I've always had a hard time getting through East of Eden...I don't know why. I have to say I'm disappointed that there's no Jane Austen...who's one of the best, in my opinion.

The list is from 1923 and on.

LOL....I didn't even notice that part of it even though I printed out the damn list.

I didn't like Metamorphosis or The Stranger that much....

Your right, it was a translated work if I remeber right....I read it in Eng 52...*shudder*

14, none of which I've read since graduating high school. If I had been required to take literature classes in college, I'd probably have more.

I'm actually a pretty voracious reader.

I'll bet that's their explanation - but it's still excellent. I toyed with adding The Diary of Anne Frank, but realized that wasn't in English, either. I would've included it as most non-Jewish people's first experience with the Holocaust.

AEPHiSierra, did you like The Painted Bird? It made me physically ill - and I think you know the scene.

Munchkin03, I somehow expected you to be very well read. Unfortunately, I'll read anything at hand. Well, almost anything.

All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

Beloved
Toni Morrison

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

Deliverance
James Dickey

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

1984
George Orwell

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

Addmittedly, the majority were for lit classes in high school and college.

I read 13 of them, only a couple since college. I'm a big fan of Fitzgerald, and The Great Gatsby is my favorite book, so I'm glad to see it made the list.

I consider myself to be very well-read as well.

KLPDaisy - Metamorphosis was originally written in German and I'm pretty sure that it was also written prior to the 1923 cut off. I agree that if the language parameters were broader, it would likely have been included...I didn't particularly like the book, but I found it interesting and well written.

I was happy to see The Sun Also Rises on the list. I am a huge Hemingway fan. :)

[QUOTE=honeychile;132

[i]An American Tragedy[/i]
Theodore Dreiser

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

Beloved
Toni Morrison

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

A Death in the Family
James Agee

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

Light in August
William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

Native Son
Richard Wright

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee


These are the ones that I have read so far. I liked most of them. I hated "Beloved", forced myself through it.

I don't really remember that much about it. I read in the 8th grade when we had to choose from a list of holcaust books to write a report on it. I just remember it being very graphic but thinking it was a pretty good book. I think you just have to have the right stomac for it.

I've read 25 of those. Margaret Atwood is my favorite author so I'm glad The Blind Assassin "made the cut", but I think some of her other books are better. Also, I love Tropic of Cancer. I was reading it once and someone asked me what class it was for - I told them I was reading it "for fun" and they laughed at me.

do movies count?:D
seriously, I have read a few of those - others are on my list to read that I should have read when i was younger (I just finshed Go Tell it on the Mountain w/in the last week).

I can't believe White Teeth was on there - I i wouldn't consider that a great novel - when clearly others were left off the list (Sula by Toni Morrison), but glad to see Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret on there - I LOVED that book! Judy Blume was just the best back then.

I haven't read The Blind Assassin, can you give me a small summary? I did like A Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake very much :)