An archive of Must Reads from Is Well Read interviews. Click photo to read full interview.
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
(but you have to read A Wild Sheep Chase first)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Natural Capitalism: Creating the next industrial revolution by Paul Hawken
A Paradise Built In Hell by Rebecca Solnit
Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstien
Thomas’ Snowsuit by Robert Munsch
Charlie & The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. The! Greatest! Of! Marlys! By Lynda Barry. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Beach by Alex Garland
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Heat, by Bill Buford
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje
U.S.! by Chris Bachelder
Moby-Dick by Herman Neville
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Learning to Love You More by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher
Hungry by Crystal Renn and Marjorie Ingall
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
Diary: A Novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Dear Diary by Lesley Arfin
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Bhagavad Gita
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Any of the poetry by Diane Di Prima
Wendy Cope – another poet. The book I have (and am reading and re-reading enough to rival Bloomability) is called Two Cures for Love, and it’s sort of a Best Of collection – but I’ve devoured as much of her poetry as I could find in my school’s library as well. Her work is wonderful – incredibly witty and accessible and so very precise.
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I think everybody should read ANY really thick book from cover to cover. Personally, I’ve done Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, once. I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read more of the big ones. Some suggestions: The Bible, Bhagavad-Gita, Koran, Being and Time, War and Peace, Finnegan’s Wake, any of the Chilton’s auto repair manuals (i.e. Toyota Camry 1997-2001), any large dictionary or encyclopaedia, patents filings, court records, a year’s worth of classified ads from an old newspaper…
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
Unless by Carol Shields
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
Palestine by Joe Sacco
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
What Is The What by Dave Eggers
Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
How to Eat by Nigella Lawson
The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
Homicide: A year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Restless Supermarket by Ivan Vladislavic
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
What is the What by Dave Eggers
The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
We Are All The Same by Jim Wooten
Notes From The Hyena’s Belly by Nega Mezlekia
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Updike’s five-novels involving Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, etc.)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
The Stone Diaries, Larry’s Party and Unless by Carol Shields
The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham
The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Any of Somerset Maugham‘s short story collections
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Wanderers by Knut Hamsun
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
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