April 2026
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    A year or two ago I put together a list of 50 must-read books and I realized I needed to remove one (Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe) because forgot I had read it in high school.

    Looking at my list, what would you add to replace that as that one last book? It doesn't have to be a specific style, just something that seems to be missing from my current list.

    For some background, I looked at many lists before compiling one of my own and decided I wanted to keep it one book per author. For example, I only have John Steinbeck on here once for East of Eden and not for Grapes of Wrath as well (which I have since read because I liked East of Eden so much!)

    I was also trying to keep it focused on books that sounded interesting to me personally. My list below is somewhat in order from favorite to least favorite for the ones that I have already read if that's helpful.

    1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Read)
    2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (Read)
    3. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Read)
    4. 1984 by George Orwell (Read)
    5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (Read)
    6. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dystoyevsky (Read)
    7. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Read)
    8. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Read)
    9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Read)
    10. The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood (Read)
    11. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Read)
    12. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll(Read)
    13. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (Read)
    14. And then there were none by Agatha Christie (Read)
    15. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Read)
    16. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (Read)
    17. Beloved by Toni Morrison (Read)
    18. The Stranger by Albert Camus (Read)
    19. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (Read)
    20. The Diary of a Young Girl byAnne Frank (Read)
    21. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Read)
    22. Anna Kerenina by Leo Tolstoy (Read)
    23. Gone With the Wind by Margeret Mitchell (Read)
    24. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Read)
    25. Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Read)
    26. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde(Read)
    27. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Read)
    28. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Read)
    29. Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut (Read)
    30. Dracula by Bram Stoker (Read)
    31. The Catcher and the Rye by J.D. Salinger(Read)
    32. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Read)
    33. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Read)
    34. Atonement by Ian McEwan (Read)
    35. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (Read)
    36. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
    37. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
    38. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
    39. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    40. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
    41. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
    42. Flowers for Algernonby Daniel Keyes
    43. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
    44. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
    45. The Age of Innocence by by Edith Warton
    46. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
    47. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
    48. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
    49. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    by carriebradshawshair

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    1. mom_with_an_attitude on

      The Hobbit

      Watership Down

      Of Mice and Men

      The Count of Monte Cristo

      One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

      Swann’s Way by Proust

    2. Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

      The Hobbit by Tolkien

      The Jungle Books by Kipling

      Matilda by Roald Dahl

      All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

      Lord of the Flies by William Golding

      The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

      The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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