The Royal Society of Literature asked J.K. Rowling and other authors to name their top 10 books that schoolchildren should read (read article). Basically, this is what JKR thinks you should have read by the time you graduated high school:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Sadly, I’ve only read three of them (Hamlet, Robsinon Crusoe, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and I only just read the third one recently. I have a lot of catching up to do, I suppose. Catch-22, Catcher in the Rye, and To Kill a Mockingbird are all on my summer reading list.
Joivre on 
Arabella Figg on 
Red Rocker on 
Tom on 
Loading ...
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve read 8 of the 10 (but I am an English teache, after all– most of these are on the reading list for my students).
Beatrix Potter was one of my very favorite authors as a child. I’d like to use her illustrations as inspiration for a mural for a child’s room some day. Since you have a little Prinzi on the way, you really should begin collecting the small, hard-bound editions of the Beatrix Potter books. They are great for young readers– and make great bedtime stories.
I want to read Catch-22 (my parents have it in a leatherbound signed-by-the-author collection at home and I think I started it once in high school but just never got into it) and David Copperfield. I don’t know why I’ve never read Copperfield– I’ve read almost every thing else by Dickens… looks like I have some reading to do as well…
Yes, I am planning to get the Beatrix Potter books for little Sophia. I’ve got a few more required purchases for Children’s Book of the Month club, and I plan to use them on the Beatrix Potter books. I recall loving them as a child as well.
I’ll get to David Copperfield eventually, but I’ve got to read A Tale of Two Cities first. We weren’t required to read that one in high school. We were given the option of that or A Separate Peace, and I chose the latter.
I have read To kill a mockingbird, animal farm (great book), and charlie and the chocolate factory.
I tried reading robinson crusoe but never got into it.
Its okay i have a while. im only 14
i need to re-read to kill a mockingbird because it was a hard book to understand.
Hi, I came across your blog while browsing through Technorati. I just wanted to say thanks for posting this list of recommended books. I agree with 9 out of the 10. I’ve never heard of that particular work from Beatrix Potter….
Interesting list. I haven’t read most of them, although I would like to read Animal Farm. I despised Catcher in the Rye (read it in high school many years ago) but I always loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In fact, I never liked the movie (I read the book before the movie came out), because I felt it just didn’t do the book justice (thus the common wisdom – read the book first!). Read Hamlet in high school, too, and enjoyed it.
Is it just me, or are several of these novels just too depressing? The older I get, the more I like to read happy endings – or at least books in which some joy can be derived from life – to balance out the sadness of life in this present world. I derive no pleasure from immersing myself in man’s evil to man or in a seemingly meaningless universe. I see enough pain around me in real life to want to avoid soaking it in in novels. (That’s actually why I quit taking French in college – too much depressing existentialism.) A few weeks ago I went to the funeral of a young wife and mother of three – she was younger than me…that was enough sorrow for a while.
However, even though there is certainly sadness and death in Harry Potter, I have felt uplifted by reading the books. Perhaps that’s what I’m looking for, what I want to be left with, even after a sad story – hope. After all, as a Christian I believe in a living Hope at the end of history. I guess I’m just really looking forward to the new heaven and new earth…
I’ve known too many young people who left this world at an early age to believe that everything ends on a happy note. I can only hope in what comes after my death, that it is not the end, and that I will be truly happy (by being outside my physical self with all it’s mistakes and flaws). I don’t understand why we must experience so much grief, but I know it’s for the greater good, and that I’ll understand it all someday. Whether this translates into Ms. Rowling’s final chapters remains to be seen, but I’m going to have a large box of tissues handy when I start to read. . .