Every secondary school reading list in the country contains weighty classics like Huckleberry Finn, Grapes of Wrath, and perhaps even a book or two written by a female, such as The Voyage Out or Jane Eyre. This list on the other and contains books which one will probably not find on a reading list purporting to embody the crème de la crème, These are important books for one reason or another, but are frequently overlooked or ignored. Hence I recommend them to youngsters in their late teens or early twenties. Well, heckaroni, I just can't seem to limit myself to books for youngsters, so there are some books for not-so-youngsters here as well. Take the list with a dose of suspicion and sniff them over a bit before handing them off to little Janie & Johnnie.
| Brautigan, Richard | Dreaming of Babylon | |
| In Watermelon Sugar | ||
| Trout Fishing in America | ||
| Markham, Beryl | West with the Night | |
| Teasdale, Sara | Collected Poems of... | |
| Lennon, John | In His Own Write | |
| A Spaniard in the Works | ||
| von Arnim, Elizabeth | Love | |
| Elizabeth and Her German Garden | ||
| Introduction to Sally | ||
| Nin, Anaïs | Collages | |
| Delta of Venus | ||
| Tolkein, J.R.R. | Leaf by Niggle | |
| Lem, Stanislaw | The Star Diaries | |
| Bagnold, Enid | The Squire | |
| The Happy Foreigner | ||
| Heinlein, Robert | Time Enough for Love | |
| Stranger in a Strange Land | ||
| Brontë, Charlotte | Villette | |
| Brunner, John | The Crucible of Time | |
| Freedman, Nancy | Sappho, the Tenth Muse | |
| Milne, A. A. | Winnie the Pooh | |
| The House at Pooh Corner | ||
| Mansfield, Katherine | The Tiredness of Rosabel | |
| Bliss | ||
| Hall, Radclyffe | The Well of Loneliness | |
| A Saturday Life | ||
| MacDonald, George | The Light Princess | |
| Cohen, Leonard | The Spice Box of Earth | |
| Beauvoir, Simone de | The Second Sex | |
| Simak, Clifford D. | Project Pope | |
| Suess, Dr. | McElligot's Pool | |
| Doctor Suess's Sleep Book | ||
| Joyce, James | Finnegan's Wake | |
| Singer, Isaac Bashevis | When Shlemeil Went to Warsaw | |
| Cleland, John | Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) | |
| Marquez, Garbriel Garcia | Autumn of the Patriarch | |
| Yoshimoto, Banana | Kitchen | |
| LeGuin, Ursula | The Left Hand of Darkness | |
| Dorje, Rinjing | Tales of Uncle Tompa | |
| Rand, Ayn | Atlas Shrugged | |
| Polo, Marco | The Travels | |
| Trout, Kilgore | Venus on the Half Shell | |
| Woolf, Virginia | A Room of One's Own | |
| Mrs Dalloway | ||
| Lofting, Hugh | Voyages of Dr Doolittle | |
| Dr Doolittle's Post Office | ||
| Dineson, Isak | Ehrengard | |
| Babette's Feast | ||
| Turner, Victor | The Ritual Process | |
| Kawabata, Yasunari | Snow Country | |
| Voltaire | Candide | |
| Babbitt, Natalie | The Devil's Storybook | |
| Hesse, Herman | Siddhartha | |
| Warner, Sylvia Towsend | Lolly Willowes | |
| Farmer, Philip José | Jesus on Mars | |
| Hossain, Attia | Sunlight on a Broken Column | |
| Morris, Desmond | The Naked Ape | |
| Burroughs, Edgar Rice | A Princess of Mars | |
| Spark, Muriel | The Abbess of Crewe | |
| The Girls of Slender Means | ||
| Porter, Eleanor H. | Pollyanna | |
| Dawkins, Richard | The Selfish Gene | |
| Wiggin, Kate Douglas | Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | |
| Whiteley, Opal | The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow | |
| Marquis, Don | Archy and Mehitabel | |
| Comyns, Barbara | Sisters by a River | |
| Who was Changed and Who was Dead | ||
| Our Spoons Came From Woolworths | ||
| Delafield, E. M. | Faster Faster! | |
| Winterson, Jeanette | Written on the Body | |
| Byatt, A. S. | Angels & Insects | |
| Lawrence, Caroline | The Thieves of Ostia (and sequels!) | |
| Smith, H. Allen | Mr Klein's Kampf | |
| Lost in the Horse Latitudes | ||
| Rhubarb | ||
[Click me home again Kathleen]
Last updated July 29, 2008
Copyright © 2002-2008 Rick McGowan