In today’s world of Netflix, social media, and smartphones, people are turning to books for entertainment less and less–and we here at Harden are dissatisfied with this societal shift. There is something innately special about getting lost in a fictional world all your own. Two people might read the same words, but the way in which those words come alive in their minds can be worlds apart. This process of imagining and interpreting is what truly sets books apart from their 21st Century counterparts. As such, we have compiled a list–in no particular order–of 30 books that every person should read before they die. the beautiful and the damned
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
The entire Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Ulysses, by James Joyce
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Lord of the Rings series, by J. R. Tolkien
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking
Charlie and the Charlie Factory, by Roald Dahl
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote