The Celebrity Reading List

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Gardiner Public Library, 72 Books

The Gardiner Public Library, from 1988 to 2007, polled various famous figures from all around the world (writers, artists, filmmakers, politicians, actors, etc.) to ask for their book recommendations. This list is based on the books that received at least two mentions.

The creators of the list asked a total of 489 celebrities and does list every single person's name

This list was originally published in 2007 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
2209 Hawaii James A. Michener 1959 American English
750 All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy 1992 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
472 The Prophet Kahlil Gibran 1923 Lebanese English
439 The Fountainhead Ayn Rand 1943 American English
13 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
508 Black Beauty Anna Sewell 1877 British English
713 The Killer Angels Michael Shaara 1974 American English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
241 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1876 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
192 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
1602 White Fang Jack London 1906 American English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
164 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
4501 Truman David McCullough 1992 American English
246 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
139 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
127 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
3232 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 2000 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
54 The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway 1952 American English
1010 The Tale of Peter Rabbit Beatrix Potter 1902 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
530 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
660 Interview with the Vampire Anne Rice 1976 American English
309 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
708 Captain Hornblower R.N. C. S. Forester 1937 British English
159 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
73 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
275 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
676 Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope 1857 British English
2533 Jazz Toni Morrison 1992 American English
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
304 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
4456 Collected Works of Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay 1956 American English
231 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
233 The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
292 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
9952 Care of the Soul Thomas Moore 1992 American English
107 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
243 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith 1943 American English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
1436 Letters to a Young Poet Rainer Maria Rilke 1929 Austrian German
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
189 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
1120 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
1260 The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood 2000 Canadian English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
1876 Cold Mountain Charles Frazier 1997 American English