A must read. Must Read List of Fiction Must Read

Anna Karenina. Lev Tolstoy

The greatest love story of all time. A story that has not left the stage, filmed countless times - and still has not lost the boundless charm of passion - a destructive, destructive, blind passion - but all the more bewitching with its grandeur.

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Master and Margarita. Michael Bulgakov

This is the most mysterious of the novels in the entire history of Russian literature of the 20th century. This is a novel that is almost officially called the "Gospel of Satan". This is The Master and Margarita. A book that can be read and re-read dozens, hundreds of times, but most importantly, which is still impossible to understand. So, which pages of The Master and Margarita were dictated by the Forces of Light?

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Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte

Mystery novel, included in the top ten best novels of all time! The story of a stormy, truly demonic passion, which excites the imagination of readers for more than a hundred and fifty years. Katie gave her heart to her cousin, but ambition and a thirst for wealth push her into the arms of a rich man. Forbidden attraction turns into a curse for secret lovers, and one day.

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Eugene Onegin. Alexander Pushkin

“Have you read "Onegin"? What can you say about Onegin? These are the questions that are constantly repeated among writers and Russian readers, ”the writer, enterprising publisher and, by the way, the hero of Pushkin’s epigrams, Thaddeus Bulgarin, noted after the publication of the second chapter of the novel. For a long time ONEGIN has not been accepted to evaluate. In the words of the same Bulgarin, it is “written in Pushkin's verses. That's enough."

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Notre Dame Cathedral. Victor Hugo

A story that survived the centuries, became a canon and gave its heroes the glory of common nouns. A story of love and tragedy. The love of those to whom love was not given and not allowed - by religious rank, physical weakness or someone else's evil will. The gypsy Esmeralda and the deaf hunchback bell ringer Quasimodo, the priest Frollo and the captain of the royal shooters Phoebe de Chateauper, the beautiful Fleur-de-Lys and the poet Gringoire.

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Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell

The great saga of the American Civil War and the fate of the wayward and head-on Scarlett O'Hara was first published over 70 years ago and has not aged to this day. This is the only novel by Margaret Mitchell for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. A story about a woman who is not ashamed to be equal to either an unconditional feminist or a staunch supporter of house building.

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Romeo and Juliet. William Shakespeare

This is the highest of love tragedies that human genius can create. A tragedy that has been filmed and will be filmed. A tragedy that does not leave the stage to this day - and to this day it sounds like it was written yesterday. Years and centuries go by. But one thing remains and will forever remain unchanged: “There is no sadder story in the world than the story of Romeo and Juliet ...”

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The Great Gatsby. Francis Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is not only the pinnacle of Fitzgerald's work, but also one of the highest achievements in world prose of the 20th century. Although the action of the novel takes place in the “turbulent” twenties of the last century, when fortunes were made literally from nothing and yesterday’s criminals became millionaires overnight, this book lives outside of time, because, telling about the broken fates of the “Jazz Age” generation.

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Three Musketeers. Alexandr Duma

The most famous historical adventurous novel by Alexandre Dumas tells about the adventures of the Gascon d'Artagnan and his Musketeer friends at the court of King Louis XIII.

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Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandr Duma

The book presents one of the most exciting adventure novels of the classic of French literature of the 19th century, Alexandre Dumas.

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Triumphal Arch. Erich Remarque

One of the most beautiful and tragic love stories in the history of European literature. The story of a refugee from Nazi Germany, Dr. Ravik, and the beautiful Joan Madu, entangled in the "unbearable lightness of being," takes place in pre-war Paris. And the disturbing time in which these two happened to meet and fall in love with each other becomes one of the main characters of the Arc de Triomphe.

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The person who laughs. Victor Hugo

Gwynplaine is a lord by birth, as a child he was sold to bandits-comprachikos, who made a fair jester out of a child, carving a mask of “eternal laughter” on his face (at the courts of the European nobility of that time there was a fashion for cripples and freaks who amused the owners). Despite all the trials, Gwynplaine retained the best human qualities and his love.

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Martin Eden. Jack London

A simple sailor, in whom it is easy to recognize the author himself, goes a long, full of hardships path to literary immortality ... By chance, finding himself in a secular society, Martin Eden is doubly happy and surprised ... and the creative gift awakened in him, and the divine image of the young Ruth Morse, so not similar to all the people he knew before ... From now on, two goals relentlessly stand before him.

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Sister Kerry. Theodore Dreiser

The publication of Theodore Dreiser's first novel was so difficult that it led its creator into a severe depression. But the further fate of the novel "Sister Kerry" turned out to be happy: it was translated into many foreign languages, reprinted in millions of copies. New and new generations of readers are happy to plunge into the vicissitudes of the fate of Caroline Meiber.

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American tragedy. Theodore Dreiser

The novel "An American Tragedy" is the pinnacle of the work of the outstanding American writer Theodore Dreiser. He said: “No one creates tragedies - life creates them. The writers only portray them.” Dreiser managed to depict the tragedy of Clive Griffiths so talentedly that his story does not leave the modern reader indifferent.

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Outcasts. Victor Hugo

Jean Valjean, Cosette, Gavroche - the names of the heroes of the novel have long become household names, the number of its readers for a century and a half since the publication of the book has not decreased, the novel has not lost its popularity. A kaleidoscope of faces from all sectors of French society in the first half of the 19th century, vivid, memorable characters, sentimentality and realism, a tense, exciting plot.

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The adventures of the good soldier Schweik. Yaroslav Gashek

Great, original and hooligan novel. A book that can be perceived both as a "soldier's tale" and as a classic work, directly related to the traditions of the Renaissance. This is a sparkling text that makes you laugh to tears, and a powerful call to “lay down your arms”, and one of the most objective historical evidence in satirical literature..

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Iliad. Homer

The attraction of Homer's poems is not only that their author introduces us to a world separated from modernity by tens of centuries and yet unusually real thanks to the genius of the poet, who preserved in his poems the beating of contemporary life. Homer's immortality lies in the fact that his brilliant creations contain inexhaustible reserves of universal human values ​​- reason, goodness and beauty.

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St. John's wort. James Cooper

Cooper managed to find and describe in his books that originality and unexpected brightness of the newly discovered continent, which managed to fascinate all of modern Europe. Each new novel by the writer was eagerly awaited. The exciting adventures of the fearless and noble hunter and tracker Natty Bumpo conquered both young and adult readers..

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Doctor Zhivago. Boris Pasternak

The novel "Doctor Zhivago" is one of the outstanding works of Russian literature, which for many years remained closed to a wide range of readers in our country, who knew about it only through scandalous and unscrupulous party criticism.

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Don Quixote. Miguel Cervantes

What do the names of Amadis the Gallic, the English Palmerine, the Greek Don Belianis, the White Tyrant tell us today? But it was precisely as a parody of the novels about these knights that “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was created. And this parody outlived the parodied genre for centuries. "Don Quixote" was recognized as the best novel in the history of world literature.

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Ivanhoe. Walter Scott

"Ivanhoe" is a key work in the cycle of novels by W. Scott, which takes us to medieval England. The young knight Ivanhoe, who secretly returned from the Crusade to his homeland and was disinherited by the will of his father, will have to defend his honor and the love of the beautiful Lady Rowena ... King Richard the Lionheart and the legendary robber Robin Hood will come to his aid.

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Headless horseman. Reed Mine

The plot of the novel is built so skillfully that it keeps you in suspense until the very last page. It is no coincidence that the exciting story of the noble mustanger Maurice Gerald and his beloved, the beautiful Louise Poindexter, investigating the sinister secret of the headless horseman, whose figure, when he appears, terrifies the inhabitants of the savannah, was extremely fond of readers of Europe and Russia.

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Dear friend. Guy de Maupassant

The novel "Dear friend" has become one of the symbols of the era. This is Maupassant's most powerful novel. Through the story of Georges Duroy, making his “way up”, the true morals of high French society are revealed, the spirit of venality that reigns in all its areas contributes to the fact that an ordinary and immoral person, such as the hero of Maupassant, easily achieves success and wealth.

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Dead Souls. Nikolay Gogol

The release of the first volume of N. Gogol's "Dead Souls" in 1842 caused a heated controversy among contemporaries, splitting society into admirers and opponents of the poem. “…Speaking of “Dead Souls”, one can talk a lot about Russia…” – this judgment of P. Vyazemsky explained the main reason for the controversy. The author’s question is still relevant: “Rus, where are you going, give me an answer?”

In the article Vladimir Putin about the national question, in which, of course, everyone is free to seek out various charms, there is at least one concrete proposal - to form a list of 100 books that are required reading for any educated Russian.

We have taken the liberty of suggesting a variant of such a list. Of course, voluntarism is inevitable here, and besides, Russian literature is richer than any list. The difficulty lies not in shaping it, but rather in making the act of choice itself: after all, we are talking about true love. We love books, and we wish you the same.

Nevertheless, we took a chance, taking as a basis some unformulated idea of ​​the “cultural code”, and tried to single out books that, as of today, form the field of Russian consciousness, whose heroes, it seems, have become, remained our contemporaries, who are torn into quotes , often even unrecognizable, which have become something of a proverb. Books, which for a Russian person, are an inevitable intellectual background, a basis for understanding any processes.

This approach forces you to hold back, cross off the list of truly great books. At the same time, it had to include works of a lower level, but which had an objective impact on the formation of the identity of the Russian educated class. We did not include the magnificent, for example, Bunin's "Life of Arsenev" and Dobychin's texts, but "The Master and Margarita" or "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" are present there.

By the way, we did not get hung up on the number "100", sparing the educated Russian youth.

So here is our list. Clarifications, additions, disputes, constructive criticism and even angry abuse are welcome. For a Russian person, after all, literature is, as usual, more than just words. This is love, this is life.

1. The Tale of Bygone Years.
2. Kiev-Pechersk Patericon.
3. Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh to children.
4. Metropolitan Hilarion's Word on Law and Grace.
5. Life of Boris and Gleb.
6. A word about Igor's regiment.
7. Life of Peter and Fevronia of Murom Yermolai-Erasmus.
8. A word about the Mamaev battle.
9. Correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Andrei Kurbsky.
10. Life of Archpriest Avvakum, written by him.
11. Derzhavin G.R. Poems.
12. Fonvizin D.I. Undergrowth.
13. Shcherbatov M.M. On the damage to morals in Russia.
14. Radishchev A.N. Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.
15. Karamzin N.M. Poor Lisa. Martha is a tenant. History of Russian Goverment.
16. Zhukovsky V.A. Poems.
17. Pushkin A.S. Works.
18. Baratynsky E.A. Poems.
19. Griboyedov A.S. Woe from the mind.
20. Lermontov M.Yu. Poems. Hero of our time.
21. Gogol N.V. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. Taras Bulba. Dead Souls. Auditor.
22. Chaadaev P.Ya. The first philosophical letter.
23. Herzen A.I. Past and thoughts.
24. Tolstoy L.N. War and Peace. Anna Karenina. Cossacks. Hadji Murad.
25. Nekrasov N.A. To whom in Russia to live well? Poems.
26. Leskov N.S. Lefty. The Enchanted Wanderer. Dumb artist. Engraved angel. Pechersk antiques. Robbery. Cathedral.
27. Dostoevsky F.M. Demons. Crime and Punishment. Brothers Karamazov.
28. Bakunin M.A. Statehood and anarchy.
29. Sukhovo-Kobylin A.V. Krechinsky's wedding. A business. Death of Tarelkin.
30. Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. Modern idyll. History of one city. Fairy tales.
31. Ostrovsky A.N. Comedy. Thunderstorm. Snow Maiden.
32. Turgenev I.S. Fathers and Sons.
33. Tolstoy A.K. Drama trilogy.
34. Kozma Prutkov. Works.
35. Tyutchev F.I. Poems.
36. Uspensky G. I. Morals of the Rasteryaeva Street.
37. Ershov P.P. The Little Humpbacked Horse.
38. Folk Russian tales collected by A.N. Afanasiev.
39. Solovyov V.S. Three conversations about war, progress and the end of world history. With the inclusion of a short story about the Antichrist and with applications.
40. Chekhov A.P. Stories. Theatre.
41. Gorky A.M. Essays. At the bottom.
42. Blok A.A. Poems. Twelve.
43. Mandelstam O.E. Poems.
44. Mayakovsky V.V. Poems. Poems.
45. Rozanov V.V. Apocalypse of our time.
46. Milestones.
47. Zoshchenko M.M. Stories.
48. Yesenin S.A. Poems.
49. Platonov A.P. Chevengur. Pit.
50. Bulgakov M.A. Master and Margarita. White Guard.
51. Ilf I. Petrov E. The Golden Calf.
52. Nekrasov V.P. In the trenches of Stalingrad.
53. Tvardovsky A.T. Vasily Terkin.
54. Shalamov V.T. Kolyma stories.
55. Schwartz E.L. Plays.
56. Solzhenitsyn A.I. One day of Ivan Denisovich. Gulag archipelago.
57. Erofeev V.V. Moscow-Petushki.
58. Shukshin V.M. Stories.
59. Brodsky I.A. Poems.

Perhaps you have not read all the books on this list, because at first glance they are so different. But try to read something that is unfamiliar to you. We guarantee that it will not leave you indifferent.

Books help develop character and teach, no matter how trite, good and beautiful. In addition, reading books can distract and captivate a person, giving him unforgettable moments of life. Reading can pass your free time, spending it, which is the most attractive, with considerable benefit. Today there are millions of books in the world - even in a lifetime they cannot be read by one person. Are there any books that must be read? Various researchers and organizations have compiled their own lists of books that must be read in your life.

1. "Life on loan". This sentimental work of Erich Maria Remarque is one of the most famous of the writer. Those who are unfamiliar with the work of this author should begin their acquaintance with this book. Many re-read “Life on loan” more than a dozen times, each time finding something new in this work.

What is this book about? There are two main characters here - a racing guy who risks his life every day, and a girl who is terminally ill with tuberculosis. At the same time, both of them believe only in the best - that is why the ending of the book is ironic and insanely absurd, and every page is saturated with tragedy.

2. "Lolita". This novel by Vladimir Nabokov cannot leave anyone indifferent. He catches with his provocative sincerity and longing. Until now, people are discussing what it was - crazy love or perversion. Everyone needs to read this confession in order to form their own opinion about the behavior of men.

What is this book about? About the love and relationship of an adult forty-year-old man and a teenage girl of thirteen.

3. "Master and Margarita". This immortal novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is extremely relevant even today, is very difficult to understand, as it refers to philosophical reading. It is read easily and quickly, but many “grow up” to it at a more mature age.

What is this book about? A mystic about love and power, about an unrecognized genius and his muse, about how the Devil once again was defeated over the human soul and about the fact that God exists, but in everyone's soul.

4. "Demons". Fyodor Dostoyevsky has no light fiction at all. But this work is a rather serious product that only a prepared reader needs to “taste”.

What is this book about? Demons lurk in every one of us. The terrible act that the protagonist committed in his youth haunts him throughout his life, embodied in the ghost of a murdered girl.

5. "Tender is the night". This is one of the main novels of Francis S. Fitzgerald, where there is love and a love triangle, as well as strong weakness or weak strength, whichever is closer.

What is this book about? Dear and beautiful life on the Cote d'Azur - it would seem, live and rejoice, but what to do if there is no most important thing - happiness?

6. "Dear friend." The classic of French literature, Guy de Maupassant, has gained fame as an aesthete, and his works are strong and, as they say, “tasty” - critics say that this is his best work.

What is this book about? About Alphonse. More precisely, about one stupid, greedy, illiterate, but terribly handsome man, with whom an intelligent and talented woman falls in love.

7. "Loneliness in the network." The books of modern authors, such as Janusz Wisniewski, are closer to the younger generation, especially since they are based on things that are very close to perception.

What is this book about? About the modern life that young people spend in front of a computer monitor, about love and loneliness, about how important it is in the world to have a loved one.

8. "Gone with the Wind". The book, which was conceived by Margaret Mitchell as a novel about love and war, became a bestseller - it still occupies the top positions in the ratings.

What is this book about? About a strong woman who, after a series of tragic events that unfolded against the background of the war between the North and the South, was able not to lose herself, but to get back on her feet. There is love and betrayal, resourcefulness and self-interest, family values ​​and patriots who are ready to do anything for their idea.

9. "Portrait of Dorian Gray". Many people know and love the tales of Oscar Wilde, but this mystical work is rightfully considered the best on the list of the writer.

What is this book about? The selfish young man does not want to grow old and lose his beauty - the artist paints his portrait, where he hides Dorian's soul. Now the portrait is aging, not the young man.

10. "Easy breathing." This work is considered the most famous by Ivan Bunin, although the legend is as old as the world - the relationship between a man and a woman does not always develop without clouds.

What is this book about? About a frivolous attitude to life - the first love of a high school student and an officer, then the first intimacy, which ends rather sadly.

11. "Scarlet sails". The most famous work of Alexander Green is a symbol of dreams come true, a beautiful fairy tale about a handsome prince.

What is this book about? Since childhood, a poor girl living in a fishing village is sure that a prince will come for her, and his ship will definitely have scarlet sails. And if you love, is it hard to create a miracle for the dearest person?

12. "Diary in the letters of Anne Frank". In Amsterdam, a monument was erected to this girl in honor of the Jews who died during the war. Anne Frank is a real-life 15-year-old girl who kept a diary during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. Today, "Diary ..." is a real document, which has been translated into many languages ​​of the world.

What is this book about? Thoughts of a teenager during the war - what does a girl dream about when her familiar world is destroyed?

13. "The Catcher in the Rye". The controversial and rebellious work of Jerome D. Salinger, which is recommended reading in adolescence.
What is this book about? The growing up of a teenager who, due to his age, is endowed with youthful maximalism and idealism. Many see themselves in the main character: just as vulnerable and sensitive, touchy and unbridled, often confused and lost.

14. "Transformation". Franz Kafka himself is a complex and sometimes gloomy writer, but it is certainly worth reading at least one of his works, especially since this short story is a complete allegory that borders on the absurd.

What is this book about? Somehow the main character wakes up in the morning, and he is not a man, but a disgusting centipede, which even relatives do not want to look at, let alone communicate - complete loneliness in all manifestations, the illusion of love and the ugliness of the soul.

15. Jane Eyre. It is believed to be the only so-called "women's novel" written in the era of Victorian England, which is worth reading for men too. All other works are only pathetic attempts to repeat the success of Charlotte Brontë. At one time, the novel made a real sensation.

What is this book about? About a governess who, although poor and ugly, has an iron will and a strong character. Despite her love for a man - about this, by the way, she is also the first to admit that the girl prefers independence and does everything possible to have equal rights with men. This is a story of strong and uncompromising love - a real "debauchery" for the time when the novel was written.

A classic must-read. Part 1

A classic cannot always be relevant. Any text, as Eco wrote, can be interpreted or used. In the first case, you accept the terms of the game set by the author. You interpret the text in terms of the conditions and the time in which it was created. Explore it to understand its essence and nature. And when using it, you are free to give your own assessment of what is happening: criticize the characters, discuss their actions, etc. The use case is closer to me. Interpretation is more for literary monuments. That is why they are not relevant. But you can also find benefit in them - language, syllable: all this will help you speak and write better, formulate your thoughts more competently.

You have to grow up to many books. Not age, but spiritually, and this is not the same thing. Even to many books from the school curriculum. You can be advised a lot of books, but any reading will be of no use until we study the classics. Our list contains only a small fraction of those classics that are strictly required reading. However, we will try our best to offer you the best.

Faust, Johann Goethe

Fools are content
They see meaning in every word.

The name of the book is so firmly connected with its author that many are sure that Goethe's Faust is the name of the protagonist of the work, or even his title.

It is worth reading if only to know what one of the most quoted, respected, praised and mentioned novels in human history is. Fans of motivation should like it, there is more than enough of it here. After all, my dear, this is not just a story about how the charming Satan acquired the soul from the poor and hard worker Faust. This is a novel about people who rebelled against the vegetative reality in the name of freedom of action and thought. About people called to transform the world by joint free and reasonable work.

And it is also a storehouse of quotes and wise sayings, in addition to the winged one: "Stop, a moment, you are beautiful!" And if you try to understand this not the easiest book, then in return it will endow you with the deep wisdom of the ages, accumulated by Mr. Goethe and poured out like an ink stream on white pages.

The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri

There is a force that is called reason.
And you are able to weigh on the scales
Good and evil.

It is an unthinkable crime against humanity to claim that The Divine Comedy is outdated, irrelevant, and boring. It is boring for narrow-minded people, outdated for the ignorant, irrelevant for the stupid. Alighieri wrote the immortal opus of the name of the triumph of life not so that some idiot, seeing many letters, would begin to vilify the work of his life.

It doesn't matter if you are a Christian or a Muslim, an atheist or a believer - everyone should read this work. Even more so as an atheist. Not in order to figure out which of the circles of Hell you will fall into, but in order to learn to distinguish between good and bad, good and evil, worthy from vile. The stories of students, real and not so, make you think about life. Do not come to God, but understand yourself.

You can even describe this masterpiece as a review of a computer game. "The plot is an interesting, carefully thought out to the smallest detail world." And you can at the same time study the history of Italy during its most interesting period. How I love this piece!

If you want to throw yourself out of the window,” Schweik said. - So go to the room, I opened the window. I would not advise you to jump from the kitchen, because you will fall into the garden right on the roses, break all the bushes, and you will have to pay for it. And from that window, you'll fly off perfectly onto the sidewalk and, if you're lucky, break your neck. If you are not lucky, then you will only break your ribs, arms and legs, and you will have to pay for treatment in the hospital.

Josef Schweik is a separate layer of literary heroes who left the book pages and began to live their own lives. He does not need a literary history - he himself is a walking anecdote. There are few such heroes, except that he, Don Quixote, and ... And, perhaps, everything. No one has such anecdotal significance. Therefore, some perceive "Schweik" as an easy, unpretentious story. Yes, it is written in a masterpiece of satirical language, sometimes rude, sometimes ridiculous. And yet, this is an incredibly accurate and sometimes even offensive satire, denouncing the war, the military leadership and, of course, idiots from society.

Hasek, who is as epic as he is insane, created the same hero. And despite the title of "idiot" thanks to the merciless mockery of the delirium reigning around, Josef Schweik, smoking a pipe, drinking beer and telling one story more beautiful than another, begins to seem like a completely normal person. So if suddenly you are considered an idiot, read this masterpiece, maybe you are really not yourself? And what are the exact quotes here: from the topical: "From the walls of the police department breathed the spirit of power alien to the people," to the vital: "The trouble is, when a person suddenly begins to philosophize - it always smells of delirium tremens." They can be collected, inserted as a comment on any news, and they will always be, as they say, on point.

"Childhood", Maxim Gorky

To die is not great wisdom, you would know how to live!

There could be Tolstoy's "Childhood" here, but this is not his main work, there are others, more important and sensitive, which will characterize the count and life better. You read them anyway. But with Gorky, everything is quite the opposite: without reading childhood, you will not understand either the author himself or life. The sad autobiographical narrative of Gorky's first years, which you successfully skipped in high school, explains many things much better. It's even strange: book actions take place at the end of the 19th century, but life, people and human scum have not changed. It is about these things that Gorky, from the position of a wise-haired peasant, writes. And it is impossible to break away, and it is impossible to argue with the opinion of the author.

Unfortunately, the image of the Bolshevik writer alienates modern readers from him, but in vain. "Old Woman Izergil" is one of the best folklore works in history, "At the Bottom" is social, "Makar Chudra" sounds funny, and, of course, the wonderful "Childhood" that you need to read for yourself, and not out of respect for the school program and the person after whom the streets and planes were named.

"Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoevsky

Poverty is not a vice, it is a truth. I know that drunkenness is not a virtue, and this is all the more so. But poverty, sir, poverty is a vice. In poverty, you still retain your nobility of innate feelings; in poverty, never anyone.

Absolutely expected piece on this list, right? And it is precisely because of this "expectation", because of his fame, because of the awe that the author's name causes, that it is worth reading. Because Dostoevsky has become fashionable. And it is disgusting that many people try to love and read it, although what they read does not evoke any emotions in them. Therefore, you must independently study the most iconic work of the master and form your attitude towards it without regard to fashion and universal reverence.

Well, of course, not only for this. The book is really interesting and good. The author plunges into the psychological process of the crime, like Jacques-If Cousteau into the bosom of another sea, and fishes out pictures from there that make the criminal understand rather than condemn. And what colorful and unfortunate heroes are everywhere, it’s even difficult to call them secondary.

But from the position of personal opinion, many aspects can be argued, and this is right, this is good: when a book gives rise to controversy, it means that it is obligatory.

"The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

All women are like that,” said Don Quixote. - A distinctive feature of their nature is to despise those who love them, and love those who despise them.

Pay attention to the quote. It was written 200 years before the same thought was expressed in poetic form by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin for his Eugene Onegin. In the very novel of wisdom, row at least with a spoon, the main thing is to distinguish it in time.

Cervantes wrote a unique work that has everything: to laugh, to write out aphorisms, and to think. Not everyone will obey the noticeably outdated style, not everyone will be pleased with the scale of the work, but those who are eager to find out why the name of the protagonist has become a household name, and the name of Cervantes is woven with golden threads into world culture, may begin to look at some things from a different angle.

A novel about the adventures of a completely sick man, written by a writer going crazy, is considered by many as a parody of the chivalric novels that had gone out of fashion by that time. But in fact, the great genius laughs at a society that has completely lost its nobility, and the last worthy person turned out to be the crazy old man Alonso Quijano, who had read these very novels and set off on a journey on a decrepit nag, taking with him the peasant Sancho Panso - the only "voice of reason" in their coordinated team.

Whatever the name is a common noun, whatever the phrase is an aphorism. For 400 years of its existence, the novel has not lost its popularity, giving birth to a bunch of imitators and proudly bearing the title of the best novel in the history of literature. Yes, we all left Gogol's "Overcoat", but first we got off Cervantes' Rosinante.

"Lolita", Vladimir Nabokov

We are not sexual fiends! We don't rape like the good soldiers do. We are unhappy, gentle, well-mannered, dog-eyed people who are adapted enough to control their impulses in the presence of adults, but are ready to give many, many years of life for one opportunity to touch a nymphet.

A novel that turned world literature upside down and made Nabokov a favorite author of both the intelligentsia and poorly educated degenerates who have not read the book, but they really like the idea itself: a sexual relationship between a man and a little girl.

But in fact, Nabokov wrote about great love, which, due to certain circumstances, namely the immaturity of the object of love, was condemned by society. When an adult uncle begins to cohabit with a non-adult girl, it does not end with anything good. After all, the child grows up, she becomes bored, and the damned Lolya ceases to put "love at first sight, from the last sight, from the eternal sight" into anything.

And, of course, separate compliments to Bunin's former heir. Nabokov writes frankly about the forbidden topic, but without obvious vulgarity. The beautiful, rich language of the classical Russian writer describes even the most slippery fragments of an erotic sense as if we are talking about the unrequited love of two adults.

Read the novel that strongly influenced the American literary school and slightly opened the doors of the unacceptable in popular literature.

"Night in Lisbon", Erich Maria Remarque

The world never seems so beautiful as at the moment when you say goodbye to it, when you are deprived of freedom.

“All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Three Comrades” are, of course, legendary and crazy classic novels, but this story touches no less, to the very heart. It is about the war, even if it is not written from the perspective of a soldier. It is about loss, albeit not combat. It is about the loss of the most precious thing, it is about impotence in the face of tragedy.

You need to grow up to it, you need to be ready for it, because behind the easy title, which is more suitable for a love story, there is a drama that the world has never seen. It is about love, but this love was crushed and swallowed up by the war, which burned everything in the human soul. The desperate confession of a man who has lost everything discourages even the most fierce cynic. You don’t even want to think about how you would live if, God forbid, you were in the place of the narrator.

The novel itself is built as a story within a story, where the unfortunate, against the backdrop of the turmoil of calm Lisbon, tells his story to Ludwig Kern (those who have read "Love thy neighbor" know this hero). This confession should be the payment for tickets for the ship with refugees, but it has become something more. With his style, Remarque is able to turn even a fairy tale about a kolobok into a bestseller about tired people and a lost generation. But here he outdid himself.

"The Golden Calf", Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov

Women love: young, politically literate, long-legged...

Some will be indignant: they say, why the hell did we include the imperishable Ilf and Petrov, and not Gogol or Chekhov, in the lists of classics? After all, against the backdrop of, say, The Cherry Orchard, on which even Americans put on performances, both The Golden Calf and The 12 Chairs seem like light reading.

Well, one can argue with the latter, because if the novel is not known abroad as well as The Inspector General, this does not mean that it is worse. It's just that the realities of the NEP are difficult to explain to the same Palestinians. The story, which is divided into quotes (such as "A car is not a luxury, but a means of transportation"), is it really not a classic? This is a classic squared, cubed! Ideal, easy, understandable to everyone, even to a 12-year-old child (at this age, your obedient servant first got acquainted with this reading matter), where every phrase is an aphorism, where even serious moments are presented as ironically as possible. In a sense, this is the history of the country, and in some sense it is a diagnosis of society, and, as often happens, the types and characters described in abundance have not disappeared even in our time.

Ilf and Petrov, the most talented journalists, communicate with the reader in an extremely ironic and intelligent way, choosing such turns of speech that one gets the impression that you are at the performance of a stand-up comedian, in a cozy conversation joking over the Kareyks, Benders, Panikovskys and Shuram Balaganovs.

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio

Who is talking about what, and we are talking about our beloved Renaissance. Well, where without it, if such masterpieces were written in the 14th century! And, surprisingly, this epoch-making work is read very easily. It is clear that the ornate style fashionable at that time is fully present (excuse me, this is not a laconic Dovlatov), ​​but the book is still very easy to read. And most importantly, it is interesting even after so much time.

For some reason, many people think that the word "decameron" sounds somehow dramatic and carries a negative connotation, but in fact the name is translated from Greek as "ten days", that is, ten days. And all these ten days, beautiful young people who fled the city from the plague tell delightful stories to each other, and, as usual, one story is more beautiful than another.

While reading, you begin to enjoy the freedom and looseness of the heroes of Boccaccio's short stories. No framework, they live and enjoy life. And it's wonderful!

For some reason, it is even difficult to explain why, I want to return to the Decameron again and again. The impressions from reading it are as wonderful as the memory of the first love, the first glass of beer, the first prison term. And the stories that these beautiful young people tell, collected from the urban folklore of Florence, mythology and then popular fairy tales, are really interesting. And when, almost 700 years after the writing of these novels, you read Fifty Shades of Grey, you wonder where humanity has taken a wrong turn?

The Ministry of Education and Science is completing work on creating a list of books required for extracurricular reading by Russian schoolchildren. The idea of ​​such a list was proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the article "Russia: a national question", which was published in January of this year. St. Petersburg State University, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science, compiled a recommended list, which included more than two hundred works. As a result of Internet voting, one hundred books on the history, culture and literature of the peoples of the Russian Federation were selected from them, acquaintance with which, according to the project coordinators, should contribute to the national self-identification of the younger generation and the preservation of the national cultural canon.

“In some of the leading American universities in the 1920s, there was a movement to study the Western cultural canon. Every self-respecting student had to read one hundred books according to a specially formed list. In some US universities, this tradition has been preserved to this day. Our nation has always been a reader. Let's conduct a survey of our cultural authorities and form a list of a hundred books that every Russian school graduate will have to read. Do not memorize at school, but read on your own. And let's make the final exam essay on the topics read. Or, at least, we will give young people the opportunity to show their knowledge and their worldview at olympiads and competitions.

V.V. Putin, "Russia: the national question"

Authoritative opinion

The idea of ​​creating a list of books recommended for independent reading was instantly picked up not only by cultural officials - the possible composition of the list was widely discussed by writers, film directors, film and theater actors. Most cultural figures turned their eyes towards the classics - most often the names of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov, Gogol, Chekhov, Bulgakov, poets of the Silver Age sounded. Of the two thousandth writers, they remembered Dmitry Bykov, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Zakhar Prilepin, Alexei Ivanov.

The contemporaries themselves also actively joined the discussion. Permian writer and screenwriter Aleksey Ivanov recommended adding books by Vladislav Krapivin, Denis Dragunsky, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, adventure novels by Dumas, and fiction by Orkhan Pamuk to the list. Dmitry Bykov would certainly include Emile Zola in his list. "It needs to be read - especially for us, especially now, because the picture of the life of the second empire is extremely similar to post-Soviet Russia," the writer emphasized.

List and anti-list

Despite the fact that the majority of representatives of the writing community reacted positively to the idea of ​​creating a single mandatory list of literature, there were those who did not find this idea successful. “Supernatsbest” laureate Zakhar Prilepin noted that it would be more interesting for him to talk about the literature that should not be read to modern schoolchildren: “With all due respect to Solzhenitsyn, I believe that the Gulag Archipelago should be excluded from the list of the school curriculum and the list of recommended literature, like any other literature, unequivocally negatively covering the mythology of the country and unambiguously interpreting the history of the 20th century, as well as any other century. Books positively elucidating the activities of the party and the government of our time should not be on the list either. But these, thank God, have not yet been written.

The widow of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who heads his foundation, called the idea of ​​creating a list of recommended literature common to all as absurd. From her point of view, the volume of compulsory literature must be provided by the school curriculum, and everything beyond this must be provided by the family. And the musician Andrei Makarevich cited as an example his school teacher of literature, who believed that any person of average intellectual development should know by heart a hundred verses, and it doesn’t matter which ones - from “A Christmas tree was born in the forest ...” to the works of Mayakovsky or Brodsky. “The important thing is that a person knows these hundred verses, which means that he already has a fairly developed head and some kind of aesthetic consciousness,” Makarevich argues. “And if a person reads a hundred books, then not everything will be a garbage dump there - something will turn out to be important.”

New concept

After the list was formed, many questions arose. How can an epic and a story be treated equally? Is it possible to list multiple works by the same author, or should each writer be represented by just one text? Include only works of fiction in the list, or allocate space for historical and non-fiction publications? And, perhaps, the main question: how will these hundred books for additional reading compare with the list of literature that is mandatory included in the school curriculum?

Representatives of the authorities, the scientific and library community had to look for answers to these and many other questions: each of the regions of the country proposed its own version of the list, and the formation of a single list was entrusted to the experts of St. Petersburg State University. They excluded works that are included in the list of compulsory literature, weeded out foreign and regional authors. The rest will be decided by online voting. At the same time, in the final list it is necessary to maintain a balance between modern literature and classical, domestic and foreign, to provide a variety of aesthetic and life experiences that readers will draw from these books, as well as a variety of genre and stylistic, which is necessary for the development of language flair.

During the implementation of the project, the very concept of the list underwent changes: the Ministry of Education decided not to limit itself to 100 books - in each region they will be supplemented by 30 regional titles, and for high school students they will include another 20 additional books chosen by schoolchildren on their own. As a result, the final list can be expanded to 150 works.

"Golden Shelf"

In itself, the idea of ​​creating a mandatory book list is not new: even Leo Tolstoy compiled the "Circle of Reading" - books that should be read by every person who lives in Russia. And Joseph Brodsky, during his teaching career at Mount Holyoke American College, prepared for his students a “List of books that everyone should read.”

Today, compiling lists of required literature can be considered a tradition: they regularly appear on various sites dedicated to books and reading. Many media, both domestic and foreign, also consider it necessary to present their version of the "golden hundred" to the attention of the public. There are dozens of versions of such lists for every genre and age category. And each of them inevitably bears the imprint of the personal assessment of the compilers, who have not only the literary taste necessary for this, but also their own predilections. In this sense, the creation of an absolutely universal list, even for a limited category of readers, seems to be as exciting as it is utopian.

We will be able to find out what exactly the compilers have selected from the millionth literary heritage created by mankind over many centuries: the project should be implemented before the end of 2012.

1. Francois Rabelais. "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (1532-1553).

2. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. "The cunning hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" (1605-1615).

3. Daniel Defoe. "The Life and Wonderful Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719).

4. Jonathan Swift. Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships (1726).

5. Abbe Prevost. "The Story of the Chevalier de Grieux and Manon Lescaut" (1731).

6. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. "The Suffering of Young Werther" (1774).

7. Lawrence Stern. "The Life and Beliefs of Tristram Shandy" (1759-1767).

8. Choderlos de Laclos. "Dangerous Liaisons" (1782).

9. Marquis de Sade. "120 days of Sodom" (1785).

10. Jan Potocki. "Manuscript found in Zaragoza" (1804).

11 Mary Shelley "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" (1818).

12. Charles Maturin. "Melmoth the Wanderer" (1820).

13. Honore de Balzac. "Shagreen leather" (1831).

14. Victor Hugo. "Notre Dame Cathedral" (1831).

15. Stendhal. "Red and black" (1830-1831).

16. Alexander Pushkin. "Eugene Onegin" (1823-1833).

17. Alfred de Musset. "Confessions of a Son of the Century" (1836).

18. Charles Dickens. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837).

19. Mikhail Lermontov. "A Hero of Our Time" (1840).

20. Nikolai Gogol. "Dead Souls" (1842).

21. Alexandre Dumas. "Three Musketeers" (1844).

22. William Thackeray. "Vanity Fair" (1846).

23. Herman Melville. "Moby Dick" (1851).

24. Gustave Flaubert "Madame Bovary" (1856).

25. Ivan Goncharov. "Oblomov" (1859).

26. Ivan Turgenev. "Fathers and Sons" (1862).

28. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Crime and Punishment" (1866).

29. Leo Tolstoy. "War and Peace" (1867-1869).

30. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Idiot" (1868-1869).

31. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. "Venus in furs" (1870).

32. Fyodor Dostoevsky. "Demons" (1871-1872).

33. Mark Twain. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876) / "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884).

34. Leo Tolstoy. "Anna Karenina" (1878).

35. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)

36. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. "Lord Golovlyovs" (1880-1883).

37. Oscar Wilde. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891)

38. HG Wells. "Time Machine" (1895).

39. Bram Stoker. "Dracula" (1897).

40. Jack London. "Sea Wolf" (1904)

41. Fedor Sologub. "Small Demon" (1905).

42. Andrey Bely. "Petersburg" (1913-1914).

43. Gustav Meyrink. "Golem" (1914).

44. Evgeny Zamyatin. "We" (1921).

45. James Joyce. "Ulysses" (1922).

46. ​​Ilya Ehrenburg. "The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito" (1922).

47. Yaroslav Gashek. "The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik during the World War" (1921-1923).

48. Mikhail Bulgakov. "White Guard" (1924).

49. Thomas Mann. "Magic Mountain" (1924).

50. Franz Kafka. "Process" (1925).

51. Francis Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" (1925).

52. Alexander Green. "Running on the waves" (1928).

53. Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov. "Twelve Chairs" (1928).

54. Andrey Platonov. "Chevengur" (1927-1929).

55. William Faulkner. "The Sound and the Fury" (1929).

56. Ernest Hemingway. "Bye weapons!" (1929).

57. Louis Ferdinand Celine. "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932).

58. Aldous Huxley. "Oh Brave New World" (1932).

59. Lao She. "Notes on the Cat City" (1933).

60. Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer (1934).

61. Maxim Gorky. "Life of Klim Samgin" (1925-1936).

62. Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" (1936).

63. Erich Maria Remarque. "Three comrades" (1936-1937).

64. Vladimir Nabokov. "Gift" (1938-1939).

65. Mikhail Bulgakov. "Master and Margarita" (1929-1940).

66. Mikhail Sholokhov. "Quiet Don" (1927-1940).

67. Robert Musil "Man without properties" (1930-1943).

68. Hermann Hesse. "The Glass Bead Game" (1943).

69. Veniamin Kaverin. "Two Captains" (1938-1944).

70. Boris Vian. "Foam of days" (1946).

71. Thomas Mann. "Doctor Faustus" (1947).

72. Albert Camus. "Plague" (1947).

73. George Orwell. "1984" (1949).

74. Jerome D. Salinger. "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951).

75. Ray Bradbury. "451 Fahrenheit" (1953).

76. John R. R. Tolkien. "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955).

77. Vladimir Nabokov. "Lolita" (1955; 1967, Russian version).

78. Boris Pasternak. "Doctor Zhivago" (1945-1955).

79. Jack Kerouac "On the road" (1957).

80. William Burroughs. "Naked Lunch" (1959).

81. Witold Gombrowicz. "Pornography" (1960).

82. Kobo Abe. "Woman in the Sands" (1962).

83. Julio Cortazar. "Playing Hopscotch" (1963).

84. Nikolay Nosov. "Dunno on the Moon" (1964-1965).

85. John Fowles Magus (1965).

86. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967)

87. Philip K. Dick. "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968).

88. Yuri Mamleev. "Connecting Rods" (1968).

89. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "In the first circle" (1968).

90. Kurt Vonnegut "Slaughterhouse Five, or the Children's Crusade" (1969).

91. Venedikt Erofeev. "Moscow - Petushki" (1970).

92. Sasha Sokolov "School for Fools" (1976).

93. Andrey Bitov. "Pushkin House" (1971).

94. Eduard Limonov. "It's me - Eddie" (1979).

95. Vasily Aksyonov. "Island of Crimea" (1979).

96. Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (1984).

97. Vladimir Voinovich. "Moscow 2042" (1987).

98. Vladimir Sorokin. "Romance" (1994).

99. Victor Pelevin. "Chapaev and Void" (1996).

100. Vladimir Sorokin. "Blue fat" (1999).