare The Life and Strange Surprising adventure of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner -- Daniel Defoe Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Captain Lemuel Gulliver -- Jonathan Swift Pride and Prejudice -- Jane austin Ivanhoe: a Romance -- Sir Walter Scott Frankenstein, or Promtheus unbound -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Twice-Told Tales and/or The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne The Stories of Edgar allen Poe alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass -- Lewis Carroll Little Women -- Louisa May alcott Tess of the d'Urbervilles -- Thomas Hardy The adventures of Tom Sawyer and The adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) Collected stories and Essays of ambrose Bierce Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -- Robert Louis Stevenson She or King Solomon's Mines -- H. Rider Haggard The Picture of Dorian Gray -- Oscar Wilde The adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- Sir arthur Conan Doyle The Red Badge of Courage -- Stephen Crane The Time Machine: an invention and Goodbye Mr. Chips -- H.G. Wells The Water Babies -- Charles Kingsley Just So, Stories, The Jungle Book -- Rudyard Kipling Dracula -- Bram Stoker Lord Jim and/or The Secret agent -- Joseph Conrad Cabbages and Kings -- O'Henry (William Sydney Porter) The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame The Secret Garden -- Frances Hodgson Burnett Ethan Frome -- Edith Wharton Riders of the Purple Sage -- Zane Grey Sons and Lovers -- D.H. Lawrence The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owens (killed in action, 1918) Portrait of the artist as a Young Man and The Dubliners -- James Joyce This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald The Sun also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and For Whom The Bell Tolls -- Ernest Hemingway Peter Pan -- J.M. Barrie The Stranger -- albert Camus The Immoralist -- andre Gide Narciss and Goldamund, Siddhartha -- Herman Hesse Orlando -- Virginia Woolf The Dain Curse and The Maltese Falcon -- Dashiell Hammett Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham I Claudius and Claudius the God -- Robert Graves The Little Foxes -- Lillian Hellman U.S.a. -- John Dos Passos Cry the Beloved Country -- alan Paton The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men -- John Steinbeck The Day of the Locust -- Nathaniel West Down and Out in Paris and London, 1984, animal Farm, The Road to Wiggan Pier and other essays and stories -- George Orwell (Eric arthur Blair) The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler The Catcher in the Rye -- J.D. Sallinger The Invisible Man -- Ralph Ellison The Group -- Mary McCarthy Go Tell it on the Mountain -- James Baldwin Lord of the Flies -- William Golding The Collected stories, plays and poems of Dylan Thomas To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee Briefing for a Descent into Hell, The Fifth Child -- Doris Lessing In Cold Blood -- Truman Capote (not a novel, but chilling non-fiction written with fictional techniques) The Fixer and The Natural -- Bernard Malamud Catch 22 -- Joseph Heller Sophie's Choice and/or The Confessions of Nat Turner -- William Styron The Illustrated Man, Dandylion Wine, and The Martian Chronicles -- Ray Bradbury I am Legend -- Richard Matheson Burr -- Gore Vidal a Clockwork Orange -- anthony Burgess The Spy that came in from the Cold, The Perfect Spy, John le Carré Grendel -- John Gardner The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings -- J.R.R. Tolkein Watership Down -- Richard adams The Joy Luck Club -- amy Tan Childhood's End -- arthur C. Clark Ragtime -- E.L. Doctorow Time after Time -- Jack Finney The Cage -- Michael Weston The Wings of the Wind -- Ronald Hardy The Prince of Tides, and/or The Great Santini -- Pat Conroy The Color Purple -- alice Walker Jazz -- Toni Morrison The Chaneysville Incident -- David Bradley Past Caring and In Pale Battalions -- Robert Goddard |
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