Augie’s 150 Books to Read in Your Lifetime

Not sure how I missed this but, fortunately, I came across a small sign mentioning it while roaming the local B&N Sunday evening. Seems that in celebration of its sesquicentennial (150 years) last year, faculty and staff at local Augustana College came up with a list of 150 books they recommend.

Although the list may in part reflect the fact Augie is an ELCA school, it is unquestionably diverse and eclectic. That makes me wonder even more about the fact I am wholly unfamiliar with the top five books and that I’ve read only 20-25 books on the entire list. As the page notes, though, “This is not a list of the ‘best’ 150 books or the ‘most important’ 150 books, but rather a fascinating snapshot of this group of people in the year 2010 and the books they have loved and want others to also read and enjoy.”

I’m not sure how the actual rank was determined and I’m not going to repeat the entire list, but here’s the top 50, with the ones I’ve read in bold.

1. Illusions: Tales of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach
2. The Snow Tree, by Caroline Repchuck
3. A Very Easy Death, by Simone de Beauvoir
4. Black Child, by Camara Laye
5. If It Die, by André Gide
6. Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust
7. The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien
10. The Bible
11. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
12. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safron Foer
13. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
14. Straight Man, by Richard Russo
15. Last Moon Dancing, by Monique Schmidt
16. Saint Maybe, by Anne Tyler
17. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
18. Practical Gods, by Carl Dennis
19. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
20. Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
21. The Next Place, by Warren Hanson
22. Good-Night Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown
23. Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
24. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
25. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein
26. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
27. Up the Down Staircase, by Bel Kaufman
28. QB VII, by Leon Uris
29. Nicholas & Alexandra, by Robert K. Massie
30. The Shack, by William P. Young
31. My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
32. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
33. Dear & Glorious Physician, by Taylor Caldwell
34. The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama
35. My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
36. Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
37. London, by Edward Rutherford
38. Possessing the Secret of Joy, by Alice Walker
39. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
40. The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough
41. Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch
42. Wizard of Oz series, by L. Frank Baum
43. The Worldly Philosophers, by Robert Heilbroner
44. Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
45. Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson
46. Stones Into Schools, by Greg Mortenson
47. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
48. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. The Magus, by John Fowle
50. The Chronicles of Narnia (series), by C. S. Lewis

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…there is no passion more rewarding that reading itself … it remains the best way to dream and to feel the sheer carnal joy of being fully and openly alive.

Pat Conroy, My Reading Life