Home > Personal > Favorite Books List!

I thought that I would make a list of some of my favorite reads for anyone who may be interested. Ever since my Hooked on Phonics® Learn to Read kit arrived in the mail last summer, I have had an insatiable desire to read anything and everything that I can get my hands on. From Harry Potter in Ancient Greek (for a good laugh, check out the suggested reading level on the web-site!) to My Life: The Story of a Cheese Grater in Braille, I try to switch things up a bit by diversifying my reading faire (you know... because the same old candy apples and Ferris wheels get pretty old after a while). In fact, I carefully read a book on speed reading a couple of months ago in order to increase my reading speed. A couple of weeks after beginning the remarkable program, I was able to read Crime and Punishment in under ten minutes! I was surprised to find that the method was as simple as scanning the page and eliminating everything except for pronouns from one's field of vision. After a little practice, the pronouns were eliminated, too. Gradually students like me who use the program are encouraged to nap. A frog is dissected. Spring comes. People marry and die. Pinkerton does not return.

Novels, Novellas, Short Stories, and Non-Fiction:
- Bhagavad Gita
- Bible
- Upanishads
Adams, Douglas - The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide
Allen, Woody - Getting Even
Allen, Woody - Without Feathers
Anselm, Saint - Proslogion
Aquinas, Saint Thomas - Summa Theologica
Aristotle - Poetics
Augustine, Saint - Confessions
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Barrett, William - Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
Becker, Ernest - The Denial of Death
Björkman, Stig - Woody Allen on Woody Allen
Boorstin, Daniel J. - The Seekers
Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Butler, Christopher - Postmodernism
Camus, Albert - The Myth of Sisyphus
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Carr, Jonathan - Mahler: A Biography
Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote
Chekhov, Anton - Short Stories
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Joseph - The Secret Sharer
Conrad, Mark and Skoble, Aeon - Woody Allen and Philosophy
Critchley, Simon - Continental Philosophy
De Beauvoir, Simone - The Ethics of Ambiguity
De Botton, Alain - How Proust Can Change Your Life
De Laclos, Choderlos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Descartes, Rene - Discourse on Method
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - The Idiot
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Notes from the Underground
Eliot, T.S. - The Idea of a Christian Society
Eliot, T.S. - Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
Fabe, Marilyn - Closely Watched Films
Farkas, Philip - The Art of French Horn Playing
Faulkner, William - Light in August
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave - Sentimental Education
Floros, Constantin - Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies
Frankl, Viktor - Man's Search for Meaning
Gauthier, David - Morals by Agreement
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - The Sorrows of Young Werther
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Jude the Obscure
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawking, Stephen - A Brief History of Time
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich - Introduction to the Philosophy of History
Heidegger, Martin - Being and Time
Heller, Joseph - Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest - The Old Man and the Sea
Irwin, William - Seinfeld and Philosophy
Kaku, Michio - Hyperspace
Kennan, Kent - Counterpoint
Kierkegaard, Søren - Fear and Trembling
Kierkegaard, Søren - The Sickness Unto Death
James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience
Joyce, James - Dubliners
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James - Ulysses
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kant, Immanuel - Critique of Pure Reason
Kant, Immanuel - Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Kempis, Thomas - The Imitation of Christ
Lawrence, D.H. - Sons and Lovers
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, C.S. - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lewis, C.S. - The Four Loves
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Mill, J.S. - Utilitarianism
Moody, A. David - The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot
Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita
Newman, John Henry - An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
Newman, John Henry - Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Nietzsche, Friedrich - Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche, Friedrich - Thus Spake Zarathustra
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey - L'Avventura
O'Brien, Edna - James Joyce
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pascal, Blaise - Thoughts
Paton, Alan - Cry, the Beloved Country
Perrine, Laurence - Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Plato - Phaedo
Plato - The Republic
Plato - Symposium
Proust, Marcel - In Search of Lost Time
Reibetanz, Julia Maniates - A Reading of Eliot's Four Quartets
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Sartre, Jean-Paul - Being and Nothingness
Sartre, Jean-Paul - Existentialism
Schonberg, Arnold - Theory of Harmony
Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea
Seinfeld, Jerry - Seinlanguage
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Sidgwick, Henry - Methods of Ethics
Spinoza, Baruch - Ethics
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men
Tolstoy, Leo - A Calendar of Wisdom
Tolstoy, Leo - A Confession
Tolstoy, Leo - Anna Karenina
Tolstoy, Leo - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Tolstoy, Leo - The Gospel in Brief
Tolstoy, Leo - What is Art?
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Unamuno, Miguel de - Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt - Cat's Cradle

Drama:
Beckett, Samuel - Endgame
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Chekhov, Anton - The Boor
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust I and II
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
Ibsen, Henrik - Ghosts
Ibsen, Henrik - When We Dead Awaken
Kane, Sarah - 4.48 Psychosis
Miller, Arthur - Death of a Salesman
Sartre, Jean-Paul - No Exit
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - King Lear
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Othello
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare, William - The Taming of the Shrew
Shaw, George Bernard - Major Barbara
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Wilde, Oscar - The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilder, Thornton - Our Town
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie

Poetry:
Alighieri, Dante - The Divine Comedy
Eliot, T.S. - Four Quartets
Eliot, T.S. - Selected Poems
Hopkins, Gerald Manley - The Major Works
Milton, John - Paradise Lost
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wordsworth, William - The Major Works
Other individual poems too numerous to name