What are the best books from the college 100 list?

Question

Im going to read a few books from this list this summer and i would like to know which ones you most enjoyed, which ones you hated and why, thanks
Author Title
-- Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Golding, William Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad
Homer The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
London, Jack The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur The Crucible
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William Macbeth
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles Antigone
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard Native Son

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Those are all amazing and I don't think you can go wrong. BTW, here is a good site to help you as you are going through those books.

Source(s):

http://www.shmoop.com/literature/
http://www.google.com/search?q=www.shmoo…

Answer 2

The Catcher in the Rye -- kind of an American classic that you can finish in an afternoon and should read if you are capable of reading. I mean, come on. Catcher in the Rye. Start with it.

Huckleberry Finn, Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Stranger, and many more on the list -- How did you graduate high school without reading these books? Your English teacher must have been terrible. Read these, you shouldn't lack knowledge of them.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich -- somewhat overlooked in the U.S., at least these days (it had more relevance during the Cold War, I guess). Worth a read.

Slaughterhouse Five is funny, smart, and fast-paced. An assigned book that has relevance to people today. Social satire, etc. Look Vonnegut up, he's another one you should get familiar with.

Dorian Gray is astonishingly good for a book from its time/place. It reads like it was written yesterday - very quick, no bullshit, no padding, no pretense. It's fun, too. One of the Great Books that really is great.

Treasure Island - boring. Unnecessary. Bloated writing style. Lame pirate fantasy. Go rent a Johnny Depp movie. Pass on this tripe.

Don't bother with any of the Homer or Beowulf unless you can find current translations. The older translations read like a King James Bible.

Answer 3

I've read a bunch on this list. My favorites:
Canterbury Tales
The Awakening
Lord of the Flies
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
The Bell Jar

Actually, these are all fantastic books. I've read most of them (not loved all of them, but liked all of them) and plan to read the ones I haven't read yet. If I were you, I'd google their plots really quickly and pick out the ones that stand out to you. It all depends on what you like.