The Chuck Jones Essential Reading List

Chuck Jones at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, circa early 1980s.
Chuck Jones at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, circa early 1980s.

 

"The author, O. Henry, taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds--the birds were chickens and the flowers, dried sunflowers rattling against a wall." --Chuck Jones

And so follows Chuck Jones’ list of Essential Books every literate, English-speaking person should read (at least once, probably more often). Click on the title to purchase the book. We have included either a brief summary of the book or its first paragraph when available directly below the title:

·         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

·         Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis

·         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

·         Roughing It – Mark Twain

·         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