Swiped from Lemming’s Progress.
Bold = books you’ve read
italics = books you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole or wish you hadn’t.
1. The Davinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3.To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
(I have a daughter named Harper Lee Masson, if that tells you anything.)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
(I was a huge Tolkien fan. When the movies came out, I couldn’t believe how much detail I remembered from the books, seared into my memory from multiple readings, mostly as a teen.)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
(I read this one in something like 2 days one college summer. I know I read one day from about 10 a.m. until 4 a.m.)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
(I know this one is supposed to be a classic, but to me it was basically “Holden Caulfield is a whiny little brat. The end.”)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
(I can’t believe I wasn’t introduced to Steinbeck in high school. This was my first Steinbeck novel, and I didn’t read it until maybe 2002 or so.)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
(Another adolescent favorite. Re-reading this and my favorite of the series, God-Emperor of Dune, I was a little surprised to see how much my political and philosphical views had been colored by my early readings.)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) gift from a student
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
(There are some really good parts and some really bad parts — I guess that’s what you get with a book written by committee over hundreds of years.)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
(Just a great adventure tale.)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51.The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
(Loved the book. Unfortunately, I’ve come to associate Card’s stories with his wingnut political views.)
54.Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
(I didn’t much like Crime and Punishment, but The Brothers Karamozov is one of my all time favorite books, so I thought I’d give it a plug.)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65.Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69 Les Miserables (Hugo)
70.The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) (French and English)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78.The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79.The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80.Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100.Ulysses (James Joyce)
Why discourage people from reading Jane Austen?
I just didn’t care for Pride & Prejudice at all. I was 16 or 17 when I read it, and mostly what I remember is a bunch of discussions about how much money various individuals had.
I liked it.
My favorite Steinbeck was “Winter of Discontent.”
Be glad you didnt read Gatsby – FSF was no Hemingway. So I’m obviously disappointed in the lack of Hemingway. I’m about halfway through his total works – and maybe if I ever find a more relaxed summer (just one damn vacation) I’ll push it down to 3/4.
OK Doug, I am a easy mark when it comes to lists. Going through your comments more fully, I totally agree with your comment about “The Catcher in the Rye”. Whoever compiled this list though should be taken to task for leaving out “The Canterbury Tales”.
Pride and Prejudice was a very colorful film recently presented on TV,but reading Jane Austen otherwise would require a pre-education in early 19th century social etiquette to appreciate the characters,and the social taboos they had to avoid ..It’s great escape literature ,for someone who appreciates the milieu.
John Steinbeck has been called a ‘socialist’by many conservatives,even today,but maybe his writings will become popular again in light of the immigration issues now being widely discussed.’Illegals for exploitation’ has a positive ring again…There would probably be some opposition to assigning Steinbeck in HS as required reading ( depending on the culture of the area) ‘Of Mice and Men’ is the most appropriate for HS probably, because of the very interesting relationship development of the 2 main characters.Some of his episodes in novels like Tortilla Flat are very earthy,maybe too much for general HS assignment,but I’ve always thought kids should read anything they understand and can put into persective.Isn’t that what education is?
Haven’t read many of these myself.
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) (original, not the expanded version)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
45. The Bible (big chunks of it, anyway)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
I don’t get around to reading much fiction. Probably the only significant novels I’ve read in the past several years have been Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall, Hannibal by Thomas Harris, and Lake Woebegon Days by Garrison Keillor. By contrast, I’ve read eleven non-fiction books so far this year. I have a pretty strong bias. :)
I expect to be getting around to The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin in the next few months, however.
There are a couple on the list above that are on my list to get to, however, including The Handmaid’s Tale and Catch-22. I get the feeling I’ve missed the appropriate window for Catcher in the Rye and (not mentioned above) On the Road by Kerouac. Or maybe not. Comments welcome. :)
Finally, I’ll note that anyone who enjoyed the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy should definitely not deprive themselves of Adams’s two Dirk Gently novels. They’re both gems, but are often overlooked because they’re not part of the Hitchhiker series — and that’s a shame.
I love the title of the one Dirk Gently novel, “The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.” (But, I also like “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”)
I’d also definitely recommend Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. It’s on the order of 2,400 pages long, but I very much enjoyed both the fictional aspects of the story and the non-fiction elements of the late 17th, early 18th centuries and the rise of science and modern economics.
One word on behalf of fiction: Fiction is a great teacher of values,especially in the formative years. That’s why social conservatives,especially, are so much into banning books,literature as well as science books,that stray ‘off-message’. Literature undermines Scripture, in their view.
It’s Dark Ages thinking all over again.
That reminds me of something I posted over at our family blog a couple of months ago:
I was sort of surprised not to see Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak) not on the list, not that I am any expert. I had to read that when I was in high school for an English class. I had already seen the movie prior to having had to read it for school. Mastering the Russian names was a challenge. Still, the story of the Russian Revolution as a backdrop to a really cool love story, in spite of having to learn the Russian names, gave a great insight to early 20th century Russia.
Doug,
Our minds seem to make or accept associations very, very eary, like throwing rocks/fun…hurting ducks/bad. Teaching moral concepts that way with little stories is more effective than starting with a rule. Kids instinctively think ‘rules are to be broken if you can’and you have to keep giving re-enforcement and assigning punishment..But there comes also situations to make ironclad rules,just for the kid’s own safety,but that’s another whole topic. .