Desert Island Books
Books You Want to Have with You if You Were Stranded on the Proverbial Desert Island
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October 2007
Compiled by Kelly DiDonato,
of the Lake Villa (IL) District Library, from contributions by the members of Fiction_L.
(To use this list in your library, book club, etc., please include the following credit line: "Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list." This list may not be used for commercial purposes.)
FICTION
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale
Jane Austen novels
Mary Balogh novels
Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition
Anne Bishop Black Jewels trilogy
Judy Blume Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Jorge Luis Borges The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969
Ray Bradbury collected stories; Dandelion Wine; Something Wicked This Way Comes
Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
Max Brooks World War Z
Pearl S. Buck The Good Earth
Jacqueline Carey Kushiel's Dart
Willa Cather My Antonia
Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot novels
John Connolly Every Dead Thing
Patrick Conroy Prince of Tides
Jennifer Crusie Anyone But You
Avram Davidson The Enquiries Of Doctor Esterhazy
Robertson Davies The Cornish Trilogy
Charles de Lint novels
Charles Dickens David Copperfeld; Our Mutual Friend
Tim Dorsey Florida Roadkill
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Dorothy Dunnett The Complete Lymond Chronicles (Game of Kings)
Leif Enger Peace Like A River
William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury; and other novels
Jack Finney Time and Again; From Time to Time
Diana Gabaldon Outlander series
Neil Gaiman Sandman series; Neverwhere
Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 Years of Solitude
Roberta Gellis Bond of Blood
Graham Greene Our Man in Havana
Pete Hamill Snow In August
Ernest Hemingway novels
Frank Herbert Dune
Tony Hillerman novels
William Hogan The Quartzsite Trip
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
Henry James Portrait of a Lady
James Joyce Finnegan's Wake
Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth
Stephen King The Stand
Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
Tanith Lee Biting the Sun; Silver Metal Lover
Ursula LeGuin The Left Hand of Darkness; Rocannon's World
C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia
Sinclair Lewis Main Street
Michael Martone Double-Wide
Armistead Maupin Tales of the City
Anne McCaffrey Pern series (Dragonflight)
Robin McKinley Beauty
James Michener Hawaii; Centennial
Margaret Mitchell Gone With the Wind
Howard Frank Mosher A Stranger In The Kingdom
Alice Munro Lives of Girls and Women
John Nichols The Wizard of Loneliness
Audrey Niffenegger The Time Traveler's Wife
Gary Paulsen novels
Walker Percy The Moviegoer
S.J. Perelman The Most of S.J.Perelman
Marisha Pessl Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Edgar Allen Poe Complete Works
Annie Proulx The Shipping News
Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
Marilynne Robinson Housekeeping
J.K. Rowling Harry Potter novels
Matt Ruff Set This House In Order
Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow
Helen Hooven Santmyer And Ladies of the Club
Budd Schulberg What Makes Sammy Run?
Robert Silverberg novels
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
John Steinbeck East of Eden
Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon
Mary Stewart Madam, Will You Talk?
Donna Tartt The Secret History
J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
John Updike Rabbit quartet
Johann Wyss The Swiss Family Robinson
NONFICTION
Robert Benchley Benchley Round-Up
William Rose Benet, ed. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia
Bible: Hebrew interlinear translation; New International Version; King James Version
R.H. Blyth haiku books
Bill Bryson books
Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy
Italo Calvino Italian Folktales
Robert Cormier I Have Words to Spend
Harold Courlander, ed. folktale books
Will Cuppy The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
Encyclopedia Britannica
Euripedes The Complete Plays
Susan Feldman, ed. The Storytelling Stone
Rene Girard Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Homer Iliad; Odyssey
Joy Of Cooking, 75th Anniversary edition
Chris McNab Living Off the Land
Thomas Merton New Seeds of Contemplation
Beverley Nichols Merry Hall
The Oxford English Dictionary
David Remnick Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker
Ned Rorem The New York Diary; The Paris Diary
George Seldes, ed. The Great Thoughts
William Shakespeare The Complete Annotated Shakespeare; A Midsummer Night's
Dream
Wallace Stevens The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
James Thurber The Thurber Carnival
Dawn Wells Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook
John Wiseman The SAS Survival Handbook
Jane Yolen, ed. Favorite Folktales From Around The World
Jack Zipes, ed. folktale books
ANTHOLOGIES
"The biggest science fiction anthology I could find"
"A good solid poetry anthology"
Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker
"One of Robert Arthur or Harold Q. Masur's Alfred Hitchcock Presents
anthologies"
The Oxford Book of American Poetry
The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence
The Norton Anthology of English Literature
The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
The Smart Set: A History And Anthology, edited by Carl R. Dolmetsch
MISCELLANEOUS
Text for learning another language
Sushi cookbook
Survival handbook (Foxfire, Marine, etc.)
Boatbuilding handbook
Sailing/navigation handbook
Guidebook of ocean fish species of the world
Also recommended: Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones because residents of
war-ravaged island must remember passages of books they've read to keep
the books "alive"
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