100 Books for the Well-Read Human
(results of question posed to members of school librarian listserve)
1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn/ Smith, Betty
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/ Twain, Mark
3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland/ Carroll, Lewis
4. All over but the Shoutin’/ Bragg, Rick
5. Always Running: LA Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. Rodriguez/ Luis
6. Anna Karenina /Tolstoy, Leo
7. Any Small Goodness/ Johnson, Tony
8. Aristotle’s Poetics
9. At the back of the north wind/ MacDonald, George
10. Beloved/ Morrison, Toni
11. Bible
12. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee/ Brown, Dee
13. Call it Courage/ Sperry, Armstrong
14. Cay, Taylor/ Theodore
15. Charlotte's Web/ White, E. B.
16. Childhood’s End/ Clark, Arthur
17. Cold Mountain/ Frazier, Charles
18. Color Purple/ Walker, Alice
19. Conservative Mind/ Kirk, Russell
20. Dark is Rising/ Cooper, Susan
21. Diary of Anne Frank/ Frank, Anne
22. Don Quixote/ Cervantes
23. Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology/ Judson
24. Five children and It (and sequels)/ Nesbit, E.
25. French Lieutenant's Woman/ Fowles, John
26. Giver/ Lowry, Lois
27. Golden Bough/ Frazer, Sir James
28. Golden Compass/ Pullman, Phillip
29. Grapes of Wrath/ Steinbeck, John
30. Great Gatsby/ Fitzgerald, F. Scott
31. Gulliver’s Travels/ Swift, Jonathan
32. Hamlet/ Shakespeare, William
33. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone/ Rowling, J. K.
34. Hiroshima/ Hersey, John
35. Hobbit/ Tolkien, J. R. R.
36. Hot Zone/ Preston, Richard
37. House on Mango Street/ Cisneros, Sandra
38. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings/ Angelou, Maya
39. If you give a mouse a cookie/ Numeroff, Laura
40. Illiad/ Homer
41. Inquiry Into the Nature of the Wealth of Nations/ Smith, Adam
42. Into Thin Air/ Krakauer, Jon,
43. Jane Eyre/ Bronte, Charlotte
44. Jungle/ Sinclair, Upton
45. Killer Angels/ Shara, Michael
46. King Must Die/ Renault, Mary
47. Last of the Mohicans/ Cooper, James Fennimore
48. Last Unicorn/ Beagle, Peter
49. Leaves of Grass/ Whitman, Walt
50. Les Miserables/ Hugo, Victor
51. Life and Death in Shanghai/ Cheng, Nien
52. Lion, the witch and the wardrobe/ Lewis, C. S.
53. Little House on the Prairie/ Wilder, Laura Ingalls
54. Little Prince/ Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de
55. Little Women/ Alcott, Louisa May
56. Longitude - the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time/ Sobel, Dava
57. Madeline/ Bemelmans, Ludwig
58. Memoirs of a Geisha/ Golden, Arthur
59. Miracle Worker/ Gibson, William
60. Mists of Avalon/ Zimmer, Marion Bradley
61. My Antonia/ Cather, Willa
62. Night/ Wiesel, Elie
63. Odyssey/ Homer
64. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection/ Darwin, Charles
65. Once and Future King/ White, T. H.
66. Persian Expedition/ Xenophon
67. Phantom Tollbooth/ Juster, Norton
68. Plato's Republic
69. Poems of Robert Frost/ Frost, Robert
70. Pride and Prejudice/ Austin, Jane
71. Prince/ Machiavelli
72. Prophet/ Gibran, Khalil
73. Road to Serfdom/ von Hayek, Friedrich A.
74. Robinson Crusoe/ DeFoe, Daniel
75. Roll of Thunder hear my cry/ Taylor, Mildred
76. Romeo and Juliet/ Shakespeare, William
77. Secret Garden/ Burnett, Francis Hodges
78. Siddhartha/ Hesse, Herman
79. Skellig/ Almond, David
80. Slaughter House Five/ Vonnegut, Kurt
81. Sparrow/ Russell, Maria Doria
82. Story of Ferdinand the Bull/ Leaf, Munro
83"Surely Your're Joking, Mr. Feynman" : Adventures of a curious character/ Feynman, Richard
84. Swiss Family Robinson/ Wyss, Johan
85. Tale of Peter Rabbit/ Potter, Beatrix
86. Tale of Two Cities/ Dickens, Charles
87. Things Fall Apart/ Achebe, Chinua
88. To Kill a Mockingbird/ Lee, Harper
89. Transall Saga/ Paulsen, Gary
90. Treasure Island/ Stevenson, Robert Louis
91. Uncle Tom's Cabin/ Stowe, Harriet Beecher
92. Universe in a Nutshell/ Hawking, Stephen
93. Unto the Sons/ Talese, Gay
94. When My Name was Keoke/ Parks, Sue
95. Where the Sidewalk Ends/ Silverstein, Shel
96. Witness/ Chambers, Whittaker
97. Women of the Silk/ Tsukiyama, Gail
98. Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do/ Terkel, Studs
99. World according to Garp/ Irving, John
100. Wrinkle in Time (and rest of the trilogy)/ L’engle, Madeline
Addendum because we just couldn’t keep it to 100
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Ferlinghetti, Coney Island of the mind
Raines, My soul is rested
McMurtry, Lonesome dove
McBride, The color of water
Shining season (biography of John Baker)
Appleman-Jurman, Alicia: my story
Blais, In these girls, hope is a muscle
Fox, Monkey island
Hickam, Rocket boys
Kingsolver, The bean trees and Pigs in heaven
Sapphire, Push
Suskind, A hope in the unseen