Some Recommended Books for Reading--Part #3

The list that follows is titled as "Classical Literature for Teenagers" but could just as easily be titled "Classical Literature for Adults." Books on this list are what present a problem for many yeshiva high schools. There are men and women in many of these works, as opposed to little girls and boys. Some, such as the Austen works, are not permitted in some high schools because they are romances. Some day I'm going to gather all high school personnel together and hopefully drum into their heads the difference between a romance and a "Literary Romance." Yes, some of the subject matter/content may present a difficulty for some parents: When in doubt, check it out. There are dozens of book reviews on line that can give you an idea of whether you want your child reading a book or not. Also, this list includes novels, plays, poetry collections and short story collections. Again, some of these works may be appropriate for younger readers; as a parent, you be the judge.

Undoubtedly I have left off this list someone's favorite work, so let me repeat: this listing is not exhaustive, but a good place to start.

Disclaimer: Parents are advised that the subject matter of some these works may present problems for individual parents.



Classic Literature for Teenagers - Grades 9 through 12 (approximation)

Agee, James --A Death in the Family
Anderson, Sherwood --Winesburg, Ohio
Austen, Jane --Emma, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
Baldwin, James --Go Tell It on the Mountain
Balzac, Honore de --Pere Goriot
Beckett, Samuel --Waiting for Godot
Bolt, Robert-- Man for All Seasons
Bronte, Charlotte --Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily --Wuthering Heights
Browning, Robert --Selected Poems
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett--Selected Poems
Buck, Pearl --The Good Earth
Butler, Samuel --The Way of All Flesh
Camus, Albert --The Plague, The Stranger
Cather, Willa --Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia
Cervantes, Miguel --Don Quixote
Chaucer, Geoffrey --The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton --The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate --The Awakening (Parental guidance suggested)
Collins, Wilkie --The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph --Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Sharer, Victory
Crane, Stephen --The Red Badge of Courage
Dante --The Divine Comedy
Dickens, Charles --Bleak House,David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities
Dickinson, Emily --Poems
Dinesen, Isak --Out of Africa
Dostoevski, Fyodor --Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
Dreiser, Theodore --An American Tragedy,Sister Carrie
Eliot, George --Adam Bede, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner
Eliot, T.S. --Murder in the Cathedral
Ellison, Ralph --Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo --Essays
Faulkner, William --Absalom, Absalom! As I Lay Dying, Intruder in the Dust, Light in August, The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald, F. Scott --The Great Gatsby,Tender Is the Night
Flaubert, Gustave --Madame Bovary
Forster, E.M. --A Passage to India,A Room with a View
Franklin, Benjamin --The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Galsworthy, John --The Forsyte Saga
Golding, William --Lord of the Flies
Goldsmith, Oliver --She Stoops to Conquer
Graves, Robert --I, Claudius
Greene, Graham --The Heart of the Matter,The Power and the Glory
Hamilton, Edith --Mythology
Hardy, Thomas --Far From the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel --The House of the Seven Gables,The Scarlet Letter
Hemingway, Ernest-- A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises
Henry, O. --Stories
Hersey, John --A Single Pebble
Hesse, Hermann --Demian, Siddhartha, Steppenwolf
Homer --The Iliad The Odyssey
Hughes, Langston --Poems
Hugo, Victor --Les Miserables
Huxley, Aldous --Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik --A Doll's House,An Enemy of the People, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, The Wild Duck
James, Henry --The American, Daisy Miller, Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James --Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man,Dubliners
Kafka, Franz --The Castle, Metamorphosis, The Trial
Keats, John --Poems
Kerouac, Jack --On the Road
Koestler, Arthur --Darkness at Noon
Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee --Inherit the Wind
Lewis, Sinclair --Arrowsmith, Babbitt, Main Street
Llewellyn, Richard --How Green Was My Valley
Machiavelli --The Prince
MacLeish, Archibald --J.B.
Mann, Thomas --Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain
Marlowe, Christopher --Dr. Faustus
Maugham, Somerset --Of Human Bondage
McCullers, Carson --The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Melville, Herman --Billy Budd, Moby-Dick, Typee
Miller, Arthur --The Crucible,Death of a Salesman
Monsarrat, Nicholas --The Cruel Sea
O'Neill, Eugene The Emperor Jones, A Long Day's Journey into Night, Mourning Becomes Electra
Orwell, George-- Animal Farm,1984
Pasternak, Boris --Doctor Zhivago
Poe, Edgar Allan --Short stories
Remarque, Erich --All Quiet on the Western Front
Rolvaag, O.E. --Giants in the Earth
Rostand, Edmond --Cyrano de Bergerac
Saki--Collected stories ("The Storyteller is great")
Sandburg, Carl --Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years ,Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
Saroyan, William --The Human Comedy
Sayers, Dorothy --The Nine Tailors
Shakespeare, William --Plays and sonnets
Shaw, George Bernard-- Arms and the Man, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Saint Joan
Sheridan, Richard B. --The School for Scandal
Shute, Nevil --On the Beach
Sinclair, Upton --The Jungle
Sophocles --Antigone,Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John --East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Travels with Charlie
Stowe, Harriet Beecher --Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan --Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William M. --Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David --Walden
Tolstoy, Leo --Anna Karenina,War and Peace
Trollope, Anthony --Barchester Towers
Turgenev, Ivan --Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark --Pudd'nhead Wilson (And everything else he wrote)
Updike, John --Rabbit Run
Vergil --The Aeneid
Voltaire --Candide
Warren, Robert Penn --All the King's Men
Waugh, Evelyn --Brideshead Revisited,A Handful of Dust
Wharton, Edith --Age of Innocence
White, T.H. --The Once and Future King ,The Sword in the Stone
Wilde, Oscar --The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilder, Thornton --Our Town
Williams, Tennessee --The Glass Menagerie,A Streetcar Named Desire (parental discretion advised)
Wolfe, Thomas --Look Homeward, Angel
Woolf, Virginia --Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse
Wouk, Herman --The Caine Mutiny
Wright, Richard --Black Boy,Native Son