Reading List (2022-2025)

Full list, followed by Top 20 lists for both Non-Fiction and Fiction.


Full List (A-Z)

  • Albert Camus – The Stranger
  • Alan Watts – The Wisdom of Insecurity
  • Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
  • Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo
  • Alexandre Dumas – The Three Musketeers
  • Andrew Roberts – Napoleon: A Life
  • Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird
  • Anthony Powell – A Dance to the Music of Time
  • Anthony Trollope – Barchester Towers
  • Antoine De Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
  • Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics
  • Arthur Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Representation
  • Arthur Schopenhauer – Parerga and Paralipomena
  • Baltasar Gracian – The Art of Worldly Wisdom
  • Barry Strauss – Ten Caesars
  • Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
  • Benedict de Spinoza – Theologico-Political Treatise
  • Bernard Malamud – The Assistant
  • Bernard Malamud – The Fixer
  • Bertrand Russell – The History of Western Philosophy
  • Bertrand Russell – In Praise of Idleness
  • Bertrand Russell – The Conquest of Happiness
  • Blaise Pascal – Pensées
  • Boethius – The Consolation of Philosophy
  • C.G. Jung – Man and His Symbols
  • C.G. Jung – The Essential Jung
  • C.G. Jung – The Freud/Jung Letters
  • Carson McCullers – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
  • Charles Dickens – Bleak House
  • Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
  • Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
  • Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart
  • Christopher Hibbert – The French Revolution
  • Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin
  • Cicero – Tusculan Disputations
  • Clare Carlisle – Spinoza’s Religion
  • Confucius – The Analects
  • Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
  • David Sedaris – The Best of Me
  • David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
  • Dennis Lehane – Gone, Baby, Gone
  • Dennis Lehane – Moonlight Mile
  • Dennis Lehane – Mystic River
  • Dennis Lehane – Shutter Island
  • Dennis Lehane – Since We Fell
  • Dennis Lehane – The Given Day
  • Dennis Lehane – World Gone By
  • Diogenes Laertius – Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
  • Don DeLillo – Libra
  • Don DeLillo – Underworld
  • Don Miguel Ruiz – The Four Agreements
  • Don Miguel Ruiz – The Voice of Knowledge
  • E.L. Doctorow – Ragtime
  • E.M. Forster – A Passage to India
  • Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty
  • Elmore Leonard – Rum Punch
  • Elmore Leonard – The Switch
  • Elmore Leonard – Up in Honey’s Room
  • Ernest Hemingway – Death in the Afternoon
  • Ernest Hemingway – Green Hills of Africa
  • Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls
  • Ernest Hemingway – The Complete Short Stories
  • Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and The Sea
  • Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises
  • Ernle Bradford – The Great Siege
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender is the Night
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Last Tycoon
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald – This Side of Paradise
  • Francis Bacon – Essays
  • François de La Rochefoucauld – Reflections
  • Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
  • Friedrich Nietzsche – The Will to Power
  • Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathrustra
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Idiot
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
  • Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary
  • George Bernard Shaw – Pygmalion
  • George Eliot – Middlemarch
  • George Eliot – Silas Marner
  • George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris and London
  • Goldsworthy – Augustus: First Emperor of Rome
  • Goldsworthy – Caesar: Life of A Colossus
  • Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana
  • Gregory David Roberts – Mountain Shadow
  • Gregory David Roberts – Shantaram
  • H.G. Wells – The Time Machine
  • Harvey A. Silverglate – Three Felonies a Day
  • Henry David Thoreau – Walden
  • Henry Green – Loving
  • Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
  • Henry Roth – Call it Sleep
  • Herman Melville – Moby Dick
  • Hermann Hesse – Siddartha
  • Hesiod – Works and Days
  • Honoré de Balzac – Lost Illusions
  • Honoré de Balzac – Pere Goriot
  • Horace – The Complete Odes and Epodes
  • Hunter S. Thompson – Hell’s Angels
  • Ian McEwan – Atonement
  • Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons
  • James Allen – As a Man Thinketh
  • James Baldwin – Another Country
  • James Ellroy – The Black Dahlia
  • Jean-Dominique Bauby – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Confessions
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau – The Social Contract
  • Jean-Paul Sartre – We Only Have This Life to Live
  • Jed Rakoff – Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free
  • Jerzy Kosinsky – The Painted Bird
  • Joe Ide – IQ
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – From My Life: Poetry and Truth
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry
  • John Cheever – Falconer
  • John Julius Norwich – Four Princes
  • John Kennedy O’Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces
  • John O’Hara – Appointment in Samarra
  • John Steinbeck – East of Eden
  • John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath
  • John Lewis Gaddis – On Grand Strategy
  • Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
  • Jonathan Franzen – Strong Motion
  • Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
  • Jonathan Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
  • Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
  • Joseph Conrad – Lord Jim
  • Joseph Heller – Catch-22
  • Joseph Heller – Something Happened
  • Junot Diaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
  • Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim
  • Kurt Vonnegut – Breakfast of Champions
  • Kurt Vonnegut – Pity the Reader
  • Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five
  • Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
  • Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
  • Levon Helm – This Wheel’s on Fire
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline – Journey to the End of the Night
  • Lord Chesterfield – Letters to my Son
  • Malcolm Lowry – Under the Volcano
  • Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
  • Mark Twain – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Michael Connelly – The Black Echo
  • Michel de Montaigne – Essays
  • Michel Foucault – Discipline & Punish
  • Moses Maimonides – The Guide for the Perplexed
  • Nancy Mitford – Frederick the Great
  • Napoleon Bonaparte – Memoirs from St. Helena
  • Nathanael West – The Day of the Locust
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
  • Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning
  • Niccolo Machiavelli – Discourses
  • Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
  • Norman Vincent Peale – The Power of Positive Thinking
  • O. Henry – Selected Stories
  • Orison Swett Marden – How to Get What you Want
  • Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Paul Bowles – The Sheltering Sky
  • Philip Roth – American Pastoral
  • Philip Roth – Portnoy’s Complaint
  • Philip Roth – The Plot Against America
  • Plato – Republic
  • Plotinus – The Enneads
  • Plutarch – Lives
  • Plutarch – Moralia
  • Polybius – The Histories
  • Rafael Sabatini – The Life of Cesare Borgia
  • Rainer Maria Rilke – Letters to a Young Poet
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance and Other Essays
  • Raymond Carver – Where I’m Calling From
  • Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep
  • Raymond Chandler – The Simple Art of Murder
  • Richard Burton – Arabian Nights
  • Richard Ford – The Sportswriter
  • Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road
  • Robert Graves – I, Claudius
  • Robert Louis Stevenson – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Robert Penn Warren – All the King’s Men
  • Robert Stone – Dog Soldiers
  • Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children
  • Saul Bellow – Henderson the Rain King
  • Saul Bellow – Herzog
  • Saul Bellow – The Adventures of Augie March
  • Seneca – Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
  • Seneca – On the Shortness of Life
  • Seneca – Dialogues
  • Søren Kierkegaard – Papers and Journals
  • Stendhal – The Charterhouse of Parma
  • Stendhal – The Red and the Black
  • Stephen King – On Writing
  • Tacitus – The Annals
  • Tacitus – The Histories
  • Tana French – In The Woods
  • Theodore Dreiser – An American Tragedy
  • Theodore Roosevelt – The Strenuous Life
  • Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
  • Thomas Mann – Buddenbrooks
  • Thomas Pynchon – Gravity’s Rainbow
  • Thomas Pynchon – The Crying of Lot 49
  • Thornton Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey
  • Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
  • Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
  • Victor Hugo – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Virgil – Complete Works
  • Voltaire – Candide
  • Voltaire – Philosophy of History
  • Voltaire – Treatise on Toleration
  • W. Timothy Gallwey – The Inner Game of Tennis
  • Walker Percy – The Moviegoer
  • Walter Isaacson – Elon Musk
  • Walter Mosley – Devil in a Blue Dress
  • Walter Scott – Ivanhoe
  • Will Durant – The Renaissance
  • Will Durant – The Reformation
  • Will Durant – The Age of Reason Begins
  • Will Durant – The Age of Louis XIV
  • Will Durant – The Age of Voltaire
  • Will Durant – Rousseau and Revolution
  • Will Durant – The Story of Philosophy
  • Will Durant – The Lessons of History
  • William Burroughs – Naked Lunch
  • William Faulkner – Light in August
  • William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
  • William Gaddis – The Recognitions
  • William Goldman – Adventures in the Screen Trade
  • William Thackeray – Vanity Fair

Top 20: Non-Fiction

  1. Blaise Pascal – Pensées
  2. Plutarch – Moralia
  3. Seneca – Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
  4. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics
  5. Baltasar Gracian – The Art of Worldly Wisdom
  6. Arthur Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Representation
  7. Francis Bacon – Essays
  8. Friedrich Nietzsche – The Will to Power
  9. Michel de Montaigne – Essays
  10. Bertrand Russell – The History of Western Philosophy
  11. Cicero – Tusculan Disputations
  12. Plutarch – Lives
  13. Will Durant – The Age of Voltaire
  14. François de La Rochefoucauld – Reflections
  15. Ernle Bradford – The Great Siege
  16. Will Durant – Rousseau and Revolution
  17. James Allen – As a Man Thinketh
  18. Michel Foucault – Discipline & Punish
  19. Lord Chesterfield – Letters to my Son
  20. Tacitus – Annals

Top 20: Fiction

  1. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
  2. Honoré de Balzac – Lost Illusions
  3. Hermann Hesse – Siddartha
  4. Theodore Dreiser – An American Tragedy
  5. William Thackeray – Vanity Fair
  6. Thomas Mann – Buddenbrooks
  7. Victor Hugo – Les Misérables
  8. Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
  9. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe
  10. Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons
  11. F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned
  12. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
  13. Stendhal – The Charterhouse of Parma
  14. John O’Hara – Appointment in Samarra
  15. Jerzy Kosinsky – The Painted Bird
  16. Robert Penn Warren – All the King’s Men
  17. John Cheever – Falconer
  18. Saul Bellow – The Adventures of Augie March
  19. David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
  20. Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road

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