There are few institutions that have successfully integrated into the book culture successfully. But Barnes & Noble has won over many readers and has become a trusty source along the way. That is why we will be looking at Barnes & Noble’s 37 best books that you must read!
The debate of what books are must reads is an old one that changes with every new classic. But for the most part, many of the books on such lists tend to remain the same. These lists help readers find great books as well as new readers. You can see the full list below.
Barnes & Noble’s 37 Best Books That You Must Read
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- Holes by Louis Sachar
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
- Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
- The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
- The Hustler by Walter Tevis
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley Series) by John le Carré
- Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle Series #1) by Diana Wynne Jones
- Beloved (Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Toni Morrison
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
- The Bell Jar (P.S. Series) by Sylvia Plath
- Life of Pi: A Novel by Yann Martel
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker’s Guide Series #1) by Douglas Adams
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Must Read Books
The list starts with a novel that was included on Oprah’s Book Club. If a book makes it on that list, then it is a must read! Following that is The Talented Mr. Ripley and I must agree with this selection. Barnes & Noble seem to know what they are doing.
The list starts off with great novels that aren’t the most popular or well-known but they are great novels nonetheless. Holes is also another great novel that you won’t see on many must read lists.
We do see classics such as 1984 and The Book Thief included. But for the most part, this list chooses great novels regardless of what society has labeled them as. That is why while I do not think this is an all time list, it is still a great list for must read novels.
Conclusion
That wraps up Barnes & Noble’s 37 best books that you must read list. What did you think of the list? Let us know in the comments below!
Did John le Carré have more Achilles heels than he had toes? David Cornwell was a formidable yet enchanting character and may have been arguably the best writer ever in the espionage genre but was he the perfect spy? Probably not and he even agreed with that … in his posthumously published letters. For more on him as an imperfect spy do see TheBurlingtonFiles website and read an intriguing news article dated 31 October 2022.
Some mavericks in MI6 called Pemberton’s People were disappointed David Cornwell was outwitted by Monty’s cousin. Do have a look at The Burlington Files series starting with Beyond Enkription as long as you don’t expect John le Carré’s delicate diction and sophisticated syntax.
Beyond Enkription is an intriguing raw and noir fact-based spy novel and it’s a must read for espionage cognoscenti but what would it have been like if David Cornwell had collaborated with Bill Fairclough? Even though they didn’t collaborate, Beyond Enkription is still described as ”up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”.
I may be crazy, but try as I might I can only count 36 books on your list – not 37. Oooh, and that’s the one I wanted to read! What about “Where the Red Fern Grows” by Wilson Rawls?
What about the handmade tales. It is one of my favorites and I think it’s won multiple awards
37 must read books for pretentious arseholes.
No wonder you are anonymous
Call of the wild by Jack London
Frankly, I’d have put Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children immediately after Marquez. Or Alasdair Gray’s Lanark. Or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Buried Giant. As for Dostoievski’s Idiot, Lev Tolstoi’s War and Peace, Gurnah’s By the Sea, Ulitskaya’s Imago, CS Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy or Llosa’s Feast of the Goat, well, I guess the definition of brilliance rings differently in my neck of woods, ie Eastern Europe.
The list is very diverse as I’ve never seen before. Horror, Science Fiction side by side with those always-in from the “Great Literature”. I liked it.
Best to read Wild Sargossa Sea before reading Jane Eyre.