Read All of Amazon's "100 Books to Read in a Lifetime"

Status: 32/100 (32%)

I learned my alphabet when I was 2, and started reading when I was 3. It has become my favorite pastime since, that to go anywhere without carrying a book feels like a violation of the law. Even though I quit uni prematurely, I have never allowed myself to stop reading or learning. Books have been my constant companion. My preferred genres are memoir/autobiography, travelogue, and realistic fiction. I don't read much fantasy, horror or thrillers, and I generally steer clear of romance and sci-fi.

Here are the best 100 books as voted by the Amazon Books editors, as of January 2018. Since the polls are open forever, the list will be ever-changing, and I will use that to my advantage. Admittedly there are books in here that I don't feel compelled to read--some great works of literature are just beyond my level of comprehension. I will replace those with other books that make the Amazon's list at some other time in the future.

 1.  To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

       

 2.  Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

       

 3.  Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)

       

 4.  Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)

 5.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling)

      

 6.  Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)
 7.  The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
 8.  Charlotte's Web (Garth Williams)

 9.  Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

10. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

11. Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
12. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
13. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
14. Animal Farm (George Orwell)
15. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

      

16. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
17. The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

18. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
19. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
20. Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
21. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
22. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

23. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

24. Night (Elie Wiesel)
25. Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)

26. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
27. A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle)
28. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
29. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
30. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
31. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

32. Breath, Eyes, Memory (Edwidge Danticat)
33. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
34. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
35. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

       

36. Where the Sidewalk Ends (Shel Silverstein)
37. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
38. The Giver (Lois Lowry)

       

39. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

40. Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
41. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
42. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
43. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
44. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)

       

45. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)

46. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
47. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)

       

48. The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
49. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
50. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
51. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
52. In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)
53. Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)

54. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

55. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
56. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
57. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
58. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
59. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
60. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

61. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
62. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Alex Haley)
63. The Old Man and The Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
64. On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

       

65. The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
66. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)

67. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

68. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
69. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)

70. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
71. Dracula (Bram Stoker)
72. The Liars' Club (Mary Karr)
73. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat (Oliver Sacks)

74. Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)
75. The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe)
76. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

77. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
78. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
79. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
80. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
81. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
82. Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
83. Celebrating Silence (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)
84. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
85. And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
86. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

87. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
88. The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls)

89. Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)
90. The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
91. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
92. Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)
93. The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
94. A Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah)
95. Beloved (Toni Morrison)
96. Helen Keller: The Story of My Life (Alan M. Dershowitz)

97. The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster)
98. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L.Konigsburg)
99. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

100. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)