From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Jeff O'Neal at Bookriot.com, 99 Books

100 books that, in the opinion of Bookriot.com editor-in-chief Jeff O'Neal, one should read before deeming themselves "well-read".

This list was originally published in 2013 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
314 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon 2000 American English
380 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
250 Anne of Green Gables L. M. Montgomery 1908 Canadian English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
103 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 1963 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
669 Beowulf Unknown 1000 Unknown Old english
1085 The Book Thief Markus Zusak 2005 Australian English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
396 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz 2007 Dominican English
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
495 Casino Royale Ian Fleming 1953 British English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
237 The Corrections Jonathan Franzen 2001 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
1074 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 2003 American English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
484 Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin 1754 Chinese Chinese
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
2885 Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer 2002 American English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
3486 The Fault in Our Stars John Green 2012 American English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
1289 A Game of Thrones George R. R. Martin 1996 American English
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
791 Gone Girl Gillian Flynn 2012 American English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
2708 The Help Kathryn Stockett 2009 American English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
2866 House Made of Dawn N. Scott Momaday 1968 American English
748 Howl and Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
1388 The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins 2008 American English
318 If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino 1979 Italian Italian
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
333 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace 1996 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
1142 Life of Pi Yann Martel 2001 Canadian English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
423 Murder on the Orient Express Agatha Christie 1934 British English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
41 On the Road Jack Kerouac 1957 American English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
337 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare 1597 British English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
274 The Stand Stephen King 1978 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
648 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
808 Watchmen Alan Moore 1986 American, British English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
3405 Fifty Shades of Grey: E. L. James 2011 British English