Good for the BBC. Everyone’s getting all chatty about their latest book challenge. 100 books you should have read. Eh. I did alright. Better than average, worse than awesome.
That’s really because so many of those books, I’ve picked them up, then put them right back down again, cause they sucked (hello Jane Eyre, I’m talking about you). I don’t like most of what I read. I’m picky and easily irritated.
But every once in a while you come across something that leaves a mark on you, that sticks with you long after you’re done with it. It’s books like that that make me want to be a writer.
And so it is with equal arbitrary capriciousness and self importance that I bring you the WTF Book Challenge: 50 books I decided on the spur of the moment you should have read, because I said so:
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
- And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon
- “American Dreams” – Peter Carey
- Animal Farm – George Orwell
- Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
- Black Like Me – John Howard Griffin
- Boomsday – Christopher Buckley
- The Butter Battle Book – Dr. Suess
- “The Cop and the Anthem” – O Henry
- The Crucible – Arthur Miller
- Eats Shoots and Leaves – Lynne Truss
- “Everyday Use” – Alice Walker
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
- Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser
- Falling Up – Shel Silverstein
- Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
- From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – E. L. Konigsburg
- Garlic and Sapphires – Ruth Reichl
- The Giver – Lois Lowry
- The Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling
- The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
- I Was Told There’d Be Cake – Sloane Crosley
- In the Woods – Tana French
- It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny – Marilyn Sadler
- Jesus Land – Julia Scheeres
- “The Lottery” – Shirley Jackson
- Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
- The Nancy Drew Series – Carolyn Keene
- Night – Lois Lowry
- Olive Kitteridge (especially “A Little Burst”) – Elizabeth Strout
- One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest – Ken Kesey
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
- Prep – Curtis Sittenfeld
- The Princess Bride – William Goldman
- Rats Saw God – Rob Thomas
- The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
- Room – Emma Donoghue
- The Scarlet Pimpernal – Baroness Emmuska Orczy
- Sideways Stories from Wayside School – Louis Sachar
- Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- Spoon River Anthology – Edgar Lee Masters
- Stiff – Mary Roach
- The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
- The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
- Under the Banner of Heaven – John Krakauer
- Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
- Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
- The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon
