Books to Read Before You Die:

Foundational The Holy Bible (by lots of people)

Foundational The Oxford Book of American Poetry
Foundational How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
Foundational The Republic by Plato
Foundational Poetics by Aristotle
Foundational/Greek Mythology The Odyssey by Homer
Foundational/Poetry Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Foundational Letters on Life by Rainer Maria Rilke
Foundational/Post-Post Modernist Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
World
World
World
World
World

Literature The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Literature The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Literature Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Literature/ African Literature Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Literature/Graphic Novel Persepolis by Marjane Strapini

British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British
British

Literature Beowulf
Literature The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Literature/ Dystopian Novels 1984 by George Orwell
Literature Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
Literature Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Literature Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Literature A Mid-Summer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare
Literature Paradise Lost by John Milton
Literature Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift
Literature Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Literature Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Literature/ Post-Post Modernist White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Literature/ Plays Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Literature/ Plays Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Literature The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Literature The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wile
Literature Beowulf
Literature Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Literature Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Literature The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan
Literature/ Gothic Tradition The Legend of Sleep Hallow by Washington Irving
Literature A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Literature Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

American Literature The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

American Literature The Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway
American Literature The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

American
American
American
American
American
American
American
American
American
American
American
African
African
African
African

Literature The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Literature/Plays The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Literature/ Plays A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Literature Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Literature Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Literature To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Literature The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
Literature The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien
Literature Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Literature The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Literature One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey

Am. Literature/ Science Fiction Kindred by Octavia Butler

Am. Literature Native Son by Richard Wright
Literature Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Am. Literature Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Holocaust
Holocaust
Holocaust
Holocaust
Holocaust

Literature
Literature
Literature
Literature
Literature

I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson

Devils Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Night by Elie Wiesel

Autobiography Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

Autobiography/ Psychology In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel
Autobiography The Color of Water by James McBride
Autobiography The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Autobiography The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan
Autobiography Angelas Ashes by Frank McCourt
Autobiography A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Native Am. Literature The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Native Am. Literature Rez Life by David Treuer
Philosophy The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
Philosophy The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Philosophy Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Psychology Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Psychology The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Feminist/Psychological Thriller The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Feminist Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Feminist The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Feminist Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block

Childhood
Childhood
Childhood
Childhood
Childhood

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Little House on the Prairie Books (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

MS/YA Literature The BFG by Roald Dahl

MS/ YA Literature A Long Way From Chicago & A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
MS/ YA Literature Wonder by RJ Palacio
MS/ YA Literature The Call of the Wild by Jack London
MS/ YA Literature The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
MS/ YA Literature Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
YA Literature The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
YA Literature The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
YA Literature/Sappy Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
YA Literature/Sappy The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
YA Literature/ Science Fiction Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
YA Literature/ Science Fiction Epic by Conor Kostick
YA Literature/Science Fiction Feed by M.T. Andersen
YA Literature/Horror Genre Carrie by Stephen King
*MS= Middle School
Science On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Science Fiction The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Dystopian Novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Dystopian Novels Anthem by Ayn Rand
Dystopian Novels The Giver by Lois Lowery
LGBTQ Luna by Julie Anne Peters
LGBTQ Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
French
French
French
French
French

Literature The Count of Mont Cristo by Alexander Dumas

Literature Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupry
Literature Les Misrables by Victor Hugo
Criticism The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes
Criticism Anything by Lacan (the French Freud)

Contemporary Plays The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown

Contemporary Plays Down The Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams

Texts I Want to Read:

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Glass Menagerie by Tennesse Williams
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie
Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishamel Beah
The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sunadeen
Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo
NW by Zadie Smith
Inferno by Dante
Ulysses by James Joyce
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Middlemarch by George Eliot
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
How Should a Person Be? By Shelia Heti
St. Lucys Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russel
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson