Books you MUST read

Bored? Or out of books to read? Check out our list of must-have-read-at-least-once-in-your-life books.

1. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

The books Noughts and Crosses is the first (and best) book of a trilogy. Set in a parallel world very much like our own, the only difference is that the two races are known as noughts and crosses: the dark-skinned are crosses and discriminate against the lighter-skinned Noughts.

The book revolves around the lives of Callum and Sephy, two teenagers and best friends. However, Callum is a Nought, and Sephy a Cross. The two are determined to preserve their delicate relationship but in a world where any sort of relationship between Noughts and Crosses are shunned, it is easier said than done.

I read this book when I was around 15, and I absolutly loved it. It has really marked me ever since and I keep it dear to my heart. The second book of the trilogy is also excellent and I really recommend this book to everyone. This is a "must read" book.

2. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies is the first of a trilogy, and also the best of the trilogy. In a futeristic world, any teenager turning 16 has to undergo a surgery to go from Ugly to Pretty. Tally Youngblook wants to have the surgery that will make her pretty, but when she gets caught up in a rebellion agains society and comes to appreciate a world where not everyone is pretty.

I always thought they should have made a movie out of this book.

3. Shinning by Stephen King

A man, his son and wife become the winter caretakers of an isolated hotel where Danny, the son, sees disturbing visions of the hotel's past using a telepathic gift known as "The Shinning". The father, Jack Torrance, is underway in a writing project when he slowly slips into insanity as a result of cabin fever and former guests of the hotel's ghosts. After being convinced by a waiter's ghost to "correct" the family, Jack goes completely insane. The only thing that can save Danny and his mother is "The Shinning". If you are too lazy to read the book, try watching the movie (if you haven't watched it yet).

- Thank you to ipreach4ever for the summary.

4. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

For info, I read this book before the movie (which  was incredibly disappointing) came out. In Los Angeles, the eleven year old Anna Fitzgerald seeks the successful lawyer Campbell Alexander trying to hire him to earn medical emancipation from her mother Sara that wants Anna to donate her kidney to her sister. She tells the lawyer the story of her family after the discovery that her older sister Kate has had leukemia; how she was conceived by in vitro fertilization to become a donor; and the medical procedures she has been submitted since she was five years old to donate to her sister. Campbell accepts to work pro bono and the obsessed Sara decides to go to court to force Anna to help her sister.

- Thank you to Claudio Carvalho for writing the summary

5. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

Atticus Finch is a lawyer in a  racially divided Alabama town in the 1930s. He agrees to defend a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman. Many of the townspeople try to get Atticus to pull out of the trial, but he decides to go ahead. How will the trial turn out- and will it change any of the racial tension in the town? Check out the movie also.

6. Little Women by Louisa May

This is an American classic. Little Women is a "coming of age" drama tracing the lives of four sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. During the American Civil War, the girls father is away serving as a minister to the troops. The family, headed by their beloved Marmee, must struggle to make ends meet, with the help of their kind and wealthy neighbour, Mr. Laurence, and his high spirited grandson Laurie.

7. The World's Greatest Short Stories by James Daley

This outstanding collection features short stories by great writers from America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Western Europe. Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include Poe, Chekhov, Joyce, Kafka, Faulkner, Pirandello, Mann, and other major writers of world literature. A wonderfully wide-ranging and enjoyable anthology.

8. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Buy Montag is a book-burning fireman in a futuristic American city undergoing a crisis of faith. In this futuristic America, books are forbidden and fireman are called upon to start a fire rather than put them out. Wanting to escape his dull life, Montag meets his next-door neighbour Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books.

When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is motivated to change and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature.

9. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

On a remote and isolated island, ten people - 8 invited guests and two servants - find themselves facing their own deaths. Their unidentified host informs them, via a gramophone record, that as they have all been responsible for someone's death, they in turn will die before the weekend is out. There is no way for any of them to flee the island, so they set about trying to determine who their hidden host might be and where he might be hiding. One by one, the guests are killed and one of them suggests that the killer is likely among them. 

10. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

This one is my personal favourite. I would recommend this book mainly for those who like psychology or psychoanalyse, but also to those who like to have a laugh. Oliver Sacks recounts the cases he has encountered patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Sacks packed his book with short stories all based on a patient's case study. The book is short, fascinating with an appealing language. If you don't understand something, no worries, there are usually short postscripts.

11. Another Jodi Picoult book: House Rules

Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger's syndrome. He has a special focus on one subject - forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to a crime scenes, and he's always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he's usually right. But when Jacob's town is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes for him. Jacob's behaviours are hallmark Asperger's, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. 

12. The Accidental Billionaires, The Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich

Again, I read this book before it became the movie "Social Network". If you've watched the movie, I wouldn't really bother with the book. It does go a bit deeper into Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins college life. It's a quick read.

13. Slam by Nick Hornby

This is one of my favourite books. I do recommend it to everyone. Just when everything is coming together for Sam, his girlfriend Alicia drops a bombshell. Make that ex-girlfriend- because by the time she tells him she's pregnant, they've already called it quits. Sam does not want to be a teenage dad. His mom had him at sixteen and has made it very clear how having a baby so young interrupted her life. There's only one person Sam can turn to-his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk. Sam believes the answers to life's hurdles can be found in Hawk's autobiography. 

But even Tony Hawk isn't offering answers this time-or is he? Inexplicably, Sam finds himself whizzed into the future, for a quick glimpse of what will be . . . or what could be. In this wonderfully witty, poignant story about a teenage boy unexpectedly thrust into fatherhood, it's up to Sam to make the right decisions so the bad things that could happen, well, don't.

14. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

You might know "Shutter Island" from the movie with Leonardo Di Caprio, but it was originally a great novel. For those who do not know the plot: US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murder name Rachel Salondo.

As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what is really going on in Ward C.

The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane.

15. Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile is the first Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro suspense novel in more than a decade from the acclaimed, New York Timesbestselling master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane. An explosive tale of vengeance and redemption—the brilliant sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone—Moonlight Mile returns Lehane’s unforgettable and deeply human detective duo to the mean streets of blue collar Boston to investigate the second disappearance of Amanda McCready, now sixteen years old. After his remarkable success with Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day, the celebrated author whom the Washington Post praises as, “one of those brave new detective stylists who is not afraid of fooling around with the genre’s traditions,” returns to his roots—and the result, as always, is electrifying.