Recommended Reading
High school English teachers and guidance counselors often are asked what students should read in order to prepare them for college. There is no single or right answer to this question. In college you will be expected to read many works critically and thoughtfully. Therefore, the more you read, the better prepared you will be for college-level work.
The current "buzz" about "best" books comes from the release this summer of a list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century written in English. The list was compiled by an advisory board to the Modern Library (a division of the Random House Publishing Company). Of course, the idea of a list of "best" books is inherently problematic, because reading is by nature an individual experience. And, this list has been widely criticized because it favors white male writers, especially those writing in the early half of the 20th century.
That being said, you are sure to find some of these books assigned in your English and American literature classes in college.
For more on the list or the 100 best as chosen by students in the Radcliffe College summer publishing course check out the Modern Library’s web site.
Here’s the Modern Library list of suggested reading:
1. Ulysses, James Joyce (1922)
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1916)
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1932)
6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929)
7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961)
8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1941)
9. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence (1913)
10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939)
11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry (1947)
12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler (1903)
13. 1984, George Orwell (1949)
14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves (1934)
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Wolf (1927)
16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1925)
17. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (1940)
18. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1969)
19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
20. Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow (1959)
22. Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara (1934)
23. U.S.A.(trilogy), John Dos Passos (1936)
24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson (1919)
25. A Passage to India, E. M. Forster (1924)
26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James (1902)
27. The Ambassadors, Henry James (1903)
28. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)
29. Studs Lonigan (trilogy), James T. Farrell (1935)
30. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford (1915)
31. Animal Farm, George Orwell (1945)
32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James (1904)
33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900)
34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh (1934)
35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1930)
36. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1946)
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder (1927)
38. Howards End, E. M. Forster (1910)
39. Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin (1953)
40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene (1948)
41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954)
42. Deliverance, James Dickey (1970)
43. A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell (1975)
44. Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley (1928)
45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926)
46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad (1907)
47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad (1904)
48. The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (1915)
49. Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence (1920)
50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller (1934)
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer (1948)
52. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth (1969)
53. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
54. Light in August, William Faulkner (1932)
55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (1930)
57. Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford (1928)
58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920)
59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm (1911)
60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy (1961)
61. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (1927)
62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones (1951)
63. The Wapshot Chronicle, John Cheever (1957)
64. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (1951)
65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1962)
66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1902)
68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis (1920)
69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905)
70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (1960)
71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes (1929)
72. A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul (1961)
73. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West (1939)
74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (1929)
75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh (1938)
76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark (1961)
77. Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce (1939)
78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling (1901)
79. A Room with a View, E. M. Forster (1908)
80. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (1945)
81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (1971)
82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner (1971)
83. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul (1979)
84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen (1938)
85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad (1900)
86. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow (1975)
87. The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett (1908)
88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
89. Loving, Henry Green (1945)
90. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (1981)
91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell (1932)
92. Ironweed, William Kennedy (1983)
93. The Magus, John Fowles (1966)
94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (1966)
95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch (1954)
96. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron (1979)
97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles (1949)
98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain (1934)
99. The Ginger Man, J. P. Donleavy (1955)
100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington (1918)
