In Honor of Words

Distressingly Incomplete

(Claire’s List of Books to Read Before You Die)

So, here’s the deal. I’ve put together this list, and it will never be complete. Such is the way of things. There are books that are on here because they are classics and everyone should read them. There are books that are on here because they make me smile. There are books that are on here because they make me cry. I guarantee that you will hate at least one of them. I guarantee that you will love at least five of them. Such, also, is the way of things. Send me your thoughts, send me your suggestions, send me your anythings.

But above all, find the words that speak to you. Enjoy.

Title	Author
The Oresteia	Aeschyleus
Emma	Austen, Jane
Pride & Prejudice	Austen, Jane
Sense & Sensibility	Austen, Jane
Ocean Sea	Baricco, Allesandro
Regeneration	Barker, Pat
The Feast of Love	Baxter, Charles
A Short History of Nearly Everything	Bryson, Bill
The Good Earth	Buck, Pearl S.
Possession	Byatt, A. S.
Ender’s Game	Card, Orson Scott
My Antonia	Cather, Willa
Don Quixote	Cervantes
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	Chabon, Michael
The Canterbury Tales	Chaucer, Geoffrey
Heart of Darkness	Conrad, Joseph
Corelli’s Mandolin	De Berniers, Louis
A Tale of Two Cities	Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations	Dickens, Charles
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water	Dorris, Michael
Crime & Punishment	Dostoevsky, Fyodor
The Brother Karamazov	Dostoevsky, Fyodor
The Brothers K	Duncan, David James
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	Eggers, Dave
Middlemarch	Eliot, George
Absalom, Absalom	Faulkner, William
The Sound and the Fury	Faulkner, William
Bridget Jones’ Diary	Fielding, Helen
The Great Gatsby	Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Madame Bovary	Flaubert, Gustave
A Room with a View	Forster, E. M.
A Lesson Before Dying	Gaines, Ernest
Cold Comfort Farm	Gibbons, Stella
Memoirs of a Geisha	Golden, Arthur
Lord of the Flies	Golding, William
The Princess Bride	Goldman, William
Ordinary People	Guest, Judith
Snow Falling on Cedars	Guterson, David
The Scarlet Letter	Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Catch 22	Heller, Joseph
A Farewell to Arms	Hemingway, Ernest
For Whom the Bell Tolls	Hemingway, Ernest
The Histories	Herodotus
The Iliad	Homer
The Odyssey	Homer
High Fidelity	Hornby, Nick
A Thousand Splendid Suns	Hosseini, Khaled
A Prayer for Owen Meany	Irving, John
The Cider House Rules	Irving, John
Remains of the Day	Ishiguro, Kazuo
The Portrait of a Lady	James, Henry
On the Road	Kerouac, Jack
Pigs in Heaven	Kingsolver, Barbara
A Separate Peace	Knowles, John
Interpreter of Maladies	Lahiri, Jhumpa
To Kill a Mockingbird	Lee, Harper
Inherit the Wind	Lee, Robert E.
The Call of the Wild	London, Jack
Life of Pi	Martel, Yann
All the Pretty Horses	McCarthy, Cormac
Blood Meridian	McCarthy, Cormac
Lonesome Dove	McMurtry, Larry
Fugitive Pieces	Michaels, Anne
Paradise Lost	Milton
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal	Moore, Christopher
Song of Solomon	Morrison, Toni
Lolita	Nabokov, Vladimir
The Things They Carried	O’Brien, Tim
The English Patient	Ondaatje, Michael
Once a Runner	Parker, John L.
Bel Canto	Patchett, Ann
The Chosen	Potok, Chaim
His Dark Materials Series The Golden Compass The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass	Pullman, Philip
Atlas Shrugged	Rand, Ayn
The Fountainhead	Rand, Ayn
Where the Red Fern Grows	Rawls, Wilson
All Quiet on the Western Front	Remarque, Erich Maria
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues	Robbins, Tom
The Human Stain	Roth, Philip
The Harry Potter Series	Rowling, J. K.
The God of Small Things	Roy, Arundhati
Shalimar the Clown	Rushdie, Salman
The Satanic Verses	Rushdie, Salman
Love Story	Segal, Erich
Antony & Cleopatra	Shakespeare, William
Hamlet	Shakespeare, William
Romeo & Juliet	Shakespeare, William
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Smith, Betty
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich	Solzhenitsyn
Of Mice & Men	Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath	Steinbeck, John
Arcadia	Stoppard, Tom
The Joy Luck Club	Tan, Amy
Anna Karenina	Tolstoy, Leo
War & Peace	Tolstoy, Leo
The Aeneid	Virgil
The Color Purple	Walker, Alice
The Age of Innocence	Wharton, Edith
The House of Mirth	Wharton, Edith
Mrs. Dalloway	Woolf, Virginia
To the Lighthouse	Woolf, Virginia