After much debate, Amazon book editors released a list of their 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime in the fall of 2014. The list skews contemporary, with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice the oldest work on the list. It also includes multiple genres spanning both adult and children’s literature. 100 Books To Read In A Lifetime.
Many of the books are 20th century classics or recent bestsellers — the oldest book on the list is Jane Austen’s 1813 masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. It also spans multiple genres, with adult fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and young adult novels such as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter making the list.
Sara Nelson, Editorial Director of Print and Kindle Books at Amazon, said in a press release, “With 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime, we set out to build a roadmap of a literary life without making it feel like a homework assignment…Over many months, the team passionately debated and defended the books we wanted on this list. In other words, we applied plenty of the bookish equivalent of elbow-grease, and we can’t wait to hear what customers have to say about our final picks.”
The titles I’ve read are boldfaced. How many have you read? Any that you’ve read that I haven’t that you’d especially recommend?
1984 by George Orwell
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney
Dune by Frank Herbert
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Color of Water by James McBride
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr
The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster NOTE: This is my favorite favorite children’s book!
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Shining by Stephen King
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak