Great Reads

My brilliant friend Lindsay recently posted a great list of books on her blog, and I was inspired to use that list as a launching pad for my own list.  It is much more difficult than I would have thought, as I am an avid reader and voracious student specifically of the Classics.  I love poetry, plays, philosophical treatises…oh heck, I just love books!

Here are the books on Lindsay’s list (the first 100) and then an additional 50 I have added.  I’d love to see what books YOU would suggest for the ongoing list AND, which books are on your list!

Key

• BOLD = Read it
• Stike-through = not interested
• Italics Underlined = read part of it or in process

1 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2 The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Editor), Joseph Smith (Translator)
3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
5 The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
6 Holy Bible
7 1984 by George Orwell
8 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
9 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
10 The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11 Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
12 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
13 Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
14 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
15 The Giver by Lois Lowry
16 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
17 Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
18 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
19 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Robin Buss (Translator)
20 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
21 Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
22 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood (Introduction)
23 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
24 The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
25 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
26 The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
27 New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
28 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
29 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
30 The Princess Bride by William Goldman
31 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
32 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
33 Animal Farm by George Orwell
34 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
35 Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
36 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
37 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
38 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
39 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Peter Sis (Illustrator)
40 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
41 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
42 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
43 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
44 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
45 Watership Down by Richard Adams
46 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
47 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
48 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
49 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
50 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
51 Dune by Frank Herbert
52 The Odyssey by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
53 Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
54 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
55 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
56 The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
57 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
58 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
59 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
60 The Complete Works of William Shakspeare
61 Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
62 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
63 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
64 The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
65 Night by Elie Wiesel
66 The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
67 The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
68 Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
69 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear (Translator)
70 Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
71 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
72 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
73 Dracula by Bram Stoker
74 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
75 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
76 The Iliad by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
77 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
78 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Henry Gifford (editor)
79 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
80 Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Richard Andrews (Editor)
80 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
82 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
83 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
84 The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
85 Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
86 The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
87 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
88 Emma by Jane Austen, Fiona J. Stafford (Editor)
89 On the Road by Jack Kerouac
90 The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
91 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
92 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
93 The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
94 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
95 A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
96 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
97 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
98 The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
99 Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
100 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

 

My additions (in no particular order):

1.  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
2.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
3.  Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
4.  Beloved by Toni Morrison
5.  Essential Rumi by Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
6.  The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
7.  M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
8.  Holy Quran by Allah
9.  Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
10.  Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
11.  Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
12.  The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
13.  The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
14.   The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
15.   The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
16.   Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
17.   The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
18.   The Art of War by Sun Tzu
19.   Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
20.  Beowulf
21.   The Republic by Plato
22.   The Crucible by Arthur Miller
23.   Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
24.   Roots by Alex Haley
25.   The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
26.   A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
27.   The Tibetan Book of the Dead
28.   Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
29.   Paradise Lost by John  Milton
30.   James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
31.   Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
32.   The Aeneid by Publius Vergilius Maro
33.   Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
34.   Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
35.   The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
36.   The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
37.   The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
38.   Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence 
39.   Walden by Henry David Thoreau
40.   Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
41.   The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
42.   The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
43.   Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
44.   Seven Valleys and Four Valleys by Baha'u'llah
45.   How to WIn Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie  
46.   The Kama Sutra
47.   Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
48.   Watership Down by Richard Adams
49.   Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
50.   Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
 

Comments

[jan]

oh my gosh....
that;s one hell of a list
i'll give it a try tho! LOL
what else do i have to do right?!?! :P

[Lindsay Teague]

my mom was saying this morning..."no hemmingway on your list". I thought I'd add a couple books in place of the ones I have no intention of reading. Your additional list is perfect! Thanks!

L

[e]

Great lists - I was reading LT's earlier. I think I have a few to add. I'd like to make a big running master list too. Once I'm finished with school I have my mind set on reading some classics that I haven't tackled yet.

[Diane Baldo]

You must have really liked the Old Man and the Sea!! You have it twice!
I found the Grapes of Wrath a tough one....I kept forgetting who was born to whom, etc!!

Very fun list.
Hope you are well!!

[Kristy]

Hi Kim, actually I think your friends list started from a BBC survey, the list is pretty similar! Here is the BBC list with some different books included that you may be interested. The original list was based on classics and contemporary books of note. There are some childrens books in the list too. The X's mark the ones I have actually read.! Still a way to go.....
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

....
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag others and pass it on. If I tagged you, it is because I think you love to read, like me!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible ()
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ()
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk (X)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (X)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (X)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (X)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (X)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (X)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ()
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (X)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (X)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ()
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ()
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ()
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ()
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (X)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ()
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath ()
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (X)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ()
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (X)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ()
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ()
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ()
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (X )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ()
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

39/100 - obviously I need to read a bit more!

[Pearl Maple]

Wow, that is a list and a half, but lots of good things there too chose from. Summer holidays are a great time to catch up on a bit of reading.

[Julie B.]

Here's a few more to add to your list:

Galileo's Daughter - Dava Sobel
Longitude - Dava Sobel
The Planets - Dava Sobel
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
On The Mesa - John Nichols
The Milagro Beanfield War - John Nichols
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Talk Before Sleep - Elizabeth Berg
Hard Laughter - Anne Lamott
Banana Rose - Natalie Goldberg
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
The Shipping News - Annie Prolux

That's just off the top of my head...