J.Tharsen Book Recommendations

     For Poetry recommendations, see "My Friends the Bibliophiles".


1. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

2. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

3. Tao Te Ching 道德經 - Lao-Tzu 老子

4. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

5. The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein

6. Watership Down - Richard Adams

7. L'Étranger (The Stranger) - Albert Camus

8. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay

9. Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl

10. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

11. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

12. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

13. Der Prozess (The Trial) - Franz Kafka

14. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

15. Roots - Alex Haley


And Honorable Mentions to:

Just About Everything by...
Jack Kerouac, Pablo Neruda, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Albert Camus,
Astrid Lindgren, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Robert Fulghum, Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe
Jamaica Kincaid, Zora Neale Hurston and Gabriel Garcìa Marquez


Roald Dahl's children's books

The Harry Potter series - J. K. Rowling

Kaffir Boy - Mark Mathabane

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

1984 - George Orwell

The Thursday Next series - Jasper Fforde

The A Wrinkle in Time series - Madeleine L'Engle

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series - Alexander McCall Smith

Football in Sun and Shadow - Eduardo Galeano

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

The Mistress of Spices - Chitra Divakaruni

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Willo Davis Roberts

The Thomas Covenant series - Stephen R. Donaldson

The Summer Tree series - Guy Gavriel Kay

A River Sutra - Gita Mehta

The Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

And last but not at all least, my two favorite plays:

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett and

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard.