100 Great Books

I've come across several 100-great-books lists on various blogs, and I think it's a great idea: read 100 books (fiction or nonfiction) that you feel you ought to have read already, setting an end-date of five or seven (or ten?) years from now. They don't all have to be classics per se, but reading them can fill in the gaps where your literary education is concerned.I decided that at least 20% of the books on my list should be translated works (which are starred on my list below). I intend to consume several of these books on CD/podcast, because let's face it--if I don't "read" while I knit, it's probably going to take me well over 10 years to get through this list. I also don't think I'm going to get around to reading any doorstoppers like Ulysses, Herodotus' Histories, de Toqueville's Democracy in America, or War and Peace; I'll read them eventually, but in the meantime I'd rather read the Joyce and Tolstoy I already have on hand (Portrait of the Artist and a collection of the shorter novels and stories, respectively). I'm also thinking about making somewhat shorter lists for plays and poetry.If you're thinking about making a list yourself, check out the 'best' lists at the Modern Library, Waterstones, The Guardian, and San José State University (that one's aptly titled 'The Guilt List').1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe2. Foundation by Isaac Asimov3. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin4. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac *5. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (Librivox)6. Beowulf7. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio *8. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges *9. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury10. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Librivox)11. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov *12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess13. Possession by A.S. Byatt14. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote15. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson16. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather17. Cathedral by Raymond Carver18. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes *19. The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever20. The Vagabond by Colette *21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad22. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper23. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier24. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (Librivox)25. The Divine Comedy by Dante *26. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (Librivox)27. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Librivox)28. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick29. Hard Times by Charles Dickens (Librivox)30. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser31. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky * (Librivox)32. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco *33. Middlemarch by George Eliot (Librivox)34. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison35. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner36. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding37. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert * (Librivox)38. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster39. The Magus by John Fowles40. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl41. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons42. Neuromancer by William Gibson43. Lord of the Flies by William Golding44. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Librivox)45. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene46. Hunger by Knut Hamsun *47. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (Librivox)48. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway49. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse *50. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban51. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston52. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce53. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka *54. On the Road by Jack Kerouac55. The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston56. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling57. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence58. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing59. If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi *60. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis61. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Librivox)62. The Giver by Lois Lowry63. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer64. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez *65. The Magician by Somerset Maugham66. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller67. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami *68. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch69. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky70. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien71. A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor72. One Thousand and One Nights (a.k.a. Arabian Nights) *73. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon74. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque*75. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth76. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie77. The Little Prince by Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry78. Blindness by José Saramago *79. Rob Roy by Walter Scott (Librivox)80. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Librivox)81. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight82. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith83. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn *84. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck85. The Red and the Black by Stendhal *86. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (audio version, Forgotten Classics)87. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (Librivox)88. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (Librivox)89. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau90. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy *91. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne * (Librivox)92. The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas *93. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut94. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells95. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty96. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe97. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (Librivox)98. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf99. Native Son by Richard Wright100. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin *The plan is to annotate this list periodically, blogging brief(ish) 'book appreciations' as I go. Feel free to leave me more recommendations --the master list is actually much longer!First up: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (I just finished it this week).