Once the academic term winds down for the holidays, I find that I can finally start reading for pleasure: something I can’t normally do when I’m expected to read 200-700 pages a week in my classes.
Over the next couple weeks I plan to tackle the rest of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera’s People of the Pines, and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series; hopefully more depending on what I end up doing over the break.
Even though I’m a student and I complain about all of the books I have to read during the year, I don’t think I will ever stop loving reading, and I am not alone.
A journalist friend of mine, Joey Coleman, recently asked me an a bunch of other friends via Facebook note for suggestions for books to read over the holidays because he wanted to get away from the things he normally reads for class. Although Joey wanted more classic literature (something I don’t typically tend to be a fan of), I gave him a rather long list of some of my favourite books.
And then I started thinking about how many books have been printed in the last 550 years or so and how many of them are considered must-read books. It turns out that the British newspaper The Guardian has printed a list of the best 1000 novels everyone one should read.
Of that list, I have read only 38, which I find surprising; given how much I love to read and how important literature has been to my university degrees.
I have several shelves filled with books at my parents’ house and another sizable collection with me at school. And yet, I’m always buying more books and don’t ever feel like I have enough. Predictably, I plan on buying some more books over the break.
If you’re looking for something to read over the break, check out The Guardian’s list for a couple of possible options. I think you should also check out Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It has been my favourite book since I was 12, and I know a few people who also cite that book as one of their favourites. Hugo and Nebula awards have to count for something too.
Books with an astericks denote some of my favourites. They are:
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams *
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess *
- Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides *
- Time to Kill by John Grisham
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- The Shining by Stephen King
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee *
- The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis *
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London *
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
- The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- Maus by Art Spiegelman *
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien *
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
- Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Do you have any books you think other TalentEgg readers should check out? Please leave your suggestions!
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