<p>Hi. I know there aren’t any required reading books for the summer (except for specific classes, I think?), but I was just wondering if some people could share what books should/must generally be read before entering ANY college. </p>
<p>From looking around the internet, these seem like some of the books:
Farewell to Arms
Red Badge of Courage
1984
Catch-22
Odyssey
The Great Gatsby
Invisible Man
etc. </p>
<p>Does anyone have any others that are a must? I would think that these are all opinion/experienced based recommendations though.</p>
<p>You won’t be able to read all of these, but:</p>
<p>The Power and the Glory (Graham Greene)
1984 (George Orwell)
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
All the King’s Men (Robert Penn Warren)
The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
The Chronicles of Narnia (Series) (C.S. Lewis)
His Dark Materials (Trilogy) (Phillip Pullman)
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest**** (Ken Kesey)
The Bridge to Teribithia (Katherine Paterson)
The Great Gilly Hopkins (Katherine Paterson)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Things Hoped For (Andrew Clements)
Things not seen (Andrew Clements)
Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
The three Musketeers (Alexander Dumas)
A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle)
Jacob Have I Loved (Katherine Paterson)
Cry the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)</p>
<p>Fight Club***** (Chuck Palahniuk)
The Chocolate War**** (Robert Cormier)
Lord of the Flies**** (William Golding)</p>
<p>Their Eyes were Watching God**** (Zora Neale Hurston)
Madame Bovary***** (Gustave Flaubert)
Sister Carrie***** (Theodore Dreiser)
Roots***** (Alex Haley)
Slaughterhouse Five***** (Kurt Vonnegut)
Breakfast of Champions**** (Kurt Vonnegut)
Brave New World***** (Aldous Huxley)
Beloved***** (Toni Morrison)
Absalom! Absalom! ***** (William Faulkner)
I know why the Caged Bird sings**** (Maya Angelou)
A Clockwork Orange***** (Anthony Burgess)
Go Tell it on the Mountain ***** (James Baldwin)
The Lord of the Rings**** (J.R.R. Tolkein)
Crime and Punishment**** (Fyodor Dostoevsky)
Song of Solomon ****** (Toni Morrison)
Catch-22***** (Joseph Heller)
The Crying Lot of 49 ***** (Thomas Pynchon)
Les Miserables **** (Victor Hugo)
East of Eden**** (John Steinbeck)
The Picture of Dorian Gray***** (Oscar Wilde)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles***** (Thomas Hardy)
For Whom the Bell Tolls**** (Ernest Hemmingway)
As I lay dying **** (William Faulkner)
The Hobbit **** (J.R.R. Tolkein)
The Sound and the Fury **** (William Faulkner)
A Farewell to Arms**** (Ernest Hemmingway)
Inferno ***** (Dante)
The Sun Also Rises **** (Ernest Hemmingway)
Heart of Darkness ***** (Joseph Conrad)
Moby Dick ***** (Herman Melville)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)</p>
<p>screwitlah: basic foundation in the must-read novels/books are supposed to help a lot for college (and life), i think. i mean, there isnt an actual list, it’s all kind of subjective</p>
<p>no biggie. I have a personal to-read list on Word saved, so I saw your thread and copy-pasted my list. The top part is books I have read, and the starred stuff is books I need to list.</p>
<p>screwitlah - the list isn’t mandatory at all. But there are some books that everyone reads, and are kind of just classics, you know? If you’ve read those before going to college, it can help in a lot of ways. Or so my english teachers have told me… Plus, 90% of these books are absolutely amazing anyways.</p>
<p>depending on what ur doing u might want to read the aeneid (virgil) and the republic (plato). those two get a lot of references in quite a few disciplines, especially the latter.</p>