Whilst researching my book report for My Ántonia, I cam across a 2004 post about the 99 best books or series of all time that I treated as a quiz as was my wont. In 2004, I’d read 16 of the 99.
So how do I do now? I have put in bold the books/series I’ve read (providing links to book reports on this blog where available) and have underlined things I know are on the shelves but are yet unread.
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishigruo
- Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
- The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
- All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- Syrup by Max (Maxx) Barry
- Emma by Jane Austen
- The Dirk Gently Series by Douglas Adams
- Ada by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
- Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, &c. by Orson Scott Card
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
- Ana Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Three Musketeers Series by Alexandre Dumas [The Three Musketeers anyway.]
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera [“Strip!”]
- Tess of D’Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
- High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
- Howard’s End by E.M. Forster
- Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbon
- My Ántonia by Willa Cather
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Doestoevesky
- What Maisie Knew by Henry James
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- Galveston by Sean Stewart
- If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- Big Trouble by Dave Barry
- Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
- Villette by Charolotte Bronte
- The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
- Phineas Finn Phineas Finn Redux by Anthony Trollope
- Darlington’s Fall by Brad Leithauser
- This Real Night by Rebecca West
- The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
- Summer by Edith Wharton
- The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Cecilia by Frances Burney
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
- Mr. Scarborough’s Family by Anthony Trollope
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
- A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
- The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
- Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
- The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Baudolino by Umberto Eco
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- The Manticore by Robertson Davies
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammitt
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
- The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
- The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
- The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
- Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
- The Discworld Saga by Terry Pratchett
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
- Possession by A.S. Byatt
- The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
- God Knows by Joseph Heller
- The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert Heinlein
- 95. Candide by Voltaire
- The Vagabond by Colette
- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
- The Fencing Master by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
It looks like I’m up to about 28 of 99.
I don’t know how much progress I’ll make between now and 2040, but I have a greater chance of reading the classical literature than the 20th century stuff, especially the children’s books or Colombian magic realism.
