There are certain books that have been considered “classic reading”, and have thus been on many reading lists for schools and groups through out the years. Here’s how Siena[sic] survey (as listed @ Timesunion.com) presents them, along with about when I read them and/or what I thought of them.
List of 30 classics:
1. The Works of Shakespeare
– Read throughout high school/college, including “Romeo & Juliet” “Julius Caesar” (Fave), “MacBeth” (Fave), “Othello”, rereading “King Lear”, “MidSummer Night’s Dream” (Big Fave!)
2. The Declaration of Independence
– Read in almost every history class LOL
3. Twain, Mark, Huckleberry Finn
– Read in jr. high/high school
4. The poems of Emily Dickinson
– Fave has got to be “Nobody” *S*
5. The poems of Robert Frost
– read throughout school days
6. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Scarlet Letter
– read in high school (found it so sad)
7. Fitzgerald, Scott F., The Great Gatsby
– rereading again (read in high school)
8. Orwell, George, 1984
– never read all the way through…we chose to read “Brave New World” (a fave!)
9. Homer, Odyssey and Iliad
– read in high school and college :P~
10. Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities
– read latter in high school (don’t remember when for the 1st)
11. Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales
– loved rereading these tales in college
12. Salinger, J.D., Catcher in the Rye
– read in middle school (a fave @ the time)
13. The Bible
– started reading in elementary school (reread since)
14. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden
– read in high school
15. Sophocles, Oedipus
– ?!? don’t remember
16. Steinbeck, John, the Grapes of Wrath
– a fave read through the years
17. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays and poems
– read in high school
18. Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice
– on my rereading list thanks to seeing the movie (again)
19. Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass
– read in hs
20. The novels of William Faulkner
– ?!?
21. Melville, Herman, Moby Dick
– on my rereading list
22. Milton, John, Paradise Lost
– hs/college
23. Vergil, Aeneid
– ?!? hs sometime
24. Plato, The Republic
– read in college (I was big into Plato @ the time LOL)
25. Marx, Karl, Communist Manifesto
– read in college
26. Machiavelli, Niccolo, the Prince
– ?!? don’t remember when read, elementary
27. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America
– ?!? (sleepy time for me on this one)
28. Dostoevski, Feodor, Crime and Punishment
– ?!? don’t remember again
29. Aristotle, Politics
– ?!? I don’t remember when I read it, but I doubt I finished it all
30. Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace
– read in college(Plato and Tolstoy were majors for me)
Click to see more classics (external link)
Slices from the PearLady 