the Chuck Jones Essential Reading List
““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.””
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 Steffens
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 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