I just read these two great posts about rereading favorite books. I very rarely do that–I’m one of those who have so many new things I want to read that it’s hard to justify making time to go back to books I’ve already finished.
Still, this made me review the notes I’ve kept on my reading–a list of every book I’ve read since 2001. From that record, I see that I’ve given exactly 57 books a perfect 10, not suggesting that they’re all masterpieces, but that reading them was pure, supreme joy for me. If I were stranded on a desert island, this would be my library.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
- As You Like It, William Shakespeare
- A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe
- The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
- Doctrinal New Testament Commentary vol.1-3, Bruce R. McConkie
- Raising Up A Family to the Lord, Gene R. Cook
- Charles Kuralt’s America, Charles Kuralt
- The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs
- Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
- Beowulf, Seamus Heaney, trans.
- The Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
- Heroes of History, Will Durant
- The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
- The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
- How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton
- The Stranger, Albert Camus
- Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
- America Alone, Mark Steyn
- The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark Leyner
- On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
- A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
- Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse
- A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Reading the OED, Ammon Shea
- An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
- Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
- The Westing Game, Ellen Rankin
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
- Rise To Rebellion, Jeff Shaara
- Sister Wendy’s 1000 Masterpieces, Wendy Beckett
- The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert
- The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
- The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
- Dune, Frank Herbert
- No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
- World War Z, Max Brooks
- Richard II, William Shakespeare
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens
- Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
- Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare
- A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
- Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
- The Secret Knowledge, David Mamet
- Noble House, James Clavell
- Flatland, Edwin Abbott
- Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
- Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
- Paradise Lost, John Milton
- Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock
- One For the Books, Joe Queenan
- Dubliners, James Joyce
- Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
- Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
- His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis
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