Saya sudah membaca beberapa buku yang direkomendasikan dalam daftar ini. Beberapa di antaranya sudah diterjemahkan ke Indonesia. Tapi jauh lebih menarik bila kita dapat memahami dalam bahasa aslinya.
THE NEW LIFETIME READING PLAN
RENCANA BARU MEMBACA SEUMUR HIDUP
Oleh Clifton Fadiman dan John S. Major
Rencana Membaca Seumur Hidup-nya Clifton Fadiman pertama kali diterbitkan tahun 1960, kemudian ada edisi revisi 1978 dan 1986. Buku ini adalah merupakan satu permata berharga sepanjang karir Fadiman yang penuh semangat mendorong membaca dan menikmati buku. “Rencana Baru Membaca Seumur Hidup” yang ditulis bersama John S. Major diterbitkan oleh Harper Collins 1997. Tulisan ini hanya mengutip daftar yang mereka buat dalam buku itu. Yang amat menarik dari keseluruhan daftar ini adalah keyakinan, yang didukung oleh kepercayaan diri Fadiman yang selama berpuluh tahun berkarir di bidang literatur, bahwa bahkan di zaman di mana buku-buku diterbitkan dalam jumlah seperti rintik hujan seperti saat ini, hanya sedikit yang akan bertahan dan pantas mendapat perhatian khusus. Daftar yang dibuat kedua penulis mencerahkan, tetapi [bila dapat membaca buku yang mereka tulis selengkapnya] komentar yang mereka berikan untuk tiap buku bahkan sudah menyenangkan bagi siapa saja pencinta buku.
- Anonymous, ca. 200 B.C.E. (Scribe Sin-Leqi-Unninni, ca. 700 B.C.E.), The Epic of Gilgamesh
- Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Iliad
- Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Odyssey
- Confucius, 551-479 B.C.E., The Analects
- Aeschylus, 525-456/5 B.C.E., The Oresteia
- Sophocles, 496-406 B.C.E., Oedipus Rex; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone
- Euripides, 484-406 B.C.E., Alcestis; Medea; Hippolytus; The Trojan Women; Electra; The Bacchae
- Herodotus, ca. 484-425 B.C.E., The Histories
- Thucydides, ca. 470/460-ca. 400 B.C.E., The History of the Peloponnesian War
- Sun-tzu, ca. 450-380 B.C.E., The Art of War
- Aristophanes, 448-388 B.C.E., Lysistrata; The Clouds; The Birds
- Plato, 428-348 B.C.E., Selected Works
- Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.E., Ethics; Politics; Poetics
- Mencius, ca. 400-320 B.C.E., The Book of Mencius
- Attributed to Valmiki, ca. 300 B.C.E., The Ramayana
- Attributed to Vyasa, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Mahabharata
- Anonymous, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Bhagavad Gita
- Ssu-ma Ch'ien, 145-86 B.C.E., Records of the Grand Historian
- Lucretius, ca. 100-ca. 50 B.C.E., Of the Nature of Things
- Virgil, 70-19 B.C.E., The Aeneid
- Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, Meditations
- Saint Augustine, 354-430, The Confessions
- Kalidasa, ca. 400, The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala
- Revealed to Muhammad, completed 650, The Koran
- Hui-neng, 638-713, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
- Firdausi, ca. 940-1020, Shah Nameh
- Sei Shonagon, ca. 965-1035, The Pillow-Book
- Lady Murasaki, ca. 976-1015, The Tale of Genji
- Omar Khayyam, 1048-?, The Rubaiyat
- Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, The Divine Comedy
- Luo Kuan-chung, ca. 1330-1400, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342-1400, The Canterbury Tales
- Anonymous, ca. 1500, The Thousand and One Nights
- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, The Prince
- Francois Rabelais, 1483-1553, Gargantua and Pantagruel
- Attributed to Wu Ch' eng-en, 1500-1582, Journey to the West
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533-1592, Selected Essays
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1547-1616, Don Quixote
- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Complete Works
- John Donne, 1573-1631, Selected Works
- Anonymous, published 1618, The Plum in the Golden vase ( Chin P'ing Mei)
- Galileo Galilei, 1574-1642, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
- Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, Leviathan
- Rene Descartes, 1596-1650, Discourse on Method
- John Milton, 1608-1674, Paradise Lost; "Lycidas"; "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"; Sonnets; Areopagitica
- Moliere, 1622-1673, Selected Plays
- Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, Thoughts (Pensees)
- John Bunyan, 1628-1688, Pilgrim's Progress
- John Locke, 1632-1704, Second Treatise of Government
- Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
- Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731, Robinson Crusoe
- Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, Gulliver's Travels
- Voltaire, 1694-1778, Candide and other works
- David Hume, 1711-1776, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, Tom Jones
- Ts'ao Hsiieh-ch'in, 1715-1763, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, Confessions
- Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768, Tristram Shandy
- James Boswell, 1740-1795, The Life of Samuel Johnson
- Thomas Jefferson and others, Basic Documents in American History, edited by Richard B. Morris
- Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers, 1787, edited by Clinton Rossiter
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, Faust
- William Blake, 1757-1827, Selected Works
- William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, The Prelude; Selected Shorter Poems; Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"; "Christabel"; "Kubla Khan"; Biographia Literaria; Writings on Shakespeare
- Jane Austen, 1775-1817, Pride and Prejudice; Emma
- Stendhal, 1783-1842, The Red and the Black
- Honore de Balzac, 1799-1850, Pere Goriot; Eugenie Grandet; Cousin Bette
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, Selected Works
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864, The Scarlet Letter; Selected Tales
- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, Democracy in America
- John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, On Liberty; The Subjection of Women
- Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, The Voyage of the Beagle; The Origin of Species
- Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, 1809-1852, Dead Souls
- Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, Short Stories and Other Works
- William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863, Vanity Fair
- Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Great Expectations; Hard Times; Our Mutual Friend,. The Old Curiosity Shop; Little Dorrit
- Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882, The Warden; The Last Chronicle of Barset; The Eustace Diamonds; The Way We Live Now; Autobiography
- Charlotte Bronte, 1816-1855, Jane Eyre
- Emily Bronte, 1818-1848, Wuthering Heights
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, Walden; "Civil Disobedience”
- Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, 1818-1883, Fathers and Sons
- Karl Marx, 1818-1883, and Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895, The Communist Manifesto
- Herman Melville, 1819-1891, Moby Dick; Bartleby the Scrivener
- George Eliot, 1819-1880, The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch
- Walt Whitman, 1819-1892, Selected Poems; Democratic Vistas; Preface to the first issue of Leaves of Grass; A Backward Glance O'er Travelled Roads
- Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1880, Madame Bovary
- Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, 1821-1881, Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov
- Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828-1906, War and Peace
- Henrick Ibsen, 1828-1906, Selected Plays
- Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, Collected Poems
- Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,. Through the Looking Glass
- Mark Twain, 1835-1910, Huckleberry Finn
- Henry Adams, 1838-1918, The Education of Henry Adams
- Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928, The Mayor of Casterbridge
- William James, 1842-1910, The Principles of Psychology; Pragmatism; four essays from The Meaning of Truth; The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Henry James, 1843-1916, The Ambassadors
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, Thus Spake Zarathustra; The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil- other works
- Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, Selected Works, including The Interpretation of Dreams; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; Civilization and Its Discontents
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1939, Selected Plays and Prefaces
- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, Nostromo
- Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904, Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard,. Selected Short Stories
- Edith Wharton, 1862-1937, The Custom of the Country; The Age of Innocence; The House of Mirth
- William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Collected Poems; Collected Plays; Autobiography
- Natsume Soseki, 1867-1916, Kokoro
- Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, Remembrance of Things Past
- Robert Frost, 1874-1963, Collected Poems
- Thomas Mann, 1875-1955, The Magic Mountain
- E. M. Forster, 1879-1970, A Passage to India
- Lu Hsiin, 1881-1936, Collected Short Stories
- James Joyce, 1882-1941, Ulysses
- Virginia Woolf: 1882-1941, Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; The ¬ves
- Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, The Trial. The Castle; Selected Short Stories
- D. H. Lawrence, 1885-1930, Sons and Lovers; Women in Love
- Tanizaki Junichiro, 1886-1965, The Makioka Sisters
- Eugene O'Neill, 1888-1953, Mourning Becomes Electra; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night
- T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, Collected Poems; Collected Plays
- Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, Brave New World
- William Faulkner, 1897-1962, The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying
- Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, Short Stories
- Kawabata Yasunari, 1899-1972, Beauty and Sadness
- Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986, Labyrinths; Dreamtigers
- Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory
- George Orwell, 1903-1950, Animal Farm; 1984; Burmese Days
- R. K. Narayan, 1906-, The English Teacher; The Vendor of Sweets
- Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989, Waiting for Godot; Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape
- W H. Auden, 1907-1973, Collected Poems
- Albert Camus, 1913-1960, The Plague; The Stranger
- Saul Bellow, 1915- , The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog; Humboldt's Gift
- Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918- , The First Circle; Cancer Ward
- Thomas Kuhn, 1922-1996, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Mishima Yukio, 1925-1970, Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1928- , One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Chinua Achebe, 1930-, Things Fall Apart
