My Own 100 Books for a Lifetime

Amazon just released its list of “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.”  After perusing this list, I have read 51.  I’m proud of myself for being over half way there, and I also gained a few reading recommendations.  However, like most great lovers of books, I found that there were some novels I believed to be blatantly missing.  Therefore, I have created my own list of “100 books to Read in a Lifetime.”  There will no doubt be duplicates, but I hope you also appreciate some of the new additions.  I am also aware that some of these selections are technically drama, short stories, or poetry collections.   What books would make your essential list?  Please leave your comments!

1.       To Kill a Mockingbird – I won’t make note of every book I mention here.  However, I truly believe that this book, more than any other (even the bible), should be read by every single global citizen.  If the reader truly follows Atticus Finch’s advice, this book has the power to transform.  An individual can truly become a better person simply for having read this book.  It should be mandatory reading in every secondary school district.
 

 

2.       The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – How could Amazon possibly omit this book?  It is so critical to our nation’s history and has become deeply rooted in our culture.  Likewise, this novel should be mandatory reading in every secondary school district.

 

3.       Of Mice and Men – This novel has also become deeply rooted in our culture.  Does no one else remember the Loony Tunes character that asked to pet the bunnies?  This is a vital novel of friendship and Lenny and George are pivotal characters in the realm of fiction.

 

4.       Pride and Prejudice – Of course Austen tops my list.  Recall my wish to make zombie Jane Austen my BFF.  However, it is quite deservedly that this novel should rank so high in Amazon’s list, Good Reads reader polls, and my personal opinion.  Austen is an astute observer of human nature.  Further, particularly given the time period, Elizabeth Bennett is an admirable marvel of a woman and an exemplary role model.

 

5.       The Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck appears twice in my top five.  This book is such a brilliant portrait of our nation during a difficult time.  Told with honesty and poetic grace, the Joad family should be known kin to every American reader.

 

 

The following novels appear without comment and in no particular order:

 

6.       The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

7.       Night - Elie Wiesel

8.       The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

9.       All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten - Robert Fulghum

10.   The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

11.   Life of Pi - Yann Martel

12.   Nickeled and Dimed - Barbara Ehreneich

13.   The Help - Kathryn Stockett

14.   The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

15.   Fear of Flying - Erica Jong

16.   Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

17.   The Road - Cormac McCarthy

18.   As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

19.   Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand

20.   The Circle - Dave Eggers

21.   Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

22.   The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

23.   The Color Purple - Alice Walker

24.   Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

25.   Black Boy - Richard Wright

26.   The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlho

27.   1984 - George Orwell

28.   The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

29.   Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

30.   Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

31.   Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

32.   A Passage to India - E.M. Forster

33.   I am Malala - Malala Yousafzai

34.   The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

35.   Animal Farm - George Orwell

36.   Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

37.   A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley

38.   Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison

39.   Persepolis -  Marjane Satrapi

40.   The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

41.   Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

42.   The Wasteland, and Other Poems - T.S. Eliot

43.   A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah

44.   The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

45.   Every Day - David Levithan

46.   Sold - Patricia McCormick

47.   The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

48.   Peace Like a River - Leif Enger

49.   The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

50.   The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

51.   Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

52.   The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

53.   Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

54.   Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

55.   The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

56.   The Stranger - Albert Camus

57.   The Things they Carried - Tim O'Brien

58.   The Round House - Louise Erdrich

59.   Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

60.   Room - Emma Donaghue

61.   Lord of the Flies - William Golding

62.   Ellen Foster - Kaye Gibbins

63.   The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

64.   The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

65.   Go Ask Alice - Anonymous

66.   The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chobsky

67.   A Doll’s House - Henrik Ibsen

68.   Beloved - Toni Morrison

69.   The Awakening - Kate Chopin

70.   The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

71.   Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

72.   Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
 

73.   Same Kind of Different As Me - Ron Hall & Denver Moore

74.   The Hunger Games  - Suzanne Collins

75.   The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

76.   Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

77.   Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

78.   A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway

79.   The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer

80.   The Crucible - Arthur Miller

81.   One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey

82.   Walden - Henry David Thoreau

83.   Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson

84.   The Woman Upstairs - Claire Messud

85.   Looking for Alaska - John Green

86.   Paradise Lost - John Milton

87.   Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift

88.   Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

89.   Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

90.   There are No Children Here - Alex Kotlowitz

91.   The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Fredrick Douglass

92.   A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Conner

93.   Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Edgar Allan Poe

94.   Annie on my Mind - Nancy Garden

95.   The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

96.   Feed - M.T. Anderson

97.   The Dinner - Herman Koch

98.   The Reader  - Bernhard Schlink

99.   Little Bee - Chris Cleave

100.      Naked - David Sedaris

Why Malala Matters

On October 9, 2012, fifteen-year-old Pakistani youth Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding home from school.  Malala was specifically targeted by members of the Taliban for her vocal campaign in favor of education for all.  Few expected Malala to survive, but she has since recovered and become a global symbol of peaceful protest.  Coming of age in a nation where youth are told that those who attend school will also go to hell, Malala cherished her education and says that school, and the quest for knowledge, kept her going through many dark days. 

In Pakistan, schools were being bombed on a regular basis and it became criminal for a girl to attend school.  Yet, just as many girls in Afghanistan continued to seek an education despite having acid thrown in their faces, and exposing themselves to similar cruelties, many Pakistani girls risked their lives to gain knowledge.  Malala states, “we hadn’t realized just how important education was until the Taliban tried to stop us.  Going to school, reading and doing our homework, wasn’t just a way of passing time; it was our future.” 

Likewise, education is the key to a brighter, more prosperous future for our own American youth.  Yet, an astonishing amount of students receive their public education begrudgingly.  They regularly demonstrate extreme disrespect for their educators, and refuse to complete course work.  They complain about freedoms they do not even understand, falsely claiming that their freedom of speech has been violated when they are reprimanded for cursing in the classroom.  They bitch, and moan, and are blind to the immense privilege of education. 

In contrast, in her autobiography “I am Malala,” Yousafzai reports how she wept desperately the day the Taliban deadline arrived, declaring and rigidly enforcing no school for girls.  Malala writes, “When someone takes away your pens you realize quite how important education is.”  As a self-proclaimed advocate of education, I possess a relentless aspiration that our American youth truly recognize and appreciate education, learning to covet and crave learning as I do.  This personal desire is one of the many reasons that I recently read Malala’s biography. 

Most often found with a book on my person, this book accompanied me to school while I was reading it.  As it was lying out near my Chromebook and attendance charts, several students took note of it.  Initially, I was eager and excited to share Malala’s story with my own students, hoping it would impact them and create perspective and gratitude.  One male student asked about the book, and I began to passionately share Malala’s trials and triumphs as a near-by female student picked up the book and began to peruse the pages. 

“Why do you have passages highlighted?” she asked. 

“I almost always read texts like that,” I explained.  “Frequently, I highlight a passage I feel is important to theme, motif, or characterization.  In this case, I underlined phrases and paragraphs that I would want to share with others.  In particular, they are lines I want students to see in the hopes that they might recognize quite how fortunate they actually are here in the United States.”

“Hmm …” she said, failing to fully comprehend what I had just explained.  She then closed the book and glanced at the cover image, “Well, she has a unibrow.” 

I pulled the book away from her in defeat and frustration, as the bell was to ring momentarily.

The following period, as my book still sat visible among my other belongings, another young male student inquired about its contents.  Rather than rattling off a tale I imagined would be ignored, I questioned his knowledge. 

 

“This is Malala’s Yousafzai’s biography,” I simply stated, “Do you know who she is?”

“Yeah,” he said, with a slight hint of uncertainty, “Didn’t she get shot in the head or something?”

“Yes, that’s correct,” I replied, pleased that he showed some awareness of global events.  “Do you know why she was shot?” I asked, hoping to receive a reply regarding her fight for equal education.

Rather, he provided the following response: “Because she doesn’t know how to dodge a bullet.”

I was appalled, and my mouth literally dropped open.  I shook my head in disbelief, and continue to be shamed by the state of American youth.  We must end the sense of entitlement that has become so widespread.  Apathy, disrespect, and ingratitude are some of the most contagious and horrific epidemics I have witnessed in youth throughout my education career.  This is not to say that all youth are ungrateful little bastards; there are certainly also those that give me hope.  However, that hope despondently diminishes as the epidemic regrettably sickens and swells.   

 

Malala said, “I don’t want to be thought of as ‘the girl who was shot by the Taliban’ but the ‘girl who fought for education.’” While Americans have the access to education that many Middle-Eastern areas lack, we too must fight for education.   We must fight to ensure that our youth recognize the power and importance of knowledge.  It is not only those in the education field who must fight.  Parents play the most powerful role in shaping youth, and we must do better.  It will take far more than a few highlighted words to change the dreadfully negative attitudes that abound in schools across the country.  Stand up and stand together to demand more respect for education and admiration for intelligent, passionate individuals.

 

Buy the book!

 

Author not compensated for promotion.