Mck,

Your love of reading is one of the most endearing qualities that you possess, not because your father is an English teacher or that your mother is the most voracious reader I know, but because you are curious and allow yourself to listen with your eyes to the words of others.

You, your mother, and I could get lost in bookstores and never really be lost.

I believe that one of the ways that someone can really get to know someone else is to read the books that the other person finds important, whether for its literary merit, the connection to a story or person, the sheer enjoyment, or the intellectual pursuit.

For me, I read for a variety of reasons, but I also would like to think that I explore through books aspects of my life and learn from the experience of characters so that I may not have to repeat the mistakes they may have made.

Below is a list of books, collections, texts, and titles that I believe are worth reading. They are in no particular order. Some have little notes beside them. I simply list them alphabetically.

They can all be found among my possessions here in the house or in my room at school. They are yours for the taking.

Ask your mother the books she thinks you should read.

Ask your Uncle Mike also. It’s his fault that I started reading a lot in the first place.

Ask the English Department at West Forsyth High School. The number of discussions I have had with them about good books worth reading, rereading, and teaching are countless.

Here goes.

1. A Confederacy of Dunces – a top five for me
2. A Lesson Before Dying
3. A Prayer For Owen Meany – get ready to laugh
4. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
5. All the Light We Cannot See
6. All The Pretty Horses
7. Amsterdam
8. And the Band Played On – about eh rise of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s
9. As I Lay Dying – has best chapter in American Lit – Ask Uncle Mike
10. Atonement – Ian McEwan is one of my favorite writers – I buy his stuff in hardback
11. Bel Canto
12. Beloved
13. Blood Done Sign My Name – Tim Tyson is a social warrior
14. Blood Meridian – great scene with piss in it
15. Cannery Row
16. Canterbury Tales
17. Crime and Punishment – reason I love this one – talk to Sabolcik bout this one
18. Cutting For Stone – talk to Serang
19. Death of a Salesman
20. Devil in the White City – wow!
21. Disgrace
22. Dubliners
23. Everything Is Illuminated
24. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
25. Fahrenheit 451
26. Fast Food Nation – one of the reasons I do a certain unit in AP Lang
27. Frankenstein – don’t play God
28. Freakonomics – makes you look at things differently
29. Gulliver’s Travels
30. Harry Potter Series
31. Heart of Darkness
32. I Am One of You Forever – about uncles
33. Invisible Man – power
34. Jane Eyre
35. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell
36. July’s People
37. Le Morte D’Arthur – I used to follow Arthurian Legend quite a bit
38. Les Miserables
39. Maus
40. Middlesex – best opening and closing of a book in the last twenty years – knew exactly where I was when I finished
41. Moby Dick– Holy sh** what a book
42. Never Let Me Go – the movie actually did it some justice
43. Night
44. Oedipus
45. Of Mice and Men
46. On the Road
47. On Writing by Stephen King – read it in a bookstore then bought it afterwards
48. Paradise Lost
49. Possession
50. Pride and Prejudice
51. Ragtime
52. Reign of Error – Ravitch is a hero
53. Salt, Sugar, Fat
54. Salvage the Bones
55. Savage Inequalities
56. Shakespeare – All of It – you know that
57. Slaughterhouse Five
58. The Adventure of Kavalier and Clay
59. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
60. The Aeneid – Mandelbaum’s translation – you met him in a grocery store, said you were bright
61. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
62. The Awakening
63. The Bible
64. The Brothers Karamazov – again ask Sabolcik
65. The Catcher in the Rye
66. The Chronicles of Narnia
67. The Crucible
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Might want you to consider a book about your brother
69. The Divine Comedy – Actually, the Commedia – again Mandelbaum’s version
70. The Great Gatsby – love teaching this book
71. The Handmaid’s Tale
72. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
73. The Interpreter of Maladies – Ask Serang
74. The Life and Times of Michael K
75. The Life of Pi
76. The Lord of the Rings
77. The Moviegoer – Walker Percy!
78. The Odyssey
79. The Old Man and the Sea
80. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill
81. The Poems of Carl Sandburg
82. The Poems of Emily Dickinson
83. The Poems of W.B. Yeats – all time periods
84. The Poems of Walt Whitman
85. The Road
86. The Scarlet Letter – like it more the older I get
87. The Screwtape Letters
88. The Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry is my literary mancrush
89. The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
90. The Stories of Flannery O’Connor – She’s Georgian
91. The Stories of Nathanial Hawthorne
92. The Water I Wide – your dad is a teacher
93. Their Eyes Were Watching God
94. There are No Children Here
95. Things Fall Apart
96. To Kill a Mockingbird – you know how I feel about this one
97. Waiting
98. Where Men Win Glory
99. Will in the World
100. Writer’s Inc. – ask your Uncle Mike
101. Zealot