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Great Novels Worth Reading_________________________________Joesph Conrad wrote:"A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential -- their one illuminating and convincing quality -- the very truth of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal. "_________________________________Here is a list of great novels worth reading before going off to college, while in college, and even for when you finish college. This list is not all inclusive (I am sure I missed a few great books), but it is a good starting place for anyone interested in exploring some of the great texts of literary art._________________________________
Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe
Watership Down—Richard Adams
The Poetics--Aristotle
Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett
Short Stories—Ambrose Bierce
Wuthering Heights—Emily Bronte
Fahrenheit 451—Ray Bradbury
The Illustrated Man—“”
A Clockwork Orange--Anthony Burgess
If On A Winter's Night a Traveler...—Italio CalvinoThe Stranger—Albert Camus
The Fall—“”
Exile and the Kingdom—“”
In Cold Blood—Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany’s—“”
Short Stories—“”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass—“”
The Awakening—Kate Chopin
The Last of the Mohicans—James Fennimore Copper
2001: A Space Odyssey—Arthur C. Clark
2010: Odyssey Two—‘’
2061: Odyssey Three—“”
3001: The Final Odyssey—“”
Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad
Nostromo—“”
The Secret Agent—“”
The Red Badge of Courage—Stephen Crane
The Divine Comedy—Dante
White Noise—Don DeLillo
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass—Frederick Douglass,
Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov—“”
Notes from Underground—“”
The Idiot—“”
Chronicles Volume I—Bob Dylan
Tarantula—“”
Invisible Man—Ralph Ellison
Essays—Ralph Waldo EmersonThe Great Gatsby—F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise—“”
Howard’s End—E.M. Forster
The Good Solider—Ford Maddox Ford
Grendel—John Gardner
Beowulf (epic poem)
The Sorrows of Young Werther—Goethe
Lord of the Flies—John Golding
The Pride and the Glory—Graham Greene
The End of an Affair—“”
Jude the Obscure—Thomas Hardy
The Scarlet Letter—Nathanial Hawthorne
Old Man and the Sea—Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises—“”
A Farewell to Arms—“”
The Iliad and The Odyssey—Homer
Les Miserables—Victor Hugo
The Last Day of a Condemned Man—“”Their Eyes Were Watching God--Zora Neale HurstonBrave New World—Aldus Huxley
A Prayer for Owen Meaney—John Irving
The World According to Garp—“”
The Haunting of Hill House—Shirley Jackson
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl—Harriet Jacobs
Daisy Miller—Henry James
The Turn of the Screw—“”
Portrait of a Lady—“”
Wings of a Dove—“”
Ulysses—James Joyce
The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man—“”
Dubliners—“”
Metamorphosis—Franz Kafka
The Trial—“”
The Castle—“”
On the Road—Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Ken Kesey
The Walking Dead (graphic novel series)--Robert Krikman
Kim—Rudyard KiplingSons and Lovers—D.H. Lawrence
The Rainbow—“”
Women and Love—“”
Lady Chatterley’s Lover—“”To Kill a Mockingbird—Harper Lee
A Hero of Our Time—Lermontov
At the Mountains of Madness—H.P. Lovecraft
Short Stories—“”
The Prince—Machiavelli
Dr. Faustus—Christopher Marlowe
The Communist Manifesto—Karl MarxThe Dark Knight Returns--Frank MillerMoby Dick—Herman Melville
Paradise Lost—John Milton
Watchmen—Allan Moore
Beloved—Toni Morrison
Sula—“”
Song of Solomon—“”
The Bluest Eye—“”
The Crucible—Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman—“”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra—Friedrich Nietzsche
The Violent Bear it Away—Flannery O’Conner
Wise Blood—“”
Short Stories—“”
1984—George Orwell
Animal Farm—“”
The Things They Carried—Tim O’Brien
Going After Cacciato—“”
July, July—“”
In the Lake of the Woods—“”Drinking Coffee Elsewhere--Z. Z. PackerShort Stories—Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of G. Arthur Pym (read this in connection with Lovecraft’s
At the Mountains of Madness)—“”
The Republic--Plato
Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time
(series of six novels)—Marcel Proust
The Godfather—Mario Puzo
V—Thomas Pychon
Gravity’s Rainbow—“”
The Crying of Lot 49—“”
The Vampire Chronicles—Anne Rice
Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Lastat
The Queen of the DamnedThe Body Snatchers
Memnoch the Devil
The Plot Against America—Phillip Roth
Portnoy’s Complaint—“”
Midnight’s Children—Salman Rushdie
Grimus—“”
Satanic Verses—“”
Shalimar the Clown—“”
The Moor’s Last Sigh—“”
Nine Stories—J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye—“”
The Wall—Jean Paul Sartre
Nausea—“”No Exit--""Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
The Oedipus Trilogy—Sophocles
Maus I and II—Art Spiegelman
The Grapes of Wrath—John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men—“”
East of Eden—“”
Le Morte D’Arthur (translation of Thomas Malory)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—Robert Lewis Stevenson
Dracula—Bram Stoker
Walden—Henry David Thoreau
The Hobbit—J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings—“”
The Death of Ivan Ilych—Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace—“”
Anna Karenina—“”
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson—“”The Vindication of the Rights of Women--Mary WolstoncraftFirst They Killed my Father—Loung Ung
Candide—Voltaire
Night—Elie Wiesel
The Picture of Dorian Gray—Oscar Wilde
To the Lighthouse—Virginia WolfeBetween the Acts--""Black Boy—Richard Wright
