I’ll be out of politics this week with the petition signing for a teacher pay raise and all the heat and craziness going on in Little Rock.
A reader asked me if I had read any good books and suggested a list of recently recommended books.
After looking at an international list, I shortened the list, adjusted it a bit for my taste, but I removed one of the Dove type Lonesome type that I like, and I decided here 50 books almost everyone is to read.
A quick note on the following criticism, the Bible is not on this list. The Bible and all its books should be read, studied and real, comparative thought, prayer and meditation throughout life.
But back to the list of 50 books to read. Here it is:
1 “Pride and Prejudice” — Jane Austen
2. “Lord of the Horses” — JRR Tolkien
3. Harry Potter series — JK Rowling
4. “To Kill a Mockingbird” – Harper Lee
5. “Eighty-Nine-Four” — George Orwell
6. “Good Hopes” — Charles Dickens
7. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” — Thomas Hardy
9. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
11. “Catcher in the Rye” — JD Salinger
12. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” — Audrey Neffenger
13. “Middle March” — George Eliot
14. “Gone with the Wind” — Margaret Mitchell
15. “The Great Gatsby” –F Scott Fitzgerald
16. “The Black 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. “The Wrath of Wrath” — John Steinbeck
21. “Alice in Wonderland” – Lewis Carroll
22. “The Wind in the Willows” — Kenneth Grahame
23. “David Copperfield” — Charles Dickens
24. “The Chronicles of Narnia” — CS Lewis
25. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — CS Lewis
26. “The Kite Runner” — 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. “Far from Madding People” – 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. “The Count of Monte Cristo” — Alexandre Dumas
38. “On The Road” – Jack Kerouac
39. “Moby Dick” – Herman Melville
40. “Oliver Twist” – Charles Dickens
42. “Notes From A Small Island” — Bill Bryson
44. “A Christmas Carol” – Charles Dickens
45. “The Color Purple” – Alice Walker
46. ”The Remains of the Day” — Kazuo Ishiguro
47. “Charlotte’s Web” — EB White
48. “Five People You Meet in Heaven” – Mitch Albom
49. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
50. “Les Miserables” – Victor Hugo
Some of those who didn’t make the 50 cut are:
“Heart of Darkness” — Joseph Conrad, “The Little Prince” — Antoine De Saint-Exupery, “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 anyone new to the state and those in our state should read. Coming soon, I promise.
Maylon Rice is a former journalist who has worked for many publications in northwest Arkansas. He can be contacted at [email protected] The opinions expressed are those of the author.
