alb318

finish reading the books on my books to read list (read all 4 entries…)
start finish classics book list

In my Junior year of high school (some 23 years ago or so) my teacher handed out a list – “Suggested Outside Reading List for the College Bound Student”. 77 books in all – I had read some of the books on the list already and over the years I’ve kept reading them. Always a good read.
Well there are 10 books left and it seems to me time to finish this list off once and for all. I’m planning to read one a month.
So here’s the list and my rough time line. I give myself leave to go over or change the order as the mood strikes me.

February: The Brothers Karamazov
March: Babbit
April: Vein of Iron
May: The Reivers
June: Saratoga Trunk
July: Don Quixote
September: Barren Ground
October: Pere Goriot
November: Giant
December: Anna Karenina

Obviously some of these books are better known then others – I’ve put off reading Ferber and Glasgow because I do think the only reason they are on this list is because the author’s were female but hopefully I’ll be proved wrong.
I’ve always gotten something from every book on this list I’ve read.
Thank you – Ms High School teacher. Can’t even remember your name but you’ve helped keep me reading.

Feb 04, 2006, 03:21PM PST


Comments:

pumpkinspice

this is so cool

I have the same goal. I got a list of books 11 years ago when I was a junior in high school and I’ve been working my way through it all this time. So cool someone else is doing the same thing. you’re list seems different than mine even though it’s titled the same. Any chance you could list all the books from the list, i’d be curious to see it, it’ll give me more ideas of books to read when I do finish my list.

Feb 08, 2006, 08:28PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

alb318

The List

Thanks! Your goal sounded just like mine so I switched mine to match
I’ll list the books here. I’m happy to give you my 2 cents on the ones I’ve read if you’re thinking of any particular ones…..

American:
Willa Cather – Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia
Raymond chandler – The Big Sleep
James Fenimore Cooper – The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans
Stephen Crane – The Red Badge of Courage
Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man
William Faulkner – The Reivers, The Bear
Edna Ferber – Saratoga Trunk, Giant
F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, By the Waters of Babylon
Ellen Glasgow – Barren Ground, Vein of Iron
Dashiell Hammett – The Continental Op, The Maltese Falcon
Ernest Hemmingway – The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest
Sinclair Lewis – Main Street, Babbit
Jack London – The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf
Carson McCullers – Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Frank Norris – The Octopus
Flannery O’Conner – Everything that Rises Must Converge, A Good Man is Hard to Find
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead
J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle
John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Moon is Down
Henry David Thoreau – Walden
James Thurber – The Thurber Carnival
Mark Twain – Life on the Mississippi, A Conn. Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Nathaniel West – Day of the Locust, Miss Lonelyhearts
Edith Wharton – Summer, The House of Mirth

English:
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
Joseph Conrad – Lord Jim
Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens – David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities
John Galsworthy – The Forsyte Saga
W.H. Hudson – Green Mansions
Rudyard Kipling – Kim
Will Shakespeare – Hamlet, The Scottish Play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Robert Louis Stephenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped
H. G. Wells – The War of the Worlds

European:
Honore Balzac – Pere Goriot
Cervantes – Don Quixote
Anton Checkov – The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters
Fyodor Dostoevski – The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
Alexandre Dumas – The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo
Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
Victor Hugo – Les Miserables
Omar Kayyam – The Rubaiyat
Leo Tolstoi – Anna Karenina, War and Peace

Feb 09, 2006, 06:51PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

pumpkinspice

thanks!

thanks so much for taking the time to type that out for me. I’ll post my whole list tomorrow.

That’s a lot of good books. I’ve read a fair few of those. And there’s lots I haven’t read, and there’s some I’ve never even heard of. Like Saratoga Trunk sounds like such an interesting title.
Which would you say was your favorite?

Feb 12, 2006, 07:41PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

alb318

probably

should have responded to this on my other post.
I really think I got something out of all of these books but if I had to pick one I’ve read again and again it would have to be Walden. I would also say the two authors I kept reading were Steinbeck and McCullers….

Feb 14, 2006, 05:02PM PST | Thread | Respond to this

pumpkinspice

Steinbeck

is good! Grapes of Wrath is one of my all time favorite books. I haven’t read anything by McCullers yet.

Feb 17, 2006, 04:10PM PST | Respond to this


 

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