Why I Read

In the next handful of years, I will complete my goal of reading 5,000 books in my life. I thought it would be fun to create a list of those books I thought worth reading a second time (or, in many cases, a third or fourth time). Here’s that list.

Warning: I’m making no claim that these are the best books ever written or even the best books I’ve ever read. They’re just the books I want in my life again.

Note: I’m not done with this list yet. There may be future adjustments, additions, and subtractions. But here’s a start.

Douglas Adams (in order)

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Life, the Universe, and Everything
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
• Mostly Harmless

Sir Robert Anderson

• The Gospel and Its Ministry
• The Silence of God
• Forgotten Truths

Roger Angell (in chronological order)

• The Summer Game
• Five Seasons
• Late Innings
• Season Ticket

Charlotte Armstrong

• A Dram of Poison

Isaac Asimov (in order)

• Foundation
• Foundation and Empire
• Second Foundation

Rick Atkinson (in order)

• An Army at Dawn
• The Day of Battle
• The Guns at Last Light

Jane Austen

• Pride and Prejudice

Sir James Barrie

• The Little Minister

Dan Barry

• Bottom of the 33rd

Dave Barry

• Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs
• Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need
• Dave Barry Slept Here
• The Shepherd, the Angel and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog

Edward L. Beach

• Run Silent, Run Deep

Richard Bissell

• High Water

W.E. Bowman

• The Ascent of Rum Doodle

Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris

• The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book

William Brinkley

• Don’t Go Near the Water

Joe E. Brown

• Your Kids and Mine

Bill Bryson

• At Home
• The Mother Tongue
• Shakespeare

Bryan Burrough

• Public Enemies

Raymond Chandler

• The Big Sleep

Christopher Cokinos

• Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Michael Collins

• Carrying the Fire

Paul Collins

• Banvard’s Follly

James Tertius DeKay

• Monitor

Charles Dickens

• Bleak House
• Our Mutual Friend

Arthur Conan Doyle

• The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard
• The Adventures of Gerard

Mark Dunn

• Ella Minnow Pea

Walter D. Edmonds

• Chad Hanna
• Drums Along the Mohawk

Jasper Fforde (in order)

• The Big Over Easy
• The Fourth Bear
• The Eyre Affair
• Lost in a Good Book
• The Well of Lost Plots
• Something Rotten
• First Among Sequels
• One of Our Thursdays is Missing
• The Woman Who Died A Lot
• Dark Reading Matter

Jack Finney

• Time and Again

David Hackett Fischer

• Paul Revere’s Ride
• Washington’s Crossing

Shelby Foote (in order)

• The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville
• The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian
• The Civil War: Red River to Appomattox

Esther Forbes

• Paul Revere and the World He Lived In

Benjamin Franklin

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

George MacDonald Fraser

• Quartered Safe Out Here

William A. Frassanito

• Antietam
• Gettysburg
• Grant and Lee

Paul Gallico

• Adventures of Hiram Holliday

Bob George

• Classic Christianity

John Graves

• Goodbye to a River

John S. Gray

• Custer’s Last Campaign

John Grisham

• The Runaway Jury

James Norman Hall

• Doctor Dogbody’s Leg

Richard Halliburton

• The Royal Road to Romance

Thomas Hardy

• Far From the Madding Crowd
• The Return of the Native

Mark Harris

• Bang the Drum Slowly

Ernest Haycox

• Border Trumpet
• The Earthbreakers

Herge (in order)

• Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
• Tintin in the Congo
• Tintin in America
• Cigars of the Pharaoh
• The Blue Lotus
• The Broken Ear
• The Black Island
• King Ottokar’s Sceptre
• The Crab with the Golden Claws
• The Shooting Star
• The Secret of the Unicorn
• Red Rackham’s Treasure
• The Seven Crystal Balls
• Prisoners of the Sun
• Land of Black Gold
• Destination Moon
• Explorers on the Moon
• The Calculus Affair
• The Red Sea Sharks
• Tintin in Tibet
• The Castafiore Emerald
• Flight 714 to Sydney
• Tintin and the Picaros
• Tintin and Alph-Art

James Herriot

• All Creatures Great and Small

Holling Clancy Holling

• Paddle-to-the-Sea

Helen Hoover

• A Place in the Woods

Tony Horwitz

• Blue Latitudes
• Confederates in the Attic

David Howarth

• 1066: The Year of the Conquest
• Trafalgar: The Nelson Touch

Victor Hugo

• Les Miserables

Scott Huler

• Defining the Wind

A.J. Jacobs

• The Guinea Pig Diaries
• The Know-It-All

Paulette Jiles

• Chenneville
• Enemy Women
• News of the World
• Simon the Fiddler

John Keegan

• The Fields of Battle

Steve Kluger

• Last Days of Summer

David Lavender

• The Way to the Western Sea

William Least Heat-Moon

• Blue Highways
• PrairyErth
• River-Horse

C.S. Lewis

• Surprised by Joy

Abraham Lincoln

• Lincoln’s Speeches and Writings

Finlay J. MacDonald (in order)

• Crowdie and Cream
• Crotal and White
• The Corncrake and the Lysander

John D. Macdonald

• The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

Alistair MacLean

• The Guns of Navarone
• Where Eagles Dare

Craig Massey

• North of Copper Creek
• That Family on Archer Street
• The Warm Summer

Bill Mauldin

• Up Front

Robert McCloskey

• Homer Price
• Centerburg Tales

John McPhee

• The Crofter and the Laird
• The Founding Fish
• Irons in the Fire
• Looking for a Ship
• Oranges
• Pieces of the Frame
• The Pine Barrens
• The Survival of the Bark Canoe

Alan Moorehead

• The Blue Nile
• Cooper’s Creek
• The White Nile

Christopher Morlely

• Parnassus on Wheels
• The Haunted Bookshop

William and Mary Morris

• Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins

Rob Neyer

• Power Ball

Adam Nicolson

• God’s Secretaries

Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall (in order)

• Mutiny on the Bounty
• Men Against the Sea
• Pitcairn’s Island

Patrick O’Brian (in order)

• Master and Commander
• Post Captain
• H.M.S. Surprise
• The Mauritius Command
• Desolation Island
• The Fortunes of War
• The Surgeon’s Mate
• The Ionian Mission
• Treason’s Harbour
• The Far Side of the World
• The Reverse of the Medal
• The Letter of Marque
• The Thirteen-Gun Salute
• The Nutmeg of Consolation
• The Truelove
• The Wine-Dark Sea
• The Commodore
• The Yellow Admiral
• The Hundred Days
• Blue at the Mizzen
• 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

Ellis Peters (in order)

• A Morbid Taste for Bones
• One Corpse Too Many
• Monk’s Hood
• Saint Peter’s Fair
• The Leper of St. Giles
• The Virgin in the Ice
• The Sanctuary Sparrow
• The Devil’s Novice
• Dead Man’s Ransom
• The Pilgrim of Hate
• An Excellent Mystery
• The Raven in the Foregate
• The Rose Rent
• The Hermit of Eyton Forest
• The Confession of Brother Haluin
• A Rare Benedictine
• The Heretic’s Apprentice
• The Potter’s Field
• The Summer of the Danes
• The Holy Thief
• Eye Witness
• The Prince of Light
• Brother Cadfael’s Penance

Roger Tory Peterson

• A Field Guide to the Birds (1947 edition)

Jean Piatt

• Adventures in Birding

Joe Posnanski

• Why We Love Baseball

Ernie Pyle

• Brave Men
• Home Country

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

• The Astonishing History of Troy Town

Van Reid (in order)

• Cordelia Underwood
• Mollie Peer
• Daniel Plainway
• Mrs. Roberto
• Fiddler’s Green
• Moss Farm

Theodore Roosevelt

• Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail

Damon Runyon

• Blue Plate Special

Witold Rybcznski

• Home: A Short History of an Idea

Louis Sachar

• Holes

H.F. Saint

• Memoirs of an Invisible Man

Charles M. Schulz (in order)

• The Complete Peanuts: 1950-1952
• The Complete Peanuts: 1953-1954
• The Complete Peanuts: 1955-1956
• The Complete Peanuts: 1957-1958
• The Complete Peanuts: 1959-1960
• The Complete Peanuts: 1961-1962
• The Complete Peanuts: 1963-1964
• The Complete Peanuts: 1965-1966
• The Complete Peanuts: 1967-1968
• The Complete Peanuts: 1969-1970
• The Complete Peanuts: 1971-1972
• The Complete Peanuts: 1973-1974
• The Complete Peanuts: 1975-1976
• The Complete Peanuts: 1977-1978
• The Complete Peanuts: 1979-1980
• The Complete Peanuts: 1981-1982
• The Complete Peanuts: 1983-1984
• The Complete Peanuts: 1985-1986
• The Complete Peanuts: 1987-1988
• The Complete Peanuts: 1989-1990
• The Complete Peanuts: 1991-1992
• The Complete Peanuts: 1993-1994
• The Complete Peanuts: 1995-1996
• The Complete Peanuts: 1997-1998
• The Complete Peanuts: 1999-2000
• The Complete Peanuts: Comics & Stories

Sir Walter Scott

• The Bride of Lammermoor
• The Heart of Midlothian

Dr. Seuss

• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
• Green Eggs and Ham

William L. Shirer

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Renald Showers

• There Really Is a Difference

Nevil Shute (in publication order)

• Marazan
• So Disdained (also titled The Mysterious Aviator)
• Kindling (also titled Ruined City)
• Ordeal (also titled What Happened to the Corbetts
• An Old Captivity
• Landfall
• Pied Piper
• Pastoral
• Most Secret
• Vinland the Good
• The Chequer Board
• No Highway
• A Town Like Alice
• Round the Bend
• The Far Country
• In the Wet
• Slide Rule
• The Breaking Wave (also titled Requiem for a Wren)
• Beyond the Black Stump
• On the Beach
• The Rainbow and the Rose
• Trustee from the Toolroom
• Stephen Morris

Eric Sloane

• The Cracker Barrel
• Our Vanishing Landscape
• The Second Barrel

Joshua Slocum

• Sailing Alone Around the World

H. Allen Smith

• Low Man on a Totem Pole

E.E. Somerville and Martin Ross

• The Irish R.M

C.R. Stam

• Acts Dispensationally Considered

Edward Steers, Jr.

• Blood on the Moon

William Steig

• Yellow and Pink

John Steinbeck

• Travels with Charley
• Winter of Our Discontent

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes

George R. Stewart

• Names on the Land

Peter Svenson

• Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground

Josephine Tey (in publication order)

• The Man in the Queue
• A Shilling for Candles
• The Franchise Affair
• To Love and Be Wise
• The Daughter of Time
• The Singing Sands

James Thurber

• James Thurber: Writings and Drawings (an anthology by the Library of America)

Thomas Henry Tibbles

• Buckskin and Blanket Days

Ian W. Toll (in order)

• The Pacific Crucible
• The Conquering Tide
• Twilight of the Gods

Amor Towles

• A Gentleman in Moscow

Mark Twain

• Life on the Mississippi
• Following the Equator
• The Innocents Abroad
• Roughing It

Robert Traver

• Anatomy of a Murder

Albert Uderzo and Rene Goscinny (in publication order)

• Asterix the Gaul

William Hazlett Upson (in order, although I’m not sure it matters)

• Botts Begins
• Botts Abroad
• Botts Breaks Hollywood
• Botts and the Queen of the North
• Botts Goes to War

Elizabeth von Arnim

• Christopher and Columbus

William W. Warner

• Beautiful Swimmers

Bill Watterson (in publication order, although I’m not sure it matters)

• Calvin and Hobbes
• Something Under the Bed is Drooling
• Yukon Ho!
• Weirdos from Another Planet
• The Revenge of the Baby-Sat
• Scientific Progress Goes “Boink”
• Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons
• The Days are Just Packed
• Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
• There’s Treasure Everywhere

E.B. White

• One Man’s Meat

Ronald C. White, Jr.

• Lincoln’s Greatest Speech

T.H. White

• The Goshawk

Connie Willis

• To Say Nothing of the Dog

William Wilson and Judy Jones

• An Incomplete Education

Owen Wister

• The Virginian

John Wyndham

• The Day of the Triffids