Just for fun, I’d like to list here some of my favorite books. These are books that I read in my more formative years or otherwise had a profound affect on me. Or maybe just some really great books. It’s a mix of science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, children’s; the whole gamut. It’s in no way any kind of definitive list of great books or anything like that. Just stuff I love. That said, if you’re looking for a good book to read, I don’t think you could go wrong with anything on this list.
In no particular order:
There’s a Nightmare in My Closet, by Mercer Mayer
The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin
Innumeracy, by John Allen Paulos
The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (series), by Douglas Adams
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
Green Futures of Tycho, by William Sleator
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore
My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George
Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
The Belgariad, by David (and Leigh) Eddings
The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
The BFG, by Roald Dahl
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
Night, by Elie Wiesel
Matilda, by Roald Dahl
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron
Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
Feed, by Mira Grant
Master and Commander (and the whole Aubrey/Maturin series) by Patrick O’Brian
Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson
Dawn (and the whole Lilith’s Brood/Xenogenesis series), by Octavia Butler
Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank
His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik
The Stand, by Stephen King
Castle Perilous, John DeChancie
It, by Stephen King
The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill
To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
The WWW Trilogy, by Robert J. Sawyer
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, by David Quammen
Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read
As Thousands Cheer, Laurence Bergreen
The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
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Matthew Shean is the author of the story “Sylvia and Larry” in the Lazarus Risen anthology, due in Oct. 2016 from Bundoran Press, and several forthcoming novels and short stories. He has a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology and spent 20 years as a research scientist throughout the northeastern United States. He now lives in Long Island (against his will), with his loving family and disdainful cats.
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