Shannon Turlington

I promise that this is the absolute last reading list I will post. Ha ha, no.

What if you are starting your reading completely from scratch? What should you read to have a good foundation on which your future reading will rest? What are those books that sparked legions of imitators and inserted themselves permanently in our shared cultural consciousness?

This is my attempt to craft a foundational reading list, one that is not only easily achievable (no, you don’t have to read Ulysses) but also enjoyable. Published in the previous two hundred years (1810-2010), these novels offer a variety of viewpoints, genres, and styles. Yet all have been highly influential on how we see ourselves as human beings. I consider these the essential books–all truly worth reading.

Is this list perfect? Of course not, but it’s a great place to start. One book always leads to another, and I hope these books will lead the burgeoning reader on to further discoveries.

Sixty books may seem like a lot. So why not set a goal of reading one book a month? Or even read one a week (or so) and power through the list in just over a year. Many of these selections are short and, more importantly, they’re fun to read. I’ve arranged the list in chronological order, but tackle them any which way. The most important thing is to keep reading and to love your reading life.

By the way, I have omitted children’s and young adult books from this list. That would be another list in itself.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen* (1813) – The choices that women must make.
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) – The first science fiction novel, the modern monster.
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847) – A woman lives life on her terms.
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) – A woman desperately pursues a life that might fulfill her.
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884) – To grasp our shameful American history, as seen through the eyes of a child.
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) – A foundational horror novel about the duality of human nature.
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) – Can you live a life of debauchery without consequences? Another foundational novel for modern horror.
8. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) – Legions of vampires would not exist without him.
9. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells* (1897) – The father of science fiction, the psychological consequences of pursuing unnatural power.
10. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) – More than just a ghost story, an early psychological thriller and a terrific example of the unreliable narrator.
11. The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899) – A woman awakens to the desire to live as she feels inside.
12. The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899) – The horror of Western expansion into Africa.
13. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902) – The first and still greatest detective.
14. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster* (1908) – A treatise in how to live.
15. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920) – How society’s rules imprison us.
16. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) – Skewering the myth of the American dream.
17. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926) – The queen of mystery’s most famous case.
18. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (1931) – Travel to a foreign land: pre-Revolution China.
19. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932) – One frightening vision of what humanity can become.
20. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1936) – More than just a great mystery, also a debate on the role and purpose of women, a debate we are still having today.
21. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck* (1937) – Still skewering the myth of the American dream.
22. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) – A foundational suspense story, often imitated, never surpassed.
23. 1984 by George Orwell* (1949) – Another frightening vision of what humanity can become.
24. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949) – An early vision of the end of civilization.
25. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) – The original story of teen angst.
26. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952) – What it means to be a man.
27. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury* (1953) – The reason to keep reading.
28. Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke* (1953) – An altogether different vision of what humanity may become.
29. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) – How quickly we revert to barbarism.
30. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (1955) – What is meant by Southern gothic and an unflinching picture of the twentieth-century South.
31. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) – To further grasp our shameful American history, as seen through the eyes of a child.
32. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1960) – Can we overcome our impulse to destroy ourselves?
33. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) – War is not only hell, it’s stupid.
34. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962) – How the systems we create imprison us.
35. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson* (1962) – No one messes with your head better.
36. Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) – Still-relevant political commentary in the guise of a terrific space opera.
37. Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967) – A study of paranoia that ushered in a new golden age of horror.
38. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin* (1969) – An alien culture sheds light on our assumptions about gender.
39. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut* (1969) – A treatise in how to die. So it goes.
40. The Shining by Stephen King* (1977) – The perfect haunted house novel.
41. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979) – Humor often leads to truth.
42. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982) – The lives of black women.
43. Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984) – The formative sci-fi novel for the digital age.
44. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985) – The definitive novel of the American West.
45. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood* (1985) – A frightening allegory for the never-ending oppression of women.
46. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (1986) – How can we truly understand the alien other?
47. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) – The immigrant’s story, the lives of Asian American women.
48. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (1990) – War is not only stupid, it’s hell.
49. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992) – The darkness inside us, what we are capable of.
50. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992) – The modern South–it hasn’t changed much.
51. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler* (1993) – A dark vision of a future that could already be happening
52. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993) – What it means to form a family.
53. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (1998) – How the West has decimated Africa.
54. The Hours by Michael Cunningham* (1998) – Women’s lives and how books shape who we are.
55. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002) – How we determine our identity.
56. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell* (2004) – Life is only a story after all.
57. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro* (2005) – Why do we accept without questioning our destinies as they are told to us?
58. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy* (2005) – How the American West has changed.
59. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (2006) – A darker look into women’s lives.
60. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007) – The curse of family and history.

*These starred authors are exceptionally great. I encourage you to read many more of their works.