Chuck Jones's Essential Reading List
Chuck Jones’ list of Essential Books every literate, English-speaking person should read (at least once, probably more often)
A Spy in the Family – Alec Waugh
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
A Travel Abroad – Mark Twain
A Treasury of Science – Harlow Shapely
Animal Architecture – Karl von Frisch
Anything by Robert Parker
Cabbages and Kings – O’Henry
Career in C Major – James Cain
Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
Damon Runyon short stories (at least three)
Double Indemnity – James Cain
Elmer Gantry – Sinclair Lewis
Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Gamesmanship – Stephen Potter
Major Barbara – G.B. Shaw
My Life and Hard Times – James Thurber
Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
Seventeen – Booth Tarkington
Short Stories of Somerset Maugham (at least two)
Silent Snow, Secret Snow – Conrad Aiken
Sir Niguel – A. Conan Doyle
Stalky and Company – Rudyard Kipling
The Autobiography of Lincoln Stephens
The Bar Sinister – Richard Harding Davis
The Crock of Gold – James Stephens
The Elements of Style – Strunk/White
The Gnome King of Oz – L. Frank Baum
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The History of Mr. Polly – H.G. Wells
The Jungle Books – Rudyard Kipling
The Killers — Ernest Hemingway
The Little Drummer Girl – John le Carre
The Moonstone — Willkie Collins
The Poems of Robert Frost
The Red Pony – John Steinbeck
The Short Stories of Ring Lardner
The Short Stories of Saki (H.H. Monroe)
The Spy that Came in from the Cold – John le Carre
The Touch of Nutmeg – John Collier
The Varming – Owen Johnson
The White Company – A. Conan Doyle
Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
Treasure Island – R.L. Stevenson
Turnabout – William Faulkner
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
Words at Play – Willard Espy
