I'll take off from politics this week as petition signing on raising teachers base pay and all sorts of heat and craziness rages on in Little Rock.
A reader asked if I have read any good books and suggested a list of recommended books to me recently.
After looking over a universal list, I have shortened the list, adjusted it a bit to my taste, but omitted any of the Lonesome Dove type westerns I so love, and decided here are 50 books almost anybody should read.
Quick remark on the coming critics, the Bible is not on this list. The Bible and all its books should be reading, studying and serious, comparative thinking, praying and meditation all of one's life.
But back to a list of 50 books to read. Here goes:
1."Pride and Prejudice" -- Jane Austen
2. "The Lord of the Rings" -- JRR Tolkien
3. Harry Potter series -- JK Rowling
4. "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- Harper Lee
5. "Nineteen Eighty--Four" -- George Orwell
6. "Great Expectations" -- Charles Dickens
7. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" -- Thomas Hardy
8. "Catch 22" -- Joseph Heller
9. Complete Works of Shakespeare
10. "The Hobbit" -- JRR Tolkien
11. "Catcher in the Rye" -- JD Salinger
12. "The Time Traveler's Wife" -- Audrey Neffenger
13. "Middlemarch" -- George Eliot
14. "Gone With The Wind" -- Margaret Mitchell
15. "The Great Gatsby" -- F Scott Fitzgerald
16. "Bleak House" -- Charles Dickens
17. "War and Peace" -- Leo Tolstoy
18. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" -- Douglas Adams
19. "Crime and Punishment" -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. "Grapes of Wrath" -- John Steinbeck
21. "Alice in Wonderland" -- Lewis Carroll
22. "The Wind in the Willows" -- Kenneth Grahame
23. "David Copperfield" -- Charles Dickens
24. "Chronicles of Narnia" -- CS Lewis
25. "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" -- CS Lewis
26. "The Kite Runner" -- Khaled Hosseini
27. "Winnie the Pooh" -- AA Milne
28. "Animal Farm" -- George Orwell
29. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
30. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" -- John Irving
31. "Far From The Madding Crowd" -- Thomas Hardy
32. "The Handmaid's Tale" -- Margaret Atwood
33. "Lord of the Flies" -- William Golding
34. "A Tale Of Two Cities" -- Charles Dickens
35. "Brave New World" -- Aldous Huxley
36. "Of Mice and Men" -- John Steinbeck
37. "Count of Monte Cristo" -- Alexandre Dumas
38. "On The Road" -- Jack Kerouac
39. "Moby Dick" -- Herman Melville
40. "Oliver Twist" -- Charles Dickens
41. "Dracula" -- Bram Stoker
42. "Notes From A Small Island" -- Bill Bryson
43. "Ulysses" -- James Joyce
44. "A Christmas Carol" -- Charles Dickens
45. "The Color Purple" -- Alice Walker
46. "The Remains of the Day" -- Kazuo Ishiguro
47. "Charlotte's Web" -- EB White
48. "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" -- Mitch Albom
49. "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
50. "Les Miserables" -- Victor Hugo
Some that didn't make the 50 cut are:
"Heart of Darkness" -- Joseph Conrad, "The Little Prince" -- Antoine De Saint-Exupery, "Watership Down" -- Richard Adams, "The Three Musketeers" -- Alexandre Dumas, "Hamlet" -- William Shakespeare and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" -- Roald Dahl.
I am also taking up a challenge of the 50 Arkansas related books a person new to the state and those within our state should read. Coming soon, I promise.
-- Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.