Read More Books!

Books are often shoved aside when there are "more important" things to do and many of us don't take the time to read. But books are so important! It has been said that "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." (Charlie Jones) That is so true. We need to read more books. I want to encourage you to make a resolution to read more books this year and in the years to come.
In the coming years there are a lot of things you will look back on and wish you hadn't done, but reading good books won't be one of those things. Sadly, these days most people don't read much. Most people have never read Les Misérables or have only seen the musical. Everyone has seen adaptions of A Christmas Carol but few have read Dicken's book A Tale of Two Cities (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times). And I know very few people have read The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, the sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

This new year I want to challenge you to read at least two books out of the following list of classics. Commit to reading them, and even if you can't understand them easily, you will read them until you do. Every one of the books in this list is free for download on Gutenberg or Amazon in various ebook forms. Or, if you don't like ebooks, you can also go to your library and check one of these books out:

Classics You Should Read

• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
• The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 
• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
• In Search of the Castaways by Jules Verne
• The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
• Off on a Comet by Jules Verne
• Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The People of the Mist by Henry Rider Haggard
• King Solomon's Mines by Henry Rider Haggard
• She by Henry Rider Haggard
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• In Freedom's Cause by G. A. Henty
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.
— Joseph Joubert

I also want to mention The Phantom Tollbooth, which is a wonderful book full of amazing puns and sayings that readers at any level can easily read. It's not old enough to be a classic but I'm sure it will be some day.
Sci-Fi lovers would love Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov. Asimov has a way of bringing out the characters of robots in a way that nobody else has.
If you like mystery books, check out the Father Brown mysteries by G. K. Chesterton. His mysteries and the solutions are very different from most mystery books.

Fantasy Books for Everyone

• The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
• The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks
• The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks
• The Heritage of Shannara series by Terry Brooks
• The Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paolini
• The Binding of the Blade series by L. B. Graham

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
— Dr. Seuss

History Books to Help You Learn

• Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb
• The Winter Fortress by Neal Bascomb
• The Middle Ages by Morris Bishop
• Knight's Cross : A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel by David Fraser
• The Battle of Britain by James Holland
• Abandon Ship!  By Richard F. Newcombe
• The Dawn's Early Light by Walter Lord
• Day of Infamy by Walter Lord
• A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
• Incredible Victory by Walter Lord
• The Yanks are Coming by Albert Marrin
• The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan
• The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan

Don't take too long picking a book though: Just read!

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
— Joseph Brodsky

Useful Resources:
gutenberg.org A great place to download the classics for free
amazon.com Lots of the classics are available for free here if you use the Kindle app

goodreads.com Awesome for tracking how many books you have read and creating a reading goal for the year.