Here is my top ten recommended reading list.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
This book is a story of what the world is coming to, from the author’s point of view. In this book, fire fighters set fire, to books. All debate and politics have been taken out of the world. Now everyone only watches TV and only about things that people can’t get upset about, like facts and figures. Montag, the hero, is a firefighter who stops burning books, when he goes to an old woman’s house that is filled with the contraband and instead of letting them come in; she burns the house down including herself.
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Gone With the Wind by Margret Mitchell
The South, civil war, that dress and the fire. Oh, and Rhett and Scarlett. I know it just seems like a romance with a huge beast of a woman, and a silly story about the South, trust me, it isn’t. It’s about a girl who is frightened and a brat, who has to shoulder bringing her family and plantation back to life. She marries young, but never to the man she really loves. The North come through her town and takes everything from her. It also deals with the defeat and devastation war can bring to the losers, and how mankind treats their own just because they are on different sides. You will see firsthand what it really means to have nothing, and not even your friends and family can help you. The horrors of having to not only rebuild your whole life again, but also your whole town, is a struggle that most people wouldn’t wish on their worst enemies.
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
This is more of an epic poem than a book. The story is very long, basically an old man is seen crashing a wedding and demanding that everyone there listen to him and his story. He was on a ship, and he shot a bird, an albatross, and from there, everything went wrong. Everyone on the ship dies, but him. There are some references that the bird he killed was, in fact, Christ.
Harry Potter Book 1 and Book 3 by J.K. Rowling
I loved book one, because it’s where all the magic started, and book three was great because something was always happening in every page and chapter. The old battle of good wizard versus bad wizard never gets old. These books aren’t just for children. There are real issues being dealt with in them, loyalty, friendship, courage, love, war, slavery, death, sickness, and also spells, and wands, and ghost and mermaids.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
The end of the world is coming, evil is creeping into the world like a dark ominous cloud, and Meg must save her father, a great scientist working for the government who ends up missing, with only her younger brother Charles Wallace, and their best friend, Calvin O’Keefe. This book deals with time travel, alien planets, good and evil, and of course love and family.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
A man’s father, the king, dies, and his mom marries his brother, the uncle is now king. But the young man, Hamlet, suspects that his father was murdered by his brother. Is Hamlet crazy, is he right? An old fashioned whodunit mystery that only Shakespeare could create.
Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon.
Not even close to the movies that always have some kind of love affair going on between Anna and the King. The King wasn’t loving or endearing, or even likable. He was cruel, vindictive, ruthless, and heartless! She was a woman who knew more than the King’s concubines, didn’t know everything about the King as she should. Not only was she expected to teach the children of the place, but also all his wives. Needless to say, she had her hands full. Anna was a brave woman for going to a country that might as well have been another world, one where she had to keep her cool, and hold her head up high, because if she didn’t, she might literally lose it.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman.
Imagine a world where abortions are illegal, until the age of thirteen. The second civil war was fought for reproduction rights; the outcome – life is inviolable from the moment of conception till the ages of 13-18. If your parents see you as a waste of space, they can choose to have it ‘unwound’ where by all the child’s organs will be donated to different people, therefore, the child never really dies, but lives on in their (the donor’s) bodies.
Cover of The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Think of the Olympic Games as something that you’re forced to do every year. You have to put your name in a pot and see if it gets called every year from the age of 12 -18. What if this game was a fight to the death? Everyone would try to kill everyone, all for the sake of winning? The world was split up into twelve districts, and a boy and a girl from each district is picked to fight in the hunger games; an event that is broadcast on live television sponsored by the current government. Katniss has been purposefully putting her name to the pot of the hunger games drawing every year, because doing so ensures her family gets extra fuel and food; however, when it’s her sister whose name is called for the next game, Katniss steps in to take her place.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
Would you destroy one person’s life to save the whole world? What if that life was a child? What if that child was a master war mind who killed many people throughout his childhood? What if he was the only chance the world had against an attack from an alien race?