The Good Life: Tuck Into a Good Book

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Born in Monroeville, Ala. -- a Podunk town between Montgomery and Mobile -- Lee moved to New York in the 1950s and took a job as a reservation clerk with Eastern Airlines. While only in her 20s, Lee began work on the manuscript that was to become To Kill a Mockingbird. The story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in Maycomb, Ala., and his two children. Scout and Jem, during a heated trial of a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman is one of the most powerful coming-of-age stories written. The character of Dill, a whiny playmate of Scout and Jem's, is based on Truman Capote, one of Lee's childhood friends. To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961. Lee, who never wrote another novel, is now 79 years old and lives in Monroeville.

7. The Winter of Our Discontent, by John Steinbeck

Recognized as one of America's greatest writers, Steinbeck has several works worthy of the list, notably The Grapes of Wrath, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize, and East of Eden. Long an astute chronicler of social issues and moral decay, Steinbeck turned his focus on 1961 contemporary America in The Winter of Our Discontent. The decline of Ethan Hawley, a Harvard grad turned grocery clerk, is at the same time dark and eloquent. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. Like many writers of his time and ilk, his life was often troubled. Steinbeck died of a heart attack at age 66 in New York City on Dec. 20, 1968.

Play Time These plays make for good reading

8. A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

You can read a play in less time than you can see one, and with these two Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpieces by Williams, your time will be well spent. A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the love triangle between Brick, his wife Maggie and his best buddy Skipper, is intense and powerful, with the tension frequently broken by Williams' wicked humor. Streetcar has become more famous as a film, thanks to Marlon Brando's portrayal of the handsome thug Stanley, and Vivien Leigh's brilliant performance as Blanche. The play, though, is moving and powerful, with a crescendo building from the time the story begins. Williams, who was big on superstition, predicted in his memoir that he would die an unusual death. On Feb. 25, 1983, Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his home in New York City. He was 71 years old.

9. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The woes of restless teen-ager Holden Caulfield is a timeless story that still entertains regardless of how many times one reads it. The Catcher in the Rye received mixed reviews when it was first published in 1951, but time has proven the novel to be both brilliant and enchanting. Bump into J.D. Salinger and give him that praise and you might get a slug in the face. Salinger, who is 86 and lives in Cornish, N.H., is a recluse who has been known to snarl at reporters or anyone who shows an interest in him.

10. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Written by McCullers when she was only 23, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a piercing account of Mick Kelly, a young girl who wants to study music, and John Singer, a deaf mute who takes a room with the Kelly family. In all her works, McCullers uses characters that are eccentric and even grotesque, but are portrayed with insight and empathy. Regarded as one of America's most gifted female writers, McCullers did not escape the heartache common to her male counterparts. Her husband, Reeves McCullers, was a tormented gay man who committed suicide in 1953 after the couple had divorced and remarried each other. McCullers herself was sickly most of her life -- having suffered a series of strokes in her early 30s that left her almost crippled. McCullers died at age 50 on Sept. 29, 1967.

11. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

When it comes to a minimalist writing style, Hemingway is perhaps the best there ever was. Certainly, Hemingway -- who was not short on ego -- would have agreed. Critics have chided Hemingway for testosterone poisoning and his penchant for writing he-man tales of bullfights and war. But A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929 and Hemingway's third novel, is an eloquent love story set in World War I and it betrays a tenderness in the young Hemingway that was absent in some of his later works. You can't be a reader of English prose and not have an opinion on Hemingway, and for the record, I'm a big fan. Hemingway, who won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 2, 1961. He was 61 years old.