100 (Fiction) Books to Read in a Lifetime

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From Abe Books:

We’ve seen these lists before – from Amazon to the Telegraph to Time Magazine and beyond. Plenty of folks have lists of the 100 best books of all time, the 100 books you should read, and on. And beautifully, despite overlap, they are all different. The glorious subjectivity of art means that no two of these lists should ever be exactly alike. So this is ours, our special snowflake of a list, born out of our passion for books. We kept it to fiction this time. Some of the expected classics are there, alongside some more contemporary fare. There is some science fiction, some YA, and above all else, some unforgettable stories.

Do any of the included titles shock you? Are you outraged by any omissions? Let us know what makes the cut for your top 100 novels.

Link to the rest at Abe Books

The first three on the list are 1984, The Paying Guests and A Tale of Two Cities.

PG highlighted The Paying Guests because he’s never read it, having lead a sheltered life. Some of the expected titles are on the list, but also some that PG might not have considered.

 

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8 thoughts on “100 (Fiction) Books to Read in a Lifetime”

  1. I’ve read the majority of the books on the list but by no means all of them. Once upon a time I might have felt a desire to read at least some of the rest. No longer. I find that my desire to read books because someone has put them on a list or thinks they are important or worthwhile or must reads has reached zero. These days the primary value of such lists is discovery. I came across nothing in this list that I hadn’t read that I want to read.

  2. Because PG took a look at “The Paying Guests”, I did as well.

    When I open up a book in the Amazon store, I glance at the summary, skip over the blurbs, and take a good look at the review distribution. The actual average score isn’t as important to me as the shape of the curve plotted by the 5 lines that show the number of each star of review.

    In an good book, the top lines are significantly longer than the bottom lines. No book is immune to some bad reviews, but a good book will show a significant curve down from many 5 and 4 star reviews down to comparatively few 2 and 1 star reviews. For an example, look up “The Guns of August” on Amazon.

    For the reverse, look up “Aftermath: Star Wars: Journey to The Force Awakens” by Chuck Wendig. This famously terrible book has as many 1 star reviews as it does both 5 and 4 star reviews, causing a reverse curve. Reading those one star reviews is a great way to pass a cold winters eve.

    “The Paying Guests” exhibit a curve that sets off all sorts of warning bells for me – an even distribution, little or no curve, essentially a ‘wall’ that drops straight down from 5 star to 1 star. When this happens I look carefully at the low star reviews.

    In this particular case, the 1 and 2 star reviewers consistently say that they could not bring themselves to finish the book. Hundreds of people. It’s a bad bad sign.

    Oh, and John Green makes the cut too? This is more like “100 books we read and liked”, not “100 best books.”

    I agree – MYMV.

    • I was one of those who couldn’t finish The Paying Guests. I found it too predictable, and it became tiresome. Which is unfortunate, as Sarah Waters’ work is generally quite good.

  3. A wonderful list of books that I have read half of. I don’t mean I’ve read 50% of the books on the list, more that of those I have tried to read I’ve mostly quit half way through (or less) because of boredom or irritation.

    It’s nice to see some children’s books on the list, and ha, I did finish most of those while actually a child, although I’ve never managed to get through a John Green novel, perhaps I was too old to enjoy him by the time he appeared on the scene.

    It does always seem a bit lazy to list more than one book by the same author on a top 100 list. Like Dickens is great and all, but surely he’s not so great as to be worthy of two books on the greatest ever list. Especially if one of them is Great Expectations. Ditto for the other double ups.

  4. The problem with all these “must read” books is the assumption that there is some universal standard of literary merit that everyone will instantly recognize.
    The idea that tastes and interests will vary person to person just doesn’t register, much less the idea that one person’s engrossing read is the next’s crushing bore or empty fluff.

    Axiomatic thinking.

    This particular list at least features a few contemporary titles and a couple of fantasies and SF titles but it still skews way too heavily to general fiction. And has virtually no non-fiction.

    As any right-thinking person knows, any proper must-read list has to be at least 50% SF, 25% Romance, 20% fantasy, mysteries and thrillers, and 5% non-fiction. 😉

    • Felix, I think you are being a little unfair in this case.

      My take on the limited commentary that comes with this list is that they don’t really assume some universal standard of literary merit (though I would not disagree that this assumption is implicit in many such lists). They do say it is limited to fiction this time so one should not complain about non fiction’s absence, though it would be a sorry lifetime’s reading if one only read fiction.

      In fact, the variety of titles suggest to me that it was put together by a committee or readers whose tastes and interest are widely variable. And you are wrong about SF and fantasy; by my count there are about 25 such titles in the list which is a pretty good score (though I think romance, detective and historical fiction are badly treated). There is not a large overlap with the 25 SFF books I would have picked though.

      They even have three books (at least) which fail modern PC standards: A Town Like Alice, Gone With the Wind and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They deserve some credit for this.

      And clearly I’m not a “right-thinking” person as I’d not include those mysteries and thrillers in your 20% group (other then Sherlock Holmes of course).

      • I just think the whole exercise is pointless. And arrogant.
        Hence the joke.

        Anyway, if I actually did a list of 100 books to recommend 80+ would be SF variants. (But there would be two books of baseball anecdotes.)

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