Here’s a list of books with our stamp of approval, from young adult series to autobiographies to richly intricate stories. Read, people. We all need food for thought every once in a while. And because illiteracy is one of the scariest things on this planet.

• The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (autobiography)
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
• The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (autobiography)
• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Wicked by Gregory Maguire
• Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
• 1984 by George Orwell
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
• Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
• A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray.
• The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
• The Client by John Grisham
• The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Speak and Catalyst by Laurie Halse Andersen
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Night by Elie Wiesel (autobiography)
• The Pact by Jodi Picoult