Reading classic books can boost your learning experience. There are some reasons why classic books can do that: they have stood the test of time, they give you different “lenses” to look through, and they will most likely be relevant even to the far future. Reading the classics is an excellent intellectual exercise which will arm you with a lot of powerful intellectual tools.
To find good classic books, there are trusted recommendations that can help us. The recommendations are found in the books How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren, and The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, both of which I believe are high-quality books. You can read the books for complete information about their recommendations (with suggestions on how to read them), but here I will directly give you the titles of the books which are recommended by both of them.
While I believe a book which is recommended by any of them is good, I think it’s safe to say that a book which is recommended by both of them is great.
So without further ado, here are the recommended classic books along with the Amazon and free download links (if any):
Novel
- Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) – Download
- Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift) – Download
- Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) – Download
- Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens) – Download
- The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) - Download
- Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) – Download
- Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert) – Download
- Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) – Download
- Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) – Download
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain) – Download
- The Trial (Franz Kafka) – Download
Autobiography and Memoir
- The Confessions (Augustine) – Download
- The Complete Essays (Michel de Montaigne) – Download
- Meditations on First Philosophy (Rene Descartes)
- Walden (Henry David Thoreau) – Download
History
- The Histories (Herodotus) – Download vol 1 – vol 2
- The Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) – Download
- The Republic (Plato) – Download
- Lives (Plutarch) – Download vol 1 – vol 2 – vol 3
- City of God (Augustine)
- The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) – Download
- Utopia (Sir Thomas More) – Download
- The Social Contract (Jean Jaques Rousseau)
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edward Gibbon) – Download vol 1 – vol 2 – vol 3 -vol 4 – vol 5 – vol 6
- Democracy in America (Alexis de Tocqueville) – Download vol 1 – vol 2
- The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx) – Download
Drama
- Agamemnon (Aeschylus) – Download
- Oedipus the King (Sophocles) – Download
- Medea (Euripides)
- The Birds (Aristophanes) – Download
- Poetics (Aristotle) – Download
- Richard III (William Shakespeare) – Download
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (William Shakespeare) – Download
- Hamlet (William Shakespeare) – Download
- Tartuffe (Moliere) – Download
- The Way of the World (William Congreve) – Download
- A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen) – Download
- Saint Joan (George Bernard Shaw)
- No Exit (Jean Paul Sartre)
Poet
- The Iliad (Homer) – Download
- The Odyssey (Homer) – Download
- Odes (Horace) – Download
- Inferno (Dante Alighieri) – Download
- The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer) – Download
- Sonnets (William Shakespeare) – Download
- Paradise Lost (John Milton) – Download
- Selected Poetry (William Wordsworth) – Download vol 1 – vol 2 – vol 3
- The Complete Poems (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) – Download
It may take years to read all these books, but it undoubtedly will be a very rewarding intellectual journey; they are among the best books of human civilization.
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Thanks, bringwedding :)
koleksinya bagus – bagus ya..
ijin download ya :)
This list is really helpful; i better go to the library fast… I better start reading now…
@.@
This is an excellent list! I just started The Odyssey this morning, after finishing Great Expectations, which is not on the list, but it’s still Dickens. Next, I hope to read The Doll’s House or the Oedipus trilogy! I think the reason I like this list so much is because I either own or have read almost all of these, so it seems really surmountable. Anyway, great list, great blog. Have a lovely day!
these books are awesome!! I’ve already read some of them but i think i’ll check out the rest.. thanks everyone byebye now **kelsey**
What about “The Great Gatsby” Of the five books I have read it is my favorite. Also anyone have a good book they can sugest I read next.
Among the novels you have mentioned, WebLiterature.Net hosts almost all of them and many more of similar classic genre – after Gutenberg.Org (which unfortunately mizes categories), this is one of the biggest websites on only classic literature as of today.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 can be found at gutenberg.net.au, created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia.
[...] classic books. These books have passed the test of [...]
[...] Topic “Best Classic Books to Read” in [...]
Thanks for this great article. It is an eye-opener. Classic literature can bring the best of peace in mind if the right book is chosen at the right time of life and mindset.
Also thanks for referring webliterature.net to one of the commentors. I was amazed to see such a great collection and all for free – surely I saved $1000 if not more on buying books.
[...] 48 Best Classic Books to Read [...]
i think to kill a mockingbird should be there. it shows the time period excellently and is amazingly written as well as has stood the test of time.
Cannot find Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’, Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ or Scott’s ‘Treasure Island’ on this list.
They would all be in my top five.
The Importance of being Earnest?
A tale of two cities?
Candide?
Come on!
As others mentioned, too many books are missing. Books as Candide (Voltaire) or The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran) deserve to be in the list.
Also, the sites http://www.webliterature.net and http://www.gutenberg.org both seem to have too many great books to cover in a lifetime – definitely more than 48.
[...] writes about self improvement. Check his articles on best classic books to read and free mind games. var addthis_pub = ‘ndthuan’; var addthis_brand = ‘Eddieway Articles’;var [...]
and where is the best adventure classics by the Great Fennimore Cooper ???…Chechov..?…Pushkin..?…
Karl Marx..??!!!…why should we read his screwed up mind that caused so many wars and conflicts in the world, that still exist today ????????
[...] Read a classic book. [...]
I think Bram Stokers Dracula counts as a classic! And The story of my life by Giacomo Casanova
[...] searching on the web for Best Classic Books to Read, I stumbled into this amazing Life Optimizer website. At a first glance, I particularly found [...]
Why do people always cut up Dante’s Comedy? It’s meant to be read as a whole, so Purgatorio and Paradiso should be included as well.
Zal: Your failure at historic knowledge has been noted.
To clarify, zal’s assessment of history is entirely backwards (mostly due to the fact that countries with Marxism-derived ideologies failed to continue for very long, and were not the cause of that many wars… especially when compared to countries with capitalist-derived ideology)
Donald – Here’s a list of the titles in the Great Books of the Western World with 1-line summaries of each. Might be helpful for people trying to decide which to read. http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2009/03/capsule-summaries-of-great-books-of.html
Jonathan,
Thanks for compiling such a helpful list!
The good of http://www.gutenberg.org is that they have audio books. The other one, http://www.webliterature.net can be searched easily but they don’t have audio books, have only written books.
[...] vezes me bate uma tristeza que não lerei todos os livros que queria ler nessa minha vida, porém,nesse site em inglês, descobri 48 bons livros clássicos para ser lidos em vários gêneros. Alguns até dei uma lidinha e conheço a história e do que se trata e realmente são muito bons! [...]
Pride and Prejudice is such a breathtaking book
Thanks, this is just what I needed:) I’m going to try for 3 years. Maybe it will give me a better chance of winning a scholarship, which is my only shot at a good college.
Have you ever read Chinese Classics?
I am 10 years old and reading these books. i am reading them cause my teacher suggested I read classics. I have a 9th grade level in reading and I am in 4th grade.
@Milander
With the exception of most of the Histories, Agamemnon (Aeschylus) and Tartuffe (Moliere), I have read every book on this list.
Your opinion that no “not one of these books would ever be chosen by any right minded person as a ‘good read’ except some anal retentive book fetishist who has snobbish pretensions” is largely insulting to one such as myself as I do consider myself to be right minded and am in no way aware that I am an anal retentive book fetishist or hold snobbish pretensions.
Let it be known that I am 16 years old and from New Zealand. If a teenager from down under can take the time to read these books (and enjoy them) how can the list be “a list of books designed to turn people off reading”?
- Samantha.
You should consider including at least one more book that covers the African American Experience.
Come on people! Give this guy a break! This is only his opinion, and there is no way (as he stated) to list and read all of the good books out there!!!! There are sooo many! If you have a different list-post it please! I for one need recommendations for good books to read myself, and for my children. Classics are a great start and stand the test of time, but again-there are many, and we all have different tastes. Thanks for taking the time to compile and place your list on the web!
Yea where is To Kill a Mockingbird?
These book are quite the classics :)
But I believe ur missing a few : ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Of Mice and Men’, Their eyes were watching God, Lord of Flies, The Chosen, :]
Great books for classic reading :]
Hall Caine – The Eternal City
Luo Guangzhou – Three Kingdoms
These are two of my most favorite of all classics; up there with the likes of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Hugo’s Les Miserables, Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo, and Plato’s Republic.
I strongly encourage every serious readers to search out these books. Eternal City is not as well known (published first in 1898) as most classics, but I am convinced that its message will stand the test of time.
Three Kingdoms is one of the four pillars of Chinese literature, the other three being:
Outlaws of the Marsh (aka The Water Margin)
Dream of the Red Chamber
Journey to the West
this is a response to Anan,
Anan the best books from human civilization does not come exclusively from Europe and North America, they come from all over the world such India, china, and lot of lost books i believe from Africa during the Egyptian and Moorish civilization were destroyed during wars of conquest, example the burning of the biggest library in the world at that time which was in Egypt
I love classics i have read a few of these but i think im going to have to try some more on this list. My favorites are little women and pride of prejudice
Readspeeder.com has a collection of over 100 classic novels which can be read for free. ReadSpeeder will keep your reading place for you between visits, so you can pick up where you left off by logging in on any other computer or even your iPhone. ReadSpeeder uses a new technology that divides the text into its ‘Natural’ phrases and presents these in sequence to improve your reading speed and comprehension. You can also add any other text you want and save it for later reading, or even share it with friends.
I love these books historical but still intriguing! Awesome books!
Quite a list! but perhaps what I find most telling is that no matter how precise a list of this sort can be it can never be perfect, Such unforgetables like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and even Shakespeare’s Macbeth are left out! Good list though
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
you can read those books sooner if
1. you listen to them in auiobook format
2. listen for pleasure, rather then number count
Enjoy.
End thanks for list and suggestions.
wow. Very nice.
I’ll start with them.
could u also suggest some eastern literature?
I’m so glad to find this wonderful place to learn something useful
Don’t forget John Steinbeck …………… Of Mice and Men
Hi, I just found your site. I have read some of the comments. It really is impossible to please everyone, so don’t worry about some of the meaner ones. I am a reader, but I’ve basically only read books from my favorite authors. I am like you and I’m new to classic books. I appreciate your list. It gave me a great place to start. Thank you!
omg, ya’ll didnt put jane eyre in there, and treasure island, and the anne of green gables sieres.