This list of books forms a
lifetime reading plan. Reading is a journey. You can't get to London by taking
three steps out the back door in Topeka. Similarly, you can't appreciate James
Joyce or Virginia Woolf without reading a lot of serious literature before you
get there. Don't feel bad about what you're reading right now. Every book puts
you on the path to deeper understanding. The best book is the one that helps
you grow the most given the knowledge and experience you already have. Don't
start with the books at the top of
the
Best 100 20th Century
Novels list. Work your way up. There are great
rewards on the great peaks, but not until you have mastered the foothills,
crossed some streams and made your way out of the forest.
This list seeks to provide a
sampling of literature at all different levels. Its focus is on fiction,
poetry, short stories and philosophy. We have been careful to cover U.S.,
British, European and Asian classics. We have also sought a balance between
male and female writers and to provide a broad ethnic representation. However,
it is a list targeted for an English speaking reader. While not exclusively
works written in English, the non-English works are either classics too
important to miss or works that translate well. The linguistically gifted are
encouraged to dive deeper into the works of each culture in the original
languages of their authors.
Click on author/title links or
visit the
FrogPicks 500 store to find out more
about the books.
Nearby Ponds
Best 100 20th Century Novels
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Best Fiction Work by a Women
The Man Booker prize for best novel in the British
Commonwealth
More book awards
and prizes
|
Author |
Title |
|
|
|
|
Abe, Kobo |
The Box Man |
|
Achebe, Chinua |
Things Fall Apart |
|
Acker, Kathy |
In Memorium to Identity |
|
Adams, Alice |
The Stories of Alice Adams |
|
Adams, Leonie |
Collected Poems |
|
Akiko, Yosano |
River of Stars |
|
Akmatova, Anna |
Akmatova: Selected Poems |
|
Albee, Edward |
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? |
|
Alcott, Louisa May |
Little Woman |
|
Alexie, Sherman |
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven |
|
Alighieri, Dante |
Inferno |
|
Allende, Isabel |
House of the Spirits |
|
Allison, Dorothy |
Bastard Out of Carolina |
|
Ammons, A.R. |
Collected Poems 1951-1971 |
|
Anderson, Sherwood |
Winesburg Ohio |
|
Apollinaire, Guillaume |
Selected Writings of Apollinaire |
|
Arden, John |
Plays One |
|
Aristophanes |
Four Plays by Aristophanes |
|
Aristotle |
The Basic Works of Aristotle |
|
Armantrout, Rae |
Veil: New and Selected Poems |
|
Ashbery, John |
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror |
|
Atwood, Margaret |
The Handmaid's Tale |
|
Auden, W.H. |
Collected Poems |
|
Austen, Jane |
Pride and Prejudice |
|
Austen, Jane |
Emma |
|
Austen, Jane |
Persuasion |
|
Austen, Jane |
Mansfield Park |
|
Auster, Paul |
New York Trilogy |
|
Ayer, A.J. |
Language, Truth and Logic |
|
Bacon, Francis |
Novum Organum |
|
Ballard, J.G. |
Crash |
|
Balzac, Honore de |
Old Goriot |
|
Baranskaya, Natalya |
A Week Like Any Other |
|
Barker, Pat |
The Ghost Road |
|
Barnes, Djuna |
Nightwood |
|
Barth, John |
The Sotweed Factor |
|
Barthleme, Donald |
60 Stories |
|
Basho, Matsuo |
Basho's Haiku |
|
Baudelaire, Charles |
Flowers of Evil and Other Works |
|
Bazan, Emilia Pardo |
The House of Ulloa |
|
Beattie, Ann |
Park City: New and Selected Stories |
|
Beauvoir, Simone de |
The Second Sex |
|
Beckett, Samuel |
Waiting For Godot |
|
Bergson, Henri |
Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics |
|
Berkeley, George |
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge |
|
Berryman, John |
Dream Songs |
|
Bishop, Elizabeth |
The Complete Poems 1927-1979 |
|
Blake, William |
The Complete Illuminated Books |
|
Bloom, Amy |
Come to Me: Stories |
|
Bogan, Louise |
The Blue Estuaries |
|
Boland, Eavan |
Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990 |
|
Bombal, Maria Luisa |
New Islands and Other Stories |
|
Borges, Jorge Luis |
Collected Fictions, Vol. 3 |
|
Bowen, Elizabeth |
The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen |
|
Bowles, Paul |
The Stories of Paul Bowles |
|
Bowles, Paul |
The Sheltering Sky |
|
Bradstreet, Anne |
Poems |
|
Brecht, Bertolt |
Dramas |
|
Bridges, Robert |
Poetry |
|
Brodsky, Joseph |
Collected Poetry |
|
Bronte, Charlotte |
Jane Eyre |
|
Bronte, Charlotte |
Villette |
|
Bronte, Emily |
Wuthering Heights |
|
Bronte, Emily |
Poetry |
|
Brookner, Anita |
Hotel du Lac |
|
Brooks, Gwendolyn |
Poems |
|
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett |
Poetry |
|
Browning, Robert |
Poetry |
|
Bruno, Giordano |
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Tr. - Arthur D.
Imerti) |
|
Buchner, Georg |
The Complete Plays |
|
Burgess, Anthony |
Enderby |
|
Burke, Edmund |
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and the Beautiful |
|
Burney, Fanny |
Evelina |
|
Byatt, A.S. |
Possession |
|
Calvino, Italo |
Invisible Cities |
|
Calvino, Italo |
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler |
|
Campbell, Joseph |
Finding Your Bliss |
|
Camus, Albert |
The Stranger |
|
Cardinal, Marie |
Devotion nd Disorder |
|
Carnap, Rudolf |
The Logical Syntax of Language |
|
Carroll, Lewis |
Through the Looking Glass |
|
Carson, Anne |
Men in the Off Hours |
|
Carter, Angela |
Nights at the Circus |
|
Carver, Raymond |
Stories |
|
Cather, Willa |
My Antonia |
|
Cavafy, C.P. |
Collected Poems |
|
Celan, Paul |
Collected Poems |
|
Celine, Louis Ferdinand |
Journey to the End of the Night |
|
Cervantes |
Don Quixote |
|
Chaucer, Geoffrey |
The Canterbury Tales |
|
Chekhov, Anton |
Selected Stories |
|
Cheng, Gu |
Nameless Flowers |
|
Chesterton, G.K. |
The Man Who Was Thursday |
|
Chiyo, Uno |
Confessions of Love |
|
Chiyo-ni |
Chiyo-ni |
|
Clampitt, Amy |
Poems |
|
Clarke, Gillian |
Selected Poems |
|
Clemens, Samuel |
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
|
Coetzee, J. M. |
Disgrace |
|
Coetzee, J. M. |
The Life and Times of Michael K |
|
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor |
Complete Poems |
|
Colette |
Collected Stories |
|
Confucius (Waley) |
The Analects of Confucius |
|
Congreve, William |
Dramas |
|
Conrad, Joseph |
Victory |
|
Coover, Robert |
The Public Burning |
|
Cortazar, Julio |
Hopscotch |
|
Crane, Hart |
Complete Poems |
|
Crane, Stephen |
The Red Badge of Courage |
|
Creeley, Robert |
Poems |
|
D'Annunzio, Gabriele |
Maia: In Praise of Life |
|
Davis, Lydia |
Almost No Memory |
|
de Burgos, Julia |
Song of the Simple Truth |
|
Defoe, Daniel |
Moll Flanders |
|
DeLillo, Don |
Underworld |
|
Derrida, Jacques |
Writing and Difference |
|
Descartes, Rene |
Meditations on First Philosophy |
|
Dickens, Charles |
Bleak House |
|
Dickens, Charles |
David Copperfield |
|
Dickens, Charles |
Dombey and Son |
|
Dickens, Charles |
Little Dorrit |
|
Dickens, Charles |
The Mystery of Edwin Drood |
|
Dickinson, Emily |
The Poems of Emily Dickenson |
|
Dinesen, Isak |
Stories |
|
Doblin, Alfred |
Berlin Alexanderplatz |
|
Donne, John |
John Donne's Poetry |
|
Doolittle, Hilda |
Collected Poems |
|
Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
The Brothers Karamazov |
|
Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
Crime and Punishment |
|
Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
The Possessed (The Devils) |
|
Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
The Idiot |
|
Dostoevsky, Fyodor |
Notes From the Underground |
|
Drabble, Margaret |
Realms of Gold |
|
Dryden, John |
Dramas |
|
Dubus, Andre |
Selected Stories |
|
Duffy, Carol Ann |
World's Wife |
|
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence |
Poetry |
|
Duncan, Robert |
Poems |
|
Duras, Marguerite |
The Lover |
|
Durrell, Lawrence |
The Alexandria Quartet |
|
Eco, Umberto |
The Name of the Rose |
|
Edgeworth, Maria |
Castle Rackrent |
|
Eliot, George |
Middlemarch |
|
Eliot, George |
Daniel Deronda |
|
Eliot, George |
Silas Marner |
|
Eliot, George |
The Mill on the Floss |
|
Eliot, George |
Adam Bede |
|
Eliot, T.S. |
Collected Poems |
|
Ellison, Ralph Waldo |
Invisible Man |
|
Emerson, Ralph Waldo |
Essays and Poetry |
|
Enchi, Fumiko |
The Waiting Years |
|
Erdrich, Louise |
The Beet Queen |
|
Erickson, Steve |
Arc D'x |
|
Ernaux, Annie |
Exteriors |
|
Esquivel, Laura |
Like Water for Chocolate |
|
Euripides |
Drama |
|
Fakinou, Eugenia |
The Seventh Garment |
|
Faulkner, William |
As I Lay Dying |
|
Faulkner, William |
Absalom, Absalom! |
|
Faulkner, William |
The Sound and the Fury |
|
Faulkner, William |
Sanctuary |
|
Faulkner, William |
Light in August |
|
Fielding, Henry |
The History of Tom Jones |
|
Fitzgerald, F. Scott |
The Great Gatsby |
|
Fitzgerald, Penelope |
The Blue Flower |
|
Flaubert, Gustave |
Madam Bovary |
|
Forster, E.M. |
A Passage to India |
|
Foucault, Michel |
Madness and Civilization |
|
Fowles, John |
The Magus |
|
Frayn, Michael |
Copenhagen |
|
Frazer, Sir George |
The Golden Bough |
|
Freeman, Mary W. |
Selections |
|
Freud, Sigemunde |
Selections |
|
Frost, Robert |
Poetry |
|
Fuentes, Carlos |
Terra Nostra |
|
Gaddis, William |
JR |
|
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel |
One Hundred Years of Solitude |
|
Gas, William H. |
In the Heart of the Country |
|
Gaskell, Elizabeth |
Mary Barton |
|
Genet, Jean |
Our Lady of Flowers |
|
Glasgow, Ellen |
Virginia |
|
Goethe |
Faust, Part 1 (tr. Shelley) |
|
Goethe |
Faust, Part 2 |
|
Gogol, Nikolai |
Dead Souls |
|
Graham, Jorie |
Dream of the Unified Field |
|
Grass, Gunter |
The Tin Drum |
|
Graves, Robert |
Collected Poems |
|
Guest, Barbara |
Miniatures and Other Poems |
|
Habermas, Jurgen |
The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 |
|
Habermas, Jurgen |
The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 |
|
Hamsun, Knut |
Hunger |
|
Handke, Peter |
Slow Homecoming |
|
Hardy, Thomas |
Poetry |
|
Hardy, Thomas |
Tess of the D'Urbervilles |
|
Hareven, Shulamith |
Twilight and Other Stories |
|
Hawthorne, Nathaniel |
The Scarlet Letter |
|
Hazzard, Shirley |
The Great Fire |
|
Hecht, Anthony |
Flight Among the Tombs: Poems |
|
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |
Phenomenology of Spirit |
|
Heidegger, Martin |
Being and Time |
|
Heine, Heinrich |
Complete Poems |
|
Hejinian, Lyn |
Writing Is an Aid to Memory |
|
Hemans, Felicia |
Records of Women |
|
Hemingway, Ernest |
The Old Man and the Sea |
|
Hemingway, Ernest |
Complete Short Stories |
|
Herbert, Zbigniew |
Selected Poems |
|
Hobbes, Thomas |
The Leviathan |
|
Homer |
The Iliad |
|
Homer |
The Odyssey |
|
Hope, A.D. |
Collected Poems |
|
Hopkins, Gerard Manley |
Poetry |
|
Housman, A.E. |
Poetry |
|
Howe, Susan |
Collected Poems |
|
Hughes, Langston |
Collected Poems |
|
Hughes, Ted |
Collected Poems |
|
Hugo, Victor |
Les Miserables |
|
Hume, David |
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding |
|
Hurston, Zora Neal |
Their Eyes Were Watching God |
|
Husserl, Edmund |
Ideas |
|
Ibsen, Henrik |
Dramas |
|
Ibsen, Henrik |
Drama |
|
Ines de la Cuz, Juana |
Poems, Protest and a Dream |
|
Ishiguro, Kazuo |
Remains of the Day |
|
Jacobsen, Josephine |
In the Crevice of Time |
|
James, Henry |
The Portrait of a Lady |
|
James, Henry |
The Ambassadors |
|
James, William |
Pragmatism |
|
Jarrell, Randall |
Poems |
|
Jelinek, Elfriede |
The Piano Teacher |
|
Jennings, Elizabeth |
Elizabeth Jennings: New Collected Poems |
|
Jewett, Sarah Orne |
Short Stories |
|
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer |
Heat and Dust |
|
Jin, Ha |
Waiting: A Novel |
|
Johnson, Samuel |
Poems |
|
Jonson, Ben |
Poetry |
|
Joyce, James |
Ulysses |
|
Joyce, James |
Portrait of the Artist |
|
Jung, C.G. |
The Basic
Writings of C.G. Jung |
|
Justice, Donald |
Collected Poems |
|
Kafka, Franz |
Short Stories |
|
Kafka, Franz |
The Trial |
|
Kafka, Franz |
The Castle |
|
Kant, Immanuel |
Groundworks for the Metaphysics of Morals |
|
Kawabata, Yasunari |
The Sound of the Mountain |
|
Kay, Jackie |
Other Lovers |
|
Kierkegaard, Soren |
Fear and Trembling |
|
Kierkegaard, Soren |
Sickness Unto Death |
|
Kipling, Rudyard |
Complete Verse |
|
Kripke, Saul |
Naming and Necessity |
|
Kundera, Milan |
The Unbearable Lightness of Being |
|
Kushner, Tony |
Drama |
|
Lagerlof, Selma |
The Lowenskold Ring |
|
Landolfi, Tommaso |
Short Stories |
|
Landon, Letiia Elizabeth |
Selected Writings |
|
Lao Tzu |
Tao Te Ching (Tr. - Stephen Mitchell) |
|
Larkin, Philip |
Collected Poems |
|
Lawrence, D.H. |
The Rainbow |
|
Lawrence, D.H. |
Selected Poetry |
|
Laxness, Halldor |
Independent People |
|
Le Guin, Ursula K. |
The Left Hand of Darkness |
|
Lee, Harper |
To Kill a Mockingbird |
|
Leopardi, Giacomo |
The Leopard |
|
Leopardi, Giacomo |
Leopardi: Selected Poems |
|
Lessing, Doris |
The Golden Notebook |
|
Levertov, Denise |
The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov |
|
Levi-Strauss, Claude |
Structural Anthropology |
|
Li, Ang |
The Butcher's Wife |
|
Lian, Yang (Lien Yang) |
Selections |
|
Ling, Ding |
Miss Sophie's Diary |
|
Lively, Penelope |
Moon Tiger |
|
Locke, John |
Essay Concerning Human Understanding |
|
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (b. 1807, d. 1882) |
Selected Poems |
|
Lorca, Federico Garcia |
Collected Poems |
|
Lowell, Robert |
Collected Poems |
|
Lowry, Malcolm |
Under the Volcano |
|
Loy, Rosetta |
The Dust Roads of Monfretto |
|
Luther, Martin |
Philosophy |
|
Machiaveli, Niccolo |
Philosophy |
|
MacLeish, Archibald |
Poems |
|
Mahfuz, Najib |
The Thief and the Dogs |
|
Mamet, David |
Drama |
|
Mandelstam, Osip |
Selected Poems |
|
Mann, Thomas |
The Magic Mountain |
|
Mansfield, Katherine |
Collected Stories |
|
Marx, Karl |
The Communist Manifesto |
|
Mastretta, Angeles |
Bolero |
|
Maupassant, Guy de |
Stories |
|
McCarthy, Cormac |
Blood Meridian |
|
McCarthy, Mary |
The Group |
|
McCullers, Carson |
The Ballad of Sad Café |
|
McDermott, Alice |
Charming Billy |
|
McEwan, Ian |
Amsterdam |
|
McNeice, Louis |
Collected Poems |
|
Melville, Herman |
Moby Dick |
|
Melville, Herman |
Poems |
|
Meredith, George |
The Egoist |
|
Merrill, James |
Poems |
|
Merton, Thomas |
Collected Poems |
|
Merwin, W.S. |
Present Company |
|
Messick, Judith |
Constance Ring |
|
Meynell, Alice |
Poems |
|
Miles, Josephine |
Collected Poems |
|
Mill, John Stuart |
Utilitarianism |
|
Mill, John Stuart |
On Liberty |
|
Millay, Edna St. Vincent |
Collected Poems |
|
Milosz, Czeslaw |
Selected Poems |
|
Milton, John |
Paradise Lost |
|
Mishima, Yukio |
Forbidden Colours |
|
Mistral, Gabriela |
Selected Poems |
|
Moliere |
Dramas |
|
Montaigne |
Essays |
|
Montale, Eugenio |
Collected Poems |
|
Moore, Marianne |
Complete Poems |
|
Morrison, Tony |
Beloved |
|
Mukherjee, Bharati |
Jasmine |
|
Munro, Alice |
Stories |
|
Murakami, Haruki |
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle |
|
Murasaki Shikibu |
The Tale of Genji |
|
Murdoch, Iris |
The Bell |
|
Musil, Robert |
The Man Without Qualities |
|
Nabakov, Vladimir |
Pale Fire |
|
| |
