The Destination

Around six months ago I set out on a quest (Now it is important to note that our lives are in fact full of journeys and it would be entirely untrue to say that I have chosen this journey in exclusion of others) to learn as much as I could about the Great Literature of Human History.  To this end, I searched for a list of the all-time best classic literature, and eventually I discovered a list of two hundred such books.  I made it my goal to read each and every one of these books.  Certainly, I am far from achieving this goal and it will take many years before I can accomplish this quest, but I am still attempting to do so.  When I discovered this list I had read a meager five of these books, but I decided to take on the challenge all the same.  Six months later, I have read 11 of these books leaving 189 to go.  Sadly, this list does not contain every book that I would like to read, and most likely I shall have read twice this number by the time I finish the list, but I do hope that someday - if I am spared - I will read this entire list.  

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
3. The Aeneid by Vergil
4.  Aesop's Fables by Aesop
5. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
6. Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
8. The Ambassadors by Henry James
9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
10. The Arabian Nights by Anonymous
11. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
12. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings by James Weldon Johnson
13. The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin                                                                                        
14. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
15. Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
16. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
17. Beowulf Translated by John McNamara
18. Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville
19. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
20. The Bostonians by Henry James
21. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
22. Bulfinch's Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
23. The Call of the Wild and WhiteFang by Jack London
24. Candide by Voltaire
25. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
26. A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, & The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens                                                                                                                                                                                        
27. The Collected Oscar Wilde
28. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
29. Common Sense and Other Writings by Thomas Paine
30. The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings by Karl Marx
31. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I by Arthur Conan Doyle
32. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II by Arthur Conan Doyle
33. The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo
34. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
35. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
36. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
37. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
38. Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James
39. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
40. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
41. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
42. The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
43. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper
44. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
45. Dracula by Bram Stoker
46. Emma by Jane Austen
47. The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
48. Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson
49. Essential Dialogues of Plato by Plato
50. Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
51. Ethan Frome & Selected Stories by Edith Wharton
52. Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen                                                                                                                                   
53. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
54. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
55. The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay
56. Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights Edited by Jack N. Rakove
57. The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason
58. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
59. Germinal by Emile Zola
60. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
61. Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway Edited by Corinne Demas
62. Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives Introduction and notes by Daphne A. Brooks
63. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
64. Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
65. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift                                                                                                                                                                                        
66. Hard Times by Charles Dickens
67. Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad
68. The Histories by Herodotus
69. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
70. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
71. The House of the Dead and Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky
72. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
73. Howards End by E. M. Forster
74. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
75. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
76. The Iliad by Homer
77. The Importance of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
78. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs                                                                                                                                           
79. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
80. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
81. Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
82. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
83. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
84. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
85. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
86. The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
87. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
88. King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
89. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
90. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
91. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman                                                                                                                               
92. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Writings by Washington Irving
93. Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
94. The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
95. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
96. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
97. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
98. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
99. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
100. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York by Stephen Crane
101. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
102. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
103. Man and Superman and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
104. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas                                                                                                                              
105. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
106. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
107. Metamorphoses by Ovid
108. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
109. Middlemarch by George Eliot
110. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
111. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
112. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
113. My Ántonia by Willa Cather
114. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
115. Narrative of Sojourner Truth
116. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
117. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
118. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
119. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
120. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
121. Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky
122. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
123. The Odyssey by Homer
124. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
125. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
126. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
127. Paradise Lost by John Milton
128. Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
129. Persuasion by Jane Austen
130. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie                                                                                                                               
131. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
132. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
133. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
134. Poetics and Rhetoric by Aristotle
135. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
136. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners by James Joyce
137. Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
138. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
139. The Prince and Other Writings by Niccolò Machiavelli
140. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
141. Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
142. Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
143. Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw                                                                                                                                               
144. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
145. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
146. Republic by Plato
147. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
148. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William D. Howells
149. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
150. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
151. Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
152. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
153. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
154. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
155. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
156. Selected Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry                                                                                                                                   
157. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
158. A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
159. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
160. Silas Marner by George Eliot
161. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
162. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
163. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
164. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
165. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
166. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
167. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
168. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
169. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy                                                                                                                                                 
170. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
171. Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
172. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
173. Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
174. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
175. The Time Machine and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
176. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
177. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
178. The Turn of the Screw, The Aspern Papers, and Two Stories by Henry James
179. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
180. Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
181. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
182. Utopia by Thomas More                                                                                                                                                                                                 
183. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
184. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
185. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
186. The Virginian by Owen Wister
187. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
188. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
189. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
190. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
191. Ward No. 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
192. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
193. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
194. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
195. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James                                                                                                                                                 
196. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
197. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
198. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
199. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
200. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Quite the list, isn't it?  Yes, it is a little intimidating, but I think I can get through it.  If you know anything at all about literature, I am sure that you noticed that many of the books on this list are somewhat on the feminine side... Sadly, discrimination based on the intended audience of books would make this quest nearly useless.  I will have to persevere through all of the books on this diverse list.  

Now, I would guess that you are wondering why exactly I am writing all of this out.  The answer to this very good question is that using this blog, I will be able to write my own feelings on each of these books (and almost certainly many other books which I have read and will read throughout this journey).  Without doubt, I will not always remember how I felt about all of these books merely because there are too many books to remember.  My hope is that in the future I will be able to look back at this blog and remember something of these books.  I have little hope that this blog will ever be of much interest to anyone else, but perhaps at some point someone else will read my views of these books and decide to read them for themselves.  Either way, for my own sake or for others, I am going to do this.  If nothing else, it will give me a chance to write.  

Wishing you all the best,

Jodath

P.S. If anyone wishes to comment on my opinions of these books, I am certainly open to other views.  Also, if there are any other books which you would recommend that I read, please feel free to mention them - I am always looking for more books to read.