HTR&W

How to Read and Why (Reading List)

By Harold Bloom

The selections should not be interpreted as an exhaustive list of what to read, but rather as a sampling of works that illustrate why to read. (Preface to How to Read and Why, page 19)

Visit my Amazon store to purchase any of these works. Review all of my posts about HTR&W (to date) here.

Preface

Prologue: Why Read?

What is a Reader?

I. Short Stories

What is a short story?

Ivan Turgenev (thoughts here)
- “Bezhin Lea”
- “Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands”

Anton Chekhov (thoughts here and here)
- “The Kiss”
- “The Student”
- “The Lady with the Dog”

Guy de Maupassant (thoughts here and here)
- “Madame Tellier’s Establishment”
- “The Horla”

Ernest Hemingway (thoughts here)
- “Hills Like White Elephants”
- “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”
- “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
- “A Sea Change”

Flannery O’Connor (thoughts here)
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
- “Good Country People”
- “A View of the Woods”

Vladimir Nabokov (thoughts here)
- “The Vane Sisters”

Jorge Luis Borges (thoughts here)
- “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”

Tommaso Landolfi (thoughts here)
- “Gogol’s Wife”

Italo Calvino (thoughts here)
- Invisible Cities

Short stories retrospective

II. Poems

A. E. Housman
- “Into My Heart an Air That Kills”

William Blake
- “The Sick Rose”

Walter Savage Landor
- “On His Seventy-fifth Birthday”

Alfred Lord Tennyson
- “The Eagle”
- “Ulysses”

Robert Browning
- “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”

Walt Whitman
- Song of Myself

Emily Dickinson
- Poem 1260, “Because That You Are Going”

Emily Brontë
- “Stanzas: Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning”

Popular Ballads
- “Sir Patrick Spence”
- “The Unquiet Grave”

Anonymous
- “Tom O’Bedlam”

William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 121, “‘Tis Better to Be Vile Than Vile Esteemed”
- Sonnet 129, “Th’ Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame”
- Sonnet 144, “Two Loves I Have, of Comfort and Despair”

John Milton
- Paradise Lost

William Wordsworth
- “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
- “My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Percy Bysshe Shelley
- The Triumph of Life

John Keats
- “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”

III. Novels, Part I

Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
Stendhal: The Charterhouse of Parma
Jane Austen: Emma
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady
Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time
Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain

IV. Plays

William Shakespeare: Hamlet
Henrik Ibsen: Hedda Gabler
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest

V. Novels, Part II

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying
Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts
Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon

I’m reading these as a personal challenge. Do you want to join me?

10 Responses to “HTR&W”

Diana Raabe
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 11:26 pm

There are plenty of reading challenges out there, but this sounds unique. In fact, we might already have HTR&W. But even if I have trouble committing, I’ll be back to check your progress …

especially when you get to Moby-Dick, which is one of my all-time favorite books.
Rebecca Reid
Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 7:02 am

I’ve read Moby-Dick for a class: it will be different reading it for myself!
Rose City Reader
Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 1:35 am

Wow! Now that I read the list, I am even more intrigued. I’ve read some of them, and others are on my TBR shelf now. I think I will hold off on the TBR works until I read HTR&W, so I can benefit from his suggestions.

I am a little worried about the poetry, since I do not consider myself a fan. But I’ve been thinking that if I could only learn HOW to appreciate poetry, I may actually appreciate it. This could be the ticket.
Rebecca Reid
Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 6:31 am

@Rose City Reader: It is an intriguing list–especially with the short stories and the collection of poems and poetry collections. I’m not one who normally sits and reads poetry, although I have come to appreciate it a bit. Bloom has also written a book called The Art of Reading Poetry if you’re interested in his take on poetry beyond what he says in HTR&W. I haven’t read HTR&W yet, so not sure exactly what he says in that.
Diana Raabe
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 1:29 am

I am no poetry afficianado either, but we have Bloom’s “Art of Reading Poetry” and I will vouch for that!
Diana Raabe
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 1:29 am

afficionado

(sorry, haven’t had my coffee yet)
Toni
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 11:19 am

Hi!
I have this book. It was gifted to me years ago from a friend for Christmas. I would love to join in and follow along.
Rebecca Reid
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 12:43 pm

Toni, Awesome! You can see what I’ve already read and reviewed in this category. I’ll look forward to following you on your blog!
Lezlie
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 9:28 am

I’ve thought about doing the same for another book you read, How To Read Literature Like A Professor. This is a great list, too. I have HTR&W on my shelf, but I haven’t read it yet. Maybe for 2009?

Lezlie
Rebecca Reid
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 11:23 pm

Lezlie, I’m finding HTR&W to be a book not to sit down and read…but How to Read Lit like a Professor was. I think Bloom is more brainy in every way. Both books have good lists of books and other literature to read!

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