There are probably 100 lists out there of the “best” 100 books.
I came across this one over at BOOKRIOT: From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books by Jeff O’Neal.
It’s a good approach, because he isn’t saying these are the only books that matter, or even that they’re the best 100– just that if you read these 100, you’d be set to join the literary discussion at the big kids’ table.
Here’s his list, in alphabetical order:
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Beowulf
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
- Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- The Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Candide by Voltaire
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
- The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
- The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- Faust by Goethe
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- The Gospels
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
- Howl by Allen Ginsberg
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
- The Iliad by Homer
- The Inferno by Dante
- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exepury
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Oedipus, King by Sophocles
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- The Pentateuch
- Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Slaughterhouse-5 by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
- The Stand by Stephen King
- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
- Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
- Watchmen by Alan Moore
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- 1984 by George Orwell
- 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Not everyone appreciated his choices. The article generated over 100 comments about:
- why these books got picked,
- how few of the chosen titles many of us have read (only 36 for me),
- suggestions for missing titles,
- who gets to say which are the right books, and
- can we be “well-read” if we’ve read the wrong books?
Seems like he made a lot of people either angry or ashamed. Come on, people! Top 100s can be a great reference, but we don’t have to live and die by them.
Am I really missing out by skipping Fifty Shades of Grey? Doubt it.
What about On the Road by Jack Kerouac? It’s on almost every list out there, but I will never be stoned enough or bored enough to finish the thing. Does that make me illiterate?
Nah. My “score” of 36 on O’Neal’s list just means our tastes overlap about 36% of the time. If reading part of On the Road or any other book counts, I’m well over 40. Including alternate titles by the authors on his list, that rises to 59. Champ!
Whichever way, I think we’d have plenty to talk about over our big kids’ lunch.
*Do you know a good list of best modern books/authors? There’s more consensus on the classics, but newer lists seem arbitrary. The mods are where I’m lacking– recommendations appreciated!
I think a lot of the angry people are ashamed people unwilling to admit it. I actually try to stick primarily to classics and ancient mythology. It feels like the purest inspiration for fantasy writing, and everything else is just a rehashing or diluting of the originals.
There is nothing new under the sun. Why do we need to read modern books? With that said, I would definitely say Game of Thrones. He’s a genius when it comes to writing. Neil Gaiman is ranted and raved about as a genius, but sadly I haven’t read anything by him yet. Is Flannery O’Conner out of this category now? Is her writing too old? I love her work.
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I need to get Game of Thrones on my TBR list. AND Flannery. Thanks for that!
You’re smart to stick with the classics, and it shows in your writing.
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I think it’s hard to be sure of the “100 books that you must read” or that have been read or are all-time classics. Everyone has their own opinion and what one person thinks is the greatest book ever, another could think it’s the worst book they have ever read. I love this article from book riot about the over-lap between most loved books and most hated books: http://bookriot.com/2013/06/25/the-good-the-bad-and-the-unread-taking-a-closer-look-at-reader-picks/
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I often love what others hate and hate what others love!
Thanks for the link– sounds like a fun article.
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I have read the Canterbury Tales with my students and… that’s it! this is a good list, although by now, I have a genre I prefer…however, I wish I had taken advantage when some of these were assigned in school I do have that debt with my cultural baggage: read classics! 🙂 Alexandra
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Canterbury Tales is a good start. What’s your preferred genre?
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Biography, definitely 🙂 in Spanish it’s BIOGRAFIA NOVELADA something like biographical novel, what would that be in English?
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I’ve read 35! 🙂
All lists are controversial and subjective but I think, this one, overall, is not that bad. I’m ok with all the classics included (I can’t stand “On the road” either but it’s an iconic book and it deserves a spot), but I disagree with some of contemporany books, for example, 50 shades, Gone Girl or The Hunger Games? I wouldn’t have included them because In my opinion time is the only one that can tell if a book deserve a place or not in a top 100 list and those are too recent, but, like I said before any list is subjective.
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35! You and I can sit together proudly! =*)
Totally agree on the contemporary books– they’re hot now, but may not stand the test of time.
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I’d add anything by Kate Atkinson. My favourite, and the first book of hers I ever read, was Behind the Scenes in the Museum; also loved Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger and Room by Emma Donoghue.
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Awesome. I had Life After Life for a week but didn’t end up reading it…life after life got in the way!
All three of these deserve a spot on my mod list. Thanks so much for commenting!
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