Heretofore Essential Reading List

A Few of my peers have inquired as to what I would consider my essential reading list. Granted, there are countless works that I have not read, e.g. Don Quixote, that would merit a spot on any list of books. But this is a list of suggested readings, that for one reason or another I have recommended. I do not want to get into the specifics of why I have included them, but trust me that I have good ones. After a point they are ordered in the order which I have read them, I believing beginning with Hart's The 100. So enjoy, and I will be adding to this list as I read more.

The Merchant of Venice; William Shakespeare
Animal Farm; George Orwell
Beowulf
The Short Reign of Pippin IV; John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby; F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Trial; Kafka
The Prophet; Khalil Gibran
The 100; Michael H. Hart
The Elegant Universe; Brian Greene
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?; Harold Bloom
Freakonomics; Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Ecclesiastes
Ethan Frome; Edith Wharton
Intro to Mathematical Philosophy; Bertrand Russell
Washington Square; Henry James
Atheism: The Case against God; George H. Smith
A Farewell to Arms; Ernest Hemingway
Hamlet; William Shakespeare
The Sorrow of War; Bao Ninh
Mother Night; Kurt Vonnegut
The End of Poverty; Jeffery D. Sachs
Deep River; Shusaku Endo
Twilight of the Idols: or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer; Friedrich Nietzsche
The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems; Charles Bukowski
The Bacchae; Euripides
Cymbeline; Shakespeare
The Anxiety of Influence; Harold Bloom
Talking Dirty to the Gods; Yusef Komunyakaa
The Cherry Orchard; Anton Chekhov
Candide; Voltaire
The Aeneid; Vergil
No Exit; Jean-Paul Sartre
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; James Joyce
Eats, Shoots & Leaves; Lynne Truss
The Stranger; Albert Camus
The Fall; Albert Camus
The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Milan Kundera
The Pig that Wants to be Eaten; Julian Baggini
Poems from Guantánamo; Marc Falkoff
Naming and Necessity; Saul Kripke
The God Delusion; Richard Dawkins
The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals; Immanuel Kant