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A.Word.A.Day
Check out my favorite daily treat, A.Word.A.Day : The magic and music of words.
My List of 100
Inspired by this meme, I’ve decided to put together my own list (in no particular order) of 100 most important/should read/best books. I invite you to play the same game: how many have you read? or started? I look forward to your feedback.
Enjoy.
1. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
4. The Odyssey, Homer
5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
6. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
7. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare
9. My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor
10. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
11. The Oresteia, Aeschylus
12. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe
13. China Boy, Gus Lee
14. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
15. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
16. Life in the Iron Mills, Rebecca Harding Davis
17. Pretty Good for a Girl, Leslie Heywood
18. Ten Points, Bill Strickland
19. The BFG, Roald Dahl
20. Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
21. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
22. The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
23. The Great Gatsy, F. Scott Fitzgerald
24. The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power, Travis Hugh Culley
25. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich
26. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
27. The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
28. The Princess Bride, William Goldman
29. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
30. The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court, Peter Irons
31. We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
32. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
33. Hatchet, Gary Paulsen
34. The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
35. Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
36. Lysistrata, Aristophanes
37. 1984, George Orwell
38. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
39. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
40. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
41. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
43. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
44. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
45. Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck
46. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
47. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
48. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
49. The Reckoning, Sharon Kay Penman
50. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
51. Little House in the Big Woods (and really the whole Little House series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
52. Dethroning the King, Julie Macintosh
53. Fire Season, Philip Connors
54. Hemingway’s Boat, Paul Hendrickson
55. A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman, Alice Kessler-Harris
56. The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
57. Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Hali Felt
58. Still Alice, Lisa Genova
…if you’ve noticed this list does not reach 100 just yet, never fear. I’m comfortable with that. I think that if I live, and keep reading, long enough (hope hope!) we’ll get there.
15 Responses
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The “BBC” 100 list | Pagesofjulia's Blog, on December 21, 2010 at 4:14 pm said:
[...] just for fun. Skip to content HomeAbout JuliaBooks I Wish to ReadMy FavoritesMy List of 100 ← Life According to Literature several pots on the fire [...]
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Fire Season by Philip Connors « Pagesofjulia's Blog, on May 19, 2011 at 8:04 am said:
[...] My List of 100 [...]
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Jillian ♣, on August 2, 2011 at 3:03 pm said:
I DEFINITELY recommend The Little House books and Little Women!! I read them for the first time last year.
(Have you read Jane Eyre? A must read.)
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pagesofjulia, on August 3, 2011 at 8:20 am said:
Hi Jillian! I did read Jane Eyre, but I’m in the minority: it didn’t stand out to me. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t find it remarkable. To each her own. In my book, Wuthering Heights was the Bronte masterpiece.
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Jillian ♣, on August 3, 2011 at 5:52 pm said:
I plan to reread Jane Eyre. I have a feeling I’ll continue to adore it. It was my first classic and turned me on to all the others I’m reading.
Wuthering Heights was awesome but difficult! I preferred Jane Eyre and Villette, though I respect Wuthering Heights. I think I’d need to read it SEVERAL more times to appreciate all that is there. For me, it felt like a whole lot of really loud noise that might have been awesome if I’d become accustomed to all the sound. Too much all at once, but unraveling it could be an adventure. I wish Emily had written another.
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pagesofjulia, on August 3, 2011 at 7:18 pm said:
Oh gosh, me too so much: wish Emily had written more. Isn’t it interesting to hear different viewpoints? I know I’m in the minority when it comes to Jane vs Wuthering Heights. It fascinates me. I can’t believe you found Jane easier! We’re a diverse world, aren’t we?
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Simon T, on October 5, 2011 at 10:31 am said:
I’ve read 14! Interestingly, your list includes some of my favourites (Pride and Prejudice, Alice, 1984 etc) and some that I didn’t like at all (Kevin, Gatsby)… curious!
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pagesofjulia, on October 5, 2011 at 10:52 am said:
Kevin certainly has folks that go both ways, and I can understand it. But I wonder what you didn’t like about Gatsby? The unlikeable characters?
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nan, on October 8, 2011 at 7:43 am said:
I’ve read 25 of these — and I recommend Jane Eyre, too, though coming it to the first time as an adult, rather an impressionable pre-adolescent to adolescent, may be a very different experience. I loved it in those years and later, in a few lonely, single years living far from home I read it once a year on Christmas and found it immensely comforting. More recently, I just wait for the TV and movie adaptations every couple of years … I read Wuthering Heights once, as an adult, and didn’t like it much — found the characters kind of annoying. Perhaps by that time I was too confirmed in my Jane allegiance …
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Kelly Kathleen Ferguson, on November 25, 2011 at 1:35 pm said:
Hey! I wish I had a more appropriate way to contact you about a review query (never mind that I feel a bit sheepish about trying to elbow in ahead of Anna Karenina), but looking at your 100 list I wondered if my might be interested in taking a look at My Life as Laura. My website is below or you can check out my Amazon page. I’m Googley. I met Bonnie Jo Campbell at Montana and she called me “Laura Ferguson” in her blog. Ha! Your bookshelves look full but if you have the time/inclination I’m happy to send a review copy. You also know there’s a Laurapalooza, right? Thanks, KKF.
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pagesofjulia, on November 28, 2011 at 8:39 am said:
Hello Kelly! Lol about Anna K.
Thanks for stopping by, and maybe I should take your hint about a review contact… I’m sending you an email about your Laura book. Thanks for thinking of me!Reply
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Lura, on July 25, 2012 at 10:01 am said:
Great list! Thanks for sharing. I’ve read quite a few and I’ve added a few to my list.
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pagesofjulia, on July 25, 2012 at 11:15 am said:
Cool!
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Darrell, on March 16, 2013 at 6:23 pm said:
I’m reading Travels with Charley now.
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pagesofjulia, on March 17, 2013 at 6:20 am said:
Good! I hope you love it!
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