Is there a better companion to a global stay-at-home recommendation than a list of recommended books to read “before you die” . . . or resume normal activities?

TCK Publishing has 100 books they think everyone ought to read, and it’s no surprise that Updike’s Rabbit, Run made the list. It was the book that brought Updike fame in 1960, a response to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that tried to show that, yes, you can “run” or road-trip to your heart’s delight as you seek to find America or yourself (whichever comes first), but that there are casualties, people you hurt when you leave them behind.

In selecting Rabbit, Run, TCK writes, “The story shows former high school basketball player Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom who, at 26 years old, is trapped in an unexciting sales job and a passionless marriage. It traces his attempts to leave these constraints on his life.”

Updike was awarded a Guggenheim to finish the book, and its publication was celebrated roughly every ten years later with another Rabbit installment:  Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, and (in Licks of Love), the novella “Rabbit Remembered.” Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest each won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.