Life has many tricks so here is one of mine: buy reference books and get novels from the library.
There are books for knowledge and books for pleasure. Get your novels from the library since you’ll only read them once. Knowledge books are different. They get highlighted and picked back up many times so keep them around. Buy knowledge books to make your own personal library and pass on novels so they don’t take up space and get dusty.
Because of the medium, novels stimulate a deeper sensation within us. Touching somewhere that movies or television can’t reach. And they provide us with common points of reference that can be used for communication. Lots of famous speakers express themselves by referring to popular novels (which only works if everyone has read them).
Anyway, I’m sure you get the point. Here is the list of my favourites:
- A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
- A Time to Kill – John Grisham
- East of Eden – John Steinbeck
- Elvis, Jesus and Coca-Cola – Kinky Friedman
- Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- I Know This Much Is True – Wally Lamb
- Kane and Abel – Jeffrey Archer
- Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
- Naked – Daniel Sedaris
- She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb
- Strip Tease – Carl Hiaasen
- The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
- The Godfather – Mario Puzo
- The Glass Castle – Jeannette Walls
- The Piano Man’s Daughter – Timothy Findley
- 100 Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Where’s yours?