10 must read books
I love books, (you know I love books!) so when I was tagged by my friend Erin for the 10 Books You Must Read Before You Die Meme I knew I had to take my time and really think about it. I admit I’m getting kind of meme’d out, but I really like this one!
Here’s my list of the 10 books I think are must reads, in no particular order:
- Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott - this is the the book I read over and over and over again when I was a kid. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it now, but it’s still the perfect book to pick up when you need a good cry.
- Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen - I love all of her books but this is my favorite. Mr. Darcy is the swooniest character ever created. Oh, my.
- The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien - all of them together really make one book, don’t you think? You can’t really like SciFi without liking this classic.
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - no I’m not kidding. As hard as it is to read, there is just no way to get around it, they’re all good. If I had to choose just one play though, it would be A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- The Little House on the Prairie Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder- again, I can’t really split these up, they just have to be read together. I’m currently reading the whole set to my kid and as always the one that has the most impact on me is the one we’re on now, The Long Winter.
- Magician by Raymond Feist - not a classic in any way, but my very favorite Science Fantasy novel. It’s usually published in two parts, Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell - some argue that 1984 is a better book, but Animal Farm spoke to me and that’s what’s important here. The first time I read it was in high school, and honestly, I got the irony of that right away.
- The Iliad by Homer- I was fortunate to read this (along with The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno) in college for one of the best professors I ever had. It was a very tough class but she really helped me break it down and make sense of it. Honestly though, it’s a toss up which of the 3 is better.
- The Plague by Albert Camus - um, eww, yet completely fascinating.
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - I know you’ve all read it, you don’t need me to tell you why it’s one of the most important books ever written.
Okay, that was harder than I thought it would be! It would have been easier to have a list of twenty - there’s so many books I wanted to put here like Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide, Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago but they didn’t make the final cut!
Rather than tag anyone, I’m going to let you decide if you want to do this meme! So what are the 10 (or 20!) best books you’ve ever read?
Hey, while we’re talking books, are you on GoodReads yet?
Comments
7 Responses to “10 must read books”
Excellent choices…but beware the LHOP. It has turned my 5 year old son into a rabid vegetarian, because, as he told me when I asked him why he doesn’t like chicken, “It’s a DEAD CHICKEN, mommy. The farmer shot it.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the farmer actually chopped its head off with an axe.
Oh, that was pretty gruesome for early in the morning. Sorry ’bout that.
manager moms last blog post..The Girl Is Starting To Worry Me With Her Lists
I’ve actually never read LHOP.. but I LOVED the show when I was younger.
ErinSlicks last blog post..Looonnnnnng Weekend
Loved the LHOP series when I was a kid and I really wish I’d saved my copies for my daughter. Oh well - gives me a good excuse to go hang out at the bookstore, right?
Lots of great picks–some are hard reads, but well worth it!
Great list. I read all the LHOP books one summer as a kid. And so many others that you list are so wonderful. What a fun thing to think about…
MommyTimes last blog post..The Modern-Day State Fair
I used to teach Little Women in a college class on Growing up Female. It made a great start for the course because so many other books we read later in the semester were influenced by it and so many of the students had fond memories of reading it as girls.
To manager mom: we are vegetarians here, and we couldn’t get past Big House in the Little Woods. So much animal-slaughtering. I know that was the reality of life back then but we decided we could wait a few years on reading the rest of the series.
what? no Nora Roberts????