Checklist of Books Students Should Read Before Going to College

! 1984 by George Orwell ! Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ! The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho ! All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich-Maria Remarque* ! And Then There were None by Agatha Christie ! Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt ! Animal Farm by George Orwell (9th) ! Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank ! Anthem by Ayn Rand (12th) ! As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner ! The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley with Malcolm X ! The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver ! Beloved by Toni Morrison ! Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney# ! Black Boy by Richard Wright (11th) ! Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya ! Bodega Dreams by Ernesto Quinonez ! Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ! Catch-22 by Joseph Heller ! Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger ! The Chosen by Chaim Potok (8th) ! The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride ! The Color Purple by Alice Walker ! The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas ! The Crucible by Arthur Miller (11th) ! Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (10th) ! Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand ! Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (11th) ! Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas ! Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan ! Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton ! Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ! A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway ! Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne and James Houston ! Fences by August Wilson ! Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes ! Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ! The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams ! The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck ! The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (11th) ! Grendel by John Gardner ! Hamlet by William Shakespeare (12th) ! The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood ! Hatchet by Gary Paulsen ! Having Our Say by Sarah Delany ! Hiroshima by John Hersey (11th) ! The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (12th) ! The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros ! How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez ! In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ! Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee ! The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison ! The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan ! Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (10th) ! Kindred by Octavia E. Butler ! Krik? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat ! A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (10th) ! Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel ! Lord of the Flies by William Golding (10th) ! Macbeth by William Shakespeare (12th) ! Maus I: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman ! The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare ! A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ! The Miracle Worker by William Gibson ! Montana 1948 by Larry Watson ! Mythology by Edith Hamilton ! The Natural by Bernard Malamud ! Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya ! Night by Elie Wiesel (8th) ! The Odyessy by Homer (9th) ! Oedipus the King by Sophocles (12th) ! Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (11th) ! The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway ! One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey ! Othello by William Shakespeare ! Our Town by Thornton Wilder ! The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton ! The Pearl by John Steinbeck ! The Piano Lesson by August Wilson ! A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry ! The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane ! Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (9th) ! The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne ! A Separate Peace by John Knowles (10th) ! Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (12th) ! Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut ! Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson ! The Stranger by Albert Camus (12th) ! A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ! The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway ! The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare ! Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (12th) ! Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (12th) ! The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ! To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (9th) ! Twelve Angry Men: A Play in Three Acts by Reginald Rose

*Books taught in some English courses