This is an updated list of books that you may read to improve your cultural literacy, understanding of diversity and general exposure.
You may choose to read one a month or every couple of months.
Foundational
1. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
2. Every Other Book Written by Bill Bryson
3. Books on World History and African History e.g A history of Nigeria by Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton
4. African Classics which include:
a. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
b. Sosu's Call - Meshack Asare
c. Une Si Longue Lettre (Trans. So Long A Letter)- Mariama BÂ
d. Terra Sonambula - Mia Couto
e. Nervous Conditions- Tsitsi Dangarembga
f. Antériorité Des Civilisations Nègres- Cheikh Anta Diop
g. L'Amour La Fantasia - Assia Djebar
h. The Cairo Trilogy - Naguib Mahfouz
i. Chaka - Thomas Mokopu Mofolo
j. A Grain Of Wheat- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
k. Oeuvre Poétique- Léopold Sédar Senghor
l. Ake: The Years of Childhood - Wole Soyinka
See a fuller list here: http://africanhistory.about.com/library/bl/bl100BestBooksA.htm
Or here: http://www.amazon.com/Great-African-Novels/lm/R1X0DX5OEHL21P
General
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Facory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
6 comments:
Interesting, not one non-fiction. How about 1421 or 1491 to better understand the history of the planet. I think knowledge of the "Columbian exchange" is worthwhile.
A little knowledge of geography is useful. When I tell people I married Nigerian they have no idea where it is or anything about it, other than what they get in their inbox.
I don't see any African literature here either.
History. Need I say more.
I am so glad to see most of the books I have read and treasure on this list, most especially Watership Down, the Hitchhiker "trilogy" and the LOTR books9 among my most prized possessions!). It would have been nice to see something by Freud, Nietzsche, Darwin or Greer on this list, even nicer to have had Achebe, Wa Thiong'o, Atta, Emecheta and the likes. But well done overall, and thank you for opening my eyes to new books I need to read!
hmm watever happend to
Ere Ale.. by Agbeke Adunni
Igbo Eledumare by Jimoh ALiu
Igbo irunmole
Aigbo Iku Oko
Abinibi ati Ability : Yettunde Ogunakole
etc...
Promote our own too abeg.
cheers///
@ Everett, done an updated list:)
This is a nice list. I have to admit that i only a few of those mentioned books.
Nice I like it.
But may I give you somethings special, friends?
You sould to try it.
HERE
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