10 Books to Read Before You Face Reality and Become a Proper Grown Up (In The Opinion of a Slightly Biased Lit Student)

I'm a Literature student, so there was bound to be something bookish on here eventually. I'm fully convinced that the reading of these books will lead you to be a well rounded and perfectly formed adult human bean.... 
Well, maybe not, but they're still good books...

Harry Potter series

I am a child of the Harry Potter generation, there is no better way to start a list of books that have to be read before grown up life with cheque books and gas bills ensues. 
In my opinion, J.K Rowling is probably the greatest story teller of the last 50 years. Most people who try to write about dragons and wizards just sound ridiculous and never get further than a first book, yet Rowling manages not only to do so with absolute grace and page turning perfection, she manages to make every single dream of every single child come true at the same time. Even the dreams that you didn't know you had until you read Harry Potter. Who doesn't want to ride a broom stick? Who doesn't want to cast spells? Who doesn't want to storm into an exam hall riding a broom stick and cast a spell that releases a dragon made out of fireworks that hunts down and bites an evil teacher in the ass? 
Who wouldn't want to eat a chocolate frog?
If there is one thing for which I could criticise Rowling it would be her part in the increasing number of children finding themselves at Central London hospitals after having run at the brick work in King's Cross St Pancras. 
If you haven't read Harry Potter then you deserve a Howler delivered at breakfast. 

Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey 

A bit of a recent find this one, I picked it up on sale at my uni book shop in the wake of the alumni author winning this year's Costa Prize. 
I haven't had much experience of dealing with dementia, only the tales of an elderly relative that passed on long before I reached my teenage years. However from what I can remember and the recounts of my mother and grandmother, this is one of the most accurate books I have ever read. 
Much in the same way as 'The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time' manages to explain and explore autism, Elizabeth is Missing leaves you with an amazing sense of sympathy not only for those living with mental illness, Altzeimers in particular,  but those looking after them too.
I think if this book had been written ten years ago it wouldn't have been anywhere near as important or successful, it accompanies the progress in mental health understanding and simplifies it for the masses. Brilliantly written and wonderfully thought provoking. 

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 

Birdsong was the focal text of my first year of A-Level and as is true with anything that you have to do to death, most people hated it. I will admit that there were times that I thought I just couldn't handle anymore blood, sex or mud. 
It took a second reading of this book after the incessant coursework essays for me to really fall in love with it. 
Everybody tells you a hundred times over how many thousands of people died in this battle or how many millions of people got trench-foot and lost three fingers in a field in France. Numbers mean nothing. You can't cry for numbers. 
Birdsong gives a face to the First World War. In fact it gives several faces, it gives a face to shell shock, it gives a face to bodily disfigurement, it gives a face to the grieving widow, it gives a face to the nurses, it gives a face to the eighteen year old away from home for the first time. You care for the people that get blown to bits in the words on the page in front of you, and trust me, nearly everyone gets blown to bits on the page in front of you. 
After reading Birdsong the memorials and the poppies and the trumpets and the silences make sense.  Reading Birdsong makes you want to cry and feel angry about the First World War, and I think that is something that everybody has to do. 

Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo 

Much in the same way as Birdsong, Private Peaceful tries to bring the War into the 21st Century, but is also the saddest children's novel ever written. Ever. 
If you have a sibling please hug them all the way through reading this and then buy them some cake at the end. 
If you don't have a sibling, then find one. 

Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy  

Reading lists are always full of 'Books That You Should Read Just To Say That You've Read Them' and whilst I've read and finished a few Classics and I've thrown even more of them at a solid wall-like structure. 
I'll let you into a secret, once you've read one Dickens, you've read them all. 
This is the only Classic I intend on putting on this list because it was the first one that well and truly captured me. 
I think the main thing that did it for me is the inclusion of a female protagonist that didn't make me want to scream. I wouldn't exactly call this a female empowerment novel, Tess doesn't exactly encounter the best of times and things don't end in a big house with a beautiful man and lots of money and babies, but I think that in itself is the beauty of this book.  
Classics to me have always seemed a little unrealistic, the guy always gets the girl, the child ends up with a home and they come into a large sum of money. Tess of the D'Ubervilles does not fit that stereotype and manages to tell the story of a brilliantly kick ass woman at the same time. Perfect. 

One Day - David Nicholls 

If you've seen the film then please, I beg you, forget everything that you watched and completely dismiss Anne Hathaway's god awful Yorkshire accent; One Day is not yet another example of terribly written chick-lit, it is in fact one of the most beautiful books of all time and every single copy sat in every single Amazon warehouse and on every single Waterstone's shelf deserves a loving home. 
This is the most read and most loved book on my shelf, it has all of those lovely lines down the spine from being held open on a page for too long. 
I think the best thing about this book is the way it manages to be a love story without all of the horrible cliches. It's not a love story about Emma and Dexter it's a love story about life; the tales of university, parenthood and holidays are told with as much fondness and care as the weddings, and naughty sexy bits. 
It's been read a hundred times and is the book to which I turn to make life good again. Just a beautiful book that captured my soul completely. 

Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne 

When I was little I had one of those beds that's like a bunk bed but only has an actual bed on the upper layer, and as a result, I had my own bookshelf near the ceiling. I used to think of this as my own secret bookshelf. I don't know why, there was only myself and my parents living in the house and my Dad built it, so of course everybody knew it was there; I just thought of it as the special shelf where I kept my most special books. 
The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh took pride of place on that shelf and always came off on the evenings when sleep was proving more difficult. It was the ultimate comfort. It was something that I'd remembered being read to me as a tiny tot, with lots of make believe voices and teddy bear puppets, but I never admitted to anybody that I still looked at, I felt a little silly reading it at eight or nine years old. Looking back I don't understand why, beautiful tales of a bear, a quiet and comforting reminder of childhood. 
This will always be a book I would recommend that a person reads to their children, but if you reach adulthood without having ventured to the Hundred Acre Woods yourself then an opportunity has been missed.

A Shakespeare

Quite simply, yes, he really is worth all of the fuss. 

Matilda - Roald Dalhl 

Roald Dahl is a linguistic magician, there is no other way of saying it. I remember this being the first book that I read to myself in its entirety and fell in love with. 
I think Matilda helped me to fall in love with reading and to this day she is still my favourite character in literature, an ordinary child who encounters and revels in the extraordinary.
That is the attraction of all of Roald Dahl's books, he would take an ordinary child living an ordinary life and turn their existence into one of adventure and excitement. The child sitting on their bed reading a Roald Dahl book felt that the next day could be the day that they ended up inside a giant peach, or getting a guided tour of a chocolate factory, or on a walk with a giraffe and a pelican.
Matilda is still the best one though. Hands down. A girl with magic mind powers beats chocolate any day. 

Lolita - Vladamir Nabokov 

A very recent read, a book that was only read this week as a university assignment. Possibly and probably the first book that made me feel like a grown-up, hence the positioning of Nabokov at the end of my list. 
This book made me feel disgusting from beginning to end, disgusted with myself, not the paedophilic stepfather engaging in 'activities' with his 12 year old stepdaughter. Nabokov writes so beautifully (it makes me squeem and cringe to write this in hindsight) that there is a second of delay where you appreciate and love the beautiful words on the page before you realise what is really being said, and how disgusting it really is. 
As well as confronting and providing an insight into an issue about which, understandably, very little is said in 21st Century society, Lolita made me question my own moral instinct. That scared me a little bit.