Great Books to Read
There is no greater pastime than reading.
Opening a book is like opening in your mind a door to a new world.
That world may be inhabited by pirates with hooks for hands, or by small rabbits wearing blue cardigans. That world could be filled with many more worlds; universes even! All accessible by the sticking out of one's thumb. That world could be a safe haven of flouncy language, and frilly frocks, and sultry looks from men with names like Mr Darcy. Or, conversely, it could entail the adventures of a few small and ever-so-ordinary heroes as they undertake a quest to rid the world of a shiny golden ring.
Thus, reading a book is like experiencing life anew. Like Alice falling through the looking glass, we are able to transport ourselves through those dusty and lovely smelling papery pages, and undertake any number of adventures! In other words, the books we read become part of our own experience.
“There are perhaps no days of our childhood where we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite book.”
Now, ponder this:
If our lives are formed by a culmination of our experiences; if our very selves are wrought in the same manner, would we not choose to read the most glorious books?
Or, in the more eloquent words of Henry David Thoreau:
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
So, for those of you with a romantic spirit, and a hankering for adventure, I give to you my own reading list. May these volumes fill your soul with happiness and your imagination with wonder...
OR…
- PICK YOUR GENRE -
. FICTION .
. NON FICTION .
. FICTION .
FANTASTICAL
Timaeus-Critias - Plato (c. 360 BC)
Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving (1819)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving (1820)
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne (1864)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne (1870)
The Story of Sigurd - William Morris (1876)
The Wood Beyond the World - William Morris (1894)
The Well at the World’s End - William Morris (1896)
The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany (1905)
Time and the Gods - Lord Dunsany (1906)
A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Borroughs (1912)
The Book of Wonder - Lord Dunsany (1912)
At the Earth’s Core - Edgar Rice Borroughs (1914)
Fifty-One Tales - Lord Dunsany (1915)
Tales of Three Hemispheres - Lord Dunsany (1919)
A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay (1920)
The King of Elfland's Daughter - Lord Dunsany (1924)
Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees (1926)
The Call of Cthulu - H. P. Lovecraft (1928)
Dune - Frank Herbert - (1965)
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle (1968)
✔ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (1979)
✔ The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)
Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder (1991)
✔ Sabriel - Garth Nix (1995)
Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson (1999)
Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (2007)
ARTHURIAN LEGEND:
History of the Kings of England | Historia Regum Britanniae - Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1136)
Brut - Layamon (c. 1190 - 1215)
The Knight of the Cart | Le Chevalier de la Charette - Chrétien de Troyes (c. 12th cent)
Percival of Wales | Perceval le Gallois - Chrétien de Troyes (c. 12th cent)
The Vulgate Cycle - Anon (c. 1210-1230)
Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 13th cent)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - The Gawaine Poet (c. 14th century)
The Death of Arthur | Le Morte d’Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory (1485)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain (1889)
The Once and Future King - T. H. White (1958)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - translated by J. R. R. Tolkein (1975)
✔ The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley (1993)
MIDDLE EARTH:
✔ The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkein (1937)
✔ The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkein (1954)
✔ The Two Towers - J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)
✔ The Return of the King - J. R. R. Tolkein (1955)
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - J. R. R. Tolkein (1962)
✔ The Silmarillion - J. R. R. Tolkein (1977)
The History of Middle Earth: Vol. 1 - 12 - J. R. R. Tolkein (1983 - 1996)
The Children of Hurin - J. R. R. Tolkein (2007)
Beren and Lúthien - J. R. R. Tolkein (2017)
GORMENGHAST
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake (1946)
Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake (1950)
Titus Alone - Mervyn Peake (1959)
THE EARTHSEA CYCLE:
✔ A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin (1970)
Farthest Shore - Ursula K. Le Guin (1972)
Tehanu - Ursula K. Le Guin (1990)
Tales from Earthsea - (2001)
The Other Wind - Ursula K. Le Guin (2001)
THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN TRILOGY:
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey (1968)
Dragonquest - Anne McCaffrey (1970)
The White Dragon - Anne McCaffrey (1978)
THE WHEEL OF TIME:
The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
+ 13 more
FAIRY STORIES:
Oisín and Niamh - Anon (c. 10th century)
The Pleasant Nights | Le Piacevoli Notti - Giovanni Francesco Straparola (1551)
The Pentamerone - Giambattista Basile (1634)
Fables - Jean de La Fontaine (1668-1694)
Tales of Mother Goose | Contes de ma mère l'Oye - Charles Perrault (1697)
Fairy Tales | Les Contes des Fées - Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (1697)
Beauty and the Beast | La Belle et la Bête - Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1740)
✔ Grimm's Fairy Tales | Kinder- und Hausmärchen - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1812)
✔ Fairy Tales | Eventyr - Hans Christian Anderson (1835)
Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti (1862)
The Blue Fairy Book - Andrew Lang (1889)
The Red Fairy Book - Andrew Lang (1890)
Celtic Fairy Tales - Joseph Jacobs (1891)
The Green Fairy Book - Andrew Lang (1892)
East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon | Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne - Asbj rnsen and Moe (1910)
Smith of Wootton Major - J. R. R. Tolkein (1967)
ROMANTICAL
Shakuntala - Kālidāsa (c. 4th century)
The Lais of Marie de France - Marie de France (c. 12th century)
The Romance of the Rose | Le Roman de la Rose - Guillaume de Lorris (c. 1230)
✔ Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (1811)
✔ Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (1813)
Emma - Jane Austen (1815)
Persuasion - Jane Austen (1817)
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen (1817)
✔ Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (1847)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë (1847)
Agnes Grey - Anne Brontë (1847)
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (1856)
Sentimental Education | L'Education sentimentale - Gustave Flaubert (1869)
✔ Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (1877)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (1891)
A Room with a View - E. M. Forster (1908)
✔ Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw (1913)
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1920)
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (1936)
CLASSICAL
The Iliad- Homer (c. 8th century BC)
The Odyssey - Homer (c. 8th century BC)
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides - Aeschylus (c. 5th century BC)
Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus (c. 5th century BC)
The Theban Plays: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone - Sophocles (c. 441-406 BC)
Ajax - Sophocles (c. 441 BC)
Medea - Euripides (431 BC)
Hippolytus - Euripides (428 BC)
The Clouds - Aristophanes (423 BC)
Philoctetes - Sophocles (409 BC)
The Bacchae - Euripides (405 BC)
The Frogs - Aristophanes (405 BC)
Electra - Sophocles (c. 400 BC)
Argonautica - Apollonius of Rhodes (c. 3rd century BC)
The Aeneid - Virgil (19 BC)
The Tale of Genji | Genji monogatari - Murasaki Shikibu (c. 11th century)
The Song of the Nibelungs | Nibelungenlied - Anon (c. 1200)
The Divine Comedy - Dante (1320)
The Decameron - Giovanni Boccaccio (1353)
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (1387)
The Faerie Queen - Edmund Spenser (1590)
SHAKESPEARE:
✔ Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (1597)
Henry V - William Shakespeare (1599)
Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare (1602)
As You Like It - William Shakespeare (1603)
Othello - William Shakespeare (1604)
✔ A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare (1605)
The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare (1605)
King Lear - William Shakespeare (1606)
✔ Macbeth - William Shakespeare (1606)
Hamlet - William Shakespeare (1609)
The Tempest - William Shakespeare (1611)
✔ Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (1612)
The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare (1623)
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
Paradise Lost - John Milton (1667)
Phèdre {Play} - Jean Racine (1677)
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (1719)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1795)
Waverly - Sir Walter Scott (1814)
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (1818)
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott (1819)
Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1829)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo (1831)
Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin (1833)
Le Père Goriot - Honoré de Balzac (1835)
Lost Illusions | Illusions perdues - Honoré de Balzac (1837-1843)
✔ Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1837)
✔ A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (1843)
The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe (1843)
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (1844)
The Three Muskateers - Alexander Dumas (1844)
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (1850)
The Scarlett Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
✔ Moby Dick - Herman Melville (1851)
Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens (1855)
✔ A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (1859)
✔ Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (1861)
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (1862)
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1866)
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (1867)
Middlemarch - George Eliot (1871)
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880)
The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James (1881)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde (1895)
✔ Dracula - Bram Stoker (1897)
SHERLOCK HOLMES
A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)
The Sign of the Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1901-1902)
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (1899)
The Scarlet Pimpernel - Emma Orczy (1905)
Growth of the Soil | Markens Grøde - Knut Hamsun (1917)
Chéri - Colette (1920)
The Prince and the Pauper - Mark Twain (1920)
Ulysses - James Joyce (1922)
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse (1922)
A Passage to India - E. M. Forster (1924)
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann (1924)
Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (1925)
The Great Gatsby - Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
The Trial - Franz Kafka (1925)
The Castle - Franz Kafka (1926)
✔ The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1926)
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (1927)
Orlando - Virginia Woolf (1928)
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway (1929)
Nausea | La Nausée - Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (1940)
The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse (1943)
✔ Animal Farm - George Orwell (1945)
✔ The Stranger - Albert Camus (1946)
✔ 1984 - George Orwell (1949)
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller (1949)
✔ The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1952)
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury (1957)
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez (1957)
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (1958)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (1960)
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963)
✔ A Movable Feast - Ernest Hemingway (1964)
✔ The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (1985)
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (1997)
✔ The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd (2001)
YOUTHFUL
Aesop's Fables - Aesop (c. 6th century BC)
The Arabian Nights: Tales from 1000 and 1 Nights - Anon (c. 16th century)
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (1726)
✔ Grimm's Fairy Tales - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1812)
The Swiss Family Robinson - Johann David Wyss (1812)
✔ Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Anderson (1835)
The Light Princess - George MacDonald (1864)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865)
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (1868)
Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll (1871)
The Princess and the Goblin - George MacDonald (1872)
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne (1873)
✔ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain (1876)
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell (1877)
Heidi - Johanna Spyri (1880)
Treasure Island - Robert Louise Stevenson (1883)
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle (1883)
✔ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
The Blue Fairy Book - Andrew Lang (1889)
The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling (1894)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum (1900)
✔ Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling (1902)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter (1902)
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)
✔ Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery (1908)
✔ The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (1908)
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
✔ Peter Pan and Wendy - J. M. Barrie (1911)
Robin Hood and the Men of the Greenwood - Henry Gilbert T. (1912)
Pollyanna - Eleanor H. Porter (1913)
The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams (1922)
Winnie-the-Pooh - A. A. Milne (1926)
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (1930)
The Little House on the Prairie Series - Laura Ingalls Wilder (1931 - 1971)
The Story of Barbar | Histoire de Babar - Jean de Brunhoff (1931)
✔ Mary Poppins - P. L. Travers (1934)
✔ Madeline - Ludwig Bemelmans (1939)
✔ The Little Prince | Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)
Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren (1945)
The Borrowers - Mary Norton (1952)
✔ Charlotte's Web - E. B. White (1952)
The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster (1961)
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle (1962)
✔ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (1964)
Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper (1965)
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle (1968)
✔ Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl (1970)
Watership Down - Richard Adams (1972)
The Princess Bride - William Goldman (1973)
✔ The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More - Roald Dahl (1977)
✔ The Witches - Roald Dahl (1983)
✔ Matilda - Roald Dahl (1988)
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA:
✔ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis (1950)
✔ Prince Caspian - C. S. Lewis (1951)
✔ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C. S. Lewis (1952)
The Silver Chair - C. S. Lewis (1953)
The Horse and His Boy - C. S. Lewis (1954)
The Magician’s Nephew - C. S. Lewis (1955)
The Last Battle - C. S. Lewis (1956)
TALES FROM MOOMINLAND:
The Moomins and the Great Flood - Tove Jansson (1945)
Comet in Moominland - Tove Jansson (1946)
Finn Family Moomintroll - Tove Jansson (1948)
The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950)
✔ Moominsummer Madness (1954)
Moominland Midwinter (1957)
Moominpappa at Sea (1965)
Moominvalley in November (1970)
THE CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN:
The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander (1964)
The Black Cauldron - Lloyd Alexander (1965)
The Castle of Llyr - Lloyd Alexander (1966)
Taran Wanderer - Lloyd Alexander (1967)
The High King - Lloyd Alexander (1968)
THE HARRY POTTER SERIES:
✔ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - J. K. Rowling (1997)
✔ Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling (1998)
✔ Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling (1999)
✔ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling (2000)
✔ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling (2003)
✔ Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling (2005)
✔ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling (2007)
MYTHICAL & SACRED
Sumerian Mythology - Anon (c. 2600 - 2000 BC)
The Epic of Gilgamesh - Anon (c. 2100 BC)
The Vedas - Anon (c. 1500-1000 BC)
Tanakh - Many Authors (c. 13th - 4th century BC)
The Iliad- Homer (c. 8th century BC)
The Odyssey - Homer (c. 8th century BC)
Homeric Hymns - Anon (c. 7th - 6th century BC)
The Theogony - Hesiod (c. 700 BC)
The Derveni Papyrus - Anon (c. 5th century BC)
The Bhagavad Gita - Anon (c. 5th - 2nd century BC)
Tao Te Ching - Laozi (c. 4th century BC)
The Mahābhārata - Anon (c. 4th century BC - 4th century AD)
Zhuangzi - Zhuang Zhou (c. 3rd century BC)
The Three Baskets | Tripiṭaka - Anon (c. 1st century BC)
The Dhammapada - Anon (c. 1st century BC)
The Aeneid - Virgil (19 BC)
Metamorphosis - Ovid (c. 8 AD)
Bibliotheca - Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st - 2nd century)
The New Testament in Greek | Novum Testamentum Graece - Many Authors, ed. Eberhard Nestle et al (c. 50-100)
The Nag Hammadi Library - Anon (c. 2nd - 4th century)
The Bible - Many Authors (canonised c. 300-400)
Beowulf - Anon (c. 6th - 9th century)
The Quran - compiled by Zayd ibn Thabit (c. 7th century)
Tibetan Book of the Dead | Bardo Thodol - Padmasambhava (c. 8th century)
Crist - Cynewulf (c. 800)
The Fenian Cycle | an Fhiannaíocht - Anon (c. 10th century)
The Zohar - Moses de León (c. 13th century)
The Elder Edda | The Poetic Edda - Anon (c. 13th century)
The Younger Edda | The Prose Edda - Snorri Sturluson (c. 1220)
The Völsunga Saga - Anon (c. 13th century)
Njál’s Saga - Anon (c. 1270 to 1290)
The Icelandic Sagas - Anon (c. 13th-14th century)
The Mabinogion - Anon (c. 1350–1410)
Guru Granth Sahib - Many Authors (c. 1604)
The Kalevala - Elias Lönnrot (1835)
. NON - FICTION .
HISTORICAL & ARTISTIC
The Histories - Herodotus (440 BC)
The History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides (c. 431 BC)
History of Rome | Ab Urbe Condita Libri - Livy (27-9 BC)
Parallel Lives - Plutarch (c. 125)
Confessions - Saint Augustine of Hippo (c. 397-400)
✔ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - Anon (c. 9th century)
History of the Kings of England | Historia Regum Britanniae - Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1136)
Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects - Georgio Vasari (1550)
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon (1776)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave - Frederick Douglass (1845)
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - Jacob Burckhardt (1860)
Van Gogh’s Letters - Vincent van Gogh (1872-1890)
The Cicerone: or, Art-guide to painting in Italy. For the use of travellers - Jacob Burckhardt (1873)
Judgements on History and Historians - Jacob Burckhardt (1929)
The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank (1947)
✔ When God Was a Woman - Merlin Stone (1976)
THOUGHTFUL
Fragments - Anaximander (c. 610-546 BC)
Fragments - Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BC)
Fragments - Anaxagoras (c. 510-428 BC)
On Nature - Parmenides (c. 500 BC)
On Nature - Empedocles (c. 494-434 BC)
The Hippocratic Corpus - Hippocrates and others (c. 5th - 4th century BC)
On Ancient Medicine - Hippocrates and others (c. 450-400 BC)
Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo - Plato (c. 399-360 BC)
The Symposium - Plato (c. 385-370 BC)
The Republic - Plato (c. 380 BC)
Gorgias - Plato (c. 380 BC)
Parmenides - Plato (c. 300s BC)
Cyropaedia - Xenophon (c. 370 BC)
Politics - Aristotle (c. 350 BC)
On the Soul | De Anima - Aristotle (c. 350 BC)
Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle (c. 340 BC)
Poetics - Aristotle (c. 335 BC)
Metaphysics - Aristotle (c. 4th century BC)
Meteorology - Aristotle (c. 4th century BC)
On Generation and Corruption - Aristotle (c. 4th century BC)
Elements - Euclid (c. 300 BC)
Conics - Apollonius (c. 3rd-2nd century BC)
Essays - Archimedes (c.287-212 BC)
On the Nature of Things - Lucretius (c. 1st century BC)
Introduction to Arithmetic - Nicomachus (c. 60–120 AD)
Discourses of Epictetus - Epictetus (c. 108)
On the Natural Faculties - Galen (c. 129-199)
Outlines of Pyrrhonism - Sextus Empiricus (c. 150-210)
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (c. 161-180)
Almagest - Ptolemy (c. 2nd century BC)
The Enneads - Plotinus (c. 270)
The Analects - Confucius (c. 4th-5th century)
The City of God - Saint Augustine of Hippo (426)
The Division of Nature | De divisione naturae - John Scotus Eriugena (867)
The Guide for the Perplexed - Maimonides (1190)
Summa Theologiae - Saint Thomas Aquinas (1265-1274)
✔ Ninety-five Theses - Martin Luther (1517)
✔ To the Christian Nobility - Martin Luther (1520)
✔ The Babylonian Captivity of the Church - Martin Luther (1520)
✔ A Treatise on Christian Liberty - Martin Luther (1520)
✔ The Prince - Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres - Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)
Essays - Michel de Montaigne (1580-1595)
The Ash Wednesday Supper | La cena de le ceneri - Giordano Bruno (1584)
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds | De l'infinito, universo e mondi - Giordano Bruno (1584)
The Harmony of the World | Harmonices Mundi - Johannes Kepler (1619)
Novum Organum - Francis Bacon (1620)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems - Galileo Galilei (1632)
Discourse on the Method - René Descartes (1637)
Two New Sciences - Galileo Galilei (1638)
Meditations on First Philosophy - René Descartes (1641)
Philosophical and Mathematical Writings - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1663-1690)
Maximes - François de La Rochefoucauld (1665)
Pensées - Blaise Pascal (1670)
Ethics - Baruch Spinoza (1677)
Principia Mathematica - Isaac Newton (1687)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke (1689)
Essay on Dynamics - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1695)
Théodicée - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1710)
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge - George Berkeley (1710)
Monadology - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1714)
Principles of Nature and Grace - Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1714)
Pantheisticon - John Toland (1720)
The New Science - Giambattista Vico (1725)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - David Hume (1748)
Encyclopédie - Denis Diderot (1751)
Candide - Voltaire (1759)
The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
The Huron | L'Ingénu - Voltaire (1767)
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith (1776)
Critique of Pure Reason - Immanuel Kant (1781)
Confessions - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
Elements of Chemistry - Antoine Lavoisier (1790)
Metamorphosis of Plants - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790)
The Rights of Man - Thomas Paine (1791)
Vindication of the Rights of Women - Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice - William Godwin (1793)
Phenomenology of Spirit - Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1807)
Theory of Colours - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1810)
The World as Will and Representation - Arthur Schopenhauer (1819)
Essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)
Self Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841)
Woman in the Nineteenth Century - Margaret Fuller (1845)
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1848)
✔ Walden & Civil Disobediance - Henry David Thoreau (1854)
On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin (1859)
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill (1859)
Capital | Das Kapital - Karl Marx (1867)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche (1883)
Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)
The Philosophy of Freedom - Rudolph Steiner (1894)
The Souls of Black Folk - W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)
In Search of Lost Time | À la recherche du temps perdu - Marcel Proust (1913-1927)
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - Albert Einstein (1916)
Psychological Types - Carl Jung (1921)
The Meaning of Relativity - Albert Einstein (1922)
I and Thou - Martin Buber (1923)
Anthropology and Modern Life - Franz Boas (1928)
A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf (1929)
The Undiscovered Self - Carl Jung (1933)
The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek (1944)
The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell (1949)
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson (1962)
Memories, Dreams, Reflections - Carl Jung (1962)
The Character of Physical Law - Richard Feynman (1965)
Orientalism - Edward Said (1978)
Historical Atlas of World Mythology - Joseph Campbell (1983)
✔ “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman!” - Richard Feynman (1985)
✔ “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” - Richard Feynman (1988)
A Brief History of Time - Steven Hawking (1988)
Tree and Leaf - J. R. R. Tolkein (1988)
Manufacturing Consent - Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988)
What Uncle Sam Really Wants - Noam Chomsky (1992)
The Spell of the Sensuous - David Abram (1996)
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace - John O’ Donohue (2003)
The Nature of Order - Christopher Alexander (2003)
Becoming Animal - David Abram (2010)
SPIRITUAL & MAGICAL
The Upanishads - Anon (c. 7th - 5th century BC)
Tao Te Ching - Laozi (c. 4th century BC)
Zhuangzi - Zhuang Zhou (c. 3rd century BC)
Tetrabiblos - Ptolemy (c. 2nd century BC)
The Three Baskets | Tripiṭaka - Anon (c. 1st century BC)
The Dhammapada - Anon (c. 1st century BC)
The Kama Sutra - Vātsyāyana (c. 3rd century)
The Bible - Many Authors (canonised c. 4th - 5th century)
A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life | Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra - Shantideva (c. 8th century)
Tibetan Book of the Dead | Bardo Thodol - Padmasambhava (c. 8th century)
A Thousand Teachings | Upadeśasāhasri - Adi Shankara (c. 8th century)
I Ching - Anon (c. 9th century)
Scivias - Hildegard of Bingen (1152)
The Zohar - Moses de León (c. 13th century)
The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart - Meister Eckhart, ed. M. O’C Welsh (1260-1328)
Isis Unveiled - Helena Blavatsky (1877)
How to Know Higher Worlds - Rudolph Steiner (1908)
Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse (1922)
Psychology and Alchemy - Carl Jung (1944)
The Wisdom of Insecurity - Alan Watts (1951)
Mysterium Coniunctionis - Carl Jung (1955)
The Wisdom of the Desert - Thomas Merton (1960)
The Book: on the taboo against knowing who you are - Alan Watts (1966)
Be Here Now - Ram Dass (1971)
✔ Being Peace - Thich Nhat Hanh (1987)
✔ The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (1988)
Peace is Every Step - Thich Nhat Hanh (1990)
Women Who Run with the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992)
Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation - Joseph Campbell (2004)
Goddesses: Mysteries of the Divine Feminine - Joseph Campbell (2013)
POETICAL & PLAYFUL
(poems and plays)
Poems and Fragments - Sappho (c. 630-570 BC)
Poems - Rumi
Poems - Hafiz
The Song of Roland | La Chanson de Roland - Anon (c. 1040 - 1115)
✔ Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (1597)
Henry V - William Shakespeare (1599)
Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare (1602)
As You Like It - William Shakespeare (1603)
Othello - William Shakespeare (1604)
✔ A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare (1605)
The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare (1605)
King Lear - William Shakespeare (1606)
✔ Macbeth - William Shakespeare (1606)
L’Orfeo {Play} - Claudio Monteverdi (1607)
Hamlet - William Shakespeare (1609)
The Tempest - William Shakespeare (1611)
✔ Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare (1612)
The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare (1623)
Le Misanthrope {Play} - Molière (1666)
Poems - Alexander Pushkin
Poems - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poems - Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - William Blake (1793)
The Eolian Harp - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1796)
Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
Odes - John Keats (1819)
The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1833)
✔ The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe (1845)
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman (1855)
Poems - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poems - Emily Dickinson
Poems - Virginia Woolf
The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot (1922)
Ash Wednesday - T. S. Eliot (1930)
Four Quartets - T. S. Eliot (1941)
✔ Poems - Robert Frost
✔ Poems - Pablo Neruda
✔ Poems - Mary Oliver
The Radiance Sutras - Lorin Roche - (2014)
EARTHY
Physica - Hildegard of Bingen (1155)
Nature - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836)
✔ Walden - Henry David Thoreau (1854)
Wild Fruits - Henry David Thoreau (c. 1859)
My First Summer in the Sierra - John Muir (1911)
The Yosemite - John Muir (1912)
A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold (1949)
Reading the Landscape of America - May Theilgaard Watts (1975)
Biophilia - Edward O. Wilson (1984)
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben (2015)
WANDERING
The Travels of Marco Polo | Livre des Merveilles du Monde - Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa (c. 1300)
The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain (1869)
A Tramp Abroad - Mark Twain (1880)
✔ On the Road - Jack Kerouac (1957)
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac (1958)
The Great Railway Bazaar - Paul Theroux (1975)
The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara (1993)