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 GarcÃa 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!