Whether you are an avid reader or an occasional reader, there are a few books that you should just not miss. The following article will cover a list of such books that everyone should read at least once in their lifetime.
You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.―Paul Sweeney
It is very important to be a good reader, as books are full of treasures of knowledge and help you live a life of imagination that is not only thought-provoking, but can turn your dreams into reality. I love books and can devour even two books in a day. It is not only a mere saying that books are your true friends, they actually are your true friends. People think books are a passe and no one really ever picks one up. But even today, people do read them. There are bestsellers churned out almost every day, and older publications have more than 50 editions published.
Reading is a pleasurable experience that can be done at your leisure. You can read Astriex, the Gaul or even enjoy Black Beauty. You can even go ahead and do some heavy reading with War and Peace by Tolstoy. You can get lost in the magical world of Lord of the Rings and read some science fiction like ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep’. Or how about some adventure with Treasure Island or Bridge to Terabithia? If reading is your thing, then try the following; you surely won’t be disappointed.
| Book | Author |
| The Home and the World | Rabindranath Tagore |
| The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams |
| Midnight’s Children | Salman Rushdie |
| Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | John le Carre |
| The Tale of Genji | Lady Murasaki |
| The Golden Notebook | Doris Lessing |
| Eugene Onegin | Alexander Pushkin |
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess |
| The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Victor Hugo |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway |
| The Rights of Man | Thomas Paine |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez |
| The Origin of Species | Charles Darwin |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
| Catch – 22 | Joseph Heller |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky |
| Slaughterhouse | Kurt Vonnegut |
| Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck |
| The Rights of Man | Tom Paine |
| As a Man Thinketh | James Allen |
| A Manual for Living | Epectetus |
| The University of Hard Knocks | Ralph Parlette |
| The Power of Subconscious Mind | Joseph Murphy |
| The Greatest Salesman in the World | Og Mandino |
| The Reader | Bernhard Schlink |
| My Name is Red | Orhan Pamuk |
| London Fields | Martin Amis |
| The Tin Drum | Gunter Grass |
| Austerlitz | W. G Sebald |
Besides the classics above, there are many more books that make for a good read, like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (a scholar’s sexual obsession with a prepubescent ‘nymphet’, whose life is further complicated by the girl’s mother’s passion for him), or Beloved by Toni Morrison (a tale about the brutal and haunting journey of American slavery).
For mystery lovers, The Voyier by Alain Robbe-Grillet (revolves around a murder plot of a girl who has been killed by a watch salesman) is something that will not be forgotten for a while. Adventurous souls will find delight in reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It is about a young boy and a runaway slave who set sail on the Mississippi to get away from ‘civilization’.
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle is about a drug addict who chases a ghostly dog on the midnight moors. If you love scandals then The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy will satisfy your tastes. You can read the story of Captain Ahab, who is seeking vengeance from the white whale in Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
One cannot miss Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, about the quinquagenarian gentleman on a hose tilting at windmills. My favorite is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe about a slave trader who is shipwrecked and gets closer to God, and finds a native to convert and makes him a real friend.
Every person should indulge in reading to be able to set his mind free. I may have missed out on many great books worth mentioning, like the Harry Potter series, and Pride and Prejudice. Books are your treasures and is rightly said by Jim Rohn, “Poor people have big TVs, rich people have big libraries.” A man who continues to read will never lose anything, only gain a lot of treasure from his true friends, books.
