| These are
the books I've read since the beginning of my sophomore year in high school,
more or less in chronological order, starting from the present and going
backward. (Yes, I am an editor, but no, I did not proofread this list;
forgive me my typos.) Escape to Witch Mountain | Key Moll Flanders | Defoe The Basketball Diaries | Carroll Replay | Grimwood The Hobbit | Tolkien Tooth and Claw | Boyle Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress | Sijie A Confederacy of Dunces | Toole A Woman of No Importance | Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan | Wilde Reading Lolita in Tehran | Nafisi Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys A Life of the Mind | Sam Shepard Rain | Kirsty Gunn Jude the Obscure | Thomas Hardy Slowness | Milan Kundera Raisin' Brains | Karen L. J. Isaacson Almost French | Sarah Turnbull The Wonderful Wizard of Oz | L. Frank Baum Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides The Forsyte Saga | John Gallsworthy Dandelion Wine | Ray Bradbury A Star Called Henry | Roddy Doyle The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold Ella Minnow Pea | Mark Dunn The Dress Lodger | Sheri Holman Howards End | E. M. Forster Save Me the Waltz | Zelda Fitzgerald Max Perkins: Editor of Genius | A. Scott Berg Berkeley! A Literary Tribute | Danielle LaFrance Cabbage Holiday | Anthony Thorne Copyediting: A Practical Guide | Karen Judd Small World | David Lodge The Golden Gate | Vikram Seth The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton Ivanhoe | Sir Walter Scott All Quiet on the Western Front | Erich Maria Remarque Go Ask Alice | anonymous Persuasion | Jane Austen Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Edward Albee The Power and the Glory | Graham Greene Daisy Miller | Henry James Ethan Frome | Edith Wharton Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte The Westing Game | Ellen Raskin Venus and Adonis | William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece | William Shakespeare Blue Angel | Francine Prose The Forest for the Trees | Betsy Lerner Cymbeline | William Shakespeare The Publishing Experience | Cass Canfield O Pioneers! | Willa Cather The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner Dubliners | James Joyce The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald Shakespeare at the Globe | David Baird A Lost Lady | Willa Cather The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Gertrude Stein Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Frederick Douglass The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison Titus Andronicus | William Shakespeare Cymbeline | William Shakespeare Metamorphoses | Ovid The Souls of Black Folk | W. E. B. DuBois Why We Can't Wait | Martin Luther King, Jr. Under Western Eyes | Joseph Conrad My First Year in Publishing | Lisa Healy Mrs. Dalloway | Virginia Woolf 1L | Scott Turow Franny and Zooey | J. D. Salinger Searching for Emma | Dacia Maraini Joan of Arc | Mark Twain Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | Anita Loos Wonder Boys | Michael Chabon The Bad Beginning | Lemony Snicket The Well of Loneliness | Radclyffe Hall Breakfast at Tiffany's | Truman Capote Ex Libris | Anne Fadiman The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro Nightwood | Djuna Barnes Venus in Furs | Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Blonde Like Me | Natalia Ilyin Querelle | Jean Genet The English Patient | Michal Ondaatje Clockwork | Philip Pullman Giovanni's Room | James Baldwin The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde Skylight | David Hare Glengarry Glen Ross | David Mamet On Directing Film | David Mamet Slaughterhouse Five | Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Lo's Diary | Pia Pera The Sweet Hereafter | Russell Banks Rain | Kirsty Gunn Flying Home and Other Stories | Ralph Ellison 1984 | George Orwell Little Altars Everywhere | Rebecca Wells Medea | Euripedes I Heard It Through the Grapevine | Patricia A. Turner Iphigenia | Euripedes The Vanishing Hitchhiker | Jan Harold Brunvand Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon | Kirin Narayan Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | J. K. Rowling Tender Is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald The Mayor of Casterbridge | Thomas Hardy Zen in the Art of Writing | Ray Bradbury Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress | Thylias Moss The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain Winesburg, Ohio | Sherwood Anderson A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries | Kaylie Jones Emma | Jane Austen Out of the Dust | Karen Hesse The Country of the Pointed Firs | Sarah Orne Jewett How Reading Changed My Life | Anna Quindland A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce Memoirs of a Geisha | Arthur Golden Poetics | Aristotle Frankenstein | Mary Shelley The Custom of the Country | Edith Wharton My Antonia | Willa Cather Alexander's Bridge | Willa Cather The Winter's Tale | William Shakespeare King Lear | William Shakespeare Henry V | William Shakespeare Twelfth Night | William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream | William Shakespeare Richard III | William Shakespeare The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | James Weldon Johnson Lady Susan | Jane Austen A Room with a View | E. M. Forster The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories | Abraham Cahan To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf Yekl | Abraham Cahan Oroonoko | Aphra Behn Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan Swift Sister Carrie | Theodore Dreiser Beethoven: His Spiritual Development | J. W. Sullivan A Hazard of New Fortunes | William Dean Howells Laughter in the Dark | Vladimir Nabokov Hard Times | Charles Dickens The House of the Seven Gables | Nathaniel Hawthorne The Djinn in the Nightengale's Eye | A. S. Byatt The Glorious Pool | Thorne Smith The Moon and Sixpence | W. Somerset Maugham On Writing and Publishing | Mark Twain Paradise | Toni Morrison The Piano | Jane Campion and Kate Pullinger Dracula | Bram Stoker Candide | Voltaire War with the Newts | Karel Capek Style | Joseph M. Williams Paradise Lost | John Milton The Duchess of Malfi | John Webster Henry IV, Part 1 | William Shakespeare Canterbury Tales | Chaucer Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | anonymous Beowulf | anonymous Utopia | Sir Thomas More Leaf Storm and Other Stories | Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Stray Lamb | Thorne Smith Love and Other Demons | Gabriel Garcia Marquez On the Road | Jack Kerouac The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Victor Hugo Shampoo Planet | Douglas Coupland Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov Bridge to Terabithia | Katherin Paterson The Day of the Locust | Nathanael West Negotiating at an Uneven Table | Phyllis Beck Kritek Beyond Blame | ??? Kotter No Contest | Alfie Kohn Notes from Underground | Fyodor Dostoevsky The Grand Inquisitor | Fyodor Dostoevsky Communist Manifesto | Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels Meditations | Rene Descartes Unmasking Japan | David Matsumoto Second Treatise of Government | John Locke The Republic | Plato The Prince | Nicolo Machiavelli Desire Under the Elms | Eugene O'Neill Miss Julie | August Strindberg The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger La Dame aux Camelias | Alexandre Dumas fils The Good Soldier | Ford Maddox Ford Othello | William Shakespeare Confessions | Saint Augustine One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey Mythologies | Roland Barthes Hippolytus | Euripedes Antigone | Sophocles Ray | Barry Hannah The House of Mirth | Edith Wharton The Tiger's Daughter | Bharati Mukherjee Jesus' Son | Denis Johnson How to Survive the Loss of a Love | Peter McWilliams Life 101 | Peter McWilliams Faust | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Equiano's Travels | Olaudah Equiano Civilization and its Discontents | Sigmund Freud On Liberty | John Stuart Mill Miss Lonelyhearts | Nathanael West Emotional Intelligence | Daniel Goleman The Passions | Robert Soloman The Ice Storm | Rick Moody Orestes | Euripedes The Book of Job | anonymous The Illiad | Homer Beloved | Toni Morrison A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Mark Twain Anthem | Ayn Rand Wuthering Heights | Charlotte Bronte Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway Trying Hard to Hear You | Sandra Scoppettone The Handmaid's Tale | Margaret Atwood This Side of Paradise | F. Scott Fitzgerald A Modern Mephistopheles | Louisa May Alcott The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath The Time Machine | H. G. Wells Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad The Color Purple | Alice Walker Cannery Row | John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand The Metamorphosis | Franz Kafka Brave New World | Aldous Huxley Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen The Stranger | Albert Camus Much Ado About Nothing | William Shakespeare Oedipus Rex | Sophocles Macbeth | William Shakespeare Hamlet | William Shakespeare Cat's Eye | Margaret Atwood Death of a Salesman | Arthur Miller A Doll's House | Henrik Ibsen Sense and Sensibility | Jane Austen The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain The Scarlett Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant | Anne Tyler The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald The Diary of Anne Frank | Anne Frank Les Miserables | Victor Hugo The Pearl | John Steinbeck Animal Farm | Geroge Orwell To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee Siddhartha | Herman Hesse The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway The Good Earth | Pearl S. Buck The Odyssey | Homer Julius Cesar | William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice | William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet | William Shakespeare My Name Is Asher Lev | Chaim Potok Pre-high school reading largely consisted of books in the Babysitter's Club series, various Caldecott and Newberry Award winners, and Wait Till Helen Comes by the great Mary Downing Hahn, which I read at least a dozen times, and which still scares the bejeezus out of me today. |