What do I need to read?

[MeadowLines]

To feel Im well read! I love reading and read every night, but I never feel well read and know enough about books that are well known.
So what books do you think are essentials to have a good literary knowledge - I appreciate the list may be very long! I am very willing to spend a lot of time catching up!

Based on your objective - 'good literary knowledge' you'll want the classics. You may want to read some common interpretations - york notes or similar. There will be podcasts that cover this kind of thing too.

Jane Eyre
Dracula
Frankenstein
Wuthering Heights
Rebecca
Beloved
The God of Small Things
Atonement
The Great Gatsby
1984

Something by Dickens - probably Great Expectations or David Copperfield
Something by Iris Murdoch
Something by Jane Austen

This list of 100 must read books from Penguin is handy. Each book has a very brief description from Penguin and also a comment from a reader saying why they had nominated the book for inclusion on the list.

www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2018/100-must-read-classic-books.html

Thank you, great ideas from you both!

I love your question, love the underlying seriousness of is, and love your goal.

However, I don't think a forum like this is a place for a good answer. Rather than my voicing impatience at some of the suggestions from others, I'd suggest you go to serious sources. Perhaps you could find online some book lists from literary courses at universities. In fact, there are a few books about just this. I used to have a fun book somewhere that was given to me that was just a long alphabetical list. Be wary of lists complied by ordinary people, and be ready to read a lot of books from before you were born. I do like the suggestion of Penguin because they cover so much, even though naturally they'll just promote their own books. Make a mental note of literary references in news stories - for instance, the fact that things are referred to as Orwellian or Dickensian gives you a clue right there.

I think you can get great ideas from other people’s lists. I would start with:

Pride and Prejudice (Emma is better and Persuasion is my favourite, but P&P is terrific for a first Austen)

Great Expectations (David Copperfield is the full Dickens experience and Nicholas Nickleby is my favourite, but again this is a good entry point)

Don’t read a Shakespeare play, watch one! They were written to be played. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is vg.

Second Jane Eyre and The God of Small Things for sure.

The Color Purple

Animal Farm

If you are finding you’re enjoying these then maybe

As I Lay Dying

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The English Patient

Last Orders

Moon Tiger

Old Filth

Don’t forget poetry! Just dip into some collections and see which you like

Seamus Heaney
Keats
Yeats
Shakespeare sonnets
Sylvia Plath
Emily Dickinson
Maya Angelou
Walt Whitman

Happy reading!

Agree with the classics recommendations. If you want something more current, try the following:

Girl with the dragon tattoo trilogy
Girl on the train
Tolkien’s the hobbit, lord of the rings trilogy
Anything by Christopher brookmyre, Margaret Atwood (wrote the handmaids tale) or Kate Atkinson ( I have really enjoyed these books)
Where the crawdads sing

All fiction, but well written. Check out best sellers lists and the book club list from Reese Whitherspoon. She has a big following as she always picks good reads.

There are some great biographies out there too, and if you fancy expanding your mind, books from Stephen Hawking or other physicists are good. Same with philosophy books like Socrates. Haven’t read his work, but it’s on my list to venture into, as is Dante’s divine comedy and other Greek classics.

Happy reading!

No one has mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird
Such an important book and really impacted on me when I first read it aged about 13.

Dear Meadow Lines, I have read all my life but not voraciously, and I feel a bit overwhelmed when I see all the books which other people have read, and vaguely guilty that I haven't read them, but when I think about it there are many that I HAVE read. If you want a romance, read a Barbara Cartland and then read North and South by Mrs. Gaskell, if you haven't already. I think that if you read poems it's best if you can read them out loud to yourself, not easy for everyone, I know, and if you think you didn't "get it" the first time read it over a time or two more.

The problem with this question is that the number of books is so vast that being 'well read' could mean anything. Generally when people compile these lists they list a random bunch of 'great' novels, but I prefer to group things together, books that relate to each other and would allow you to discuss a genre or author as a whole with reference to key texts.

Examples would be something like 'feminist gothic' - read Rebecca, Jane Eyre, The Yellow Wallpaper as classics then you will see their tropes and influence in modern books like Wakenhyrst or Mexican Gothic.

A genre that frequently comes up in popular culture and news is dystopia - so starting with 1984 and Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, a few Philip K Dick stories, A Clockwork Orange and then something new like The Power.

I think you'll always sound more well read if you can discuss books in context rather than just rattling off that you've read this or that.

I’d alternate.
One classic then one popular and/or current.
Some other suggestions for classics are:
The grapes of wrath
Of mice and men
The great Gatsby
The old man and the sea

For current ( although some are older) books that people often talk about I’d try
Harry Potter
The hunger games series
A man called ove
American dirt
The Rosie project
Eleanor oliphant is completely fine
Any book by Marion Keyes
Any of the Jack reacher books by Lee child
Any book by liane moriaty

It's great to see varying opinions on this. Thankfully I have read a handful of the books suggested, but I will add the rest to my list and also explore other books within the different genres to get a broader view. I will also read the study guides or essays about them too.
I'm so glad I asked, thank you all!

You probably need to read some French and Russian literature too, the Greek epics and some philosophy.

I think a lot of literature that is referenced in society tends to be things we read and studied at school, so I'd think about what is on English Literature curricula, particularly for various A-Levels. When I was at school, I studied Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Hardy, Keats, Blake, Emily Bronte off the top of my head, and having a knowledge of literature then encouraged me to explore other texts of the time, or similar themes, and has left me with a love for literature (I had some truly excellent English teachers, and did Literature at A Level. I probably would have happily studied English Lit at Uni as well, but was worried I wouldn't be able to find a job afterwards).

Agree with lists above but don’t forget War and Peace. It’s not as long as it is made out to be and is not at all daunting. I read it in three volumes of about 250 pages a volume when I was young. I loved the characters and as an adult the battle scenes are fascinating as Tolstoy relates the mistakes that were made and the anguish of frightened men. Tolstoy had been a soldier and the Napoleonic wars recent history to him so experiences would have been accessed from the older generation. Tolstoy gives his theory of how wars come about which resonates today. Then there is romance, Natasha is a delight, as are other characters; then there is guilt which Tolstoy invariably displays in his characters (Peter Basoukov) as he is really describing his young self. Take your time and a great story will unfold. This is much, much better than Anna Karenina so please don’t be put off by the fallacy that it is too long or difficult.

I agree with looking at literature reading lists from universities. I thought I was well read until I started uni two years ago! I would say most people are aware of the traditional classics but don’t forget modern classics. Sam Selvon is good. I also like Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God especially. Also Margaret Atwood.

Agree with a pp that context is everything. It’s better to understand a couple of books than read hundreds just to say I’m well read. So I would, for example, read Arrow of God then read some criticism around it, so I could understand it and discuss it in context to similar works.

Reading popular books is not the same as being well-read. Marian Keyes and Liane Moriarty write books that are very popular but surely nobody would describe them as literature? And as for Lee Child?

There's a hell of a lot more to romance than Barbara Cartland.

I like the suggestion of reading a group of genre books such as feminist gothic.

Recently I've been trying to read a couple of books by a particular author and then a biography or autobiography, or even a fictional book based on a true event and then a couple of factual books about the event or biographies of people involved in it.

If you want to include some poetry I can recommend Danusha Lameris. I think her poetry is wonderful, it's thought-provoking, relatable, but also brings me something new.

I am also at the moment trying to buy and read 'banned' or 'cancelled' books and authors. I've got quite a collection already and I've got to say it's bringing me into contact with books, subjects, and authors I probably wouldn't have tried otherwise.

It's a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, all fairly recent books, and I'm not necessarily in agreement with the authors or the subjects, but it's certainly making me think, and quite often it's making me do more research, examine my own opinions and pre-held prejudices etc.

The reason I started is that regardless of whether I like a book or agree with the author, I do not like the idea of banning books, cancelling authors, or putting certain topics 'off-limits' to one author but not another.

I tend to print off or cut out articles or write a small note to explain what brought a book to my attention, to keep with the book, and do a bit of research around the author or subject as well.

I forgot to say, one of the authors whose books I've read and then read a biography of is Shirley Jackson.

Of her books, I've read The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery (and other short stories), The Sundial, Just An Ordinary Day (Uncollected Stories), and The Road Through The Wall. Then I read a biography about her, A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin. I would also like to watch the film based on another book about her, Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell, which has Elizabeth Moss as Shirley, but with one thing and another I haven't seen it yet.

If you're wanting to try that style of reading, I'd recommend giving her books and the biographies a try. There are less interesting authors who don't write as well who are sadly far more recognised than her, and personally I feel she was badly overlooked for far too long. Although I will say that with the Uncollected Stories, there are bloody loads of them and not all of them are good, but most have a way of looking at things that give you something to think about.

I think all her books, and the biography, have a lot to say about the times she lived in and how women like her (clever, talented, unconventional) were not valued as they should be.