step foot on asphalt without the immediate urge to run. Not as a physical test but as a mere escape. As much as I love my hometown and the people in it and my family, I can feel it swallowing me whole as it did for years. I live near train tracks and with each passing of the train, I feel like moving swiftly into the night air with a light pack on my back and hopping onto the closest cart. For some reason the west holds a form of solitude for me and even though I have never been, only read stories and heard tales, I feel the call of it. I plan on answering that call, soon.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Looking for Alaska by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Paper Towns by John Green

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Beach Music by Pat Conroy

The Missing Series by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series by Rick Riordan (5)

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (7)

The Outside Series by Shalini Boland

The Unwind Trilogy by Neal Shusterman

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Into the Wild by John Krakauer

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Kingdom Keepers V- Shell Game by Ridley Pearson

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

1984 by George Orwell

The Republic by Plato

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

The Illiad and Odyssey of Homer

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins

White Noise by Don Delillo

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Young Man’s Guide by William Alcott

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond by Denis Johnson

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry by Christine De Pizan

The Art of Warfare by Sun Tzu

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

The Thin Red Line by James Jones

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Politics by Aristotle

First Edition of The Boy Scout Handbook

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Crisis by Winston Churchill

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Beyond Good and Evil by Freidrich Nietzsche

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Essential Manners for Men by Peter Post

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly

Hamlet by Shakespeare

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

A Farewell To Arms by Earnest Hemingway

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

American Boys’ Handy Book

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A River Runs Through It by Norman F. Maclean

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

The Count of Monte Cristo

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarq

The Red Badge of Courage by John Crane

Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans by Plutrach

A Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt

The Bible

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Dangerous Book for Boys

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Histories by Herodotus

From Here to Eternity by James Jones

The Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson