I'll pop off the ones from the top of my head now and add to the list as I go along. So, here they are in no particular order.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee: my all time favorite

2. Strangers from a Different Shore - Ronald Takaki: a recent favorite.

3. Interview with a Vampire - Anne Rice

4. Hawaii - James Michener

5. Caribbean - James Michener

6. Shogun - James Clavell

7. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

8. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut: Vonnegut's best in my opinion.

9. Calvin and Hobbes Collections - Bill Watterson. I'm counting all five as one choice. They are: "Calvin and Hobbes", "Something Under the Bed is Drooling", "Yukon Ho", "Weirdos from another Planet", and "Revenge of the Babysat". Hilarious reading.

10. Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley

11. Those Barren Leaves - Aldous Huxley

12. Time Must Have A Stop - Aldous Huxley

13. Heaven and Hell - Aldous Huxley: an excellent look into the subconscious, or the mind's antipodes as Huxley calls it.

14. Crome Yellow - Aldous Huxley

15. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

16. Antic Hay - Aldous Huxley

Have you figured out that I'm a Huxley fan?

17. Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing - William Sargant

18. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

19. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien

20. Dessa Rose - Sherley Anne Williams

21. A Gathering of Old Men - Ernest Gaines

22. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

23. Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut

24. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

25. Lou: Winning at Illinois-- Lou Henson with Skip Myslenski: I'm a fanatic college basketball fan, especially University of Illinois basketball

26. A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers - John Feinstein: also about college basketball

27. The Other - Thomas Tryon: I'm not generally a fan of suspense- horror books, but this is the best one I've read

28. Black Boy - Richard Wright

29. Native Son - Richard Wright

30. American Hunger - Richard Wright

31. Trixie Belden mystery series - Kathryn Kenny: There are some 40 books in this series, a series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I grew up with these books in early elementary school, so I had to include them somehow.

32. The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper - another favorite from elementary school

33. No Longer at Ease - Chinua Achebe

34. The Training of the Urban Working Class: A History of Twentieth Century American Education - Paul Violas

35. Strategies of Discourse Processing - Teun van Dijk and Walter Kintsch

36. Human Spatial Behavior: A Social Geography - John Jakle, Stanley Brunn, Curtis Roseman

37. The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics - Thomas Dye and L. Harmon Zeigler

38. Essays into Literacy - Frank Smith

39. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

40. The Fixer - Bernard Malamud

41. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

42. Guns of Navarone - Alistair MacLean

43. Ice Station Zebra - Alistair MacLean: MacLean was a favorite of mine back in my teenage days. Excellent action adventures.

44. Five Smooth Stones - I gave my copy of this book to my brother-in-law and his wife and haven't gotten it back yet. I'm drawing a blank on the author's name. If someone knows, please fill it in for me. Thanks.

45. The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler. This really helped me understand one of my all time favorite movies (the Humphrey Bogart version of The Big Sleep)