Good Reading: A Guide for Serious Readers
Waldhorn, Weber, and Zeiger, editors
Good Reading began as a list of college
reading. It has since been much expanded to include significant works
in literature, history, regional studies, humanities, social sciences,
and science. At the front are four checklists of "101 Significant
Books," "A Short List of Books to Read on Vacation," "A Short List of
Books to Read Before Entering College,"
and "A Short List of Books to Read After Retirement."
Frequently Asked Questions
Who wrote this list?
See the heading above and the credit below
to find out who wrote this list. If you don't like the selections in
this list or the arrangement, take it up with the author(s).
Why isn't my favorite author listed here?
This list may not include your favorite author, but
he or she may be on other Great Books lists. Check the
author index to see.
See the Great Books FAQ
for more about the Great Books and these lists of them.
This page:
101 Significant Books |
A Short List of Books to Read on Vacation |
A Short List of Books to Read before Entering
College |
A Short List of Books to Read after Retirement
101 Significant Books
Ancient Times
- Aeschylus, The Oresteia
- Aesop, Fables
- Aristophanes, Comedies
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
- The Bible
- Confucius, Analects
- Euripides, Dramas
- Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
- Lao-Tzu, The Way and Its Power
- Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
- Plato, Republic and Symposium
- Plutarch, Parallel Lives
- Sophocles, The Theban Plays
- Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
- Vergil, Aeneid
Middle Ages and Renaissance
- The Arabian Nights
- Bacon, Essays
- Boccaccio, Decameron
- Cervantes, Don Quixote
- Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- Dante, Divine Comedy
- Machiavelli, The Prince
- Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur
- Montaigne, Essays
- More, Utopia
- Muhammad, Koran
(1)
- Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat
- Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Shakespeare, Complete Tragedies, Comedies, and
Histories
17th and 18th Centuries
- Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
- Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
- Burns, Poems
- Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- Descartes, Discourse on Method
- Donne, Poems
- Fielding, Tom Jones
- Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Hamilton, et al., Federalist Papers
- Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
- Locke, Essay Concering Human Understanding
- Malthus, Principle of Population
- Milton, Paradise Lost
- Molière, Comedies
- Paine, The Rights of Man
- Rousseau, The Social Contract
- Smith, The Wealth of Nations
- Spinoza, Ethics
- Sterne, Tristram Shandy
- Swift, Gulliver's Travels
- Voltaire, Candide
19th Century
- Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Balzac, Eugènie Grande
- Browning (Robert), Poems
- Byron, Poems
- Chekhov, Plays
- Darwin, The Origin of Species
- Dickens, David Copperfield
- Dickinson, Poems
- Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
- Eliot, Middlemarch
- Emerson, Essays
- Flaubert, Madame Bovary
- Goethe, Faust
- Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- Hugo, Les Misèrables
- Ibsen, Dramas
- Keats, Poems
- Marx, Capital
- Melville, Moby Dick
- Nietzsche, The Will to Power
- Poe, Stories
- Shelley, Poems
- Stendhal, The Red and the Black
- Thackeray, Vanity Fair
- Thoreau, Walden
- Tolstoi, War and Peace
- Twain, Huckleberry Finn
- Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Wordsworth, Poems
- Zola, Germinal
20th Century
- Beauvoir, The Second Sex
- Borges, Labyrinths
- Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity
- Eliot, Poems and Plays
- Ellison, Invisible Man
- Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Frazer, The New Golden Bough
- Freud, Introduction to Psychoanalysis
- Frost, Poems
- García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
- James, The Ambassadors
- Joyce, Ulysses
- Lawrence, Women in Love
- Mann, The Magic Mountain
- O'Neill, Plays
- Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
- Shaw, Plays
- Woolf, To the Lighthouse
- Yeats, Poems
-----
1. Muslims do not consider Muhammad to be the author
of the Koran (Quran), but rather a prophet transmitting the word
of God (Allah).
A Short List of Books to Read on Vacation
Biography:
- James Boswell, Life of Johnson
Science:
- Isaac Asimov, Asimov on Numbers
- or Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a
Hat
Science Fiction:
- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
- or Arno Schmidt, The Egghead Republic
Drama:
- George Bernard Shaw, Plays
Short Stories:
- Anton Chekhov, Short Stories
- or Henry James, Short Stories
Mysteries:
- Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time
- or Sarah Caudwell, Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Poetry:
- The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
- or M. L. Rosenthal et al., Poetry in English:
An Anthology
Novels (Heavyweight):
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
- Henry James, The Ambassadors
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker
Novels (Medium weight):
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
- Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
- J. P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of
Solitude
Novels (Lightweight):
- Collette, Chéri
- Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
- P. G. Wodehouse, The Most of P. G. Wodehouse
- J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions
- Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth
A Short List of Books to Read before Entering College
"Select those that are new and appeal to you most:
you'll find it hard to err."
- Homer, Odyssey
- Greek Drama:
- Aeschylus, The Oresteia
- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Antigone
- Aristophanes, The Clouds, The Birds
- Plato, Dialogues (The Phaedo; The Symposium; The
Republic)
- The Bible:
- Old Testament (Pentateuch; Job; Song of Songs;
Isaiah)
- New Testament (Luke)
- William Shakespeare (at least two tragedies and two comedies that
you have not read in high school classes)
- Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy
- Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural
History
- Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry (browse among British
and American poets from the 14th to the 20th century)
The Novel
"Try any of the novels you have not read."
- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
- Voltaire, Candide
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
- William Faulkner, Light in August
- D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
- Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
A Short List of Books to Read after Retirement
"Savor these, one by one, not necessarily in the
order listed, of course (the order is thematic); and if you
are not intrigued, captivated, or at least titillated, reject it
and proceed to the next. For though they are all worthwhile,
any one might not be worth your while."
- William Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, Reader in Comparative
Religion (an anthropological approach to comparative
religion)
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
- William Shakespeare, Plays (whichever you have
missed or would like to reread)
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays
- Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
- Samuel Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre (a survey of the
great ideas)
- Norton Anthology of Poetry
- or M. L. Rosenthal et al., Poetry in English:
An Anthology
Biography
"Any or all of the following will reward the effort."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography
- Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
- Richard Ellman, James Joyce: A Biography;
Oscar Wilde: A Biography
- Peter Gay, Freud
- Leon Edel, Henry James
British and American Novel
"Fill in gaps still left."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
- Henry James, The Ambassadors;
The Golden Bowl
- William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!;
The Sound and the Fury
- Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (or others you
have not read)
- Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers;
The Warden
- James Joyce, Ulysses
- Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
- Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Continental, Latin American, African, and Asian Novels
- Fedor Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
- Stendhal, The Red and the Black;
The Charterhouse of Parma
- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years
of Solitude
- Wole Soyinka, Aké
- Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
Source: Good Reading:
A Guide for Serious Readers. Ed. by Arthur Waldhorn,
Olga S. Weber, Arthur Zeiger. 23rd ed. New York: Bowker, 1990.
© 1990 by The Committee on College Reading.
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