Books You Must Read

by D. J. McAdam

 I will begin this introduction to the list below in the worst possible way, which is by apologizing for the title.  No one must read anything, in the sense of being compelled to read something by another.

But those of us who love books, and who love reading, know that we must read.  The command is self-generated, and will not be denied.  To travel my morning commute into Washington without a book to read on the train is a punishment that I would not wish on my worst enemies.  Actually, I exaggerate; I have no "worst enemies," and those that I disliked in the past were generally illiterate, anyway.  But I digress.

As I was saying, we - people like you and I - must read.  We must finish a book, and then begin another.  Sometimes, this transition is an easy one; at other times, less so.  There are occasions when we are forced to ask ourselves, "What book should I read next?"  There are times - dreadful times - when we find no easy answer to this question, when we wrack our brains until we reach a point when no book seems like the right choice. 

This happened to me recently.  I thrashed about for a week, figuratively, or at least semi-figuratively.  I became sullen.  I was morose.  The sunny skies of literature darkened.  All was dark, gray, gloomy, and empty. 

That was when the thought came to me.  If I didn't know what to read next - and, clearly, I didn't - maybe someone else did. 

There are hundreds - thousands, perhaps - of recommended reading lists.  I read all of them.  They were all (well, almost all) some help, and I am back to reading again.  But the thought occurred to me that none of them was quite perfect.  The list below may not be perfect, either, but I did have a specific design in mind when embarking upon assembling it.  I thought it better to offer a list of books one must read then a list of the 100 greatest books of all time, whatever they may be.  In other words, the books on this list are books you want to be sure to read; whether or not they are great, or the greatest, is a moot point. 

A few more words of introduction, then we'll surge ahead.  First, the list is not in a specific order, so you do not have to follow the order that the books are in.  Dive in anywhere, or choose every fifth book, or something like that.  Second, the list is one that I plan on adding to in the future; thus, if your absolute best, most favorite, most loved book is not on the list, please do not despair.  Third, I am obviously not free of bias in terms of reading preferences.  English is my primary language, I live in the United States, and I am male.  The list no doubt reflects this orientation, though I would like to say that there seems to be a tendency which did not exist when I was young of male readers feeling a need to read male writers, and females reading female writers.  I can assure you that this is an utterly ridiculous approach to reading, and any male who is too self conscious to board a train with a copy of Jane Eyre under his arm should reproach himself for silliness.  Fourth, I have only listed books that I have actually read and enjoyed, an approach which certainly could leave out a great deal of worthwhile books.

At any rate, the next time you ask yourself, "What should I read next?" I hope this list will prove helpful. 

Books You Must Read

1. Plato, The Republic
2. Homer, The Odyssey
3. William Shakespeare - One really must read all of Shakespeare
4. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
5. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables
6. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
7. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
8. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
9. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White.  This is the book Collins himself considered his masterpiece, though he is better remembered for The Moonstone.  It is, perhaps, the most meticulously plotted of all Victorian novels. 
10. Owen Wister, The Virginian
11. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
12. Franz Kafka, The Trial
13. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
14. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
15. James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
16. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
17. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
18. Egar Allan Poe, Complete Short Stories
19. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Essays
20. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
21. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
22. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
23. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
24. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
25. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
26. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
27. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
28. Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
29. Bram Stoker, Dracula
30. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
31. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
32. Jack London, The Call of the Wild
33. Henry James, The American
34. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
35. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
36. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
37. George Orwell, Animal Farm
38. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
39. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
40. P. G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves
41. Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth
42. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
43. Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
44. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
45. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
46. Henry James, Daisy Miller
47. E. W. Hornung, Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman
48. Henry James, Washington Square
49. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
50. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
51. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
52. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
53. Hermann Hesse, Demian
54. Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
55. Albert Camus, The Stranger
56. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
57. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
58. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
59. George Orwell, 1984
60. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
61. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
62. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
63. Thomas Paine, Common Sense and Other Essays
64. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
65. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
66. St. Augustine, Confessions
67. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
68. W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
69. H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
70. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Books Under Consideration (A Sampling)

The Way We Live Now, Origin of Species, Common Sense, Utopia, Ivanhoe, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Compleat Angler, Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca, Travels of Marco Polo, The Moonstone, Death in Venice, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, The Cloister and the Hearth, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Treasure Island, The Vicar of Wakefield, Ivanhoe, Treasure Island, St. Leon, Fahrenheit 451, Marius the Epicurean . . .

Books I Definitely Decided Not to Place On the List

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Prince, The Art of War, Johnny Got His Gun, anything by Faulkner, tons of other books....

Other - and Perhaps Wiser - Opinions

• Books and Reading, by John Cowper Powys

Or, If You're Going to Be Shopping Online . . .

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