Really, these 100 books? You sure?
I see these lists sometimes of the 100 Books That Everyone Should Read, and I usually ignore them. But earlier this month, for whatever reason, I decided to dig into one to see how I would measure up. As an unrepentant English major and English/writing teacher, I felt some strange need to see how the literary prognostications of a business publication would compare to my own reading history. Here are my results from their list of one hundred titles:
These I read cover-to-cover and remember fairly well:
- “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
- “1984” by George Orwell
- “The Lord of the Rings” (1-3) by J.R.R. Tolkien
- “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White
- “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien
- “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
- “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
- “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse
- “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
- “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wadrobe” by C.S. Lewis
- “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
- “The Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
- “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare
- “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams
- “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare
- “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle
- “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein
- “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger
- “The Odyssey” by Homer
- “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut
- “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
- “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare
- “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
- “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
- “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley
- “The Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis
- “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll
- “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote
- “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
- “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez
- “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
These I started and didn’t finish, or only read parts:
- “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot
- “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
- “The Holy Bible: King James Version”
These I saw as a movie, TV, or stage play adaptation— I know, that’s cheating . . .
- “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd
- “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
- “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett
- “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
- “The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larrson
- “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell
- “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak
- “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
- “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman
- “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl
- “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck
- “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- “Anne of Green Gables” by L.M. Montgomery
- “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens
These I’m certain that I’ve read, but to be honest, I can’t remember specifics:
- “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Anne Frank
- “Night” by Elie Wiesel
- “Animal Farm” by George Orwell
- “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain
These I’ve never read, but I’d like to:
- “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls
- “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
- “The Story of My Life” by Helen Keller
- “The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel” by Barbara Kingsolver
These I know about and am not opposed to reading— I just haven’t . . .
- “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
- “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
- “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte
- “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins
- “The Giver” by Lois Lowry
- “Wuthering Heights” Emily Bronte
- “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
- “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas
- “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith
- “The Stand” by Stephen King
- “Enders Game” by Orson Scott Card
- “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy
- “Watership Down” by Richard Adams
- “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden
- “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier
- “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (#3) by Arthur Conan Doyle
- “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
- “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel
- “Catching Fire” by Suzanne Collins
- “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen
- “The Good Earth (House of Earth #1)” by Pearl S. Buck
- “Mockingjay (Hunger Games #3)” by Suzanne Collins
- “And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie
- “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough
- “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving
These I’d never heard of:
- “Cutting For Stone” by Abraham Verghese
- “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster
- “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger
- “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon
- “Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge” by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
- “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett
These I’ve never read it and, at this stage in my life, don’t intend to:
- “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling
- “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling
- “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” by J.K. Rowling
- “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” by J.K. Rowling
- “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
- “A Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin
Once I was done remembering, sifting, and assessing, this exercise revealed something that surprised me. Apparently, I’ve only read barely more than one-third of the “books” that everyone should read. Everyone, really? Of course, I also have some objections to the seriously flawed reading list, if it truly is for everyone:
- The list contains no William Faulkner novels at all!
- There are hardly any African-American authors here.
- Although Harry Potter novels and Hunger Games novels are counted separately, all three Lord of the Rings books, the whole Narnia series counts, and the whole King James Bible each only count as one “book”!
- The lack of current literary writers, like Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, and Don DeLillo, is auspicious.
- Another couple of inarguably great novels are missing: Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
- The list only contains two poetry selections, “The Raven” and “The Odyssey,” and no Beat Generation poetry at all. Hello . . . “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg!
So, my dissatisfied response has been to make my own list, which I hope everyone will click: 101 Books.