Which books should one have read to be able to call oneself "well read'?

[McDreamy]

just wondered

the ones richard and judy havent read

lol biogs are good

It's probably more about 'how many' than 'which'.

crime and punishment

war and peace

titus groan trilogy

tristram shandy
a rebours

sons and lovers

bleak house

frankenstein

diary of a nobody

middlemarch

tess of the durbervilles

kinflicks

the tin drum

magic mountain

Barbara Cartland?
no seriously

Kafka, Ibsen, Hamsun, Homer, Plato, Dostovjevski, that sort of thing, in addition to all those modern writers such as Calvino, Perez-Reverte, Dan Brown, Coehlo
gosh I dont know.

Probably a newspaper, actually

Austen, Hardy, Lawrence, Dickens really it should be the complete works of each but since Dickens is so awful, I'm making an executive decision and saying you only have to read one of his!

Frankenstein.

Middlemarch - I hated it though, so am probably a pleb.

Lolita.

Wuthering Heights.

Jane Eyre.

Madame Bovary.

Vanity Fair.

Rebecca.

For a start.

I loved Brave New World, 1984, In Cold Blood, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, I suppose they are 'modern classics'

all the ones that I've read!

JK Rowling

Oh gosh yes to "Of Mice And Men" and "Mocking Bird". I suppose The Grapes Of Wrath ought to be there too, although it is so depressing.

Love In The Time Of Cholera?

The complete works of Shakespeare?

Yes to HP. I'd add The Hobbit too, although I suspect many people wouldn't.

Ooh, I'm feeling smug, I've read most of these. When I was 15...only get chance to read the back of the toilet cleaner these days...

You've got to read East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Brilliant!

IMO
iris murdoch
virginia woolf
albert camus
oscar wilde
dostoyevsky
kafka
orwell

um um um

steinbeck

um um um

of mice and men

um um

I think it is very personal what books people think of as essential.

I HATE lord of the rings.

watching films helps - good for discoving writers.

lord of the flies

Clearly I'm not at all well read. Have only read 3 of the books mentioned so far!

timewaster letters

I have never heard anyone describe themselves as well-read and hope I never do

I'm reading 'North and South' Elizabeth gaskell at the mo - does that count??

(Have read, works of Wilde, Marx, The Gormenghast Trilogy and Mr Pye as I love Mervyn Peake, 1984, lots of Dickens, fair amount of Shakespeare, DH Lawrence etc. but still have a long way to go to be properly well read I think - the Russian greats scare the pants off me for a start). I think there is a lot of 'genre' fiction (sci fi) that is unfairly ignored by the literary mafia - and not treated seriously as literature as a result - authors like Asimov, Wells and Atwood are not given the weight they deserve.

Gosh, this takes me back, I remember the summer of sweet sixteen, where I refused to leave the house till I had read the entire Steinbeck collection, all of Hamsun, Ibsen, and Camilla Collet. Well, the weather was awful, and what a sad geek am I.....

cryptonomicon

Good point Pointy Dog, I think maybe it's a term used to describe others rather than yourself.

trollope