English Faculty Book Picks

Are you ready for two really long lists?

During my final semester at BYU-I, I had an assignment to pick one book from three lists and then put together a presentation for each of the three books. The lists were comprised of books in the canon, recommended books, and nonfiction books related to English/writing. My professor put the lists together by asking all the English faculty what one book in each category they thought everyone should read. So, looking for a good book to read or perhaps just wondering what books you should read before you die, here's some titles to consider.

Recommended Booklist

·         The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth

·         The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

·         The Ambassadors by Henry James

·         An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

·         Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

·         Arabella by Anonymous

·         Best American Short Stories

·         Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

·         The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

·         Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan

·         The Brothers K by David James Duncan

·         Bungay Castle by Elizabeth  Bonhote

·         Candide by Voltaire

·         Century of the Wind by Eduardo Galeano

·         Collapse by Jared Diamond

·         The Color Purple by Alice Walker

·         Confessions by Augustine of Hippo

·         The Conjure Woman by Charles Chestnutt

·         The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

·         Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

·         Field Guide by Robert Hass

·         Five Skies by Ron Carlson

·         Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

·         Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop

·         The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

·         God: Stories edited by C. Michael Curtis

·         Good Omens:  The Nice and Accurate Prophecies by Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaimon and Terry Prachett

·         The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

·         Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

·         The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

·         How to Read Literature Like a Professor:  A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines  by Thomas C. Foster

·         In Memoriam A.H.H by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

·         Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon

·         The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

·         The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

·         Language as Symbolic Action by S.I. Hawakawa

·         The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

·         The Light Princess by George MacDonald

·         Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

·         Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

·         Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard

·         Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway

·         Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

·         The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie

·         Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery by Richard Selzer

·         Mrs. Mike: The Story of Katherine Mary Flannigan by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

·         My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

·         Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

·         Night by Elie Wiesel

·         The Octopus by Frank Norris

·         A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

·         Persuasion by Jane Austen

·         The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

·         A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

·         Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams

·         Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

·         The Road by Cormac McCarthy

·         The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe

·         A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

·         Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler

·         The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

·         Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

·         The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

·         The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

·         Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

·         Story by Robert McKee

·         Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis

·         Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard

·         The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

·         The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber

·         The Tree of Man by Patrick White

·         The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday

·         The World is Flat:  A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman

·         These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prince by Nancy E. Turner

·         This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff

·         Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

·         Translation by Brian Friel

·         Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

·         Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver

·         White Boys by Reginald McKnight

·         Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

·         Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

·         Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre

The Canon

·         Absolom, Absolom by William Faulkner

·         Adam Bede by George Eliot

·         The Aeneid  by Virgil

·         All My Sons by Arthur Miller

·         Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye

·         Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

·         Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

·         As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

·         Beloved by Toni Morrison

·         Beowulf

·         Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

·         Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

·         The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

·         Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

·         The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard

·         Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

·         Crucible by Arthur Miller

·         Cry, the Beloved Country  by Alan Paton

·         David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

·         Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

·         A Death in the Family by James Agee

·         Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

·         Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri

·         A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

·         Dream Songs by John Berryman

·         Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede

·         The Efficacy of Prayer by C.S. Lewis

·         An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen

·         For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

·         Frankenstein   by Mary Shelley

·         Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

·         Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

·         Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

·         Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

·         Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift

·         Hamlet  by William Shakespeare

·         Collected poems of Thomas Hardy

·         Collected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne

·         Heart of Darkness  by Joseph Conrad

·         Holy Bible

·         Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain

·         Illiad   by Homer

·         Imagining America: Stories From the Promised Land edited by Wesley Brown

·         Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

·         Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

·         Jane Eyre  by Charlotte Brontë

·         Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

·         Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

·         Collected poems of John Keats

·         King Lear  by William Shakespeare

·         Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass in His Own Words by Fredrick Douglass

·         Life of King Alfred by Asser, Bishop of Sherborne

·         Light in August by William Faulkner

·         Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (If you choose this option, the play to pair it with would be Ah, Wilderness)

·         Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

·         Macbeth by William Shakespeare

·         Merchant of Venice  by William Shakespeare

·         Middlemarch by George Eliot

·         Midsummer Night’s Dream  by William Shakespeare

·         Moby Dick by Herman Melville

·         Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

·         Mrs. Dalloway by Virgina Woolf

·         My Antonia by Willa Cather

·         Odyssey  by Homer

·         Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

·         Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

·         One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

·         One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

·         Othello by William Shakespeare

·         Paradise Lost  by John Milton

·         Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge

·         Portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde

·         The Prelude by William Wordsworth

·         Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

·         Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

·         The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard

·         Riders to the Sea by J. M Synge

·         Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

·         Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

·         Scarlet Letter  by Nathaniel Hawthorne

·         Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

·         The Seagull by Anton Chekhov

·         Selected Tales and Sketches by Nathaniel Hawthorne

·         Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

·         Silas Marner by George Eliot

·         Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

·         Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

·         A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

·         Tempest by William Shakespeare

·         Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

·         Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

·         Till We All Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

·         To Kill a Mockingbird  by Harper Lee

·         To the Lighthouse  byVirginia Woolf

·         Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck

·         Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

·         Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

·         Walden by Henry David Thoreau

·         The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen

·         Winesberg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

·         Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

·         Collected Poems of William Wordsworth

·         Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

That should keep you going for awhile :)

Actually, come to think of it, looks like I've got a lot of reading to do!