CSU Libraries’ Suggested Novels and Dramas to Read

In 2013, Republican and Idaho State Senate Education Committee Chairman, John Goedde, introduced legislation for all high school students in the state to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, in order to graduate. This requirement, and novel, greatly encourages and is referenced by many Tea Party members, before the legislation and now. This signifies how literature is still a significant, administrative influence and inspiration outside a library or college campus.

The Simon Schwob Memorial Library encourages the reading habits of its patrons and students; however, not all books closed are meant to stay that way. On any campus, a collegiate environment inspires many to become more serious about his or her studies. Regardless of students’ major, of study, or a patrons’ intent to conduct their research, there is simply a list of novels and dramas that many are presumed to, and should be, familiar with.

Each year the New York Best-Sellers list features familiar and new authors and writers. The British and Western canon is becoming larger with new, contemporary contributions; however, certain literary works are not as appreciated or read by millennials and bibliophiles, as they should. Here are CSU Libraries’ suggested novel and dramas lists.
**Lists are not in any order of significance.

Novels

 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Night, Day, and Dawn by Elie Weisel

Middlemarch by T.S. Eliot

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand            
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Wuthering Heights by Elizabeth Brontë

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell

The Color of Water by James McBride

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

A Good Man is hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce          
Candide by Voltaire
Curious Wine by Katherine Forrest

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angeluo

                                                                       

Dramas

The Histories, Tragedies, and Comedies of William Shakespeare

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello

Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind

The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe

She Stoops to Conquer by Goldsmith

The Way of the World by Congreve

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht

The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks

A Streetcar Names Desire by Tennessee Williams

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill

After reading a few pieces of literature, one is not considered a literati; yet, it is advised that readers maintain their passion to read. As the semester comes to an end, CSU libraries encourages many, particularly bibliophiles, to review the list of canonical literature. For more information about reading selections, browse CSU libraries official page and CSU Gil-Find Catalog to locate items.