I was looking at these lists of action/adventure/thrillers
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2009/0...t-one-fiction/
http://gearpatrol.com/2013/02/04/100...-mens-library/
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/128718...ller-thrillers
and thinking that so many of the entries were just modern pulp garbage. It occurred to me that I could probably make a better list myself without any Clive Cussler, Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, or Tom Clancy. So here's what I came up with:
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aenead by Virgil
The Voyage of the Argo by Apollonius Rhodius
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Works of Ossian by James Macpherson
Chushingura by Takeda Izumo
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
The White Devil by John Webster
The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton
Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso
Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
Tirant Lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell and Marti Joan de Galba
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
The Song of Roland by Anonymous
The Bruce by John Barbour
Grettis Saga by Anonymous
Njal's Saga by Anonymous
Egil's Saga by Anonymous
Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach
Nibelungenlied by Anonymous
Tain Bo Cuailnge by Anonymous
Beowulf by Anonymous
Thebaid by Statius
Pharsalia by Lucan
Epic of Gilgamesh by anonymous
Ramayana by Valmiki
One Thousand and One Nights by various
Shahnameh by Ferdowsi
The Tale of the Heike by various
Journey To the West by Wu Cheng'en
There's only about 45 there that I could think of. I'm definitely forgetting some great works of action literature. A lot of the great works of literature are about society or psychology, family, and relationships, but some of them are about swashbuckling, fighting, and hair's breadth escapes. So what are your favorites?