Books Not to be Without

Thanks to several faculty, and one student, for responding with their list of books they wouldn't want to live without.
Several gave caveats--this is my list today, I could add more, I usually don't respond to such hyperbole--so, simply read, enjoy.
And if I get more lists, I'll share them as well. --Susan

Joe Dickhudt
My all-time favorites:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
To Kill a Mockingbird

Richard Dove
The New Webster Handy College Dictionary is my most frequently open book, so it asked that I choose it. The title also probably gives you a clue as to why I agreed with the book to choose it.

Rich Trembley
I would like to cast my vote for Stephen King's Dark Tower series. After I was done with one book, I couldn't wait to get into the next one, and with release dates often months away, it was grueling!!!! I was really disappointed when the story actually ended in the seventh book. Possibly his finest work.

Bruce Clary
Song of Myself, Walt Whitman. The book most responsible for my becoming an English major and, subsequently, a teacher of American literature.
The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. It’s a head rush to read ED’s poems in her own hand and in the same order in which she hand bound them.
Moby-Dick, Hermann Melville. I just pulled this off my shelf yesterday morning and reread the chapters “The Whiteness of the Whale” and “Ambergris.” Amazing.
The Four Gospels. Besides being the one of the touchstones of Western art and culture, when read in order of composition, they offer the fascinating history of the development of the early church’s Christology.
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Prince Myshkin, the epileptic “holy fool,” remains for me the most vivid portrayal of all that is involved in being a follower of Jesus.
Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor. Hazel Motes, the Christ-haunted protagonist, is a comic, backwoods, Georgia redneck version of Myshkin.
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton. Lily Bart finishes in a dead-heat with Isabella Archer for the Greatest Female Character Created by an American Writer award.
Dubliners, James Joyce. The greatest single volume of short fiction that I can think of.
East of Eden. I read every John Steinbeck novel when I was in high school. Grapes of Wrath is a better novel, but this riff on the Cain and Abel story was the one that most fascinated me then and now.
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson. This collection brought Chekhov’s compassion for his characters to the American short story.

Gary Entz
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This book inspired me to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, although I still like the book Anna Karenina better.
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
This is one of the most moving anti-war novels ever written.
Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
This is the book that convinced me to major in U.S. history.
Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey
This book is one of the strongest condemnations ever written of modern consumer society and how it is destroying our environment.
Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca
Even after 2000 years, Seneca gives common sense advice.

Rod Gieselman
The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report (any year). Warren Buffett could be a modern day Samuel Clemens if he chose to write rather than make billions.”

Kim Stanley
Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens. What would life be without the Circumlocution Office, whose job is to see that It Doesn't Get Done?
Middlemarch, George Eliot. Still the absolute truth about being a woman.
Candide, Voltaire. Reminds you of how terrible and how wonderful people are.
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Even when you don't understand Yeats, reading his poems out loud makes you feel that it's worthwhile to be human.
The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, D.B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee.
I read it over and over. Even the index is priceless. OK, especially the index.

Luke Chennell
I’ve worn out two copies of H.L. Mencken’s A Mencken Chrestomathy – it always serves to maintain my faith in skepticism.