Compiling this was way harder than I thought because I had to exclude some…well, many…and prioritize *gasps*.  So many books…

Not in order of any importance except perhaps the first 6, or 7 or so…more or less…yanno?

It’s interesting too, as I was doing this, I noticed how each and every title transported me back to the first time I read it (because many of these have been read more than twice or even thrice)….where I was physically and emotionally in my life.  Just like music does for me.

Fun to see what others have on their list thanks to Illuminary’s List of 50.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
2. Like Water for Chocolate ~ Laura Esquivel
3. All things Asimov
4. All things Heinlein
5. The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
6. Walden ~ Henry David Thoreau
7. The Red Tent ~ Anita Diamant
8. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ~ Mark Twain
9. The Secret Garden ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
10. Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
12. Anam Cara ~ John O’donnohue
13. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll
14. Little House in the Big Woods ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder
15. The Gate to Women’s Country ~ Sherri S Tepper
16. In the Time of Butterflies ~ Julia Álvarez
17. Gone With the Wind ~ Margret Mitchell
18. Beloved ~ Toni Morrison
19. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ~ Maya Angelou
20. Prodigal Summer ~ Barbara Kingsolver
21. Fahrenheit 451 ~ Ray Bradbury
22. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ~ Betty Smith
23. The Jungle Book ~  Rudyard Kipling
24. Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Bronte
25. A Midsummers Night Dream ~ William Shakespeare
26. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ~ C. S. Lewis
27. Where the Wild Things Are ~ Maurice Sendak
28. A Wrinkle in Time ~ Madeleine L’Engle
29. A Christmas Carol ~ Charles Dickens
30. Pippi Longstocking ~ Astrid Lindgren
31. The Hobbit ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
32. The House of Spirits ~ Isabel Allende
33. The Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame
34. Winnie the Pooh ~ A. A. Milne
35. Sons and Lovers ~ D. H Lawrence
36. Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Bronte
37. The Good Earth ~ Pearl S Buck
38. Atlas Shrugged ~ Ayn Rand
39. Memoirs of a Geisha ~ Arthur Golden
40. The 4 Agreements ~ Don Miguel Ruiz
41. The Milagro Bean Field Wars ~ John Nichols
42. The Handmaidens Tail ~ Margret Atwood
43. Left Hand of Darkness ~ Ursla LaGuin
44. Gift of the Good Land ~ Wendell Berry
45. How the García Girls Lost Their Accents ~ Julia Alvarez
46. The Help ~ Kathryn Sockett
47. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl ~ Anne Frank
48. The Grapes of Wrath ~ John Steinbeck
49. Catch 22 ~Joseph Heller
50. Slaughterhouse Five ~ Kurt Vonnegut