I’ve always loved to read. Before I married, my whole front closet in the apartment was a library. (After, not so much. We needed the space for other stuff.) Recently. Newsweek had an article in the latest issue on the 50 books you should read now that will cast the greatest light on our now. They are all types and they’re there for al sorts of reasons. Just in case you need something to read: (Note I’ve got all 50 but the More tag doesn’t show here. Click the post title to see the rest.)

1. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope – this satire of financial and moral crisis in Victorian England even has a Madoff-type swindler. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
2. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright - Perhaps no two questions are as important in the early 21st century as the ones Wright answers: how 9/11 happened, and why.
3. Prisoner of the State by Zhao Ziyang – Chinese officials are confiscating copies of this memoir by the party chief who was ousted for opposing military force in Tiananmen Square. They have reason to be nervous.
4. The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr – You’ve heard of “cloud computing,” but let’s be honest, you really don’t know what it means. Or why it’s going to change everything.
5. The Bear by William Faulkner – A boy comes of age in the 1880s by learning the ways of the fast-disappearing Mississippi forests.
6. Winchell by Neal Gabler – Before there was Rush Limbaugh-or Us Weekly-there was Walter Winchell: gossip columnist, commentator, McCarthyite, radio celebrity, has-been.
7. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc – It took LeBlanc 10 years immersed in the lives of one Bronx family to produce this gripping, cinematic account of urban poverty and its causes. It will take you two days to read it.
8. Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid – While the book is about the run-up to the Iraq War and the immediate aftermath, its strength is its insight into how Iraqis really think, which is instructive as we head for the exits.
9. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely – Overturns the notion that we weigh pros and cons logically. Read it to understand why we obey honor codes-and other irrational behaviors.
10. God: A Biography  by Jack Miles – Miles, a journalist and former Jesuit, treats the God of the Bible as a literary protagonist-and discovers infinitely human depths.
11. The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry – First published in 1982, this book-length argument for the family farm-and against agribusiness-is simply the most thoughtful book on modern agriculture.
12. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor – Stories of the New South, Christ-haunted and out of control, are as scary as they were when published in 1955. “Shut up, Bobby Lee, it’s no real pleasure in life.”
13. Underground by Haruki Murakami – This collection of interviews with victims and perpetrators of Japan’s 1995 sarin-gas attack is a useful study of modern terror and its aftermath.
14. Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen – The Harvard Business School professor who introduced the idea of disruptive innovation in The Innovator’s Dilemma applies the same principles to education, with provocative results.
15. Air Guitar by Dave Hickey – A seamless blend of criticism, personal history, and a deep appreciation for the sheer nuttiness of American life, with essays on Norman Rockwell, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Perry Mason, to name a few.
16. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman – There’s no better season to read the Great American Poem than summer, and no better place than the outdoors for savoring its charms, both contemplative and ecstatic.
17. The trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin – Smolin covers string theory and other topics in modern physics showing that scientific advances are as much about personalities as data.
18. City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. Whyte - Using years of painstaking research, Whyte proved that the way to make a city work lies in the details-the width of a park bench, the height of a subway step.
19. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – A penetrating parable of the grim future of technology and life on an Earth without animals (and the basis for Blade Runner).
20. Benjamin Franklin by Edmund S. Morgan – A model biography: pithy, wise, and-despite its brevity-complete. Franklin emerges as a quintessential hero of his time, and ours.
21. The Mississippi Books by Mark Twain
22. Among the Thugs by Bill Buford
23. Brooklyn by Colm TÛibÌn
24. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
25. Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman
26. Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden
27. Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus
28. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
29. American Promethius by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
30. The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn
31. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
32. Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris
33. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
34. Walking with the Wind by John Lewis
35. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
36. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
37. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
38. Underworld by Don DeLillo
39. Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne
40. American Pastoral  by Philip Roth
41. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
42. The Regeration Trilogy  by Pat Barker
43. Senator Joe McCarthy by Richard H. Rovere
44. Years of Wonder by Geraldine Brooks
45. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
46. Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
47. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
48. American Journeys by Don Watson
49. Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes
50. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson