Category Archives: Books

50 Must-Read Books

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I easily read one book a week, more if I am caught up in the book. A couple of weeks back, I was thinking back to the thousands of books I must have read in my lifetime and wondered if these are books one must read in their lifetime. So I decided to compile a list and in this list are some favourites, some that I have read, and some I have on my to-read list. How many of these have you read?

Of course, each person’s must-read books will be different depending on their taste, and what someone may consider a must-read may have not made it to this list. This list of 50 books in alphabetical order is not an exhaustive one by any stretch, so if there is a book I have missed that needs to be included, let me know and I will add it for others to discover new books too.

Source
  1. 1984 by George Orwell
  2. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  4. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  5. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
  6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  7. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  8. Charlotte’s Web by E. B White
  9. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  10. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  12. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  13. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
  14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  15. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
  16. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  17. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  19. Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan
  20. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  21. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
  22. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  24. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  25. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  26. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  27. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  28. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  29. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  30. The Color Purple: A Novel by Alice Walker
  31. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  32. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
  33. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  34. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
  35. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
  36. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  37. The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
  38. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
  39. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  41. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  42. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
  43. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
  44. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  45. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
  46. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  47. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  48. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
  49. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  50. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Did your favourite books make the list?

In My Hands Today…

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The Ginger Tree – Oswald Wynd

338749In 1903, a young Scotswoman named Mary Mackenzie sets sail for China to marry her betrothed, a military attaché in Peking. But soon after her arrival, Mary falls into an adulterous affair with a young Japanese nobleman, scandalizing the British community.

Casting her out of the European community, her compatriots tear her away from her small daughter. A woman abandoned and alone, Mary learns to survive over forty tumultuous years in Asia, including two world wars and the cataclysmic Tokyo earthquake of 1923.

In My Hands Today…

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Beside a Burning Sea – John Shors

2958315One moment, the World War II hospital ship Benevolence is patrolling the South Pacific on a mission of mercy—to save wounded American soldiers. The next, Benevolence is split in two by a torpedo, killing almost everyone on board. A small band of survivors, including an injured Japanese soldier and a young American nurse whom he saves from drowning, makes it to the deserted shore of a nearby island.

Akira has suffered five years of bloodshed and horror fighting for the Japanese empire. Now, surrounded by enemies he is supposed to hate, he instead finds solace in their company—and rediscovers his love of poetry. While sharing the mystery and beauty of this passion with Annie, the captivating but tormented woman he rescued, Akira grapples with the pain of his past while helping Annie uncover the promise of her future. Meanwhile, the remaining castaways endure a world not of their making—a world as barbaric as it is beautiful, as hateful as it is loving.

In My Hands Today…

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The Last Brother – Nathacha Appanah, translated by Geoffrey Strachan

90839941944 is coming to a close and nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily struggle for his family. When a brutal beating lands Raj in the hospital of the prison camp where his father is a guard, he meets a mysterious boy his own age. David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazi-occupied Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent on to indefinite detainment in Mauritius.

A massive storm on the island leads to a breach of security at the camp, and David escapes, with Raj’s help. After a few days spent hiding from Raj’s cruel father, the two young boys flee into the forest. Danger, hunger, and malaria turn what at first seems like an adventure to Raj into an increasingly desperate mission.

In My Hands Today…

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The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai – Wang Anyi, translated by Michael Berry, Susan Chan Egan

3114060Set in post-World War II Shanghai, “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” follows the adventures of Wang Qiyao, a girl born of the “longtong,” the crowded, labyrinthine alleys of Shanghai’s working-class neighborhoods.

Infatuated with the glitz and glamour of 1940s Hollywood, Wang Qiyao seeks fame in the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant, and this fleeting moment of stardom becomes the pinnacle of her life. During the next four decades, Wang Qiyao indulges in the decadent pleasures of pre-liberation Shanghai, secretly playing mahjong during the antirightist Movement and exchanging lovers on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Surviving the vicissitudes of modern Chinese history, Wang Qiyao emerges in the 1980s as a purveyor of “old Shanghai” – a living incarnation of a new, commodified nostalgia that prizes splendor and sophistication – only to become embroiled in a tragedy that echoes the pulpy Hollywood noirs of her youth.