First, I understand this isn’t really a fair question because “well read” isn’t objective. I just think asking this way will get the most interesting suggestions. So I’m asking in your personal opinion, if you had to recommend any 5 fiction books that are essential to a person being well read, what 5 would they be. Here’s my list in no order (I’m counting series as one title, but you don’t have to if you think only a specific book in the series should make the list.)
Lord of the Rings Series (idk if the Hobbit counts but I’m including it in the series)
1984
Sirens of Titan
Catch-22
Cool Hand Luke
by SpicyTurkeyBaster
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Why Sirens of Titan over Slaughterhouse 5?
_I, Claudius_ and _Claudius the God_ by Robert Graves (counting as one series)
_Murder on the Orient Express_ by Agatha Christie
_Three Men in a Boat_ by Jerome K. Jerome
_The Count of Monte Cristo_ by Alexandre Dumas
The Earthsea series by Ursula K. LeGuin
Honorable Mentions:
_To Say Nothing of the Dog_ by Connie Willis (which riffs off of _Three Men in a Boat_; the title of Willis’ book is, in fact, the subtitle of Jerome’s.)
_Les Liaisons Dangereuses_ by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
_The Hound of the Baskervilles_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Brave New World
Frankenstein
Under the Volcano
Dracula
The Arabian Nights
Pride and Prejudice by J. Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
The Overcoat by Gogol, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, The Trial by Kafka, Call it Sleep by Henry Roth, Blindness by Saramago
Middlemarch by George Eliot, The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia-Marquez, A Brave New World by A. Huxley