My Ideal Bookshelf...

Every book related website, whether curated by professional writers, publishers or booklovers, is awash in some variation of "100(ish) Books To Read Before You Die". After perusing many of these lists, I can say with confidence that they are heavily redundant, somewhat elitist, and likely comparable to the most boring assignment you have gotten since high school. Surely there must be a better list of books I can recommend you keep company with in your dying days. No one book has changed my life, but the reading of countless has made my life what it is. I can’t imagine who I would be today without my love of reading and I am grateful that I don’t have to. I am not going to regurgitate a synopsis here or lay bare my journal entries to disclose the books magnitude or what emotions it elicited. What I will say is that singularly or in some extraordinary combination they made me who I am.

1. The Stand – Stephen King

2. Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling

3. We Begin At The End - Chris Whitaker

4. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

5. Dracula – Bram Stoker

6. The Institute - Stephen King

7. All The Sinners Bleed - S.A. Cosby

8. Recurison - Blake Crouch

9. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

10. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

11. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

12. Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

13. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

14. Motherless Brooklyn – Jonathan Lethem

15. Lord of The Rings Trilogy – J. R. R. Tolkien

16. The Martian – Andy Weir

17. Fairy Tale - Stephen King

18. Heart Shaped Box – Joe Hill

19. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

20. This Story Is A Lie – Tom Pollock

21. I Am Pilgrim – Terry Hayes

22. Carnivale Of Curiousitites - Aimee Gibbs

23. Harriet The Spy – Louise Fitzhugh

24. The Eight – Katherine Neville

25. Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer

26. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

27. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

28. Babel - R.F. Kuang

29. Where the Sidewalk Ends – Shel Silverstein

30. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy) – Stieg Larsson

31. A Simple Plan – Scott Smith

32. The Echo Wife - Sarah Gailey

33. Final Girls Support Group - Grady Hendrix

34. Eight Detectives - Alex Pavesi

35. Small Mercies – Dennis Lehane

36. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

37. Happiness Falls - Angie Kim

38. Everyone In My Family Will Someday Be Dead - Benjamin Stevenson

39. Go Ask Alice – Anonymous

40. Bad Monkey/Sick Puppy – Carl Hiaasen

41. The Shining – Stephen King

42. Murder of Roger Ackroyd/Crooked House – Agatha Christie

43. Princess Bride – William Goldman

44. Grimm’s Fairy Tales – Brothers Grimm

45. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

46. Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

47. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

48. Dead Silence - S.A. Barnes

49. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

50. In the Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

51. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver

52. High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

53. Postcards from the Edge – Carrie Fisher

54. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

55. Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

56. Kane and Abel – Jeffrey Archer

57. American Gods – Neil Gaiman

58. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt

59. The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next Series) – Jasper Fforde

60. The Nightingale – Kristin Hannah

61. Practical Magic – Alice Hoffman

62. The Stinky Cheese Man – Jon Scieszka

63. The Killing Circle – Andrew Pyper

64. Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

65. The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett

66. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

67. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

68. English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

69. Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarros

70. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

71. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova

72. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Edward Albee

73. Battle Royale – Koushun Takami

74. Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

75. Ordinary People – Judith Guest

76. Rosemary’s Baby – Ira Levin

77. The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton

78. One Hundred Years Of Lenni & Margot - Marianne Cronin

79. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke

80. Lessons In Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus

81. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott

82. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

83. No One Will Miss Her - Kat Rosenfield

84. Speak Of The Devil - Rose Wilding

85. Larry’s Party – Carol Shields

86. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng

87. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

88. Paradox Hotel -Rob Hart

89. Bright Young Women - Jennifer Knoll

90. Frozen River - Ariel Lawhon

91. Winter’s Bone – Daniel Woodrell

92. Bird Box – Josh Malerman

93. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! – Dr. Seuss

94. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

95. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult

96. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

97. Smila’s Sense of Snow – Peter Hoeg

98. The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Leguin

99. Heartburn – Nora Ephron