Books Which Changed My Life Books Which Changed My Life
I'm often asked by students and parents to recommend books for casual reading. Though I have a recommended reading list on a different page which is specifically geared for my upper middle school students, I thought it'd be nice to prepare a longer, more comprehensive reading list, one which adults could browse, too. Fortunately , compiling such a list wasn't that difficult.
A few years back, I gave a great deal of thought to a question which had been posed one day in the The Times: What book changed your life? This question is in league with "What is your favourite CD?" and "What is your fondest childhood memory?" It is almost impossible for any bibliophile, avid reader, English major ... to answer. I couldn't narrow it down to just one, despite many attempts to do so. So here follows that list: What books changed my life.
Children's Books, Phase 1 (Early Readers)
Cleary, Beverly Ramona Quimby, Age 8; Dear Mr. Henshaw; Ramona and Her Father
Konigsburg, E.L. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Ness, Evaline Sam, Bangs and Moonshine
O'Brien, Robert C. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Packer, Edward et al Choose Your Own Adventure Series
Packer, Edward et al Time Machine Series
Raskin, Ellen The Westing Game
Selden, George A Cricket in Times Square
Silverstein, Shel Where the Sidewalk Ends; A Light in the Attic
Children's Books, Phase 2 (Young Adult)
Adams, Richard Watership Down
L'Engle, Madeleine A Wrinkle in Time; A Swiftly Tilting Planet; A Wind in the Door
O'Dell, Scott Island of the Blue Dolphins
White, E. B. Charlotte's Web
Speare, Elizabeth George The Witch of Blackbird Pond
The complete works of Roald Dahl
Must-Read Classics (Children's Literature)
Andersen, Hans Christian Complete Fairy Tales
Burnett, Frances Hodgson The Secret Garden
Carroll, Lewis Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass
Grahame, Kenneth The Wind in the Willows
Kipling, Rudyard Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Milne, A. A. Winnie the Pooh
The complete works of Beatrix Potter
The complete Paddington Bear series
Adult Reads
Amis, Martin Time's Arrow
Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451
Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth
Bryson, Bill Notes from a Big Country (and others in his travelogue series)
Bulghakov, Mikhail The Master and Margarita
Byatt, A. S. Possession
Calvino, Italo If on a winter's night a traveller ...
Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen) Out of Africa; Seven Gothic Tales; Winter's Tales
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Love in the Time of Cholera
Hesse, Hermann Siddhartha
McBride, James The Color of Water
Naipaul, V. S. A House for Mr. Biswas
Nifenegger, Audrey The Time Traveler's Wife
Norris, Frank McTeague
Paton, Alan Cry, the Beloved Country
Pollan, Michael The Botany of Desire
Potok, Chaim Book of Lights
Rolvaag, O. E. Giants in the Earth
Roy, Arundhati The God of Small Things
Schindler, Anton Felix Beethoven As I Knew Him
Vonnegut, Kurt Breakfast of Champions; Cat's Cradle; Dead Eye Dick; Slaughterhouse Five; Welcome to the Monkey House
I Thought My Father Was God (ed. Paul Auster)
Must-Read Classics (Adults)
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice; Northanger Abbey
Author unknown: The Sagas of the Icelanders
Brontë, Emily Wuthering Heights
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales
De Balzac, Honoré History of the Thirteen
Dickens, Charles Great Expectations
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Frost, Robert The Complete Poems of Robert Frost
Hamsun, Knut Hunger (Sult)
Hardy, Thomas Far from the Madding Crowd; Return of the Native; Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Ibsen, Henrik Ghosts; Wild Duck; The Master Builder
James, Henry The American
Joyce, James Dubliners; Ulysses
Khayyam, Omar The Rubaiyat
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, C. S. The Chronicles of Narnia
Nabokov, Vladimir Invitation to a Beheading; Lolita; Pnin
Rumi, Jal-al' uddin Collected Poems
Shakespeare, William Complete Sonnets
Steinbeck, John Of Mice and Men
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings
Twain, Mark (an edition of collected letters, short stories and essays)
Voltaire Candide
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Importance of Being Earnest
Woolf, Virginia Mrs. Dalloway; A Room of One's Own; To The Lighthouse
