Miami Hamilton's Favorite Books

Last summer, one of our students (Jeff Chandler) sent an e-mail to the whole Miami Hamilton campus - students, faculty and staff - asking one simple question: "What is your favorite book?"

Jeff wanted to start building his own library this year and wanted some recommendations from his campus. He recently sent me the compiled list, so we thought we'd share it on the blog. In alphabetical order by title, here it goes:

1984 by George Orwell

6 Days of the Condor by James Grady

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Tool

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irwin

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

A Trip to the Beach by Melinda & Robert Blanchard

Acheron Dark-Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Alex Cross Series by James Patterson

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Best Storybook Ever by Morm Richard Scarry

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Change of Heart by Jodi Picolt

Chronicles of Narnia (all of them) by C. S. Lewis

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd

Dao De Jing by Lao Tsu

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Desperation by Stephen King

Dracula by Bram Stocker

Dragons of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey

Extremely Loud by Jonathon Safran Foer

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Ford Country by John Grisham

Full Dark No Stars by Stephen King

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams

House of Night Series by J.C. Cast

How to Tell a True War Story by Tim O’Brian

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe

I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

If on Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Illustrated man by Ray Bradbury

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer

Incredibly Close by Nicholas Sparks

Inkheart (The trilogy) by Cornelia Funke


It Gets Better: Coming Out by Dan Savage, and Terry Miller

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan

King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry

Kingdom Come by Alex Ross

LES MISERABLES by Victor Hugo 

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

My Life by Bill Clinton

Notes from a Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Pet Cemetery by Stephen King

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Prozac by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Rascal, a Memoir of a Better Era by Sterling North

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Somebody, Somewhere by Donna Williams

Song of the Dodo by David Quammen

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Telling Lies by Paul Ekman

The Ancient Webster's Dictionary

The Bible authorized by King James 1611

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Chamber by John Grisham

The Christmas Shoes by Donna VanLiere

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed by Bruce Coville

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

The Husband and the Good Guy by Dean Koontz

The Jack Reacher thriller series by Lee Child (all fifteen)

The Killing Joke by Alan Moore

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

The Liars club, a memoir by Mary Karr

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Lost World by Michael Crichton

The Mitch Rapp thriller series by Vince Flynn (all twelve)

The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Rock Says by Joe Layden

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Shining by Stephen King

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobelski

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson

The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Tuesday's with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Youngblood Hawke by Herman Wouk

I hope this list inspires you to pick up a book this summer! Happy reading!