Thirty Books You Won’t Forget
I love to read, and on the back of my first business card I share some unforgettable books. Of course, this aren’t all my favorites — remember, the qualification is “unforgettable” — but I was constrained by the size of the card! The books are arranged alphabetically here, but it wouldn’t be hard to put them in order by type — classic, epic poetry, drama, etc. There’s a lot of good reading here!
30 books you won’t forget
A Moveable Feast– Ernest Hemingway
Animal Farm– George Orwell
Antigone– Sophocles
Autobiography of Ben Franklin- Benjamin Franklin
Beowulf
The Bible
Canterbury Tales– Chaucer
The Crosswicks Journals– Madeleine L’Engle
Divine Comedy– Dante Alighieri
Gulliver’s Travels– Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness– Joseph Conrad
House of Mirth– Edith Wharton
Huckleberry Finn– Mark Twain
Jane Eyre– Charlotte Bronte
Les Miserables– Victor Hugo
The Lord of the Rings– J.R.R. Tolkien
Mere Christianity– C.S. Lewis
My Antonia– Willa Cather
The Odyssey– Homer
Oliver Twist– Charles Dickens
Paradise Lost– John Milton
The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
Pride and Prejudice– Jane Austen
Pygmalion– George Bernard Shaw
Robinson Crusoe– Daniel Defoe
The Plays of William Shakespeare
Sir Gawain Tales
The Three Musketeers– Alexandre Dumas
Walden– Henry David Thoreau
Wuthering Heights– Emily Bronte
What is on your list of unforgettable books?
2017 note: I’m not surprised that my first blog post was a book list. Many of these choices would remain if I made a new list, but not all. After all, I’ve kept reading over the last ten years! You’ll find a lot of overlap between this “30 books you won’t forget” reading list and the Excellence in Literature booklist, and that’s no coincidence. After all, half the fun of writing a literature curriculum is that you get to assign the very best books you’ve ever read (and a few you may not love but that need to be read).
If you enjoyed this book list, you might like these two lists from the Excellence in Literature site:
Hello:
I’m so glad to hear a mom say such favorable things abouthomeschooling through high school. I am trying to talk my 13 yr. okd into doing it next year when she begins the 9th grade. She thinks she will miss out if she doesn’t go to traditional high school, I’m going to keep praying about this. Thank you for your website and for your positive, upbeat, and informative notes that I can have access to. God bless you and look forward to more communication with you. Do you like or ever heard of high school/homeschool co-op groups? We just found out about one for high school and are semi-interested. Please give me your opinion on these groups? Thanks, Christine
Dear Christine,
Thank you so much for stopping by- I’m glad you’ve been encouraged. I hope that you’ll find homeschooling through high school a great joy as I have.
I’m familiar with several high school homeschool co-ops, and I think it can be a wonderful idea. It allows teaching mothers to share subjects they know best, and it gives the student a variety of interactions and experiences.
If you have a group near you, ask if you can sit in on a couple of sessions to see how classes go, and to see if the group seems a good fit for your family values.
Thanks again for stopping by and commenting!