For some reason known only to the mysteries of the internet, I received a year-old email from agent Chip MacGregor of MacGregor Literary. That message contained his suggested reading list for writers which I am passing along to you. Enjoy! Don't try to read it all at once ;D. This list does not contain books about the craft of writing or books about the publishing industry. I will compile and post those in the near future.
The archives of Chip's blog (which is no longer posting) are still online and contain a treasure trove of helpful writer advice. http://chipmacgregor.typepad.com/main/
Susan
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I've had a bunch of people ask me, "What would be on your list of great books for writers to read?", so I decided to share my list of suggested books to make yourself well read…
Ancients: Homer’s ILIAD and ODYSSEY; Sophocles’ OEDIPUS REX; Euripides’ THE TROJAN WOMEN and ELECTRA; Herodotus’ THE HISTORIES; Thucydides’ HISTORY OF THE PELOPPENESIAN WAR; Sun Tsu’s THE ART OF WAR; Aristophanes’ LYSISTRATA; Plato’s SELECTED WORKS; Virgil’s THE AENEID
Classics: Augustine’s CONFESSIONS; Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY; Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES; Shahrazad’s THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS; Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE; Miguel de Servants’ DON QUIXOTE; Shakespeare’s COMPLETE WORKS; John Donne’s SELECTED WORKS; Galileo’s DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO CHIEF WORLD SYSTEMS; Hobbe’s LEVIATHAN; Descarte’s DISCOURSE ON METHOD; Milton’s PARADISE LOST; Moliere’s PLAYS; Blaise Pascal’s PENSEES; Bunyan’s PILGRIM’S PROGRESS; John Locke’s SECOND TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT; Daniel Defoe’s ROBINSON CRUSOE; Jonathan Swift’s GULLIVER’S TRAVELS; Voltaire’s CANDIDE; Henry Fielding’s TOM JONES; Laurence Sterne’s TRISTRAM SHANDY; James Boswell’s LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON; Thomas Jefferson’s BASIC DOCUMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY; Hamilton, Madison, and Jay’s THE FEDERALIST PAPERS.
Moderns: Jane Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE; Stendahl’s THE RED AND THE BLACK; Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER; Thackeray’s VANITY FAIR; Dicken’s THE PICKWICK PAPERS, DAVID COPPERFIELD, HARD TIMES, THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP; Charlotte Bronte’s JANE EYRE; Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS; Anthony Trollope’s THE WAY WE LIVE NOW and THE WARDEN; Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK; George Elliott’s THE MILL ON THE FLOSS; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s FAUST; Gustave Flaubert’s MADAME BOVARY; Selected poems of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman; Alexis de Tocqueville’s DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA; the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe; Thoreau’s WALDEN.
Moving Toward Contemporaries: Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV; Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE; Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN; Lewis Carroll’s ALICE’S ADVENTURE IN WONDERLAND; Henry Adams’ THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS; Thomas Hardy’s THE MAYOR OF CASTORBRIDGE; Henry James’ THE AMBASSADORS; Joseph Conrad’s NOSTROMO; Anton Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD; George Bernard Shaw’s MAJOR BARBARA; Edith Wharton’s THAT HOUSE OF MIRTH; Marcel Proust’s SWANN’S WAY; Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN; the poetry of Yeats.
Contemporary: The poetry of Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden; E.M. Forster’s A PASSAGE TO INDIA; James Joyce’s ULYSSES; Virginia Woolf’s TO THE LIGHTHOUSE; D.H. Lawrence’s SONS AND LOVERS; Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and THE ICEMAN COMETH; Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD; William Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING; Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES; George Orwell’s 1984; Albert Camus’ THE PLAGUE; Saul Bellow’s THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARSH; Aleksander Solzhenitsy’s CANCER WARD; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE; Thomas Pynchon’s GRAVITY’S RAINBOW; Samuel Becket’s WAITING FOR GODOT.
The archives of Chip's blog (which is no longer posting) are still online and contain a treasure trove of helpful writer advice. http://chipmacgregor.typepad.com/main/
Susan
---
I've had a bunch of people ask me, "What would be on your list of great books for writers to read?", so I decided to share my list of suggested books to make yourself well read…
Ancients: Homer’s ILIAD and ODYSSEY; Sophocles’ OEDIPUS REX; Euripides’ THE TROJAN WOMEN and ELECTRA; Herodotus’ THE HISTORIES; Thucydides’ HISTORY OF THE PELOPPENESIAN WAR; Sun Tsu’s THE ART OF WAR; Aristophanes’ LYSISTRATA; Plato’s SELECTED WORKS; Virgil’s THE AENEID
Classics: Augustine’s CONFESSIONS; Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY; Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES; Shahrazad’s THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS; Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE; Miguel de Servants’ DON QUIXOTE; Shakespeare’s COMPLETE WORKS; John Donne’s SELECTED WORKS; Galileo’s DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE TWO CHIEF WORLD SYSTEMS; Hobbe’s LEVIATHAN; Descarte’s DISCOURSE ON METHOD; Milton’s PARADISE LOST; Moliere’s PLAYS; Blaise Pascal’s PENSEES; Bunyan’s PILGRIM’S PROGRESS; John Locke’s SECOND TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT; Daniel Defoe’s ROBINSON CRUSOE; Jonathan Swift’s GULLIVER’S TRAVELS; Voltaire’s CANDIDE; Henry Fielding’s TOM JONES; Laurence Sterne’s TRISTRAM SHANDY; James Boswell’s LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON; Thomas Jefferson’s BASIC DOCUMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY; Hamilton, Madison, and Jay’s THE FEDERALIST PAPERS.
Moderns: Jane Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE; Stendahl’s THE RED AND THE BLACK; Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER; Thackeray’s VANITY FAIR; Dicken’s THE PICKWICK PAPERS, DAVID COPPERFIELD, HARD TIMES, THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP; Charlotte Bronte’s JANE EYRE; Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS; Anthony Trollope’s THE WAY WE LIVE NOW and THE WARDEN; Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK; George Elliott’s THE MILL ON THE FLOSS; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s FAUST; Gustave Flaubert’s MADAME BOVARY; Selected poems of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman; Alexis de Tocqueville’s DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA; the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe; Thoreau’s WALDEN.
Moving Toward Contemporaries: Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV; Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE; Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN; Lewis Carroll’s ALICE’S ADVENTURE IN WONDERLAND; Henry Adams’ THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS; Thomas Hardy’s THE MAYOR OF CASTORBRIDGE; Henry James’ THE AMBASSADORS; Joseph Conrad’s NOSTROMO; Anton Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD; George Bernard Shaw’s MAJOR BARBARA; Edith Wharton’s THAT HOUSE OF MIRTH; Marcel Proust’s SWANN’S WAY; Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN; the poetry of Yeats.
Contemporary: The poetry of Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden; E.M. Forster’s A PASSAGE TO INDIA; James Joyce’s ULYSSES; Virginia Woolf’s TO THE LIGHTHOUSE; D.H. Lawrence’s SONS AND LOVERS; Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and THE ICEMAN COMETH; Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD; William Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING; Ernest Hemingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES; George Orwell’s 1984; Albert Camus’ THE PLAGUE; Saul Bellow’s THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARSH; Aleksander Solzhenitsy’s CANCER WARD; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE; Thomas Pynchon’s GRAVITY’S RAINBOW; Samuel Becket’s WAITING FOR GODOT.
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