I’ll be quitting politics this week as the signing of a petition for a teacher base salary increase and all kinds of heat and madness rage in Little Rock.
A reader asked me if I had read any good books and recently suggested a list of recommended books.
After looking at a universal list, I shortened the list, tweaked it a bit to my liking, but left out all the Lonesome Dove-type westerns I love so much, and decided it were 50 books that almost everyone should read.
Quick note on upcoming reviews, the Bible is not on this list. The Bible and all its books should be read, studied and studied, compared, prayed and pondered throughout life.
But back to a list of 50 books to read. Here is:
1. “Pride and Prejudice” — Jane Austen
2. “The Lord of the Rings” — JRR Tolkien
3. Harry Potter Series–JK Rowling
4. “To kill a mockingbird” — Harper Lee
5. “1980–Four” — George Orwell
6. “Great Expectations” — Charles Dickens
7. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” — Thomas Hardy
8. “Catch 22” –Joseph Heller
9. Complete Works of Shakespeare
10. “The Hobbit” — JRR Tolkien
11. “Heartcatcher” — JD Salinger
12. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” — Audrey Neffenger
13. “Middlemarch” — George Eliot
14. “Gone with the Wind” — Margaret Mitchell
15. “The Great Gatsby” — F Scott Fitzgerald
16. “Dark House” — Charles Dickens
17. “War and Peace” — Leo Tolstoy
18. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — Douglas Adams
19. “Crime and Punishment” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. “Grapes of Wrath” — John Steinbeck
21. “Alice in Wonderland” — Lewis Carroll
22. “The Wind in the Willows” — Kenneth Grahame
23. “David Copperfield” – Charles Dickens
24. “Chronicles of Narnia” — CS Lewis
25. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — CS Lewis
26. “The Kite” — Khaled Hosseini
27. “Winnie the Pooh” — AA Milne
28. “Animal Farm” — George Orwell
29. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
30. “A Prayer for Owen Meany” — John Irving
31. “Away from the Madding Crowd” – Thomas Hardy
32. “The Handmaid’s Tale” — Margaret Atwood
33. “Lord of the Flies” — William Golding
34. “A Tale of Two Cities” — Charles Dickens
35. “Brave New World” — Aldous Huxley
36. “Of Mice and Men” – John Steinbeck
37. “Count of Monte Cristo” — Alexandre Dumas
38. “On the Road” — Jack Kerouac
39. “Moby-Dick” – Herman Melville
40. “Oliver Twist” – Charles Dickens
41. “Dracula” – Bram Stoker
42. “Notes from a Small Island” — Bill Bryson
43. “Ulysses” — James Joyce
44. “A Christmas Carol” — Charles Dickens
45. “The Color Violet” — Alice Walker
46. ”The Leftovers of the Day” — Kazuo Ishiguro
47. “Charlotte’s Web” — EB White
48. “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” — Mitch Albom
49. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
50. “Les Miserables” — Victor Hugo
Some who didn’t make the 50 cut are:
“Heart of Darkness” — Joseph Conrad, “The Little Prince” — Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, “Watership Down” — Richard Adams, “The Three Musketeers” — Alexandre Dumas, “Hamlet” — William Shakespeare and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” — Roald Dahl.
I’m also taking on the challenge of 50 Arkansas-related books that someone new to the state and those in our state should read. See you soon, I promise.
— Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several publications in northwest Arkansas. He can be contacted by email at [email protected] The opinions expressed are those of the author.
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