Of course, personally, I plan on invoking the Law of Singularity by then and transfer my consciousness to a robot’s and live forever. Or… be bit by a vampire, whichever option is available to me.
I highly suggest you start looking for your own options immediately after reading this post!
But, in the event I and every one of us has to go meet our Maker, the one regret we can cross off our bucket list is to read the following 10 books before that happens. I have taken off proper classics (English and American) as well as my beloved Nora Roberts because those should be read as a matter, of course, IMO.
To me, the following books represent comfort reads, often-reads, yearly and beloved reads. These books contain bits of my soul and, I hope, they do yours, when you read them.
1. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ll be the first to admit that I read LOTR after I saw Aragorn in Fellowship when I was sixteen. Brooding knights are totally my thing. But, my god! I learned everything I know about world, character, and conflict-building from Tolkien! More important, the scope of storytelling is nothing less than sheer genius. Putting six races together and making the underdog the hero in the most ordinary of ways…I am, and will always be in awe of Tolkien’s skill and imagination.
2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Everything I learned about a strong, individualistic work ethic, I learned it from imagining Howard Roark take on Ellsworth Toohey. While The Fountainhead is now touted as pushing the capitalist agenda, it is also a tome on how creativity needs to stand tall and still like a tree when confronted by the pressure to conform and give in. It is also an unexpected love story that contains my most favorite quote in the English lexicon: I love you as selfishly as I exist.
3. Don’t Look Down by Bob Mayer and Jennifer Crusie
DLD is an amazing example of co-writing done really, really well. Narrated in third person by both the hero and heroine, it is a romantic suspense mystery with alligators and movie stars and mob bosses! The hero, JT Wilder, is former military with a Wonder Woman fetish who provides the heroine what she needs when she asks for it. The heroine, Lucy Armstrong, is six foot of badassery and self-sufficiency. To see her need JT is delicious.
4. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
I mentioned Tragedy in the title because everyone romanticizes this play so much, they romanticize two teens dying needlessly. It is tragic; the narrator makes it clear off the bat that it is. But…oh dear lord, the English language becomes a concerto in Shakespeare’s hands, ebbing and flowing in the direction he chooses. Whether it is Romeo’s ‘temperate’ sonnet or Juliet’s ‘rose is a rose’ speech, Shakespeare uses Tragedy to make allegorical points of family, class and choice to the greatest, moving effect.
5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Erin Morgenstern’s debut is like a dream – you’re thrust in the middle of the story and you’re caught in it before you know what’s happening. And all this, when the hero and heroine take about seventy pages to meet each other for the very first time. Two childhood magicians spend their whole life trying to best each other for the sake of their much-older father figures. In the process, they create the most beautiful circus in the world – it’s magical in the truest sense of the world – and find the truest magic of all, in each other. But can they keep it?
6. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic is distilled starlight and secret wishes. It is a story of two sisters, Gillian and Sally Owens, a small town in Massachusetts and two witch aunts. It is an epic love story told in three scenes. It is a story of finding family when you’ve lost yourself. Hoffman’s prose grabbed me by the throat and still hasn’t let go, almost twelve years later, with the sheer breadth of emotion it still invokes.
7. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
This is one of the few Booker prize-winning novels I thoroughly adore revisiting over and over again. It’s a heartbreaking social commentary on class and race told through the voice of Vernon ‘God’ Little, a small-town high-schooler who ends up going on trial for his best friend Jesus Mendoza’s death. It deals with touchy subjects about homosexuality, school predation and the American penitentiary system which fast tracks sensational trials.
8. The Golden Gate by Alastair Maclean
A taut thriller from word one, The Golden Gate is a master-class in action storytelling. The story is that of Peter Branson and his team taking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco hostage with the US President, Chief of Staff and various other dignitaries. The action takes place almost exclusively on the Bridge – no mean feat for a seventy-thousand word novel and reason enough to read this book – and is a delight of action, old-school espionage and the creative use of the most uncreative heroine’s name ever –April Wednesday.
9. Mahabharata (any translation)
The Mahabharata is all heart and guts and glory boiled down to its purest form. It is gods meddling and man deciding. It is the battle of good versus evil and evil being good while still doing evil. It is strong female characters and feminist men. It is every single emotion ever written about told over hundreds of little tales and fables that will teach something new each time they’re read. It is epic, in the truest sense of the word.
10. Heart of Obsidian by Nalini Singh
Heart of Obsidian is part sci-fi, part paranormal, rawly sexual and sensual and a story with the world’s most likeable anti-hero. In short, it is one of my favorite love stories of all time. Because Kaleb Krychek, the most dangerous man in the earth created by Singh finds his equal in the first and only woman he’s ever, ever loved. Heart of Obsidian is a sweeping testament to love really making the world go round (Kaleb’s Sahara wants him to save the world instead of destroying so he does so)!
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