100 Life-Changing Books

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

About this list

National Book Award, 100 Books

National Book Award-winning authors got together to select what was, in their opinions, 100 life-changing books.

There were 38 National Book Award authors who submitted life-changing book picks; they are: Adam Bagdasarian, Ai, Andre Dubus III, Ann Cameron, B.H. Fairchild, Beth Kephart, Charles Wright, Clarence Major, Deirdre Bair, Ellen Howard, Howard Norman, Ivan Doig, Jacques Barzun, Jean M. Auel, Jill Abramson, John Balaban, Joseph Bruchac, Joyce Carol Oates, Joyce Carol Thomas, Kimberly Willis Holt, Laurie Halse Anderson, Lloyd Alexander, Lois Lowry, Mark Bowden, Milton Meltzer, Myron Levoy, Nikki Giovanni, Paul West, Philip Schultz, Richard Peck, Richard Wilbur, Sherod Santos, Stephen Dixon, Stephen King, Susan Mitchell, Tony Hillerman, Tor Seidler, Tracy Kidder.

This list was originally published in 2006 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
1656 Arrowsmith Sinclair Lewis 1925 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
2225 Aspects of the Novel E. M. Forster 1927 British English
722 Bastard Out of Carolina Dorothy Allison 1992 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
640 Black Boy Richard Wright 1945 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
655 Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway 1987 American English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
213 The Counterfeiters André Gide 1925 French French
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
466 A Death in the Family James Agee 1957 American English
135 Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann 1947 German German
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
540 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe 1968 American English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
388 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
753 Henderson The Rain King Saul Bellow 1959 American English
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
57 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
3591 Legends of The Fall Jim Harrison 1979 American English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
1415 Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain 1883 American English
52 Lord of the Flies William Golding 1954 British English
1073 The Lottery and Other Stories Shirley Jackson 1948 American English
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
1661 A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare 1595 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
416 Out of Africa Isak Dinesen 1937 Danish Danish
4632 Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Roddy Doyle 1993 Irish English
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
238 A Season in Hell Arthur Rimbaud 1873 French French
1224 The Snow Leopard Peter Matthiessen 1978 American English
539 So Long, See You Tomorrow William Maxwell 1980 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
1376 Tales of the South Pacific James A. Michener 1947 American English
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
1031 The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Yukio Mishima 1956 Japanese Japanese
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
2063 Watt Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
914 The Yearling Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 1938 American English
6317 The Artist's Way Julia Cameron 1992 American English
5487 Body Rags Galway Kinnell 1968 American English
5487 Dark symphony James A. Emanuel (Comp), Theodore L. Gross 1968 American English
4722 Death of a Lake Arthur William Upfield 1954 Australian English
5037 Eight Men Richard Wright 1961 American English
3942 A Fire on the Moon Norman Mailer 1970 American English
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
1236 Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Ryunosuke Akutagawa 1915 Japanese Japanese
3434 Horseman, Pass By Larry McMurtry 1961 American English
1841 Kafka's Other Trial Elias Canetti 1969 Bulgarian German
3087 The Marriage Of Cadmus And Harmony Roberto Calasso 1988 Italian Italian
3001 Monsignor Quixote Graham Greene 1982 British English
4722 My Book House Olive Beaupré Miller 1920 American English
1097 My Name Is Aram William Saroyan 1940 American English
4722 The Negro Caravan Sterling Allen Brown, Arthur Paul Davis, Ulysses Lee 1941 American English
4722 Of Time and the River Thomas Wolfe 1935 American English
5747 Open Secrets Alice Munro 1994 Canadian English
4722 The Bone is Pointed Arthur William Upfield 1938 Australian English
4929 The Poorhouse Fair John Updike 1959 American English
2620 The Prince and the Pauper Mark Twain 1881 American English
5624 The Richard Trilogy Paul Horgan 1970 American Unknown
6695 The Times Are Never So Bad Andre Dubus 1983 American English
5487 The Voices of Marrakesh Elias Canetti 1968 Bulgarian German
1257 Lives of the Caesars Suetonius 121 Roman Latin
5575 Audubon Robert Penn Warren 1969 American English
2313 The Left-Handed Woman Peter Handke 1976 Austrian German
6695 The Stories Of Breece D'j Pancake Breece D'J Pancake 1983 American English