not_yet_defined started this and others (flamencanyc & vl_redreign) ran with it so I thought I'd post my list here but it's got 10 books. I've read far too many to be able to narrow it down to a simple 5. Hell, 10 was hard enough.

10 BOOKS I'D HATE TO NEVER HAD READ:
(in no particular order)
1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
5. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
6. The Hobbit & LOTR (yes I'm counting all four as one...bite me) by J. R. Tolkien
7. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
8. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
10. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith


This was really really hard because I'd love to add all of O. Henry's work (irony is my friend) and Edgar Allan Poe's.

Plus I had to cut CS Lewis out, so no The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (sobs) and then there's Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky (spills more tears for these 2).

Then there's Othello and most of Shakespeare's other work.

Oh and I can't forget The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer. And Kurt Vonnegut all of his stuff. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley...The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood...The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Color Purple by Alice Walker...and Steinbeck, especially The Grapes of Wrath (this one should really be on the list of 10) & Of Mice and Men.

Oh Hell, I give up. I suck at this game. It would be easier to make a list of books I could live without. LOL