St Bernadette’s guide to being well read, 100 + suggested books.

Reading a broad range of books will give you a broad and varied vocabulary

Top 10 classic books – Must Reads

• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Top 10 Fantasy books

• Harry Potter series 1- 7 by J.K. Rowling
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Name of the Wind  by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
• The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
• Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
• The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
• Neverwhere Neverwhere  by Neil Gaiman

Modern best sellers

• Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman
• The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
• The fault in our stars by John Green
• Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher
• Flour Babies by Anne Fine
• How I live now by Meg Rostoff
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

10 realistic novels for young adults

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman 
• Paper Towns by John Green
• Perfect Chemistry  by Simone Elkeles
• The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

10 children’s books you should read no matter how old you are

• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass  by Lewis Carroll
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  by Roald Dahl
• Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
• The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson

Fiction about Rock and Pop

• If I Stay  by Gayle Forman           
• This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
• Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn        
• Where She Went by Gayle Forman
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway
• Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson
• Out of the Box Regifted by Jennifer Theriot
• The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

Books about faraway places 

• Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams  
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See 
• Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
• An Ishmael of Syria by Asaad Almohammad

Biographies and autobiographies (documenting a person’s life)           

• Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
• Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi by Katherine Frank
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Barrack Obama; Dreams from my Father – As story of race and inheritance  
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times by Thomas Hauser
• Marie Curie: A Life by Susan Quinn
• Alex Ferguson: My autobiography
• Jenson Button: Life to the Limit : My autobiography
• Big Sam: My Autobiography: Sam Allardyce
• I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai and Patricia McCormick
• One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin by Kathryn Lasky and Matthew Trueman

​​​​​​History

• The Devil in the White City by David McCullough
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
• The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
• Hiroshima by John Hersey
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
• Apartheid, 1948-1994

Fiction for GCSE students – Classics and 20^th Century

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• 1984 by George Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Lord of the Flies by William Goulding
• The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• East, West by Salman Rusdie
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Half of Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  
  Please use the suggestions box in the library if you would like to read one of these books and you cannot find it.