Here’s what I currently have on my list:
– One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
– East of Eden by John Steinbeck
– The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
– The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
– Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
– Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
– 1984 by George Orwell
– Don Quixote by Cervantes
I started with One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m halfway in and I’m not a huge fan of it so far, but I will finish it.
I have hardly read anything outside of fictional romance, so please feel free to recommend me anything you think is a classic, and preferably something you really enjoyed reading yourself 🙂
by waitwaitwait_NOW
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‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde is a book I suggest for its exploration of morality and the pursuit of pleasure. Wilde’s only novel is a brilliant blend of gothic horror and Victorian decadence, with a sharp commentary on society’s superficiality.
Animal Farm by George Orwell, not my favorite book but one of the best I have ever read.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.
You could help yourself to some classics with romance like Jane Eyre. There’s more than a few very well respected romance heavy books. Jane Eyre fans don’t kill me if I called out the wrong book, I think that one has romance…
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu; Heike monogatari; The Dream of the Red Chamber (or The Story of the Stone) by Cao Xueqin, the Mahabharata, …
There is no good reason to limit your choice to the Western canon.
But if you want to stay in Western circles, go for the Njals saga!
* *To Kill a Mockingbird* – Harper Lee – you may have read it before but it’s absolutely worth a re-read
* *Pride and Prejudice* – Jane Austin – a different type of romance than you’ve been reading
* The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – I listed to the Tim Robbins audiobook and it really brought the story to life
* *Fahrenheit 451* – Ray Bradbury – very timely with all the book bans these days
* *Frankenstein* – Mary Shelley – focuses on the cruelty of the world, could be written today
* C*atch 22* – Joseph Heller – it’s on my list too!
* *Dracula* – Bram Stoker – I’m about half way through and it’s an incredible story
**The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn**
**The Call of the Wild**
Some of these are very long so I’d recommend looking for some shorter ones too to help balance the load.
Animal Farm
Of Mice and Men
A Christmas Carol
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Old Man and the Sea
The Great Gatsby
The Stranger
Handmaids Tale is a bit longer but I’d still recommend it too
A modern classic: [The Secret History](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29044.The_Secret_History).
Alas, Babylon. One of my favorite books.
The strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The hound of the Baskervilles
The moonstone