Great Reads Start Here

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is perhaps one of the top five greatest novels ever written. A bold statement, but one not easily refuted.

What other books qualify for greatest ever? Certainly The Great Gatsby is one of them. There are so many layers there, along with some of the prettiest sentences ever written. A list of greats, in no particular order, follows below. Keep in mind that these are books I’ve actually read, and is not exclusive. I would probably add more if I thought long enough. And whereas some books that are considered great may not be on my list, it’s either because I haven’t read them (The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner), or just wasn’t very taken by them (The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne). I would be more than happy to discuss these selections, or your own, if you want to have a dialogue.

• Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)
• Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)
• The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
• Middlemarch (George Eliot)
• Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austin)
• The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
• Go Down, Moses (William Faulkner)
• Nickel Mountain (John Gardner)
• Henderson the Rain King (Saul Bellow)
• The Chocolate War (Robert Cormier)
• Dune (Frank Herbert)
• Alas, Babylon (Pat Frank)
• On the Beach (Nevil Shute)
• 1984 (George Orwell)
• Rendezvous With Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
• The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
• Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
• The Makioka Sisters (Junichiro Tanizaki)
• Whirlwind (James Clavell)
• The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James)
• Fade (Robert Cormier)
• The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury)
• Boy’s Life (Robert McCammon)
• A Passage to India (E.M. Forster)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
• The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
• The Hyperion Quartet (Dan Simmons)
• Prometheus Stumbles (Ed Gosney…um, not published yet)

Some of the most entertaining reads ever:

• A Song of Ice and Fire series (George R.R. Martin)
• The Amber Chronicles (Roger Zelazny)
• Shadows Fall (Simon R. Green)
• Replay (Ken Grimwood)
• The Thin Woman (Dorothy Cannell)
• Hound of the Baskervilles (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
• The List of Seven (Mark Frost)
• Year Zero (Jeff Long)
• The Stand (Stephen King)
• Swan Song (Robert McCammon)
• Summer of Night (Dan Simmons)
• A Winter’s Haunting (Dan Simmons)
• The Kingdom of the Wall (Robert Silverberg)
• The Commonwealth Saga (Peter F. Hamilton)
• The Risen Empire (Scott Westerfeld)
• Shannara Series (Terry Brooks)
• The Engines of God (Jack McDevitt)
• Eternity Road (Jack McDevitt)

And that’s it, for now. There are many, many more books I could list under the second category, along with several more for the first.