Hey!
I'm a uni student and in need of a good read that follows the guidelines. I do have a reading list and I'd like to read something from there, as the list is already quite extensive. The professor is open to us reading something else, but in that case, it should be an author from an English-speaking country. There has to be an adaptation available (preferably, a movie) as I'll have to write an essay later comparing the two.
I am a huge fan of Kafka's works, especially The Trial. Its theme of existential absurdity and judgement without a clear reason is very striking for me as a trans man. I also like Dostojevski's Crime and Punishment and Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell To Arms), but the latter's novel I have already analyzed for this class, so I'm aiming for a different author. For movies, I like The Green Mile. I'd like to read something I actually enjoy and resonate with, maybe connect to my own experiences. So far, themes of alienation, philosophical unease and quiet isolation have been what I enjoy.
Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White, Moonstone
Charles Dickens David Copperfield, Great Expectations
George Eliot Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South, Cranford
Thomas Hardy The Mayor of Casterbridge
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
R. L. Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
W. M. Thackeray Vanity Fair
Anthony Trollope The Warden, Barchester Towers
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
E. M. Forster Howards End, A Passage to India
John Galsworthy The Forsyte Saga
Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier
James Joyce Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando
D. H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Women in Love
Evelyn Waugh Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
George Orwell 1984, Animal Farm
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim
Iris Murdoch Under the Net, The Good Apprentice, The Black Prince
Graham Greene The Power and the Glory, England Made Me
William Golding The Lord of the Flies
Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie
Doris Lessing The Grass Is Singing, Martha Quest, The Golden Notebook
Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea
Angela Carter Nights at the Circus, Wise Children
David Lodge Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work
John Fowles The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Collector, The Magus
Margaret Drabble The Ice Age
Malcolm Bradbury The History Man, Rates of Exchange
A. S. Byatt Possession, Angels and Insects
Ian McEwan The Cement Garden, Atonement, Saturday, or any other novel
Martin Amis Time’s Arrow
Christopher Isherwood The Berlin Stories
Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day, An Artist of the Floating World, Pale View of the Hills, Klara and the Sun
Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Sexing the Cherry
Graham Swift Waterland
Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
James Kelman How Late It Was How Late
Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses, Midnight’s Children, Moore's Last Sigh, Victory City
Ben Okri The Famished Road, Astonishing the Gods, Freedom Artist, or any other novel
Timothy Mo Sour Sweet
Hanif Kureishi The Buddha of the Suburbia
Ali Smith Autumn, also the following parts of the tetralogy: Winter, Spring, Summer; The Hotel World
Zadie Smith NW, White Teeth, On Beauty, or any other novel
Carmen Marcus How Saints Die
Sarah Moss Summerwater
Sarah Perry The Essex Serpent
Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends; Normal People; Beautiful World, Where are You
Avni Doshi Burnt Sugar
Joanna Walsh Break.up
Anna Burns The Milkman
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin
James Fenimore Cooper Leatherstocking Tales
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Herman Melville Moby Dick
Louisa May Alcott Little Women
Kate Chopin The Awakening
Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage
Edgar Allan Poe Short stories
Willa Cather My Antonia
Henry James The Portrait of the Lady, The Bostonians, The Wings of the Dove, Daisy Miller
Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy
Jack London Martin Eden
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome
Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night
John Dos Passos U.S.A.
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, To Whom the Bell Tolls
William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom!
John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Nathaniel West A Cool Million, The Day of the Locust
Eudora Welty Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, short stories
Saul Bellow More Die of Heartbreak, Seize the Day, Herzog
Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
Truman Capote In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Carson McCullers The Ballad of the Sad Café, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Flannery O’Connor Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, short stories
Vladimir Nabokov Lolita
Gore Vidal Lincoln
William Styron Sophie’s Choice
J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five, The Children’s Crusade, Cat’s Cradle
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar
Bernard Malamud The Fixer
Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead
E. L. Doctorow Ragtime, The Book of Daniel
Cormack McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49
Robert Coover The Public Burning
Jack Kerouac On the Road
Joyce Carol Oates Wonderland
Ishmael Reed The Terrible Twos, Mumbo Jumbo
Philip Roth Sabbath’s Theatre
John Barth The Floating Opera, The Sot-Weed Factor
Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Alice Walker The Colour Purple
Jerzy Kosinsky The Devil Tree
Paul Auster The New York Trilogy
John Updike Rabbit, Run
John DeLillo White Noise
Toni Morrison Beloved, Sula, The Song of Solomon
Leslie Marmon Silko Ceremony
Louise Erdrich The Antelope Wife
Isaac Bashevis Singer A Crown Of Feathers
Marilynne Robinson Housekeeping
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche Americanah
Julia Alvarez How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Don DeLillo Cosmopolis
Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad
Dave Eggers The Circle
Louise Erdrich The Sentence
Jeffrey Eugenides Virgin Suicides
Siri Hustvedt The Blazing World
Rachel Kushner The Flamethrowers
Ben Lerner Leaving Atocha Station
Cormac McCarthy The Road
Julie Otsuka The Buddha in the Attic
Richard Powers Overstory
Jesmyn Ward Salvage the Bones
Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
Frederick Philip Grove Settlers of the Marsh
Sinclair Ross As For Me and My House
Elizabeth Smart By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano
Ethel Wilson Swamp Angel
Sheila Watson The Double Hook
William Ormond Mitchell Who Has Seen the Wind
Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers
Robertson Davies Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders
Margaret Laurence Stone Angel, The Diviners, or any other novel
Alice Munro Lives of Girls and Women, Love of a Good Woman, Open Secrets, or any other collection
Margaret Atwood Surfacing, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, or any other
novel
Marian Engel Bear
Timothy Findley Famous Last Words, Wars, Pilgrim
Rudy Wiebe The Temptations of Big Bear, or any other novel
Michael Ondaatje Coming Through Slaughter, In the Skin of the Lion, The English Patient, Anil’s
Ghost
Audrey Thomas Intertidal Life
Aritha van Herk No Fixed Address, Restlessness, or any other novel
Sandra Birdsell Night Travellers, Children of the Day
Tomson Highway Kiss of the Fur Queen
Susan Swan Biggest Modern Woman of the World
Jane Urquhart The Whirlpool, Away, or any other novel
Joy Kogawa Obasan, Itsuka
Carol Shields The Stone Diaries
Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces, The Winter Vault
Anne-Marie MacDonald Fall on Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies
Alistar MacLeod No Great Mischief
Guy Vanderhaeghe The Englishman’s Boy
Kerri Sakamoto The Electrical Field
Sky Lee The Disappearing Moon Cafe
Denise Chong The Concubine’s Children
Thomas King Green Grass, Running Water
Rohinton Mistry Such a Long Journey
M. G. Vassanij The Book of Secrets, No New Land
David Adams Richards Mercy Among the Children
Eden Robinson Monkey Beach
Douglas Coupland Generation X
Yann Martel The Life of Pi
Wayson Choy Jade Peony, All That Matters
Lee Maracle Daughters are Forever
Miriam Toews A Complicated Kindness
Lori Lansens Girls, Rush Home Road
Camilla Gibb The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life, Sweetness in the Belly
Elizabeth Hay The Student of Weather, Late Nights in Air
David Bergen The Time in Between
Joseph Boyden Three Day Road
Andre Alexis Childhood
Gloria Sawai The Song of Nettie Johnson
Rawi Hage De Niro’s Game
Emma Donoghue Room
Madeleine Thien Dogs at the Perimeter
Larissa Lai Salt Fish Girl
Makeda Silvera The Heart Does Not Bend
Austin Clarke The Polished Hoe
Pauline Holdstock Beyond Measure
Esi Edugyan The Second Life of Samuel Tyne
David Chariandy Soucouyant
André Alexis Fifteen Dogs
Joshua Whitehead Johnny Appleseed
Tania Tagaq Split Tooth
Francesca Ekwuyasi Butter Honey Pig Bread
Omar El Akkad What Strange Paradise
Mary Lawson A Town Called Solace
Noor Naga If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
by burlapscars