The Guilt List

A few months ago, I came across a list of books posted by San Jose State University's English and Comparative Literature Department. They have termed the suggested texts as their "guilt list", offering this warning---"Any English major who hasn't read most of these has no right to joy!"

As a Lit major from Florida State University (Scalp 'em Seminoles!) and a voracious reader AND as someone seriously contemplating my master's in the field, I took this list to heart. Since coming across it, I have been trying to familiarize with some of the books on the list that I hadn't encountered before. Peruse the list. What do think should be added or omitted? Do any of these books stand out as tomes that changed your life? Comment, discuss, enjoy!

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart
Aeschylus. The Oresteia
Allende, Isabelle. The House of the Spirits
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima
Aristotle. Poetics
Atwood, Margaret. Surfacing
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice, Emma
Barrio, Raymond. The Plum Plum Pickers
Barth, John. The Sot Weed Factor
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil
Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron
Boswell, James. Life of Johnson
Bradbury, Ray. Dandelion Wine
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights
Brooks, Gwendolyn. Blacks
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth
Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita
Cather, Willa. My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton. The Lady with a Dog (and plays)
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim
Cooper, James Fennimore. Leatherstocking Tales
Crane, Stephen. Red Badge of Courage
Dante, Alighieri. The Divine Comedy
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times, Bleak House, David Copperfield
Doestoevski, F. M. The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie
Duras, Marguerite. The Lover
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch
Eliot, T. S. The Wasteland, The Four Quartets
Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man
Erdrich, Louise. The Beet Queen
Euripides. The Bacchae, Hippolytus
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!, The Hamlet, Light in August
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Maddox. The Good Soldier
Fuentes, Carlos. The Death of Artemio Cruz, Where the Air is Clear
Garland, Hamlin. Main Travelled Roads
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl
Goethe. Faust
Grahame, Kenneth. Wind in the Willows
Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key
Hardy, Thomas. Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance
Hemingway, Ernest. Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises
Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey
Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God
James, Henry. Turn of the Screw, Ambassadors, The Portrait of a Lady
Johnson, Charles. The Oxherding Tale
Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses
Kafka, Franz. The Trial
Kennedy, William. Ironweed
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road
Keys, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon
Kinnell, Galway. The Past
Kingston, Maxine Hong. China Men
Lawrence, D. H. Sons and Lovers, Women in Love
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love, Experiment in Criticism
London, Jack. The Sea Wolf
Lorde, Audre. The Black Unicorn
Lowell, Robert. Life Studies
Machiavelli, The Prince
Mahfouz, Naguib. Midaq Alley
Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Dead
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain
Marlow, Christopher. Dr. Faustus
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. A Hundred Years of Solitude, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
McCullers, Carson. Short Stories
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, Typee
Jean de Meun. The Romance of the Rose
Middleton, Thomas. The Changeling
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons
Milton, John. Paradise Lost
Momeday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain
Morrison, Toni. The Song of Soloman
Munro, Alice K. Selected Stories
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Norris, Frank. McTeague
O'Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood, A Good Man is Hard to Find
Orwell, George. 1984, Animal Farm
Ovid. Metamorphosis
Paterson, Katherine. Jacob Have I Loved
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49
Plato, The Republic
Proust, Marcel. Swann's Way
Rich, Adrienne. Selected Poems
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela or Clarissa
Roethke, Theodore. Words for the Wind
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye
Saroyan, William. The Human Comedy
Scott, Walter. Waverley, Ivanhoe
Shakespeare, William. The Major Plays
Shaw, George Bernard. Mrs. Warren's Profession
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony
Silone, Ignazio. Bread and Wine
Sophocles. Oedipus the King, Antigone
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queen
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery Row
Stegner, Wallace. Angle of Repose
Stendhal (Henri Beyle). The Red and the Black
Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy
Stevens, Wallace. The Palm at the End of the Mind
Styron, William. Lie Down in Darkness
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Makepace. Vanity Fair
Thurber, James. The Thurber Carnival
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace, Anna Karenina
Trollope, Anthony. The Way We Live Now
Twain, Mark. Huckleberry Finn
Updike, John. Rabbit, Run; Trust Me
Virgil. The Aeneid
Wallant, Edward Lewis. The Pawnbroker
West, Nathaniel. The Day of the Locust
Wharton. Edith. The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence
White, E. B. Charlotte's Web
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Ernest
Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward Angel
Wolfe, Tom. Bonfire of the Vanities
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway
Wright, A. T. Islandia
Wright, Richard. Black Boy, Native Son
Yeats, William Butler. Collected Poems
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Memoirs of Hadrian
Also, Genesis, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, The Bhagavad Gita, Qu'ran, Song of Roland, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight