Influential Reading

A few works that have had lasting impact or were otherwise notable:

  • Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)

  • Aesop - Aesop's Fables

  • Alcott, Louisa May - Little Women (Little Women, #1)

  • Alexie Sherman - First Indian on the Moon

  • Alexie, Sherman - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

  • Alighieri, Dante - The Divine Comedy

  • Bachman, Richard - The Running Man

  • Bourdain, Anthony - Kitchen Confidential

  • Bourdain, Anthony - The Bobby Gold Stories

  • Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre

  • Budnitz, Judy - Flying Leap

  • Budnitz, Judy - Nice Big American Baby

  • Bukowski, Charles - You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

  • Burnett, Frances Hodgson - The Secret Garden

  • Carver, Raymond - Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  • Chiang, Ted - Stories of Your Life and Others

  • Clarke, Arthur C. - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #1)

  • Coetzee, J.M. - Waiting for the Barbarians

  • Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness

  • Crichton, Michael - Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)

  • Crichton, Michael - Travels

  • Cronley, Jay - Funny Farm

  • Dahl, Roald - Fantastic Mr. Fox

  • Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe

  • Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations

  • Drake, David - Time Safari

  • Eldon, Dan - The Journey is the Destination : the Journals of Dan Eldon

  • Endō, Shūsaku - Silence

  • Englebert, Omer - St. Francis of Assisi: A Biography

  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby

  • Frank, Anne - The Diary of a Young Girl

  • Franklin, Benjamin - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

  • Freud, Sigmund - Moses and Monotheism

  • Fromm, Erich - You Shall Be as Gods

  • Héctor García/ Francesc Miralles - Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life

  • Golding, William - Lord of the Flies

  • Gray, Spalding - Swimming to Cambodia

  • Hamilton, Edith - Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

  • Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter

  • Hemingway, Ernest - The Old Man and the Sea

  • Hemingway, Ernest - The Short Stories

  • Herbert, Frank - Dune

  • Hesse, Herman - Siddhartha

  • Homer - The Odyssey

  • Horowitz, Anthony - Trigger Mortis

  • Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God

  • Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

  • Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World Revisited

  • Huxley, Aldous - Heaven and Hell

  • Huxley, Aldous - Island

  • Huxley, Aldous - The Doors of Perception

  • Irving, John - A Prayer for Owen Meany

  • Ishiguro, Kazuo - An Artist of the Floating World

  • Johnson, Denis - Jesus' Son

  • Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

  • Keret, Etgar - The Girl on the Fridge

  • Kesey, Ken - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

  • King, Stephen - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

  • Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  • Kurniawan, Eka - Man Tiger

  • Lawrence, T.E. - Seven Pillars of Wisdom

  • Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

  • Levin, Ira - The Stepford Wives

  • Lewis, C.S. - The Screwtape Letters

  • Little, John - The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee

  • London, Jack - The Call of the Wild/ White Fang

  • Machiavelli, Niccolò - The Prince

  • Mahfouz, Naguib - Palace Walk (The Cairo Trilogy #1)

  • Markham, Beryl - West with the Night

  • Martel, Yann - Life of Pi

  • McCarthy, Cormac - All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

  • Miller, Arthur - The Crucible

  • Morrison, Toni - Beloved

  • Murakami, Haruki - A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)

  • Murakami, Haruki - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

  • Murakami, Haruki - Men Without Women

  • Murakami, Haruki - Sputnik Sweetheart

  • Murakami, Haruki - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

  • Murakami, Haruki - Wind/ Pinball: Two Novels

  • Nakamura, Fuminori - The Thief

  • O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

  • Orwell, George - 1984

  • Orwell, George - Animal Farm

  • Pearce, Joseph Chilton - The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality

  • Pirsig, Robert M. - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

  • Plotkin, Mark J. - Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest

  • Rand, Ayn - Anthem

  • Rand, Ayn - The Fountainhead

  • Rather, Dan - The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist

  • Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front

  • Ritchie, Mark Andrew - Spirit of the Rainforest

  • Rowling, J.K. - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

  • Sedaris, David - Holidays on Ice

  • Seneca - Letters from a Stoic

  • Shakespeare, William - Hamlet

  • Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein

  • Shlaes, Amity - Coolidge

  • Silverstein, Shel - Where the Sidewalk Ends

  • Sophocles - Oedipus Rex (The Theban Plays, #1)

  • Steinbeck, John - Of Mice and Men

  • Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath

  • Stoker, Bram - Dracula

  • Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  • Unknown - Beowulf

  • Verne, Jules - Journey to the Center of the Earth (Extraordinary Voyages, #3)

  • Watts, Alan - Zen

  • Wells, H.G. - The Island of Dr. Moreau

  • Wells, H.G. - The Time Machine

  • Wharton, Edith - Ethan Frome

  • White, E.B. - Charlotte's Web

  • Wiesel, Elie - Night (The Night Trilogy, #1)

  • Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray

  • Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie

  • Wiking, Meik - The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living

  • Wright, Richard - Black Boy

  • Yan, Mo - Red Sorghum

  • Yan, Mo - Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh