50 Books You Should Shut Up Until You Have Read

So, recently on Facebook a friend tagged me in her post of that list that's been circulating for a couple years with the intro, "The BBC thinks most people have only read 6 of these 100 books; how many have you read?" This has led to an unprecedented number of comments about books, the list, and which books should be on the list. I had no idea so many people wanted to jabber about books with me! My little ol' Literary Supplement blog has been here the whole time! I should also point out that there is no evidence that particular list was actually the BBC's list anyway; rather, it is probably a random internet bastardization. Such is the way of the world. Anyway, I half-jokingly said I'd make my own list of fifty books and as luck would have it, the serious half has won out. Off the cuff, spontaneously, what the heck, this list is nothing close to complete or definitive, but is nonetheless....

Fifty Books I Think Everyone Should Read

1. Aesop's Fables
2. The Divine Comedy by Dante
   
3. Macbeth by Shakespeare
   
4. Candide by Voltaire
5. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
8. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe (and a collection of his stories)
   
9. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
   
10. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
    
11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
12. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
13. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
14. Cimarron by Edna Ferber
15. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
    
16. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
17. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon
18. Jubilee by Margaret Walker
    
19. Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
20. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
21. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
    
22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
23. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
24. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
    
25. The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
    
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
27. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
    
28. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
29. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
    
30. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
31. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
32. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
33. Julian by Gore Vidal
34. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
35. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
36. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
37. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
38. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
39. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
40. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
    
41. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
42. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
43. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
44. Holes by Louis Sachar
45. Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
46. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
    
47. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
48. Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin
49. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
50. Going Nucular by Geoffrey Nunberg

There. Now, how many of those have you read?