I taught English II Honors this past semester, and the students and I ended up having several conversations about books people should read. They were big readers and asked about my favorite books often. Then, recently, on a high school English teacher forum, someone started a discussion about the books everyone should read before they leave high school. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what books I think everyone should read. I tried to come up with a list, but it was nearly impossible. I started and restarted and cut and added, and I tried to think of what the purpose of this list would be. Ultimately, I didn’t want a list of books I liked (although I do like all of these books); I wanted a list of books that should be read because they have something extremely important to say to us as people. Therefore, without further ado and in no particular order, here are the five books everyone should read and why:

1. Night by Elie Wiesel: There have been many books written about many tragedies, but this account of the Holocaust captured the minds of people across the world when it was published not long after Wiesel was freed. The disintegration of the human psyche detailed in this novel is blunt and disturbing. The bottom line: as humans, we need to understand of what we are capable. People did this to other people, and no one should allow anything like it to happen again.
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: With the way technology has taken over our lives, our desire for instant gratification, and the fact that reading is at an all-time low, this book screams for us to educate ourselves. The society in the book is willfully ignorant; they chose to rid themselves of books and the people lack common sense. Their world is riddled with fast gratification, the people are easily manipulated and unhappy, and the knowledge of the world has been lost. Reading is so incredibly important at any age, and the book explains just some of the reasons why.
3. The Bible: As a Christian, I believe the Bible is the ultimate source of knowledge. It’s the most important book ever written, and it contains truths that will guide your life, complete you, and allow you to live in God’s kingdom after death. Even if you’re not a Christian, knowledge of the Bible can be helpful when reading other books as Biblical allusions are ever-present in Western literature. In fact, the two most quoted and referenced to works are the Bible and Shakespeare.
4. A book that makes you deeply uncomfortable: I realize this is not a single book, but this book is not going to be the same for you as it is for me. There have been many novels I’ve read that have made me uncomfortable, and that’s a good thing. Books should challenge your beliefs, introduce you to new things, and make you think. If you’ve never read a book and thought, “I don’t know if I agree with that,” then you haven’t branched out enough. There are a handful of books I’ve read that fall under this category for me personally (some of which became all-time favorites): The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee, Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.
5. A book that you know intimately: Again, this book is going to be different for you than it is for me. There is something so beautiful about knowing a book well. You can quote portions of it and the characters become like your best friends and you find that moments of your life seem to be inexplicably tied to moments in the novel. It’s unlike any relationship you’ve experienced: you can come home to the book, open to any page, and find yourself brightening or being challenged or learning something new or comforted–whatever you need on that particular day. Connecting that deeply with a book is a unique experience everyone should have. There are so few books with which you can build a connection so, for me, even though there are several books I’ve read more than once, only two have ever really been known to me in this way: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare.

Agree with my list? Don’t agree? What five books would be on your list? Comment, and let me know!

–Mads