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.

1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
2. As You Like It, William Shakespeare
3. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe
4. The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
5. Doctrinal New Testament Commentary vol.1-3, Bruce R. McConkie
6. Raising Up A Family to the Lord, Gene R. Cook
7. Charles Kuralt’s America, Charles Kuralt
8. The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs
9. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
10. Beowulf, Seamus Heaney, trans.
11. The Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason
12. Heroes of History, Will Durant
13. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
14. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
15. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
16. How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton
17. The Stranger, Albert Camus
18. Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
19. America Alone, Mark Steyn
20. The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark Leyner
21. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
22. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
23. Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse
24. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
25. Reading the OED, Ammon Shea
26. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
27. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
28. The Westing Game, Ellen Rankin
29. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
30. Rise To Rebellion, Jeff Shaara
31. Sister Wendy’s 1000 Masterpieces, Wendy Beckett
32. The Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert
33. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
34. The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay
35. Dune, Frank Herbert
36. No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
37. World War Z, Max Brooks
38. Richard II, William Shakespeare
39. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
40. Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
41. Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare
42. A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
43. Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
44. The Secret Knowledge, David Mamet
45. Noble House, James Clavell
46. Flatland, Edwin Abbott
47. Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
48. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
49. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
50. Paradise Lost, John Milton
51. Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock
52. One For the Books, Joe Queenan
53. Dubliners, James Joyce
54. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
55. Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz
56. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
57. His Excellency: George Washington, Joseph J. Ellis