I have read all of the books on this list (and I've read some of them already four or five times). These are books that I could not put down. And, once I finished the last page, I kept thinking about them. I'll keep updating this list as I read new books or remember books that should be here.
In no particular order:
- Pride & Prejudice, and anything else written by Jane Austen (including her grocery lists, if you can get your hands on them).
- Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! Seth Grahame-Smith (If you've read the original, this is hilarious).
- Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
- The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough (I read this on my honeymoon, which in retrospect, was a weird choice but it was great to read by the pool).
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
- Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith (I've been reading this at least every five years since I was ten).
- The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zola Neale Hurston
- Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
- Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
- The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
- The Midwife's Tale, Gretchen Moran Laskas
- Midwives, Chris Bohjalian (apparently I like books about midwives)
- The Blood of Flowers, Anita Amirrezvani
- The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery (This might be heresy, but I like this book even better than Anne of Green Gables).
- Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann (Warning: this book will make you feel stupid, but it's entertaining as hell).
- The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
- The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (I refuse to watch the movie because the book is perfect and I don't want it ruined).
- Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst (have a box of Kleenex handy).
- The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (the King Arthur tale, for women).
- Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
- Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
- Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
- Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl (Full disclosure: some of the members of my book club hated this book and thought it was overly contrived/pretentious. But I loved it).
- Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
- Frangipani, Clestine Vaite
- American Dervish, Ayad Akhtar
- The Help, Kathryn Stockett (The movie was great, but the book was even better).
- Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
- The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
- The Crimson Petal and the White, Michel Faber (The adventures of a prostitute named Sugar in 1870s London - sooooooooo gooooooooooood. It only gets a 3 star rating on Amazon, which is just stupid).
- The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins
- The Princess Bride, William Goldman (While I was reading this book, my cousin Julie was standing ten feet away and dancing like a chicken. The book was so engaging, I didn't notice).
- East of Eden, John Steinbeck
- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
- The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
- The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory
- The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel (This was actually assigned reading for my ninth grade history class. As a fifteen year old, I loved it. But I haven't reread it as an adult).
- Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See
- Life of Pi, Yann Martel
- Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
- Wifey, Judy Blume (Judy Blume has been my guilty pleasure since I first read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in the second grade).
- The Eight, Katherine Neville
- Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling
- Twilight Saga, Stephenia Meyer (Shameful, but entertaining, so shut up).
- Sookie Stackhouse Series, Charlaine Harris (The HBO True Blood series is based on these books, but the books are less gritty and more about clothes and romance).
- The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
- The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz (Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize and rightfully so).
- The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (A book about teenagers with cancer that will make you cry, laugh and remember how precious life is. I cannot say enough good things about it).
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon
- High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (I like reading Hornby's novels because I feel like it gives me a glimpse of the male brain).
- I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (The journal of a 17 year old woman living in the English countryside during the 1930s. If you like Austen and L.M. Montgomery, you'll love this).
