A Good Read

There are constantly lists coming out of books you should read before you die, or great summer reads, or the top ten books of all time. This is not one of those lists. It is a list of books, but they’re books that I have loved reading. They’re not necessarily the best books, they may never win prizes, though I’m sure some of them have, but they are books that I have fallen in love with.

I’m also not going to go on about why I love each book. I’m simply going to list them, in no particular order, by title and author. I’m not trying to persuade you to read any of them but, if you do, that’s great. I just want to give you a few books you might not have heard of, or forgotten about, that you could, perhaps, put on your list one day.

So, here are 20 books that I have loved and I hope you love, too.

 

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. 

Hamlet by William Shakespeare. 

Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park. 

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. 

When Galaxies Collide by Lisa Harvey-Smith. 

Beachmasters by Thea Astley. 

The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs. 

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

 

The Witches by Roald Dahl. 

Rose Madder by Stephen King.

 

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

 

Dr Space Junk vs the Universe by Alice Gorman. 

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. 

The Norton Anthology of Poetry by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy. 

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

 

The Rise of Life by John Reader. 

Animalia by Graeme Base. 

The Adonis Strategy by Alex Fazakas. 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

What are your favourite books? Are they from your childhood? Do you stick to a genre, or branch out? Why do you love them? Do they remind you of what was happening in your life at the time? What is the power of books for you?