Most people who like to read eventually decide to come up with a list of all their favorite books. I also thought it would be fun to try and compile something like that. But its tougher than I thought. There are so many books whose name brings a warm glow to the heart but not much else. I don’t remember anything more about them except fleeting imagery. I should have kept a list and written down what I thought of the book once I had read it – a little late for that. So I went out on cyberspace and saw what the others were writing as their recommended reading material. I had read most of them and then some. Some I agreed with and others I did not. But at least I got sure of one thing. I am not a deviant, I like what most people like. It was reassuring. But there are a few that didn’t make it to the list of most people but they made it to mine.
So I decided that I would write down at least two hundred books and then shorten the list to top one hundred. That way I could be sure that these are the books which actually deserve to be read; for me anyway. I wanted to include more Stephen King but decided that one is enough, he is the King for me anyway. Also more Heinlein… Oh boy, this could be a problem.
No, I won’t change it now. I’ll publish it before I want to make some more changes to this list. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these as much as I have. Just keep in mind that these are in alphabetical order and not any other. I would be working on this list for the rest of my life if I were to write it out in order of some given rank. I would never be able to decide between the first and second places, let alone the remaining ninety-eight. Hmm, maybe a bubble-sort algorithm.
Anyway, here goes for my top 100 books everyone should read. This is the first part. More next time.
- Adam Smith – Wealth of Nations
- Albert Camus – The Stranger
- Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
- Alvin Toffler – Future Shock
- Amy Tan – The Bonesetter’s Daughter
- Anonymous – Beowulf
- Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange
- Aristotle – Various Works
- Arthur Conan Doyle – Complete Sherlock Holmes
- Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha
- Arturo Perez-reverte – The Club Dumas
- Arundhati Roy – God of Small Things
- Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
- Baroness Orczy – The Scarlet Pimpernel
- Boris Pasternak – Doctor Zhivago
- Bram Stoker – Dracula
- Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho
- Carl Sagan – Cosmos
- Charles Darwin – Origin of Species
- Charles Dickens – David Copperfield
- Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
- Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
- Christoper Marlow – Dr. Faustus
- Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club
- Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
- Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon
- DH Lawrence – Sons and Lovers
- Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
- Erich Von Daniken – Chariots of the Gods
- Ernest Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms
- Ernest Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Ernest J Gaines – A Gathering of Old Men
- F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
- Franz Kafka – The Trial
- Frederik Pohl – GateWay
- Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
- Gabriel G. Marquez – 100 Years of Solitude
- Gabriel G. Marquez – Autumn of the Patriarch
- George Orwell – Nineteen Eighty-four
- Gregory Maguire – Wicked
- Guy De Maupassant – Tragedy and Comedy of Life
- Guy Sajer – The Forgotten Soldier
- H. Ryder Haggard – She
- Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
- Haruki Murakami – The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
- Henry Fielding – Tom Jones
- Henry James – The Turn of the Screw
- Herman Melville – Moby Dick
- Hermann Hesse – Siddharta
- Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf
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