Okay…I’m diving in head first - Books you should read in your lifetime according to me. These are in no particular order, but I’ll probably end up listing my very favorites first.
Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Shogun, by James Clavell
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk
Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
Dust Tracks on a Road, by Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkein
Another Country, by James Baldwin
Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Patton
A Song of Fire and Ice - the series, by George R. R. Martin
The Dragon Bone Chair series, by Tad Williams
Otherland, the series, by Tad Williams
The Dragons of Pern - the entire series, by Anne McCaffrey
Ringworld, by Larry Niven
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
Pretty much anything by Kurt Vonnegut
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Native Son, by Richard Wright
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
V, by Thomas Pynchon
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes - poems
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
anything written by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Poems of Lao Tzu
The Bhagavad Gita
Meetings with Remarkable Men, by G.I. Gurdjieff
Cloudsplitter: A Novel, by Russell Banks
All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell - and his other books too
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Germinal, by Emile Zola
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Ulysses, by James Joyce
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams
A Grain of Wheat, by Ngugi wa Thiongo
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
The Web and the Rock, by Thomas Wolfe
Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
1984, by George Orwell
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
pretty much every novel by Sharon K. Penman - start with The Sunne in Splendor
The Arthur Books, a series by Bernard Cornwall
The Arthurian Saga, a series by Mary Stewart
The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy
Sophie’s Choice, by Pat Conroy
The Children of Men, by P.D. James
Deep Survival, Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonazles
Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo A. Anaya
The Beanfield War, by John Nichols
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
Where Men Win Glory, the Odyssey of Pat Tillman, by Jon Krakauer
Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham
Six Wives, the Queens of Henry VIII, by David Starkey
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Undaunted Courage, by Stephen E. Ambrose
Constantine’s Sword: the Church and the Jews, a History, by James Carroll
To Destroy You Is No Loss, The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family, by Teeda Butt Mam
Kill and Tell, by Linda Howard
After the Night, by Linda Howard
Son of the Morning, by Linda Howard
Kiss of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning
The Dark Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning
The Immortal Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning
Spell of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning
The Highlander’s Touch, by Karen Marie Moning
Mila 18, by Leon Uris
Exodus, by Leon Uris
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Summa Theologica, by St. Thomas Aquinas
Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross
Night, Elie Wiesel
Dawn, Elie Wiesel
Souls on Fire, Elie Wiesel
The Interior Castle or The Mansions, by St. Theresa of Avila
All the original Nancy Drew Mysteries, by Carolyn Keene
A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L’Engle
The Mushroom Planet series, by Eleanor Cameron
Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis
The Bunnicula Collection, by James Howe, Deborah Howe and Victor Garber
The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
Rechenka’s Eggs, by Patricia Polacco
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett
In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
The Children of Odin, The Book of Northern Myths, by Padraic Colum
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, by Seamus Heaney
The Man Who Would Be King, by Rudyard Kipling
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carole, by Charles Dickens
Anpao, An American Indian Odyssey, by Jamake Highwater
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Marie Sandoz
Cheyenne Autumn, by Marie Sandoz
Old Jules, by Marie Sandoz
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Ogalala Sioux, by John Niehardt
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, by Carlos Castaneda
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
Breakfast At Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote
The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck
The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare
Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx (a short and perfect story)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Moses: When Harriett Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, by Carole Boston Weatherford
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
D-Day, by Stephen Ambrose
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (not my favorite but my daughter insists)
The House of Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe
Troubled Sleep, A Novel, by Jean Paul Sartre
The Golden Bough, by James George Frazer
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Mabinogion, author unknown
Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman
Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale, And Here My Troubles Began, by Art Spiegelman
The Wall, by John Hershey
The Prince, by Machiavelli
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
Sacajawea, by Anna Lee Waldo
Days of Our Years, by Pierre Van Passon
O the Chimneys, by Nellie Sachs
The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian, by Marco Polo
A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown
Death Be Not Proud, A Memoir, by John Gunther
A Distant Mirror, the Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara W. Tuchman
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, by Sei Shonagon
Beautiful Joe, by Marshall Saunders
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell
Bambi, A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift
Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer, by Sena Jeter Naslund
James The Brother of Jesus, by Robert Eisenman
The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, by Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung
The Source, by James A. Michener
Memories, Dreams and Reflections, by Carl Jung
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, by Gershom Scholem
Mr. Popper’s Penguins, by Richard Atwater and Florence Atwater
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton
The Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
Atlas Shrugged, by Ann Rand
The Fountainhead, by Ann Rand
Anthem, by Ann Rand
Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean
The Jew in the Lotus, by Rodger Kamnetz
Tyrants and Kings, by John Marco - the series
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuro Ishiguro
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Madam Bovary, by Gustav Flaubert
Watership Down: A Novel, by Richard Adams
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot, by Alexandre Dumas
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
Howl, by Allen Ginsberg
Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith
Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg
The Bourne Identity: A Novel, by Robert Ludlum
Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett
Jurassic Park, by Michale Crichton
The Thornbirds, by Colleen McCullough
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story, by Richard Preston
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan
Thing of Beauty, by Stephen Fried
White Fang, by Jack London
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason
The Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
American Wholefoods Cuisine, by Nikki and David Goldbeck
Farm House Cookbook, by Susan Herrmann Loomis
The Vegetarian Epicure, by Anna Thomas
The Great Chile Book, by Mark Miller
Thai: The Authentic Taste of an Exotic Cuisine, by Kit Chan
A Pinch of Salt Lake, by the Junior League of Salt Lake City
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
Knocking On the Earth, by Ellery Akers
A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry, Translated by Nguyen Ngoc Bich
Pablo Neruda: A New Decade Poems 1958-1967, Translated by Ben Belitt and Alastair Reid
The Iliad and the Odyssey, by Homer
The Complete Works of Aristotle, by Aristotle
The Essential Spinoza: Ethics and Related Writings, by Benedictus de Spinoza
The Guide of the Perplexed, by Moses ben Maimonides
A Room With a View, by E.M. Forster
Being There, by Jerzy Kosinski
The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski
The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart
A Woman Named Solitude, by Andre Schwarz-Bart
Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi
The Drowned and the Saved, by Primo Levi
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi
If This Is a Man, by Primo Levi
The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault
The Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
Ozma of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell
Pygmalion, a romance in five acts, by George Bernard Shaw
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
The Mosquito Coast, by Paul Theroux
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Riverworld, by Phillip Jose Farmer
The original Nancy Drew mystery series, by Carolyn Keene
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco