My 50 Favorite Books

I started this months ago, and just this morning got back around to it.  Inspired by Joe Hill's List, and procrastinating while writing:  my 50 favorite novels/short story collections.....

Echoing one of Mr. Hill's administrative notes:  It should go without saying that what I've read constitutes less than a hundred millionth of a percent of the books written, so by no means do I intend for this to be the 50 Best Books...merely my 50 favorite books.  While, by and large, most of the books on the list have their technical and artistic merits that would support them in arguments, most (if not all) are on the list because they were simply the right book at the right time.

Also, I've no doubt left something I love off--first two that jump to mind are Life of Pi and Animal Farm.  I've also included no plays. I'm not huge on reading plays, and what I've read were assigned readings back in my edumacation days, but a couple that might pop somewhere near the top:  Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson.

Alphabetized, by Author

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy         Douglas Adams
Watership Down                    Richard Adams
The Floating Opera               John Barth
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz                  L. Frank Baum
The Old South            Arna Bontemps
Fahrenheit 451          Ray Bradbury
Something Wicked this Way Comes            Ray Bradbury
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay           Michael Chabon
the Yiddish Policemen's Union              Michael Chabon
Jurassic Park                  Michael Crichton
The Twits                  Roald Dahl
A Tale of Two Cities           Charles Dickens
Lord of the Barnyard             Tristan Egolf
Stalking the Nightmare            Harlan Ellison
As I Lay Dying              William Faulkner
Light in August              William Faulkner
Cold Mountain                  Charles Frazier
Neverwhere                 Neil Gaiman
Lord of the Flies                 William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time        Mark Haddon
Stranger in a Strange Land            Robert Heinlein
Catch-22          Joseph Heller
Andersonville             MacKinlay Kantor
Flowers for Algernon          Daniel Keyes
Dark Tower:  Wizard and Glass      Stephen King
the Shining            Stephen King
the Stand               Stephen King
The Bottoms             Joe R. Lansdale
To Kill a Mockingbird             Harper Lee
The Complete Stories              HP Lovecraft
The Giver                      Lois Lowry
No Country for Old Men           Cormac McCarthy
the Road                           Cormac McCarthy
the 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear            Walter Moers
Coyote Blue        Christopher Moore
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor          Flannery O'Connor
True Grit             Charles Portis
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban         J.K. Rowling
Contact                Carl Sagan
Epiphany                      Ferrol Sams
Run with the Horsemen            Ferrol Sams
the Killer Angels             Michael Shaara
a Simple Plan                       Scott Smith
Of Mice and Men                  John Steinbeck
Cannery Row                        John Steinbeck
Confederacy of Dunces            John Kennedy Toole
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn       by Mark Twain
Slapstick              Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five                Kurt Vonnegut
Winter's Bone              Daniel Woodrell