10 must-read books

[liisus]

Hey!
If you could choose 10 books you think every person should read, what would they be?

[lagunabiotch]

Oh fun! I love recommendations. Disclaimer- I'm a soon-to-be dietitian and I love classics. The first ones are must reads for life- everyone can benefit and learn a lot through them

1. The Omnivore's Dilemma- Must read to learn about where our food (USA) comes from and why
2. In Defense of Food- Stop dieting, just stop it (also learn about the history of how dietary recommendations came to be (USA))
3. Mindless Eating- A compilation of research about eating- stuff like a bowl of candy and a bowl of fruit is put out together, what bowl to people go to? OR why how dimming the lights makes you eat/drink more
4. Gone with the Wind- Just a beautiful novel with some great characters
5. Jane Eyre- Jane's a strong, independent woman, a Romance with a bit of mystery
6. Brave New World- Dystopian novel, really scary in that I could see something like this actually happening
7. 1984- Again dystopian, can totally see this happening too, and what's scary about this one is a lot of the stuff in the book has actually happened
8. Nineteen Minutes- I think it's important to read books or watch movies that are from the evil persons perspective, it helps in having empathy and makes you realize the world isn't black and white
9. The Art Forger- Not sure that this is a MUST read, it is a really fun mystery and you learn a lot about how art is made
10. 11/22/63- Stephen King's drama/scifi novel. Not scary at all. It is so fun and interesting, I had never read a drama by him only horror novels, he is a great writer.

BONUS- cuz i just wanna say Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is another really fun novel and takes place in my home (SF Bay Area)

[rensays]

Nice to know there are readers out here- the people with actual brains.

1. Interview with the Vampire / Vampire Lestat
2. Art of War
3. LOTR
4. Ender's Game
5. Great Gatsby
6. Pride and Prejudice
7. Anna Karenina
8. Tipping Point
9. Princess Bride
10. Harry Potter Series

I gotta check out that SF bay area book! I lived there for my undergraduate studies.

[liisus]

Great recs! I am sure to do a whole lot of reading in the future so surely this list will change dramatically but so far here are some books that I enjoyed immensely.

1) Anything by Tolkien. Either The Hobbit, LOTR series, Silmarillion or something else. I just think he is brilliant!
2) Great Gatsby or Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald, I personally prefered the latter
3) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It is just so touching, written so simply yet it is so powerful.
4) Hamlet by Shakespeare.
5) Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
6) The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss
7) Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka or The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - both are novellas with hidden metaphors.
8) The Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
9) Something from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
10) Let´s finish off this list with Harry Potter. It is the series that I grow up with. The Order of the Phoenix was the 800 page book I made my mum carry around when I was a 5-year-old. Potter is the book that made me fall in love with reading and therefore it deserves a place in this list.

I just finished Black Boy by Richard Wright too and it was brilliant. Maybe this theme should just be called "book recs" instead of "10 must-read books"...

[honeylovexo]

1. The Nicomachean Ethics
2. The Great Gatsby
3. The Beautiful and Damned
4. The Picture of Dorian Gray
5. Eating Animals
6. Lean In
7. How to Write, Think and Speak Correctly (lol)
8. Desert Flower
9. The Road
10. Pollyanna

[conflate]

The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
A Woman Speaks - Anais Nin
Bonus book: The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem

I could go on for ages haha but these are some of my all-time favourites.

[ggeyeliner]

Ondskan ("The Evil") by Jan Guillou
Le Petit Prince (''The Little Prince'') by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
Tolkien and Rowling and Martin series.

[hollaatmegurl]

I don't really have 10 because I blank when I try to think of titles but I really think The Kite Runner is a must-read. I think a lot of people read it in school and it didn't really stick with me then, but reading it after I graduated I had more time to really READ it (yenno like not just reading it to catch key points that would be on a quiz the next day) and it's one of the few books that I won't be able to ever forget.

[catcherintherye]

1. 1984
2. Brave new world
3. Catcher in the rye (of course)
4. Catch 22
5. Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
6. To kill a mockingbird
7. Motorcycle Diaries
8. Making Habits, breaking habits: why we do things, why we don't, and how to make changes stick
9. In cold blood
10. Love in the time of Cholera

[husky]

1. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
2. The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
6. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
7. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
8. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell
10. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

[freckles mcgee]

1. Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn
2. Sharp Objects- Gillian Flynn
3. Dark Places- Gillian Flynn
4. If I Stay- Gayle Forman (they're making this one into a movie and I'm excited and nervous)
5. Bossypants- Tina Fey
6. Old Fear Street books by RL Stine. Not exactly the best books but I still like to read them every so often.

And I've run out haha.

[gizcorn]

I used to read all the time, and have been trying to get back into it recently, so my list is pretty much one book
1)The Gift of Fear - Gavin DeBecker: AMAZING book. literally have been shouting it from the rooftops to everyone ever since I finished it haha
It's not the only thing I've read recently, but it's the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend. Pretty much everything else has been drivel masquerading as a hyped novel *cough* Gone Girl.

[puresoul]

If I only had to choose from the ones that I've read recently (last 2-3 years) then my list would probably be (in no particular order):
1. Dancer from the Dance - Andrew Holleran
2. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
3. The Millennium Series - Stieg Larsson, continued by David Lagercrantz
4. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
5. Lion - Saroo Brierley
6. The Revenant - Michael Punke
7. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
8. Perfume - Patrick Süskind
9. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
10. The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman