100 Books Worth Reading Before You Die
February 3, 2020
Everyone has goals or intends to accomplish something before it becomes too late. Some of you might already have a bucket list or a personal journal. Your goals can be as extreme as skydiving or as calm as wandering through a favorite museum. But what about reading? What books do you want to read? Well, we gathered the input of the West community and have compiled a list of 100 books worth reading before you die. Now go read some books!
- Beneath the Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
- The Harry Potter series by J.K.Rowling
- Matilda by Roald Dahl
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson
- Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson
- The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
- The Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan
- The Kane Chronicles series by Rick Riordan
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White
- The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins
- Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eager
- A Boy Named It by David Pelzer
- Find Rest by Shaunti Feldhahn
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- The 5 People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Hunger Games series by Susanne Collins
- Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Look Me in the Eyes by John Elder Robison
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Habbon
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- The Six of Crows series by Leah Bardugo
- The Spirit Animals series (authors vary)
- An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
- Chac Mool by Carlos Fuentes
- Quarantine by Lex Thomas
- An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
- Maximum Ride: The Manga (vol. 1) by James Patterson and NaRae Lee
- Zero Repeat Forever by Gabrielle Prendergast
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Where the Crowdads Sing by Delia Owens
- The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
- Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- The Good Neighbor by A. J. Banner
- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
- Walking with the Wind by John Lewis
- Battle Cry for Freedom by James M. McPherson
- Real World Whitetail Behavior by Jim Roy
- The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R.Tolkien
- Voyage of the Dawn Trader by C.S. Lewis
- Prince Caspian by C.S.Lewis
- The Children Hurin by J.R.R.Tolkien
- Beowulf
- The Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
- American Sniper by Chris Kyle, Jim DeFelice and Scott McEwen
- America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Heartless by Marissa Meyer
- Fawkes by Nadine Brandes
- Raising Dragons by Bryan Davis
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- A Dog’s Way Home by W. Bruce Cameron and Cathryn Michon
- Story Thieves by James Riley
- Hero’s Song by Edith Pattou
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- Pegasus: The Flame of Olympus by Kate O’Hearn
- The Memory Book by Lara Avery
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- Caraval by Stephanie Garber
- The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare
- The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare
- Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
- The Legend series by Marie Lu
- The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
- A Fistful of Honey by Malena Crawford
- The Divergent series by Veronica Roth
- Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young
- The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Till We Have Faces by C.S.Lewis
- The Consequence of Ideas by R.C. Sproul
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
- The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy
We’d like to give a shout out to all the staff, teachers, and students who let us interview them for suggestions for the list: Mrs. Opitz, Mrs. Biesen, Mr. Lawrence, Samantha Mate-Freshman, Mr.Conway, Mrs. Hilbert, Mrs. Hack, Mrs. Seaborg, Mrs. Guevara, Ms. Ryan, Mrs. Hofferica, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Gorney, Liz Vujaklija, Natalie Klosowski, Mrs. Lehnert, Señora Rybicki, Madame Floyd, Mr. Van Swol, Mrs. Krippel, and Mr. Gallagher.