We've rounded up 20 great books we think everyone should read by 50

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20 books everyone should read in their fifties

The essential Halloween reading list in 10 books 

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10 terrifying classic tales to read

Selected Poems

A post-humous, autobiographical collection of poetry from John Updike, one of the most celebrated American writers of the twentieth cenury and author of modern classic novel Rabbit, Run 
 
Updike had a boundless capacity for curiosity and delight. This collection of poems from across his career displays his extraordinary range in form and subject: from metaphysical epigrams, and lyrical odes to blank-verse sonnets, on topics from Roman busts to Lucian Freud to postage stamps. 
 
These poems are nimble and inventive, exploring art, science, popular culture, foreign travel, erotic love, growth, decay and rebirth. Collected in chronological order, from precocious undergraduate efforts to frequently anthologized classics, this is an autobiography in verse for every Updike fan and a celebration of twentieth century American life.

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton. 
 
His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal. 
 
Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.

Collected in chronological order, from precocious undergraduate efforts to frequently anthologized classics, this is an autobiography in verse for every Updike fan. 
 
Updike had a boundless capacity for curiosity and delight. This collection from across his career displays his extraordinary range in form and subject: from metaphysical epigrams, and lyrical odes to blank-verse sonnets, on topics from Roman busts to Lucian Freud to postage stamps. These poems are nimble and inventive, exploring art, science, popular culture, foreign travel, erotic love, growth, decay and rebirth. From one of our generation's greatest writers, Selected Poems is a celebration of twentieth century American life.

Essays And Criticism

More Matter

More Matter is a collection of John Updike's best-loved critical essays and reflections. 
 
From the journals of John Cheever to the Queen of England, More Matter is a lively discussion on contemporary art, issues and people, told from the inimitable perspective of Pulitzer prizewinner John Updike. Wide ranging, incisive, witty and always superbly written, it has something to say about almost everyone - from Graham Greene to Bill Gates to Mickey Mouse - and everything - from sexual politics to spiritual matters to unopenable packages. It provides any number of intimate glimpses into how this remarkable mind works. 
 
Praise for More Matter: 
 
'Unlike most journalism, Updike's occasional writing is so exquisite as to repay multiple readings' Publishers Weekly 
 
'More Matter attests to Mr. Updike's remarkable versatility and to his ardent drive to turn all his observations into glittering, gossamer prose. . . . In his strongest pieces, Mr. Updike's awesome pictorial powers of description combine with a rigorous, searching intelligence to produce essays of enormous tactile power and conviction' New York Times 
 
'More Matter will leave even his closest followers amazed. . . . Updike can write about anything, in any form and at any length, and do it with intelligence and knowledge and grace and agility and wit-and oh, the prose' Pittsburgh Tribune Review 
 
John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. His novels, stories, and nonfiction collections have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.

A modern master, the finest writer working in English

He is both a superb unraveller and a super accepter of the contradictions of the world . . . we should simply be grateful that he is there with his fine, discriminatory prose

With a fiction writer's affectionate, shaping hand, Updike explores everything from the nature of evil and the philosophical content of literature to the wreck of the Titanic and the infuriating phenomenon of unopenable parcels. 
 
Exploring the work of both his peers and his predecessors, there are numerous fascinating pieces on literature, but Updike also gives sharp-eyed impressions of the other arts, from film to photography to painting, as well as honing in, with his peerless acuity, on the incidental and overlooked details that constitute so much of our lives.

Olinger Stories

The first one-volume hardcover edition of the eleven autobiographical stories that were closest to Updike's heart. 
 
With full-cloth binding and a silk ribbon marker. EVERYMAN'S POCKET CLASSICS.

JOHN UPDIKE was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.

In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced, according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in full elsewhere until now.

Foreword

John Updike's fictional antihero, Henry Bech, could not be more different from his creator. A self-confessed composite of Norman Mailer and J.D. Salinger, he cannot help but flatter himself. In this 'foreword' Updike presents us with a conceited and satirical manifestation of what it means to be an American and a writer.

Essays and Criticism

Higher Gossip

Higher Gossip presents John Updike's last collection of essays, poems and short stories. 
 
'Gossip of a higher sort' was how the incomparable John Updike described the art of the review. Here then is the last collection of his best, most dazzling gossip. Influential reviews of Toni Morrison, John le Carré and Ann Patchett and expert critique on exhibitions of El Greco, Van Gogh and Schiele are included alongside previously uncollected short stories, poems and essays on his 'pet topics'. 
 
Following earlier prose collections More Matter and Due Considerations, Updike began compiling Higher Gossip shortly before his death in 2009. Displaying his characteristic humour and insight on subjects as varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs, make-up and his own fiction, the delightful Higher Gossip bookends a legacy of over fifty celebrated titles. 
 
Praise for Higher Gossip: 
 
'All illuminating cross-section of his whole career. It will be required reading for Updike's many fans, but it also serves as an excellent pick'n'mix introduction to his omnivorous intellectual range' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Measured, erudite, and humorous writings' Boston Globe 
 
'Updike was that rare creature: an all-around man of letters, a literary decathlete who brought to his criticism an insider's understanding of craft and technique; a first-class appreciator of talent . . . an ebullient observer [with] a contagious, boyish sense of wonder' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 
 
John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. His novels, stories, and nonfiction collections have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009. 
 
Christopher Carduff, the editor of this volume, is a member of the staff of The Library of America.

'Gossip of a higher sort' was how John Updike described the art of the review. Here, then, is the last collection of his most dazzling gossip, compiled shortly before his death in 2009. 
 
Displaying his characteristic humour and insight on subjects as varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs and make-up, the delightful Higher Gossip bookends a legacy of over fifty celebrated titles and is is essential reading for lovers of literature.

Rich in Russia

'There, in Russia five years ago, when Cuba had been taken out of the oven to cool and Vietnam was still coming to a simmer, Bech did find a quality of life - impoverished yet ceremonial, shabby yet ornate, sentimental, embattled, and avuncular-reminiscent of his neglected Jewish past.' 
 
In these two short stories, Updike's brilliant observational acuity is matched by a light, comic touch. The writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything - from his meals to his bugged hotel room - is already paid for, and then to Rumania. 
 
This book includes Rich In Russia, Foreword, Bech in Rumania, Appendix A and Appendix B.

John Updike

Owen Mackenzie's life story abounds with sin and seduction, domesticity and debauchery. His marriage to his college sweetheart is quickly followed by his first betrayal and he embarks upon a series of affairs.  His pursuit of happiness, in a succession of small towns from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, brings him to the edge of chaos, from which he is saved by a rescue that carries its own fatal price.

John Updike

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