First Step: J.D. Salinger
Step one is a book a lot of people have read. 'The Catcher in the Rye' is so easy to read most people have to read it by high school. This is the story of a teenager who wanders around New York City after getting kicked out of school. It's pretty good and pretty short and a nice easy first step.

Step Two: F. Scott Fitzgerald
The second book to read is another one you may have read in high school. A lot of people consider 'The Great Gatsby' to be the greatest of all American novels. Gatsby is a guy who has been driven to make a shady fortune so he can fit in with the "rich". He still can't quite fit in and finds they aren't all they're cracked up to be anyway. It's not very hard to read and while the story is pretty good the way Fitzgerald uses language is really what makes it so great.

Step Three: Ernest Hemingway
Next read 'Sun Also Rises' by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway has a direct style with simple language and so is very easy to read. This is a story about cool people drinking, dancing, and hanging out in cool locations.

Step Four: Kurt Vonnegut
Now for something a little different. 'Slaughterhouse-Five' is considered science fiction by some. It's about a war-traumatized man whose mind starts to take him to his memories in the past and delusions of the future. It's very different and very interesting to read.

Fifth Step: Jack Kerouac
Getting back down to earth, the next step is the great novel of the Beat Generation, (for younger people they were like the original Slackers.) 'On the Road' is about heading out across the country in a car with not much more than a few friends. It makes you want to grab a couple of friends and head out yourself.

Step Six: Saul Bellow
You're halfway there when you start 'Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Classics)'. You don't hear about Saul Bellow the way you do about people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but he's right up there with them. Henderson is a millionaire who seems to have it all, but feels unfulfilled. He goes to Africa, goes tribal and on this most primitive level he finds himself.

Step Seven: Joseph Heller
'Catch 22' is the classic satire on the insanity of war and bureaucracy. Everybody knows what a catch-22 is. The expression comes from this cynical black comedy about an American bomber squadron in World War II. This is a little more difficult than today's average best-seller, but it's funny and will make you think about how life's absurdities are accepted.

Step Eight: Ralph Ellison
Never heard of him? 'Invisible Man' (not that invisible man) is the greatest novel of the black experience in America. The narrator realizes that he himself is "invisible" to whites who don't see him, but rather their own preconceived ideas about who he is. The reason this book is so great is because its examination of black/white issues is just a context for ideas about all humanity. This is a great book that is timeless in what it has to say.

Step Nine: John Steinbeck
You're almost there! Your next to the last step is 'The Grapes of Wrath (20th Century Classics)'. Some people have to read this in high school. It's slow developing and pretty long so I wouldn't recommend that (unless the student has followed my steps), but how hard could it be if some people have to read it as teenagers. It's the story of a family displaced during the Great Depression, but it's a whole lot more. Steinbeck is the voice of the common man and shows thathumanity and dignity are not limited by social class.

Final Step: William Faulkner
This is it. If you can read the 'The Sound and the Fury (Vintage International)' you are a black belt of American literature. This is not a long novel, but it is difficult. While it is about a old family in the south falling apart it's really about how three minds see things differently and think differently. It has three sections that give the background of the story from the point of view of three different people. Each section is actually like being in the mind of that person. It uses "stream of consciousness" which just describes the characters' thoughts as they come to them. Finally, in a fourth section a conventional third person narrator describes what happens on the day to which the first three sections have led. This novel is something special; a masterpiece by a writer's writer. The greatest novel in the English language is supposed to be ULYSSES by James Joyce and this is a great lead up to that extremely difficult masterpiece which also employs stream of consciousness.

You've Reached a Higher State, Buddha
You'll now be much smarter, won't like TV or comic books, and will be thinner and better looking in an artistic sort of way. Carry any other classic around with you and other smart people (old style, not new style techno-geek smart people) will come up and start talking to you in your new strange language.