Recommended Reading (Favorites)
Because I’m always looking for reading suggestions, and because my favorite part of some books is the reading list at the end (sort of in a “Go now and read! Immediately!” vein), here’s what I’ve read and loved:
Children’s Literature
Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain series
Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
Lois Lowry, The Giver
Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series
Classics
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Balzac, Le Pere Goriot
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Henry James, Washington Square
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra
George Orwell, 1984
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
Contemporary Fiction
Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
T.C. Boyle, Talk Talk
Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Mary Gordon, Final Payments
Nick Hornby, About a Boy
Yann Martel, The Life of Pi
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
Drama
Lee Blessing, Eleemosynary
Christopher Durang, ‘dentity Crisis
Marsha Norman, ‘Night, Mother
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Essays
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion, The White Album
Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris
Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon
Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level
General Nonfiction
Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
Kate Fox, Watching the English
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Memoir
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
Lauren Slater, Lying
Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Abigail Thomas, Safekeeping
Poetry
T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”
Kenneth Koch, New Addresses
Catie Rosemurgy, Stranger Manual
Travel Writing
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Writing, Reading, & Literature
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story
Nick Hornby, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree
Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote for Money
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Young Adult Literature
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy
Nick Hornby, Slam
Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere
Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
Lauren Oliver, Delirium
Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss
