Lifetime Reading Plan

While looking for a computer book at the library, I stumbled over a paperback that suggested a list of books that we might read during a lifetime. Although I am not much of a reader, especially of fiction as most of the following are, I think it was a great concept and goal to aim at. To be an informed member of society, it is nice to know a little about the most important pieces of literature from around the world. Some entries are for short books, others such as Shakespear's complete work are rather more ambitious. Here then is the table of contents from The New Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman & John S. Major:

1. Anonymous, ca. 2000 B.C.E. (Scribe Sin-Leqi-Unninni, ca. 700 B.C.E.), The Epic of Gilgamesh
2. Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Iliad
3. Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Odyssey
4. Confucius, 551-479 B.C.E., The Analects
5. Aeschylus, 525-456/5 B.C.E., The Oresteja
6. Sophocles, 49~406 B.C.E., Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
7. Euripides, 484-406 B.C.E., Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, Electra, The Bacchae
8. Herodotus, ca. 484-425 B.C.E., The Histories
9. Thucydides, ca. 470/460-ca. 400 B.C.E., The History of the Peloponnesian War
10. Sun-tzu, ca. 450-38o B.C.E., The Art of War
11. Aristophanes, 448-388 B.C.E., Lysistrata, The Clouds, The Birds
12. Plato, 428-348 B.C.E., Selected Works
13. Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.E., Ethics, Politics, Poetics
14. Mencius, ca. 400-320 B.C.E., The Book of Mencius
15. Attributed to Valmiki, ca. 300 B.C.E., The Ramayana
16. Attributed to Vyasa, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Mahabharata
17. Anonymous, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Bhagavad Gita
18. Ssu-ma Ch'ien, 145-86 B.C.E., Records of the Grand Historian
19. Lucretius, ca. 100-ca. 50 B.C.E., Of the Nature of Things
20. Virgil, 70-19 B.C.E., The Aeneid
21. Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, Meditations

22. Saint Augustine, 354-430, The Confessions
23. Kalidasa, ca. 400, The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala
24. Revealed to Muhummad, completed 650, The Koran
25. Hui-neng, 63~713, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
26. Firdausi, ca. 940-1020, Shah Nameh
27. Sei Shonagon, ca. 965-1035, The Pillow-Book
28. Lady Murasaki, ca. 976-1015, The Tale of Genji
29. Omar Khayyam, 1048-?, The Rubaiyat
30. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, The Divine Comedy
31. Luo Kuan-chung, ca. 1330-1400, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
32. Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342-1400, The Canterbury Tales
33. Anonymous, ca. 1500, The Thousand and One Nights
34. Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, The Prince
35. François Rabelais, 1483-1553, Gargantua and Pantagruel
36. Attributed to Wu Ch'eng-en, 550-1592, Journey to the West
37. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533-1592, Selected Essays
38. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1547-1616, Don Quixote

39. William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Complete Works
40. John Donne, 1573-1631, Selected Works
41. Anonymous, published 1618, The Plum in the Golden Vase (Chin P'ing Mei)
42. Galileo Galilei, 1574-1642, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
43. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, Leviathan
44. René Descartes, 1596-1650, Discourse on Method
45. John Milton, 16o~1674, Paradise Lost, Lycidas, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Sonnets, Areopagitica
46. Molière, 1622-1673, Selected Plays
47. Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, Thoughts (Pensés)
48. John Bunyan, 1628-1688, Pilgrim's Progress
49. John Locke, 1632-1704, Second Treatise of Government
50. Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
51. Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731, Robinson Crusoe
52. Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, Gulliver's Travels
53. Voltaire, 1694-1778, Candide and other works
54. David Hume, 1711-1776, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
55. Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, Tom Jones
56. Ts'ao Hseh-ch'in, 1715-1763, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone)
57. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, Confessions
58. Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768, Tristram Shandy
59. James Boswell, 1740-1795, The Life of Samuel Johnson
60. Thomas Jefferson and others, Basic Documents in American History, edited by Richard B. Morris
61. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers, 1787, edited by Clinton Rossiter

62. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, Faust
63. William Blake, 1757-1827, Selected Works
64. William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, The Prelude, Selected Shorter Poems, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800)
65. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Biographia Literaria, Writings on Shakespeare
66. Jane Austen, 1775-1817, Pride and Predudice, Emma
67. Stendhal, 1783-1842, The Red and the Black
68. Honoré de Balzac, 1799-1850, Père Goriot, Eugénie Grandet, Cousin Bette
69. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, Selected Works
70. Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864, The Scarlet Letter, Selected Tales
71. Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, Democracy in America
72. John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, On Liberty, The Subjection of Women
73. Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, The Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species
74. Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, 1809~1852, Dead Souls
75. Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, Short Stories and Other Works
76. William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863, Vanity Fair
77. Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorrit
78. Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882, The Warden, The Last Chronicle of Barset, The Eustace Diamonds, The Way We Live Now, Autobiography
79. The Brontë Sisters
    1. Charlotte Brontë 1816-1855, Jane Eyre
    2. Emily Brontë 1818-1848, Wuthering Heights
80. Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, Walden, Civil Disobedience
81. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, 1818-1883, Fathers and Sons
82. Karl Marx, 1818-1883, and Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895, The Communist Manzfrsto
83. Herman Melville, 1819-1891, Moby Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener
84. George Eliot, 1819-1880, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch
85. Walt Whitman, 1819-1892, Selected Poems, Democratic Vistas, Preface to the first issue of Leaves of Grass (1855), A Backward Glance O'er Travelled Roads
86. Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1880, Madame Bovary
87. Feodor Mikhialovich Dostoyevsky, 1821-1881, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov
88. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910, War and Peace
89. Henrick Ibsen, 1828-1906, Selected Plays
90. Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, Collected Poems
91. Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass
92. Mark Twain, 1835-1910, Huckleberry Finn
93. Henry Adams, 1838-1918, The Education of Henry Adams
94. Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928, The Mayor of Casterbridge
95. William James, 1842-1910, The Principles of Psychology, Pragmatism, Four Essays from The Meaning of Truth, The Varieties of Religious Experience
96. Henry James, 1843-1916, The Ambassadors
97. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, and other works

98. Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, Selected Works; including The Interpretation of Dreams, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Civilization and Its Discontents
99. George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Selected Plays and Prefaces
100. Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, Nostromo
101. Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, Selected Short Stories
102. Edith Wharton, 1862-1937, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth
103. William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Collected Poems, Collected Plays, Autobiography
104. Natsume Soseki, 1867-1916, Kokoro
105. Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, Rememberence of Things Past
106. Robert Frost, 1874-1963, Collected Poems
107. Thomas Mann, 1875-1955, The Magic Mountain
108. E.M. Forster, 1879-1970, A Passage to India
109. Lu Hsn, 1881-1936, Collected Short Stories
110. James Joyce, 1882-1941, Ulysses
111. Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Olando, The Waves
112. Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, The Trial, The Castle, Selected Short Stories
113. D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love
114. Tanizaki Junichiro, 1886-1965, The Makioka Sisters
115. Eugene O'Neill, 1888-1953, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night
116. T.S. Eliot, 1888-1965, Collected Poems, Collected Plays
117. Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, Brave New World
118. William Faulkner, 1897-1962, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying
119. Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, Short Stories
120. Kawabata Yasunari, 1899-1972, Beauty and Sadness
121. Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986, Labyrinths, Dreamtigers
122. Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Lolita, Pale Fire, Speak, Memory
123. George Orwell, 1903-1950, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days
124. R.K. Narayan, 1906-, The English Teacher, The Vendor of Sweets
125. Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape
126. W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, Collected Poems
127. Albert Camus, 1913-1960, The Plague, The Stranger
128. Saul Bellow, 1915-, The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift
129. Meksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918-, The First Circle, Cancer Ward
130. Thomas Kuhn, 1922-1996, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
131. Mishima Yukio, 1925-1970, Confessions of a Mask, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
132. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1928-, One Hundred Years of Solitude
133. Chinua Achebe, 1930, Things Fall Apart